The Voice of Colors – Part Two

Mandala

 

We saw in Part One how colors have been associated with certain moods in the West, often with real social functions. Obviously this is not the prerogative of this part of the globe, every culture and era has read the colors in their own way.

 

I state an anecdote, which allows us to understand how information can come from every direction and it is always good to remain with the receptors open.

I have always paid a lot of attention to the colors of flags, keeping them in mind while I photograph, precisely because I know how colors can be additional vehicles of emotions to the viewer.

Well, for a long time I couldn't explain the love and almost obsession that Thai people have for the color yellow.

In every ceremony, official function, even in the flowers used, yellow is predominant, yet it does not appear in any way in their flag which is blue, red and white. So, one day I asked a friend of mine, and she sent me a photograph, which shows the calendar of the week: “In Thailand, every day has a color, and yellow is the color of Monday, which was the day of the birth of our beloved King.”

Since the love that the Thai people had for the late former King Bhumibol Adulyadej was incredible and heartfelt, the yellow color has taken on a higher importance even than the flag.

This is one of those cases in which certain notions can help to give depth to our photographs.

 

Days of the week in Thailand

 

Let's go back to our journey into colors.

Hindu and Chinese traditions are certainly among the oldest in the world, and it is interesting to understand their interpretation of colors. 

“The Chinese cosmological system that had been adopted in Japan during the seventh century, attributed to each direction a particular color and a particular season, according to the complex geomantic system that greatly influenced the daily life of the Japanese people in the Nara and Heian periods, through the complicated scaffolding of directional taboos, kataimi and an apparatus of superstitions of various kinds:

the colors of blue and green were attributed to spring and the direction was the east,

summer was attributed the red color and the direction was the south,

the color white was attributed to autumn and the direction was the West,

the black color was attributed to winter and the direction was north,

the yellow color distinguished the center.”

 Rossella Marangoni writes on “Japan in Italy”.

In Japan, as in China, colors have a strong symbolic value, maybe to a greater extent than in the West.

Blue, red, white, black and yellow had a positive moral connotation, while the other colors, for example purple, were considered negative and harbingers of doom. Particular importance was therefore attributed to colors, a meaning that went far beyond mere decorative concern, linking them to an ethical concept. As the famous designer Tanaka Ikkō states:

“In Japan, colors, whether intense or delicate, are identified not on the basis of reflected light or shadow, but in terms of the meaning and feeling associated with them. The adjectives used to describe colors, such as iki (sophisticated or chic), shibui (measured, mitigated) or hannari (gay and cheerful) tend to be those that emphasize feelings, rather than the value of the colors being compared.”

 

Katsushika Hokusai. “Mount Fuji in Clear Weather”, 1830

In later eras, the importance attributed to colors grew, as is evident from the literary masterpieces of the Heian period, a time when color played an essential role – cultural, spiritual and sensual – in the classical culture of Japan. The colors of the kimonos, for example, followed coded combinations that were closely linked to the court rank of the individual who wore them and appropriate to the season in which they were found: not respecting these rules of etiquette would have earned them social exclusion.

The symbolism of Green was therefore borrowed in Japan from the Chinese tradition, like all cosmic symbolism. Green (绿色) is associated with the color of jade whose meanings in Chinese culture are purity, sincerity, reliability and health.

Red (红色) in China is immediately associated with the New Year, an extremely important event. Red symbolizes happiness, luck and wealth. But also love. In ancient times it was color, together with black, associated with death; it later became part of the five-elemental system of influences associated with fire, summer and Mars.

Yellow (黄色) is considered the most beautiful and important color in China: it's associated with the concepts of good taste, purity, wealth and authority, it was in fact the color of the emperor, so that one of its shades has gone down in history as “Imperial Yellow “, with a law that prohibited ordinary people from wearing yellow clothes. But yellow can also indicate something vulgar. The “yellow” films 黄 片 (huáng piàn) are pornographic films.

Blue (蓝色) in China embodies the meaning of spring and good omen, trust and longevity. It is also linked to the concept of quality. Moreover, it is perceived as a female color, while in many other Western countries it is linked to the male gender.

 

We come to the Black-White couple.

White (白色) is the color that indicates mourning, being the opposite of red which is that of “birth”. While the former is the color that dresses up to honor the deceased, the latter is forbidden at funerals and a favorite of happier celebrations, such as weddings.

In this sense, Black (黑色) does not necessarily have a negative character, as we do in the West, on the contrary it is a fundamental part of the white with which it composes the unity of Yin and Yang. Associated with the concepts of elegance and quality, it's a frequent color in everyday clothing. Unlike Westerners, the Chinese do not tie black to death, but it can also mean irregularity or illegality, secret. The term “underworld” is in fact translated into Chinese with the words black + society, “black society”, (黑社会, hēi shèhuì).

 

This is as far as the Japanese-Chinese tradition is concerned, but there is also a different sentiment linked to the colors related to Tibetan Buddhism, very fascinating and complex.

In this case the reading of colors is deeply connected to the spiritual aspect, as we will see later for Hinduism.

A long reflection is obviously related to the Black-White duality.

White is the vehicle of knowledge, because everything is revealed in it, being the sum of the entire spectrum of light. Therefore Sarasvati, the goddess of Knowledge, is represented in white, because in Her nothing must be hidden, but knowledge must belong to everyone and must destroy the darkness of ignorance. As well as the goddess Tara, in white, who also represents purity, holiness and cleanliness, and is “the one who leads beyond the darkness of the slavery of ignorance”.

White has qualities as cold as snow or very hot as a burning metal.

It's a fundamental element in the story of Buddha, linked to his birth. Legend says that Queen Maya, mother of Buddha, dreamed of being touched by the trunk of a white elephant, which is a symbol of fertility, associated with rain. The Buddha himself, in other previous lives was an elephant, as written in the Jataka, the tales of his previous lives.

The purity of this dream convinced the Queen that her birth would be blessed with spirituality.

Black, on the contrary, is the primordial darkness, where there is no light, but in which there is a sound that no human being can perceive, because in the maximum heights of the harmonic scale and unattainable to the human senses. It is when the harmonic vibrations slow down and diminish that the material forms become tangible from their reality of pure energy: therefore the dark becomes light, the colors the shadows, the sound and the sound the form or matter.

 

In this sense, the so-called “black paintings” of Buddhism are exemplary.

It is a genre called “Black Thangka”, or “the Mighty”, highly mystical Tibetan paintings with an esoteric value, widely used in the 17th century.

They were painted with sparkling gold lines on a gloomy black background, often representing ferocious demons, and their purpose was to achieve, during a deep and difficult contemplation, the awareness that the black of hatred and ignorance, evil in themselves, they could be conquered: not annihilated, but transformed into good, hatred transformed by wisdom into compassion.

Tibetan painting

I limit myself to this because otherwise we would go too far.

 

I want to conclude with a part that I have explored in recent weeks, after reading some texts on Hindu spirituality.

Which will lead us back to the West, for a final comparison on a topic that has long fascinated even our philosophers.

In a previous article, on Sanskrit, I mentioned the theory of  “navarasa”.

The Rasa theory is explained by Bharata in the Natya-sastra which is an ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts. It is thought to have been written in the 2nd century BC, and is probably the fifth Veda. In the Natya-sastra, Brahma says:

“The purpose of the Natya-sastra is to reveal to mankind the technology with which one can come to understand the nature of the world through its dramatic representation.”

There are nine rasas: laughter (hasya), love (srngara), anger (raudra), compassion (karuna), fear (bhayanaka), amazement (adbhuta), heroism (vir), hatred (bibhatsa) and tranquility (santa). Bharata described eight rasas but Abhinavagupta, who is the main authority on the theory of rasa, argued that there are nine rasas, adding tranquility as the ninth, because tranquility underlies and propels the original eight rasas forward.

 

What does this have to do with colors, you ask.

It has something to do with it, because each rasa is associated with a color and a divinity.

laughter (hasya) – white – Shiva 

love (srngara) – blue/black – Visnu 

anger (raudra) – red – Rudra 

compassion (karuna) – dove (brown) – Yama 

fear (bhayanaka) – black – Kala 

astonishment (adbhuta) – gold – Gandharva 

heroism (vir) – yellow – Indra 

hate (bibhatsa) – blue – Mahakala 

tranquility (santa) – silver – Narayana

We have already seen how, even in Hinduism, some colors are linked to legends and traditions. From the importance of yellow associated with Krishna, a symbol of peace and knowledge, to the blue of the terrible Kali, the warrior goddess who represents female strength – it's no coincidence that blue is an expression of hatred in navarasa.

What struck me was this association between colors and feelings, and their mixture that generates human expressions and characters.

Here we return, and conclude, to the West.

The same idea first occurred to Hippocrates, with his “theory of the four humors”. The Greek doctor theorized that the human body was composed of four basic substances (the so-called “humors”) and that the balances and imbalances in the quantity of these substances in an organism determined its health.

These humors corresponded to the elements air, fire, earth and water, which some years earlier had been indicated by the philosopher Empedocles as the raw material of all that exists. The whole cosmic reality of the world was a combination of different amounts of these four elements, and from there arose the theory of the four humors. The properties of these four elements, in turn, were reflected in the characteristics of the four humors which according to Hippocrates flowed through the human body.

Black bile: 

Substance related to the earth element, the properties of which were cold and dry. 

Yellow bile: 

Humor corresponding to the element of fire. Its qualities were warmth and dryness. 

Blood: 

The substance linked to the element of air, the properties of which were heat and humidity. 

Phlegm: The substance related to water, the properties of which are cold and moisture. 

This theory was expanded by Galen (131-201) corroborating it through scientific studies. The infinite possibility of combining these elements gives rise to the different characters of the human soul, to which four temperaments correspond (melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine).

 

In addition to being an etiological theory of disease, the humoral theory thus also became a theory of personality: the predisposition to excess of one of the four humors would define a character, a temperament and at the same time a physical constitution called complexion:

the melancholy, with an excess of black bile, is thin, weak, pale, miserly, sad; 

the choleric, with an excess of yellow bile, is thin, dry, nice tone, irascible, touchy, crafty, generous and proud; 

the phlegmatic, with an excess of phlegm, is blissful, slow, lazy, serene and talented; 

the sanguine, with excess of blood, is ruddy, jovial, cheerful, greedy and dedicated to a playful sexuality.

 

This makes us understand how different the outcomes of philosophical and spiritual research have been in the West and in Asia, but not dissimilar was the relationship between the profound influence that colors have in our psyche and on our lives.

“Wearing colors” could become a nice way to describe us.

Then, each of us, can follow one or the other interpretation, or be fascinated by them all, like me. What should never be underestimated is how much power colors have in our lives.

This is why I love to conclude this long journey with one of the most beautiful lines of a poem by Cesare Pavese:

“Every morning I will go out 

looking for colors” 

(Cesare Pavese) 

Yin and Yang

READ ALSO:

• The Voice of Colors – Part One
• Sanskrit: At the Roots of the Indo-Malay Language 

https://www.odissivilas.org/navarasa
"India – Art beyond forms” curated by Giovanni Torcinovich (VAIS - Il Cerchio, 2013)

Italian version