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The symbolism of colour

Chapter 10: CHAPTER IX
By Ellen McCaffery
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Mythology, Legends & FolkloreReligion/Spirituality

About This Book

The text surveys traditional and esoteric meanings attached to colours, arguing that hues function as symbols and vibratory forces linked to emotion, music, and the natural world. It treats individual colours in turn—red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, brown and grey—and considers the rainbow, tracing cultural lore, gem and talismanic uses, and artistic and poetic responses. Practical topics include medical and agricultural applications of coloured rays, meteorological colour signs, chromatics of the sky, and the proposed correspondence between colour and sound. Appendices outline schools of colour, planetary colours, and experiments on plant growth under coloured light.

CHAPTER IX

THE OLD LANGUAGE OF BROWN AND GREY

“Beauty is never lost,
God’s colours are all fast.”—Whittier.

We next consider the colour brown—the symbol of autumn and decay. The autumn may indeed be a beautiful season of mellow fruitfulness, and the rich red-brown hues may delight us, but for all this, the brown is a sign that the life is surely, though gently, passing away from the leaves. Yet because the tree does not die merely because the leaves perish, brown takes on the meaning of the still quietness that is necessary before the next period of effort. We have the expression “to be in a brown study,” that is, in a calm state of mind, oblivious to external facts and objects for the time being, yet really working out some deep problem that has to be solved before physical effort is of any value. There is a softness and gentleness about brown which calms our restless minds.

Browns and other sombre “useful” colours are usually tabooed by healers because they tend to depression. If rest is needed, this is better given by blues and purples since they are quietening in effect. In ordinary household decoration, golden browns may be used with the most restful and helpful effect.

In the human aura, however, the presence of much brown indicates an unprogressed character—one who needs to make his life more spiritual.

Grey eyes are considered by many the best for expressing tenderness and sadness, but as a rule grey denotes what is hard and unfeeling. Still there are such a number of shades of grey that probably this last meaning is only appropriate to the shades having much blue in them.

Tennyson writes:—

“Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O sea,
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.”

Kingsley writes:—

“’Tis the hard grey weather
Breeds hard Englishmen.
Sends our English hearts of oak
Seaward round the world.”

W. S. Cary, in “Heraclitus,” writes:—

“They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to bear, and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake,
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.”

W. E. Henley, in his “Song of the Sword,” sings:—

“Follow, O follow me,
Till the waste places
All the grey globe over
Ooze, as the honeycomb
Drops, with the sweetness
Distilled of my strength.”

Again we must contrast this modern symbolism with the ancient. Grey was the union of black and white, and so partook of the symbolism of each. Christ in grey robes was not a cheerless Christ. His grey robes symbolised resurrection—the triumph of life over death; they symbolise the joy of white over the despair of black, of the joy of knowledge of future and everlasting life over the dark, inscrutable ways of apparent death.

The grey friars wore grey robes to portray Christ risen, still alive and working for the people of earth.