"I am as curious about colour as one would be visiting a new country,[...]" , said Henri Matisse, and I can just agree. I have spent years exploring every aspect of colour, and I still discover new things all the time. In this two-part article, we will take a brief look at colour in various cosmologies. In part one I discuss different cultures and alchemy; in part two , I bring up the role of colour in the three major monotheistic religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Introduction
Since the dawn of history, colours have been used as symbols of a certain quality, a family, a god, a sacred ceremony, a nationality, etc. The meaning of a certain colour can shift from time to time and from culture to culture, even from individual to individual, although some seem universally human.
Sometimes colours are part of a cosmology, alchemy, an all-encompassing system to model reality, material and spiritual. Then we have correspondences: numbers, cardinal points, zodiacal signs, gods, elements, colours - and any other modality filling up its own space - all knit together in a web of correspondences in order to understand reality as one, and all its parts as interconnected by analogies. The most consistent examples of this way of thinking are old Chinese philosophy and Alchemy. None of them should be understood as factual, or at least not only as factual; in their ultimate forms both work and express themselves with models and symbols.
Of course, correspondences can be arranged in different ways, after all we deal with models. That is why, for instance, colour correspondences to zodiacal signs are not always the same. If we leave the genuine colours for a moment, let us look at a very simple example to illustrate what I mean.
Say that we have a pack of cards. There are four "colours": Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Cloves. Let us say that they correspond to the Pythagorean quaternary of reality, and most specifically to the Cardinal points, North, South, East, and West. Now, if we let different people arrange the correspondences, some would let Spades stand for North, while others might choose South instead, or East or West - and put everything in another order. There would still be four "colours" and four Cardinal points, one of each corresponding to one of the other, but the view on which corresponds to which would differ. This is not really important, the structure of the analogy is intact; however we choose to make the mutual correspondences pairwise, it is still essentially the same model. But when we try to list various symbolic correspondences, as I will do below, we encounter different particular versions. So, when, below, I give more than one zodiacal sign [for instance] for a colour, they represent different systems, and I have not always taken the time and space to define them all here. On the whole, my choice of what to elaborate on or treat briefly is entirely subjective.
Different Cultures
All ancient cultures had a developed colour code. In old Egypt, not knowing "someone's or something's colours", was not to know that person's or thing's true nature. [Compare English, "to show one's true colours".]
In India, possibly the most colourful place in the world, several colour codes developed, and it is still the place where they are given the most importance in everyday life.
China, as we have already mentioned, had colour systems intertwined with metaphysics and cosmology. So had Arabian and Western Alchemy, which contain a large number of systems, sometimes created by individuals known by name.
India & China
Indian mainstream philosophy has correspondences based on chakras, energetic centres of the body. Of them, seven are of major importance in Hinduism, and to them are assigned various correspondences - colours too. They are: red, yellow, blue, orange, green, indigo, and violet.
Describing this or other Indian systems further would require a long explanation of Indian philosophy, which is beyond the scope of this text. This is also true for Chinese philosophy, so let us just very briefly look at how some of their major systems relate to colour:
In Taoism, the universe is sometimes said to be created from three colours, green or blue [no proper distinction is made between the two], red, and yellow. Chinese Buddhism, however, claims "Colour is empty. Emptiness is colour". A contradiction? Judge for yourself. Contradictions are sometimes illusive.
Chinese Alchemy counted five elements [fire, water, wood, metal, earth], as opposed to the traditional four of the West, even if the latter was completed with the "quintessence" and practically changed to five. Thus Chinese metaphysics added a "centre" to the four Cardinal points, actually making them five, as everything was five, even their music was pentatonic; and the colour system was made of five colours: red, green, black, white, and yellow.
I Ching represents another, older Chinese tradition, and colour there has a different meaning, with orange as Yin and azure as Yang - and then a complicated teaching based on 8 groups of three, called "pa kua", 2 groups of three, and 64 cosmic archetypes.
The 8 groups of three [trigrams] can be interpreted as 8 different colours: white, black, yellow, red, blue, green, purple, violet.
A third old Chinese system is Feng Shui. It is aesthetic-metaphysical-astronomical, and shares many concepts with other schools of Chinese philosophy. The trigrams of I Ching, and Pa Kua, for instance, appear here in scripts older than I Ching. East is associated with Green Dragon and Spring, South with Red Phoenix and Summer, West with White Tiger and Autumn, and North with Dark Turtle and Winter.
Alchemy, Anthroposophy, Etc.
"A beautiful forest in India is found,
Wherein two birds together are bound.
One is snow-white, the other red.
They bite each other until both are dead."
(D. Stolcius von Stolcenberg, Viridarium chymicum, Frankfurt 1624)
Many systems exist, often created by a specific individual. I am not going to bring them all up here. Just a few examples.
Alchemy is not a field with a sharp borderline separating it from other disciplines, so it is not always clear what it comprises. But alchemists explored colours, trying to explain them. There are many forms of colour circles, where one tried to make a closed system containing all colours, and there were correspondences in the usual way, creating metaphysical connections between colours and other systems of elements. There were also attempts to explain the nature of colours in a more scientific sense. Representatives of this activity span over many centuries, and include for instance Ramon Lull (1235-1316), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).
In Alchemy, a quite general correspondence between seven colours, gems, metals, and "planets" [in reality the seven celestial bodies being visible to a naked eye] was:
gold/yellow: topaz, Sun, gold;
silver/white: pearl, Moon, silver;
red: ruby, Mars, iron:
blue: sapphire, Jupiter, tin;
black: diamond, Saturn, lead;
green: emerald, Venus, copper;
purple: amethyst, Mercury, quicksilver.
Physika kai mystika [Of natural and mystical things], by some scholars considered as the oldest text on Alchemy [which just depends on how to define Alchemy, a not so simple question], attributed either to Democritus (around 400 BC) or Bolos of Mende (third century BC), describes the alchemical Opus Magnum as consisting of four phases:
1. blackening (nigredo)
2. whitening (albedo)
3. yellowing (citrinitas)
4. reddening (rubedo)
Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), mystic, Christian, and in some sense an alchemist - originally a shoemaker who came to become one of Europe's most influential thinkers - had his own specific ideas of colours and their meanings:
blue - entity
red - father in the brilliance of fire
green - life
yellow - son
white - brilliance of God's majesty as a quintessence
Philip Otto Runge (1777-1810), who was strongly influenced by Böhme, interpreted colours as the Trinity:
blue - God the father
red - the son
yellow - the holy spirit
These were the only colours he recognised as existing. He wrote to Goethe in 1806: "As is known, there are only three colours, yellow, red, and blue." All others, and the whole universe, would be possible to create from these, he claimed. Runge was a painter himself.
Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1909), hardly counted amongst the alchemists although he belonged to that tradition, created a system he called "L'Archéomètre", a very complex system of symbolism, including many traditions and colours, planets, zodiacal signs, letters, numbers, and musical notes. He built this up with "concentric zones of equivalents" in a very complex way.
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy, created a specific colour system, based on black, white, green and "peach blossom". He wrote "Green is the dead image of the living, peach blossom the living image of the soul, white or light the soul's image of the mind, and black is the mind's image of death". He elaborates further on this and adds red, yellow, and blue as "radiant" colours, each with its own specific properties. Then a whole philosophy is built on this.
"Colours are light's suffering and joy."
(Goethe)
Part II of this essay: Colour & Cosmology II - Religions
Read also about colours in Heraldry: Vexillology & Heraldry
and my articles about colour, and about symbols.
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it was amazing to read article like this and seems you really did some research. Even here in our country we had are own interpretation with colors. Like Black for death, so we are usually wearing black to attend funerals. Though as years go by, some perception of colors changes.