The symbolism of colour

CHAPTER I

COLOUR A TRUE SYMBOL

“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—

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:—

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:—

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:—