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THE SYMBOLISM OF COLOUR
THE SYMBOLISM OF
COLOUR
BY
ELLEN CONROY, M.A.
“Speak to the earth and it shall teach you.”--JOB.
LONDON
WILLIAM RIDER & SON, LIMITED
8 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 4
1921
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
1. COLOUR A TRUE SYMBOL 1
2. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF RED 6
3. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF YELLOW 14
4. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF GREEN 21
5. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF BLUE 27
6. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF PURPLE 36
7. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF WHITE 40
8. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF BLACK 46
9. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF BROWN AND GREY 50
10. THE OLD LANGUAGE OF THE RAINBOW 53
APPENDICES--
1. SCHOOLS OF COLOUR 61
2. THE COLOURS OF THE PLANETS 62
3. CHROMATICS OF THE SKY 64
4. YELLOW 64
5. COLOUR AND FORM 65
6. THE GROWTH OF PLANTS UNDER COLOURED RAYS 65
THE SYMBOLISM OF COLOUR
CHAPTER I
COLOUR A TRUE SYMBOL
“The great below clenched by the great above.”--E. B. B.
“God made the country; man made the town,” says William Cowper, and
almost everyone will agree that it is the deprivation of the colour of
the country that makes our towns so sadly depressing, for nearly all
people appreciate colour, though perhaps in a general way. They realise
that colour helps to beautify the world.
Other people, however, look upon colour as one of the greatest joys
in life. The colour of the woods, the flowers, the sunrise, and the
sunset are sources of the very deepest emotion, exalting them above
mere interest in external things into the very highest realms of vision
and beauty. The colours of an artist like Titian make them realise
the joy of living. Even the word-pictures of the poets do the same,
so that they become firm believers in the poetic fallacy that what
is beautiful in nature reflects what is beautiful in the mind of man.
Thus Buddha watching the sun rise seems to clothe Nature with his own
luminous soul, which is striving to make a new age begin on the earth.
Edwin Arnold, in his _Light of Asia_, tells us that the Buddha rose
just before the False Dawn and stood--
“Watching the sleeping earth with ardent eyes
And thoughts embracing all its living things;
While o’er the waving fields that murmur moves
Which is the kiss of Morn waking the lands,
And in the East that miracle of Day
Gathered and grew. At first a dusk so dim
Night seems still unaware of whispered dawn,
But soon--before the jungle-cock crows twice--
A white verge clear, a widening, brightening white,
High as the herald star, which fades in floods
Of silver, warming into pale gold, caught
By topmost clouds, and flaming on their rims
To fervent golden glow, flashed from the brink
With saffron, scarlet, crimson, amethyst;
Whereat the sky turns splendid to the blue,
And, robed in raiment of glad light, the King
Of Life and Glory cometh.”
As we read the passage the whole scene arises before us, of the
lonely watcher and the glorious Eastern sky. In other versions of the
same event, however, we have more definite teaching concerning these
beautiful sunrise hues. The Buddha plays his vina and the colour of the
sky changes according to his seven notes--yellow, blue, violet, green,
pink, white, and cream; not colours given by chance, but of deep
esoteric meaning.
Did we but know it, no doubt the seven strings on the lute of Apollo
had once the same significance; and though we know these seven strings
had other meanings as well, yet we must not therefore dismiss our
theory, for “Is not God able to say many things in one?” That is the
whole essence of the understanding of symbolism, that there are planes
of interpretation.
There has always existed a belief in the essential connection between
colour and sound. That is why in everyday language we say “a colour
clashes” or “a colour harmonises”--both terms from the sister art of
music. The scientist has now worked out this connection,[1] so that we
have the following facts:--
Vibrations per second.
A tenor voice produces 400
Red light ” 400,000,000,000,000
A soprano voice ” 700
Violet light ” 700,000,000,000,000
Thus light gives a finer vibration than sound to the extent of a
million million times, and this is one reason why, when the mind is so
tired that even music seems wearisome, it can be healed by means of
colour. Professor Wallace Rimington of King’s College made a colour
organ in which colours were thrown on a screen when the organ was
played.
[1] Dr Mount Bleyer of New York invented the vibrograph to give the
connection between colour and sound.
Few people recognise that colours are powers, forces, vitalities, and
vibrations.[2] Yet such they are, and on the physical plane we are now
learning to enlist them in all kinds of occupations, as varied as that
of the physician, the gardener, the brewer, and the baker. Every year
we are finding out more clearly how we can use these vibrations for the
benefit of man. Every year new hospitals are being opened for colour
healing. Every year we are finding out how we can obtain better crops
by means of the application of coloured rays.[3] The meteorologist[4]
has taken up the colour of the sky as an indication of weather, and is
making exhaustive tabulation of facts in order to make more definite
the lore which we learnt as children in such rhymes as:--
“Evening red and morning grey
Sets the traveller on his way;
Evening grey and morning red
Brings down rain upon his head.”
When we think of colours and read into them some of the wonderful
truths with which they have been associated for many centuries, we are
astonished to find that there is a direct correspondence between the
value apportioned to a colour on the physical plane and the value given
symbolically. Swedenborg was continually insisting that there was no
true symbolism without a direct correspondence. Thus, if we take the
lions at the base of Nelson’s column and substitute any other animals,
our minds would be instinctively offended. Why? Because Nelson and his
men had in them the same quality or qualities that we associate with
the lion.
[2] See Appendix V.
[3] See Appendix VI.
[4] See Appendix III.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning grips this great truth and expresses it in
her poem of _Aurora Leigh_:--
“Verily I was wrong,
And verily many thinkers of this age,
Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understand
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single or alone;
The great below clenched by the great above.”