It would be wiser to write down a sort of re-cap of the following post, because the reader is likely to get lost in the labyrinth of several thoughts & ideas enunciated below.
1. Oswald Spengler, a great German intellectual who flourished in the early 20th century wrote in his book, The Decline of the West, what maybe the finest eulogy of Western-Northern-European culture, which he calls the culture of the “Faustian” Man – from the Medieval-Goethean legendary character called Faust.
2. With expansive erudition and consummate expertise of an incisive intellectual, he delineates the fundamental principles, psychological-roots, soul-type, essential ideas, and crucial achievements of the “Faustian” Man.
3. He makes comparisons with what he calls “Magian” Culture, which encompasses the Middle-East, historically all the way from Chaldea-Babylon, through Persia, Judaism-Christianity, down to Islam – and with “Classical” Culture, which basically encompasses Greece & Rome.
4. He occasionally meanders into the Chinese & Egyptian worlds – which he evidently admires – makes favorable comparisons with the “Faustian” –but ultimately, has the more ardent passion for Faustian Culture.
5. He tends to club Indian culture together with the “Classical”, i.e. Greco-Roman – and while making very sparse & unsatisfactory comments on Hindu-Brahmanical or Vedic culture – demeans & gives a pathetic picture of Buddhism.
6. Note that he doesn’t see Judaism & Christianity – at least as far as their origination, concretization & establishment was concerned – as “Faustian”.
He sees them as “Magian”.
7. “Faustian” culture begins around 10th century CE, and starts growing in Germany, France, England, and thereabouts – but there is a parallel growth, albeit not in such a pure, exalted form, in Italy too.
8. One of the greatest expressions of Faustian culture is the Gothic Cathedral.
This is {“Magian”} Christianity, yes, but Christianity completely transformed & revitalized & reinterpreted by the Faustian soul.
The Gothic Cathedral is the first, complete majestic expression – and one of the loftiest achievements – of the new, burgeoning, independent, unique, and irreplaceable Faustian race-type.
The fundamental abstractions that underlie the development of Gothic architecture characterize all the great achievements of European culture {mostly Western, though Spain comes into the picture too} – and their consummate artistic expressions are Baroque & Rococo art, Shakespeare & Beethoven,
9. In his discussions, Spengler tends to demarcate Italian culture from the more “Germanic” Northern-Western culture.
Italians were not purely “Faustian”, but there was, of course, some degree of reflection & interpenetration.
He gushes over Dante, but is more restrained & unclear when it comes to Raphael & Michelangelo.
He prefers Giorgione & Leonardo, and then admires the Venetians, but he is not as fascinated with the Renaissance, since the Renaissance claimed to, and to a great extent did, follow “Classical” Greco-Roman artistic ideals.
10. In his cultural analyses, Spengler rightly gives substantial importance to the concept of color – i.e. what colors are used, in what way, in various aspects of human existence.
He calls blue & green the most pertinent “Faustian” colors, as they emerged in the Pre-Renaissance European paintings – which are mostly religious, Christian works of art – and explicates on how & why these two colors are so loved by the “Faustian” Man.
The gold-color, used in Byzantine or Byzantine-influenced European-Christian art, Spengler sees as “Magian” – NOT as “Faustian”.
Green, for him, is the most Catholic of all colors.
Brown, which emerged in great European art towards the second half of the 16th century, and finally found its greatest expression in Rembrandt – is the quintessential “Protestant” color.
Whether he finally gives the highest place of honor to the browns of Rembrandt & the indeterminate grey-brown-silver tones of Watteau, or to the blue-greens of Catholic art {or by Catholic painters}, isn’t very clear to me, but he undoubtedly holds all these high above the warm colors used by the “Classical” Man.
11. I find a lot of lacunae in his arguments, though some are very accurate, very perceptive, very intelligent, very convincing, and above all, very thought-provoking.
There are many intricate, sophisticated and recondite dimensions to Spengler’s complex & cerebral magnum opus, but, to put it simply, one fundamental characteristic of the “Faustian” man is his love for Space – for Depth & Distance – in the sense of the indefatigable conquest of Space.
And not just the conquest of Space, but a directional thrust into Space, which symbolizes and represents his quest for the “Infinite”.
Spengler raises this to an almost transcendental struggle, turning it into a battle between Spirituality {signified by the Western European Man’s love for Space} and Matter {signified by the Western European hatred, for the body & sex}.
The latter, he sees glorified, in “Classical” culture, especially with its love for the nude sculpture, and its overwhelming delight in the beauty of the human body.
The “Classical” Man – read Greco-Roman {& indirectly, to an extent, Indian} Man} – has no serious interest in Space, has no sense of the great creative idea of Space, has simply never looked at it the way the “Faustian” Man does, and has no such concern or worry about Space.
Blue & green, gold & brown, thus, factor into these discussions about two diametrically opposed weltanschauungs, two incomparably incompatible world-views.
India fits in surreptitiously, almost inconspicuously, somewhere in-between, barely mentioned or analyzed, but mostly clubbed with the “Classical”, which is about the Near & Present, rather than the Far, and the continuum of Past-Present-Future.
As I wrote in the earlier post, Spengler’s most passionate concern is to show that the unique European culture – which budded in the 10th century and reached its climax in European Mathematics & Astronomy & German Music in the 18th century – is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT from, and totally different from, the Greco-Roman “Classical Culture”, to which so many Europeans think they owe their achievements.
In the context of color, apparently, Blue was not important for the Greeks, but it is of cardinal importance to the “Faustian” Man.
This seems to reveal a fundamental difference in their racial character, in their psychic orientation, in their soul-types, in their way of seeing & dealing with existence.
The heavy use of gold came from the “Magian” Middle East – and is NOT a purely “Faustian” concern.
This is the theme I’m addressing in these posts.
Am I trying to prove Spengler wrong?
Not really.
He makes many valid, many interesting points.
I can’t say I always “get” everything he has to say – for that one needs to have knowledge not just of advanced physics & mathematics, but also of their historical development – but I’ll address what is evident & comprehensible to me.
The subject of color is both simpler, and very important.
I begin with a quote from Nietzsche, which has evidently influenced Spengler, about the peculiar sense of color of the Greeks.
I move on to show the extreme fluidity and interpenetrability of various color and color-spectrums, in Ancient Indian thought.
The three cardinal colors referred to, are:
1. hari {as a color, denotes yellow, green, tawny etc.; it is not only the name of Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa, but a word which pervades the whole of Sanskrit literature like Deva, Indra, Pati, etc. etc.}
2. śyāma and
3. nīla.
My thoughts about these colors pertains to the similarities in the thought-process of Greeks and Indians.
Evidence of the similarity in thinking implies there was a consistent logic followed by both cultures, separated by several thousand miles.
Then I attempt to speculate on how yellow & green on the one hand, and green & blue on the other, tend to be associated or seen as interchangeable.
{Though Spengler doesn’t really think of Ancient Indians as strictly “Classical” – they are a completely distinct racial-type – he does see a lot of similarities between the two, and tends to scoff at them, and their Non-“Faustian” “passivity”.}
Did the Gothic, “Faustian” Man abjure warm colors, like red & yellow?
Did “Classical”, “passive” Indians spurn the “Faustian” colors like blue & green – or the “Magian” gold?
Spengler draws certain conclusions from the use of particular colors in specific ways in distinct cultures: is he really correct?
He highlights the essential nature of the “Faustian” soul by emphasizing that it clothed Virgin Mary – the chief object of worship in the Medieval, Gothic, “Faustian” universe – in blue & white.
But how accurate is he?
Are all his arguments really sound?
He despises warm colors – is he making some serious mistakes here?
Is there a different perspective on the use of specific colors in specific contexts?
This is what I’m writing about.
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“There is one Supreme Self {haṁsa – swan} in the midst of this universe.
He Himself is the Fire {agni} that is fully established in the water {salila”} {i.e. the body}.
By knowing Him alone one goes beyond death;
There is no other path to go by.”
– 6.15, Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad
“For the Lord {Jehovah} thy God {Elohim} is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.”
– 4.24, Deuteronomy
“On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast.
Everyone in the camp trembled.
Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire.
The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.”
– 16-18, Chapter 19, Book of Exodus, The Bible
“Those who perceive Rudra, the sole Puruṣa, oft-invoked and oft-eulogized, in the form of Fire {vahni-rūpa}, the excellent Deva in the midst of the heart {hṛdasya madhye}, possessing the size of the tip of a hair, are self-possessed & courageous. Theirs is perennial serenity, not of others.”
– 33-34, Chapter 18, Liṅga Purāṇa
From Dawn of Day, by Friedrich Nietzsche:
“THE COLOUR-BLINDNESS OF THINKERS.—
How differently from us the Greeks must have viewed nature, since, as we cannot help admitting, they were quite colour-blind in regard to blue and green, believing the former to be a deeper brown, and the latter to be yellow.
Thus, for instance, they used the same word to describe the colour of dark hair, of the corn-flower, and the southern sea; and again they employed exactly the same expression for the colour of the greenest herbs, the human skin, honey, and yellow raisins: whence it follows that their greatest painters reproduced the world they lived in only in black, white, red, and yellow.
How different and how much nearer to mankind, therefore, must nature have seemed to them, since in their eyes the tints of mankind predominated also in nature, and nature was, as it were, floating in the coloured ether of humanity! (blue and green more than anything else dehumanise nature).
It is this defect which developed the playful facility that characterised the Greeks of seeing the phenomena of nature as gods and demi-gods—that is to say, as human forms.”
Astonishingly enough, this is pretty much the case in India.
I am very sure the Greeks were not color-blind – or retarded.
Nor were Indians.
We probably no longer understand the method of their thinking, i.e. how & why they chose the specific concepts, ideas, images, and symbols, which they did – or only seldom – but that does not mean they employed no logical, rational, or natural method {i.e. the idea or notion evolved naturally from experience & observation}.
Modern European thinkers like Nietzsche don’t help, and Spengler simply misleads.
In India, for instance, Kṛṣṇa is also called Hari.
Now look at the dictionary meanings of the word hari:
mfn. (prob. fr. a lost √hṛ , “to be yellow or green”)
· fawn-coloured,
· reddish brown,
· brown,
· tawny,
· pale yellow,
· yellow,
· fallow,
· bay (esp. applied to horses),
· green,
· greenish
· m.
è yellow or
è reddish brown or
è green (the colour)
Doesn’t this match with Nietzsche’s observation {bullets, underlines etc. by me}:
“they employed exactly the same expression for the colour of
· the greenest herbs,
· the human skin {I believe the Greeks were not exclusively or even predominantly White, so they were “olive”-skinned, brown-skinned, wheatish-bronzy, even dark folk – hence, fawn, tawny, fallow, etc.},
· honey {reddish-brown, golden-brown, tawny, amber}, and
· yellow raisins”??
{Virgin Mary & the Child, with St. Paul: by Titian, c.1510.
If it is true that the intentional accomplishments of a mathematic belong only to the surface of history, it is equally true that its unconscious element, its number-as-such, and the style in which it builds up its self-contained cosmos of forms are an expression of its existence, its blood.”
And blood is red, Mr. Spengler, unless you are referring to certain cephalopods, or the most inferior of creatures.
In all his ingenious theorizing, especially that of the force which moves the mass – the idea of Force being absolutely central & definitive to “Faustian” thinking – Spengler does not quite convincingly enunciate the basic issues:
Who possesses this Force?
Who, or What, exercises it?
Who moves the Mass?
Whose is the “vertical upthrust” of all Faustian striving?
Who or What conquers Space, or Nature, or cleaves & penetrates the ring of the distant horizon?
Who longs for & loves this Limitless Space?
It is, after all, the Faustian Man himself: it is, after all, Man.
The Man of body & life-force, of blood & intellect, of perception & feeling, of knowledge & emotion, of reason & action.
Space neither thinks nor acts: this is simply not true, and if this is the kernel of Faustian thought, then it is quite unconvincing.
Space is perceived {indirectly, in a strange way}, felt, loved, feared, desired by, & acted upon, by Man.
Where Spengler puts the Body, he should have put Man – a harmonious, integrated unit – and the whole equation changes.
Limitless Space is the Object: the Acted-Upon, the Mass, in relation to which the Force is Man Himself.
And Force, and Forcefulness, are best symbolized by Fire {and by extension, the Sun with His rays of light}, not by Space.
And if all Culture is the efflorescence of Blood, then Blood is the Acting Force, the Creative Force itself, and Blood is Red.
Red is the Active, Dynamic, Creative: Blue, the passive.
Hence, in India, the color associated with Creation of the Universe is Red, associated with the metaphysical quality Rajas.
This is not the highest, most supreme color (within this specific context), but the philosophical association is appropriate.
I see Space – ākāśa in Hindu texts – as the medium and matrix within which, the Cosmic Intelligence-Will-&-Life-Force acts to create the Universe.}
Fact is, yellow raisins would be generally mixed up with & indistinguishable from brown, tawny, or reddish ones – the puzzling point here is the “greenest herbs”, because raisins do have the color of honey – which in turn is the skin-color of most dusky races.
Do note that what we call “olive”-skinned is actually brown or brownish, at best, a brown-yellow-ish: that does not mean we are “color blind”, does it?
The modern dictionaries seem to define “olive” as a “yellow-green” color, though I am sure no olive-“skinned” person is “yellow-green”, and the olive itself is of a very distinct green color.
In other words, we see that green {“olive”} is identified, or associated with, yellow-brown {the yellowish-brownish complexion of “olive”-skinned people}.
This association exists till today.
Nietzsche’s conclusions do not make much sense, though his observations are accurate.
It makes perfect sense to think that names for colors were derived from the things which possessed those colors ... is it possible that sometimes they came from the products of, or rather, the things that were produced from, those things?
Is it possible that the word to denote the oil of a particular plant, is the same as that used to denote the plant itself – or vice versa?
When we say “rose colored” or “rosy”, we refer only to the flower of the rose-plant, not the whole plant in itself – and we refer only to the red rose, not roses of other colors like white or yellow.
Even then, are we sure we refer to the pink rose, or the red rose?
“Roses are red, Violets are blue” ... but roses come in white, pink & yellow, and violets are, well, violet.... yet we say “roses are red, violets are blue” ... we have a tendency to generalize, and classify in broad categories.
We say the sky is “blue”, but the fact is that, one, the sky is not an object that possesses color; two, even if we say that there is something out there, perceived by our eyes, it is not blue, it infact can have various colors.
There is a red sky, a black sky, a purple sky, a pink or roseate sky, a crimson sky, a grey sky, an orange sky...
I am not clear about what is Nietzsche referring to, when he says – rather, implies – that the yellowish-brownish-tawny color applies to the “greenest herbs”.
There is no example.
But there has to be some logical connection.
Maybe the name of those “herbs” were derived from the color of their flower or fruit?
To continue.
In Sanskrit, we have the word harita {related to hari}:
· n. yellowish,
· pale yellow,
· fallow,
· pale red,
· pale (also, “pale with fright”) ,
· greenish,
· green (also; “verdant” as opp. to śuṣka “dry”)
· n. a yellowish or greenish substance
· n. gold
· n. greens, vegetables Vishn. (“unripe grain” Sch.)
We also have harit, which more or less means the same things.
In contemporary Hindi, green is denoted by the word harā, and greenery, by hariyāli.
There is considerable variety in the translation of the term harit/harita, which repeatedly occurs in the Ṛg Veda.
It has been translated
· as “bay-colored”,
· as “tawny” {i.e. a pale, brownish-ochrish yellow, as in the color of the lion}, and
· as “green”,
something which Nietzsche observes in relation to the Greeks.
The Greeks and Indians – both of whom Spengler essentially dislikes, and tries to demean – seem to be seeing and portraying colors in a very similar manner.
A more modern translation says harit means the rays of the Sun {thus integrating the concepts of golden-yellow & green}.
harit also means both emerald, and turmeric.
You can see that many ideas of the Greeks & Indians were identical, and that both tended to classify green, yellow, brown & tawny, and finally, even golden & red, under the same blanket words.
{Hence, all the modern-Western talk of “Greek influence” on just about everything in India: we could argue the exact opposite: Greeks went out from India centuries before the Homeric era – the likes of Alexander, if he ever did come to this land, were merely coming back to the place whence they originated}.
Of course, I cannot precisely explain how yellow & green would be denoted by the same word – or green & tawny – though tawny & yellow are not far from each other.
I can think of a broad principle – such as that of agricultural fields, or greenery in general, which, under sunlight, can look both yellow & green.
That is, these two colors are the primary agricultural colors, and colors of open greenery – but I really don’t want to say something stupid, and there’s no point speculating upon it right now.
{But since I can barely stop myself... :)
Think of rice fields under the Sun.
Or bamboo forests, often mentioned in our texts {bamboo being an important plant in Hindu consciousness – as in the Chinese – strangely unrecognized today}.
Yellow & green shine out side by side, even merge, nay blend, in countless delightful hues & tones across the breadth of sleepy meadows, lush woods, verdant hill-sides, and rolling fields.
A corn field is typically green topped with sprouts of yellow.
A wheat field goes from being a fresh, pure, gleaming green to yellow-golden-brown.
Look at any European painting with a natural background, i.e. with fields, meadows, hills etc. in the background, and particularly those which are bright – or on the brighter side – or depict the fields, meadows etc. lush & tranquil under sunlight.
What do you see?
That the green almost always blends with yellow, i.e. there’s an interplaying of shades of green with shades of yellow-brown.
Is this the phenomenon that the words hari & harit were intended to convey?
Not the color green, but the color – the total synthesis of all the shades & hues – of greenery, of verdure – of open spaces abounding in trees, plants, shrubs – of woods & meadows & fields – but bathed in, or speckled with, sunlight?
It is only when the sky is dark, gloomy, cloudy, sunless, or at late twilight after sunset, that the green attains a deeper hue, and the yellow, brown, golden hues start ebbing & vanishing.
...
As for harit being synonymous with piṅgala, the latter, I think, carries a distinctly deeper, darker, reddish connotation – even red-gold.
Perhaps such words capture the process of transformation, as in the ripening of grain, or certain vital foods, from green to yellow-tawny-bay-brown?
Do note that if you take the branch of a tree, or a plant, you will find brown & green in it together.
The bark of trees come in various shades of brown, some deeper, some lighter, some tinged with grey, some whitish, some reddish, some even silvery ... and the same applies to the color of leaves.
Leaves change color, from green to yellow to brown, and so on.
One can wonder if a possible root-concept is “leaf”.
That is, the word means “leaf-colored”.
This is just speculation.
A term like harita, thus, might be used as in the color of a plant, or a tree, or something like “field”, or “greenery”, in which shades of yellow-brown, and shades of green, always co-exist, and abide & dance beside each other, and mingle & merge forever.
I, however, prefer the idea prior to this, that it is the color of sunlit verdure.
It is evidently a color of freshness, of newness, cheerful. }
{The Coronation of the Virgin, by Peter Paul Rubens.
This is not uncommon: Mary dressed in all-blue {in this painting, blue & a purplish-blue}, and Jesus dressed in all-red.
God the Father here is dressed in yellow & white: the colors of the brightest, incandescent Light.
In the Shiva Purāṇa, Shiva is described as “sahasrāṃśu sahasrādhika-tejasam” {Verse 11, Chapter 19, Sṛṣṭi-khaṇḍa, Rudra-Saṁhitā} – i.e. as one “who was shining with a brilliance that excelled thousands of rising suns {sahasrāṃśu}”.
This can only be depicted as a blinding whitish-golden burst of light.
“If a thousand suns were to rise up together in the sky, they would not match the effulgence of that great soul {mahātman}” – thus is the param-aiśvara rūpa – the supreme glorious form – of Kṛṣṇa, the yogeśvara, glorified in the Bhagavad Gītā 11.12 – a vision of which he grants to Arjuna.
Agni is both white {śveta} and red {aruṣa} in Ṛg Veda 3.1.4 – which has been correctly translated as “pure” and “radiant” by H.H. Wilson – white being associated with purity, and red with brilliance.
Again, we see,
“White-hued {śvita} and thundering he dwells in splendour...” {Ṛg Veda 6.6.2}
Yet again we are told, of Agni:
citro yad abhrāṭ chveto na vikṣu
ratho na rukmī tveṣaḥ samatsu
– Ṛg Veda 1.66.6
“When he shines, with wonderful lustre, he is like the white (sun) {śveta},
or like a golden chariot {rukma ratha} amongst men, resplendent {tveṣa} in battle”.
The three colors – red, white, and golden – were fully identified, and clearly correlated, in the Ṛg Veda itself.
And they are all associated with Fire, Sun, Light, Radiance, Splendour – by extension Spirit, Soul, Consciousness.
...
These seem only too appropriate for the depictions of the Creative, Dynamic God-Father and Christ-Logos-Jesus figures.
“And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.” ... so says the King James Bible of the Book of Revelation {1.15}, about the vision of Jesus Christ by John the Beloved Apostle.
This verse has been intensely debated today, especially by those who think that the Ancient Israelites were Africans – since they take brass to be a brownish color.
Be that as it may, I think the translations are all slightly confusing.
There can be two interpretations: one based on the brass “as having been refined in a furnace” – the other on “as if they burned in a furnace”.
Please note that these are two quite different situations.
In the first, reference is to the metal as we find it after it has been refined.
In the second, reference is to the metal as we find it while it is being refined.
The New American Standard Bible is perhaps closer to the mark when it says: “His feet were like burnished bronze when it has been heated to a glow in a furnace”.
In neither case, pure white seems to be indicated.
The first is better understood as a golden color, as all brass items are, though the Bible does distinguish brass from gold and silver, hence, brass maybe of a deeper hue than gold.
The second is something like molten metal – a burning, glowing, red-white-gold color – somewhat like flowing lava.
As I might show later, this is something one finds amply in Ancient Indian literature.
...
I do not see any compulsive predilection for a blue-robed Mary in Rubens
Red is the color, not just of Passion, but of Feeling & Sentiment itself.
Red is the most intense, potent color of Emotion.
And which color can convey Love – any form of Love – better than Red?
It is probably the color which acts the strongest upon the mind, and evokes the most powerful sensations.
Blue, on the other hand, is cold: it is the color of frigidity.
Draped on the Virgin Mary, it certainly seems to emphasize her lack of sexuality, accentuate her chastity, italicize her perpetual virginity.
Was the object, as Spengler says, to etherealize her, i.e. to desexualize her?
Gazing upon the Mother of God – also the Mother of Humanity in essence – the Mother of All – would it be appropriate to drape her in Red, a color invariably associated with sexual, erotic sentiments?
Would Men, unconsciously, subliminally, seeing a beautiful, young woman dressed in dazzling red, be able to see her purely as a Mother?
Would other elements unconsciously intrude into their consciousness?
And yet, I refuse to accept the notion that red was scarcely used in depictions of Mary: it was abundantly used.
{It is interesting to note that with the Renaissance, the Virgin Mary loses all her closed, cut-off, sexless, standardized look inherited from the Byzantine East – and morphs into a full-bodied, beautiful, often big-breasted, highly personalized/individualized but nevertheless asexual, unerotic woman.
She is almost matronly ample in many depictions, whereas Pre-Renaissance depictions almost never emphasize her body, its fullness, its inherent fertility, and wrap it up almost completely, negating her body.
It must be counted amongst the great achievements of the World, this master-creation of Medieval & Renaissance Christian Europe: the artistic depiction of a young, beautiful, often fulsome & matronly lady, sometimes almost girly in her gentleness & softness, completely lacking in sexuality & eroticism.
It is difficult to feel murky emotions of lust, whilst gazing upon the tender & innocent Sistine Madonna – not yet a woman, but not precisely a girl – shyly afloat in a vaporous realm between childhood & motherhood – by Raphael.
In Indian depictions, even the Buddha & the Bodhisattvas –
...
But we must not fall into easy formulas, as Spengler does.
Kṛṣṇa is the supreme erotic god of Indian, Hindu culture – just think of the Gīta Govinda – and he is blue, blue-black, black, or deep green.
Why?
Can we answer that question?
Rāma has the same magnetic beauty as a Kṛṣṇa , as passionately extolled by Tulsīdās in the Rāma-Carita-Mānasa:
“His dark form {syāma sarīra}, which resembles a blue lotus {nīla-kaṃja} and a heavy rain-cloud {bārida gambhīra}, possessed the beauty of millions of Cupids {Kāma – i.e. the God of Love, Sex, and Desire, in India}.
The nails glistened on His red lotus-like feet {aruṇa caraṇa paṅkaja} as if pearls had been set on the petals of a rosy lotus .”
In other words, Indians never did divorce the color of the blue from sexual attractiveness, or sensuous beauty.
{BTW, the original simply says kamala-dala – there is no reference to a rosy lotus – the redness of the feet or toes is implied by the terms aruṇa paṅkaja.}
But not only Spengler, all modern people see blue as asexual too.
It is the color of formality.
Yes, the Virgin Mary is very often depicted in very rich, luscious, almost gorgeous blues {for there is a sensual blue} – there is a deep, intense royal blue – though these cannot compare to the most voluptuous, glossy red.
But the blues associate with her typically emphasize sobriety and dispassion.
It should be noted that the color associated with Venus, the quintessential pagan-European goddess of love, sex, & fertility, is blue.}
It’s interesting that deity Hari (i.e. Kṛṣṇa) – the word meaning yellow or green or tawny – is blue or blue-black or black.
However, his garment is definitely yellow.
With the repeated mass extermination of Brāhmaṇas over centuries, the whole literature that could have explained these ideas seems to have been lost.
It is full of mysteries & peculiarities which we cannot understand or explain nowadays, but apparently, there was a method, there was an inner logic & consistency, and this pattern emerges in other cultures too (as faraway as Greece).
Rāma & Kṛṣṇa are repeatedly called śyāma (i.e. their complexion is śyāma), which is generally understood as black, or dark, or blue, or swarthy.
They, however, are both traditionally draped in yellow, i.e. hari.
Spengler doesn’t have to face such an issue while explicating “Faustian” art: the complexion of all characters is irrelevant – they’re all White Caucasians {with some peculiar, rather mysterious exceptions} – that is why the dress is so important.
In India, the complexion of the character itself varies, and is very crucial – and so is the dress.
This is one very important difference, which one should remember, while making any sort of comparative analysis.
The dictionary gives these meanings of śyāma:
“n. (said to be connected with √śyai)
· black,
· dark-coloured,
· dark blue or
· brown or
· grey or
· green,
· sable,
· having a dark or swarthy complexion (considered a mark of beauty)
m.
· black or
· blue or
· green (the colour)”.
Śyāma is one of the names of Kṛṣṇa.
Imagine my surprise, when my mother told me once, suddenly, in the middle of my chattering, that śyāma actually means green, as in dark-green.
However astounding this maybe, it is not very surprising, since the word hari primarily means green.
And yet, śyāma appears to be a dark green, while hari seems to be a bright, yellow-green.
{And then there is the mystery of the feminine of śyāma – śyāmā – meaning “golden”.}
Point is: the colors are related.
I can understand the similitude between blue & green, on the one hand, and blue & black on the other – but green & black?
Can we say that Oswald Spengler provides us with an explanation?
Doesn’t he club blue, green & black, together, as “Faustian” colors?
These are distinctly the colors of the outdoors, as in of nature.
We see in the name Śyāma itself, and in the whole color-symbolism surrounding Rāma & Kṛṣṇa, a co
And what a difference!
{Two gorgeous portraits by Anthony van Dyck: on the left, Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio; on the right, Agostino Pallavicini.
These men, these portraits, exude wealth, gravitas, dignity, and an immensity of power, which all men ache to achieve.
Very contrary to the statement made by Spengler: “Yellow and red are the popular colours, the colours of the crowd, of children, of women, and of savages”.
I am sure neither Cosimo de Medici, nor Cardinal Richelieu would agree: check out their famous portraits, if possible.
Nor would the world-conquering British army of Red-coats, quintessential military manifestation of the “Faustian”-Western-
I think the value of a particular color in clothing came from the rarity of the source of its dye, & the difficulty with which the color could be extracted, than almost anything else, though this cannot be entirely true.
Popes & Cardinals said they wore red as symbolizing the blood of Christ, but this is unconvincing: the deeper meaning lies in the psychological effect of sheer grandeur & regality, which splendid red robes have, on any viewer, on the masses.
Red, like Gold, is a color symbolic of wealth & power.
There is one point, though.
Wherein lies the psychic difference between blue & red?
Somehow, somewhere, deep in the subliminal depths of human consciousness – a concentrated, glossy & rich red would be associated with – Enjoyment.
When not associated with wild rage, destructive fire, turbid streams of smoking lava spilling out from exploding volcanoes, and the insanity of bloodshed, the human mind almost always associates red not just with beauty, stateliness & opulence – not just with love, passion and sexual desire – but also with pleasure, delight.
We feel that these men not only possess wealth – they enjoy it, too.
This element of happiness, is missing, in blue, & black.
That is why a King or an aristocrat dressed in dark blue, or black, conveys a distinctly different image than someone like Agostino Pallavicini in the painting above.
He appears to be more formidable.
More formal, even stiff.
Having “the blues” means being sad, or melancholic.
Blue, black, and even grey-brown colors – in clothing – lack that subtle, subliminal sense of happiness, of satisfaction & contentment – they lack the sense of enjoyment – they are “sober”, so to speak – there is something cold, reserved, unfriendly, and grim about them.
They are not only unfriendly, they are also unhappy colors – though it would be more accurate to say that they lack any happiness.
Spengler associates them with all epitomes of power, because men dressed in blues & blacks lack a certain fundamental softness, which comes with red – they seem more intent on their work, on the “job that is to be done”, on their duties – than on any sense of their enjoyment or contentment with their own existence.
In a sense, yes, it could be said: they appear to be focused on something outside themselves.
Again, I find his views incomplete & inconsistent: the colors he despises {red, pink, scarlet, yellow} were used by officials of the Roman Catholic Church {certainly so, in their paintings} – and so were the colors praised by him.
He says: “Violet, a red succumbing to blue, is the colour of women no longer fruitful and of priests living in celibacy”.
I don’t know about the first, but priests living in celibacy wear the browns, blacks, greys, and whites which he mostly admires, as one can see in Benedictines, Jesuits, Franciscans etc..
Brown, which Spengler loves so much, can be called the color of mud, the soil, the Earth, dead wood, dried leaves and hence, of Matter {which he hates so resolutely}.}
As we’ve seen, in our texts, Kṛṣṇa & Rāma are not only black, or blue, or blue-black, but also green.
Aren’t these the choicest colors of the “Faustian” Man striving for infinity – aren’t blue, green & blue-green the quintessential Catholic colors
In the Srīmad Bhāgavata, we read {8.16.35}:
“My Lord, I offer my respectful obeisances unto You, who are dressed in yellow garments, whose form {vapus} is dark {śyāma} as the emerald {marakata}...”
So how did Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa’s color change from blue to green?
Perhaps because the colors are related?
I’ve mentioned in the previous post, the reference from the Bhūmī Khanḍa of the Padma Purāṇa, Chapter 88, Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa described as:
“Madhusūdana...the great lord, dark-green like a sapphire {indra-nīla} and a cloud...”.
I mentioned that the translation is problematic, because there are no green clouds, and the indra-nīla is very much a blue sapphire, as far as I know.
But sapphires do come in greens.
hari, as I have said, means green, and one of the meanings of harit, is emerald.
It shouldn’t surprise us that Kṛṣṇa’s {or Rāma’s} color is suddenly understood to be green, like that of an emerald.
But for the ancients, as yellow & green tended to merge on the one hand – green & blue tend to merge, on the other.
I am not sure what pattern they followed, in thinking thus.
The first thought that comes to the mind is that they drew their conclusions from nature.
Blue & green tend to merge (or rather, one turns into another) at great distances, and in immense water-bodies.
Here, the Depth & Distance, so passionately admired by Spengler, do have a crucial role to play.
We all have heard of the blue-green sea.
The sea often looks simply green.
Or the colors of the water may change from blue to greenish-blue to blue, to deep blues.
Or the sea looks green at the closest, then blue, and then a very deep, blackish blue.
Green hills, valleys & mountains will take on a bluey-bluish hue at immense distances.
Distant mountains take on various shades of blue & green, simultaneously.
To put it in a way: blue & green seem to co-exist in vast water-bodies and also in distant mountains; what is blue now looks green sometime else; or tints of blue & green perpetually interpenetrate each other; they manifest & shimmer simultaneously, like a many-colored heap of gems.
Does the color symbolism of Rāma & Kṛṣṇa come from the ocean, or rather, water?
If that is the case, our texts don’t talk about it: they merely give the poetic, exoteric version of much deeper ideas embedded in the very symbolic poetry.
I cannot recollect their color being compared to a water-body.
I will go with the idea that the blue-green color-association comes from the co-existence of these colors together in nature.
haritāśma (harit + aśma), which is literally “green-colored stone” can mean either emerald, or turquoise.
A variant of the same word,
haritāśmaka, means turquoise.
haritopala, “green stone”, again means emerald.
· indranīla means sapphire, wher
· indranīlaka, means emerald.
I think all this matters.
Turquoise is defined as a greenish-blue color, by the Oxford dictionary, and a semi-precious stone, typically opaque and of a greenish-blue or sky-blue colour, consisting of a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminium.
Sapphires can be both blue, and green.
This is the second important instance, in which we see that blue & green co-exist, so to speak – interpenetrate each other – blend together – color each other.
Last but not the least, when it comes to words like śyāma, my intuitive sense tells me that this is the color of lush verdure, of thick forests, of greenery, on a cloudy day.
Just like the terms hari, harit, harita etc. seem to pertain to the Sun, to the sunshine, dawn etc., the word śyāma and probably even nīla, are all associated with clouds & rainfall, evenings, gloamings, & sunsets.
I would have to check this out myself, but what would be the color of a forest – or a vast expanse of verdure – on a cloudy day, in the rainy season, with a sky overcast with corpulent, dark rainclouds – massy & grumpy-looking?
I’m inclined to think that it is on such occasions that the green & blue appear together: the greenery is tinged with a smoky or cloudy blue.
The connection between the rain-cloud and Rāma & Kṛṣṇa should be abundantly clear to every well-read Indian.
Their beauty & their complexion is most often compared to that of a rain-cloud.
But the very fact that green is associated with the same term {i.e. śyāma}, means that the fundamental object of reference is something else.
śyāma thus might just mean a dark green-blue, or dark bluish-green, which is most observable from the color of dense, lush foliage or verdure on a cloudy or rainy day, without sunlight.
Just like hari, harit etc. would be associated with the rising, ascending Sun, śyāma would be associated with the setting sun, or the obscured sun, with twilight, sunset etc.
Do note how the dictionary defines the word: black, dark-coloured,
To me, this is very clearly the color of vegetation or greenery, of woodlands & forests, of valleys & gorges, on a cloudy day, or a rainy day.
śyāma itself also means cloud.
{Saint Michael weighing souls, by Juan de la Abadía, dating to the late 15th century.
From the little that I have seen, and remember, St. Michael is mostly dressed in blue & red, like Jesus, Mary, John the Beloved etc.
His body-hugging dress {whatever it is called} is blue, and the flowing garment about him is red.
There is no absolute thumb-rule to this, but broadly speaking, he is dressed in red & blue.
This painting is somewhat Pre-Renaissance, reminiscent of the Byzantine style.
But many icons of St. Michael show him in red, and colors like yellow, orange-brown etc.
In India, Shiva is known as Nīlalohita, i.e. dark-blue & red.
It also means purple.
“The eternal lord {sanātana} pervades everything.
Hence, he is all-pervasive {sarva-vyapī}.
Rudra the Supreme Cause {parama-kāraṇa} is Infinite/Limitless {ananta} because neither Brahmā nor Viṣṇu nor others could trace out his beginning or end...
Lord Nīlalohita is subtle {sūkṣma} and stays always in the heart in the bodies,
Hence, he is called Sukṣma (subtle).
He is both blue & red since both Pradhāna and Puruṣa merge in him.”
– Verses 16-18, Chapter 18, Volume 2, Liṅga Purāṇa
The English translation doesn’t seem to make too much sense, and I think the Hindi translator is better, but this quote is just a small pointer, so it’d be a digression to analyze its flaws.}
Now as to the first part of Nietzsche’s statement:
“Thus, for instance, they used the same word to describe the colour of dark hair, of the corn-flower, and the southern sea...”
I don’t see why the color of the southern sea (does this mean the Mediterranean?) should not be described by the same word as for cornflower.
It might just mean a deep, rich blue, or something like that.
But as I’ve pointed out earlier, dark hair was also described as deep-blue, or blue-black, in India.
Thus we read of Viṣṇu-Puruṣa, in the Srīmad Bhāgavata, as having {2.2.11}:
snigdhāmalā-kuñcita-nīla-
which has been translated as:
oiled spotless bluish, curly hair
and which I’d translate as:
glossy {snigdha}, shining {amala}, deep-blue, curly hair
In the Lalita-Vistāra, we are given a description of the 32 marks of the great being (mahā-puruṣa-lakṣaṇa) with reference to the Buddha, by the sage Asita, that:
“Prince Sarvārthasiddha’s hair is deep blue like the neck of a peacock or kohl powder, and curls to the right”
His hair is dark blue, the word in the original Sanskrit text being “abhinīla”, i.e. “very dark or black”.
abhinīla simply means very nīla, i.e. very blue, or a very deep-blue (as in an intense sapphire blue).
I’ve also mentioned the color of Draupadī’s tresses:
Thus, we have the following passage describing her {1.166.44}:
śyāmā padmapalāśākṣī nīlakuñc
mānuṣaṃ vigrahaṃ kṛtvā sā
nīlakuñcita mūrdhajā has been translated as: “her locks were blue & curly”.
nīla means blue, or dark-blue, or blue-black.
Draupadī is repeatedly said to have “curly, blue locks”.
As I’ve said, she – Kṛṣṇā – is clearly a feminine counterpart of Kṛṣṇa himself.
nīla-kuñcita is precisely the word used in the Srīmad Bhāgavata.
The same word is used for Rāma, in the Mahābhārata:
{3.277 in the Hindi translation}
lohitākṣaṃ mahābāhuṃ
dīrghabāhuṃ mahoraskaṃ n
“...possessed of eyes that were red, & arms that were sinewy.
And his steps were like those of a wild elephant.
And he had long arms and high shoulders and black & curly hair.”
Do note that Rāma is also said to have nīlakuñcita mūrdhajam, exactly the same as Draupadī above.
The Hindi translator prefers to say he had black hair (& curly).
In other words, dark hair was repeatedly denoted by the term nīla, which means deep blue, as in sapphire blue.
What Nietzsche says of Greeks, is true of Ancient India too: dark hair was described as deep-blue – or simply blue {nīla} – which in turn could be compared to cornflower blue, or the color of the {southern} sea.
Kṛṣṇa’s complexion has been compared to an atasī flower, i.e. the flower of the flax plant, which is more or less the same as cornflower blue, probably a tad bit softer, as in Mahābhārata 5.95.52-53 {5.
atasī puṣpasaṃkāśaḥ
vyabhrājata sabhāmadhye hemnīvopahito maṇiḥ
which Ganguli translated as:
“And Janārdana attired in yellow robes having the complexion of the Atasī flower, sat in the midst of that assembly like a sapphire mounted on gold.”
and the Hindi translator writes as:
“Enchantingly (lit. stealing the mind) dark {śyāma} as the alasī flower {another name for flax}, the radiantly yellow-robed Kṛṣṇa, looked like a sapphire placed in the centre of a golden vessel {svarṇa-pātra}, admist that assembly.”
The fact is that the original Sanskrit verse doesn’t use any word to denote sapphire: it says maṇi which simply means gem, or precious stone.
I reckon commentators have understood this to be the sapphire, because the flax flower is blue in color.
{I should also point out that the yellow, in case of the robes, in the original, is pīta – and Viṣṇu-Puruṣa is called Pītavāsas – “robed in yellow” – but this yellow is explicitly compared to gold, or the golden color.
We’ve seen that Spengler engages in hairsplitting pedantry, trying to distinguish yellow from gold – relegating yellow to bumpkins, morons, and savages – and gold, to something unearthly & unnatural, but extremely wonderful.
This distinction was evidently ignored by Indians – and as I understand it, by the Europeans themselves.
St. Peter – the Pope of Popes – the Lion-King of the Catholic Church – the Rock on which the {Catholic} Church is built – is most often depicted with yellow or golden-yellow, invariably with blue.}
{Below, a painting of St. Peter & St. Paul, from the 1420s by Italian painter Masolino de Pasilane.
Paul, holding a sword, is draped in a jewel-blue, with a rather bright orangish-red outer-robe;
Peter, who holds the keys, dons a deeper emerald green dress draped over with a golden-yellow outer-mantle.
Spengler likes to call green the quintessential Catholic colour, but that is not the case.
Green came into prominence when the Biblical figures were taken out of the gold-&-jewel-color infused, Byzantine-rooted, deeply religious art of the Pre-Renaissance days, and brought into the landscapes, mountains and forests of Europe {in the 15th century CE}.
Their portrayal became an outdoorsy phenomenon, giving almost equal importance to the environment, to the Nature in the lap of which these figures were placed.
Take for instance the depiction of Saint Matthew the Evangelist, given below, dated to c. 1367, by Andrea Orcagna.
There are no depictions of green hills and blue mountains here, or only minimal & stylized: this is a different world.
Matthew himself is draped in a gemmy pink & scarlet-red.
It should be noted that this was precisely the era in which Gothic architecture reached its pinnacle of grandeur.
Apparently “Faustian” painting comes much later than “Faustian” – i.e. Gothic – architecture.
What precisely is “Faustian” painting, given the immense gap between the likes of Filippo Lippi or Botticelli, and the likes of Rembrandt, is not totally clear to me.
Interestingly enough, in the dictionary, nīla can mean:
n. of a dark colour , (esp.)
· dark-blue or
· dark-green or
· black ...
Thus, there is a constant association of “dark”, “black”, “deep blue”, “deep green”, and by extension (or previous to these correspondences), simply blue & green.
These are, I repeat, the favorite colors of the Faustian Catholic man, according to Oswald Spengler.
As I see it, these associations were fully grasped by the Ancient Indians, and written into their language, symbols, imagery, and poetry.
The so-called “Faustian” colours were central to Ancient Indian consciousness too.
If the dark or black skin-color could be compared to blue & green – then dark or black hair could also be called blue {or green}.
This the Greeks seem to have done.
I take it that the Greek language is also as fluid & protean as Sanskrit, and so is their symbolism, that’s how “blue” hair could be compared to the cornflower – just as Kṛṣṇa’s complexion can be compared to a blue lotus, a blue cloud {probably a dark-green cloud!}, a sapphire, and a pale-blue flower.
These gentlemen might also be making an error somewhere of thinking that one word has only one meaning or one range of meanings.
As we can see from Sanskrit, this isn’t the case.
The word for a color may not only denote a particular range of colors {say, yellow-brown-golden}, but multiple range of colors {blue-green on the one hand, and yellow-brown on the other}.
So when we’re told that Homer called the Sea “oinops” – i.e. wine-colored {rather, wine-faced}, he might not have meant red-colored.
The word rendered “wine” might have multiple meanings, and hence, indicate colors pretty distanced on the color-spectrum.
In India, for instance, the word madhu can mean: Honey, Milk, Water, Butter or Ghee.
The color of all is different.
It is also possible that Homer was referring to the sea reddened by the Sun.
{Madonna and the Child, known as Madonna of the Book, by Jacopo Pontormo, c.1540-45 CE.
The integration of red & blue in the portraits of Mary, Jesus, John the Apostle, St. Michael, God the Father, etc. seem to be more appropriate, to me, as depicting an integration of opposites: remember, traditionally, Blue would be seen as Water i.e. Matter, and Red as Fire, i.e. Spirit: this would be exact opposite of Spengler.
But symbols are almost infinitely plastic & malleable.
Do note the color schemes – or the color “palette” – in the paintings above.
The first is by the great Florentine, Italian painter Giotto di Bondone – who can be said to straddle both the Byzantine and the Early Renaissance art-periods.
The painting is that of Jesus as the Redeemer, and can be dated to c. 1318-1322 CE.
The second is that of the Annunciation by a somewhat elder contemporary, Duccio, who is more Byzantine-Gothic than Giotto.
The painting dates to c.1308-11, and shows both Mary & Gabriel in red & blue.}
In India, Red is the color of the rising Sun, and of Fire, though other colors maybe assigned to them, too.
One of the thousand names of the Great Goddess, as I’ve pointed out at least twice earlier, in the Lalitā Sahasranāma, is nijāruṇaprabhāpūramajjadbra
The key word here being aruṇa, which basically means Dawn, and the reddish color of dawn.
Literally speaking, aruṇa means both red, and gold.
Even the Sun is called Aruṇa – just as he is called Rohita, which also means Red.
Aruṇa is also the charioteer of the Sun.
The Great Goddess is consistently described of being red complexioned: everything about her is red.
The reference to Dawn, however, refers to the rising Sun, and the splendors & hues of the morning.
I think that is the crucial idea here.
Do remember that in the Mahābhārata, Yudhiṣṭhir
This is, in all probability, red or or golden-red, or some hue of red (ruddy, pinkish-red).
Another name in the Lalitā Sahasranāma, is: taruṇādityapāṭala, i.e. taruṇa-āditya-pāṭala: She Who is of the pale-red (pinkish-red) hue of the tender, (i.e. just-arisen, or newly-arisen, or new-born) Sun, the color itself being called pāṭala, the purplish-pink trumpet-flower, also saffron.
taruṇādityapāṭala is almost identical to bāla-arka-sadṛṣa-ākāra.
The great ideas here are that of
a new dawn, a new awakening, a new day,
a new beginning,
a breaking forth of light & splendor,
a new force & a new life bursting into being,
radiance pervading & conquering the whole world,
the triumph of light,
the obliteration of all darkness & ignorance,
the bringing into order from the chaos of night,
the onset & going-forth of consciousness & perception,
and hence, awakening of knowledge & self-realization.
These ideas can be extended, since the Sun is the symbol both of the Supreme Being as well as the Ātman; in the Vedas, it is the representative of Immortality, as well as Prāṇa.
All these ideas factor in, into the ideas behind the color symbolism of red, golden, yellow, orange, and other “warm” colors.
Life is Heat – simple truth.
...
Methinks Spengler hardly ever talks about the Sun, or understands the complex symbolism of the Ancients, though he castigates the Greeks for not worshipping Helios, quite forgetting that they worshiped Apollo:
“It is a deeply significant fact that in Hellas of all countries star-gods, the numina of the Far, are wanting.
Helios was worshipped only in half-Oriental Rhodes and Selene had no cult at all.
Both are merely artistic modes of expression (it is as such only that they figure in the courtly epos of Homer), elements that Varro would class in the genus mythicum and not in the genus civile.
The old Roman religion, in which the Classical world-feeling was expressed with special purity, knew neither sun nor moon, neither storm nor cloud as deities.”
I am not sure what to make of these statements.
We have always thought of something very different.
He has the most peculiar ideas:
“The candle affirms and the sunlight denies space as the opposite of things (?????????).
At night the universe of space triumphs over matter, at midday things and nearness assert themselves and space is repudiated.
The same contrast appears in Attic fresco and Northern oil-painting, and in the symbols of Helios and Pan and those of the starry night and red sunset.”
This can be called the very epitome of sophistry.
I wonder what is the value of Space without “things”, just like one wonders about the value of the Soul without the “body”.
Yes, the candle may possibly be said to “affirm space”, but the candle is basically a kindled fire.
The term “night” is shady: it is almost never absolutely pitch black: there is always some sort of light, however dim, a vague darksome violet-blue shade, which prevents us from total blindness.
And yet, we can comfortably say that at Night, or rather in darkness, there is no “space”: one can neither see nor feel anything except the heavy, dumb weight of an ineffable nothingness – an all-encompassing, all-devouring bl
A sense of Space is liberating: the darkness of night is not.
Neither things close, nor things distant, are perceptible, at night, or in darkness.
Candle-light is highly circumscribed, and very much limits, narrows, & encloses, the range of vision, and emphasizes only the Near.
You can almost never perceive the far-off, in candle-light.
You can barely look into the corners of your room, or beneath your bed.
There is no sense of anything whatsoever – no height, no immensity, no depth.
Everything else is not “space”, but a sort of swallowing-up, annihilating, obliterating blackness.
It is only in daylight {& there maybe daylight with or without a brightly shining Sun} in which Man has perception of the breadth & expanse of the world, has some sense that the distant exists, that he can form an idea of the faraway.
...
The darksome, shadowy portrait-paintings of Rembrandt – so ardently adored by Spengler {I adore them too} – and which maybe called the paintings of night, or twilight – the most uterine & womb-like – do not emphasize Space: they are not Expansive, nor do they convey Immensity.
They concentrate our focus on the characters depicted, on their visage, form, clothing, ornamentation etc., as none of the Renaissance paintings with their skies, clouds, distant hills & forests, do.
The night closes in on us, canceling the distant, erasing the horizon, concealing the faraway mountains & vistas: morning, and day, opens up: it expands our vision, and the universe.
The candle is close-by: the Sun, far away: this simple truth itself contradicts Spengler’s words.
{Though he does take cognizance of the fact in castigating the Greeks.}
Never can Light, which is nothing but Fire, be contrary to Space.
Truth is, the night – and darkness – that unsettling, obscuring darkness – make us intensely aware of ourselves, our bodies, because it heightens our isolation by expunging other objects from our range of perception, and focuses our consciousness on ourself.
The exact opposite is true of the day, created by the rising of the Sun – Sūrya-Indra-Agni-Āditya: we feel ourselves, our bodies, our very being, much smaller, and a part of a much larger, far-spreading whole.
“Agni is Jyoti {Light}, and Jyoti is Agni...
Sūrya is Jyoti, and Jyoti is Sūrya...
Agni is Varcas {Splendour}, Jyoti is Varcas...
Sūrya is Varcas, Jyoti is Varcas...
Jyoti is Sūrya, Sūrya is Jyoti...”
– 9th Shloka, 3rd Adhyāya, Shukla Yajur Veda
In a sense,
Light creates Space {we cannot have any conception of Space without some light}:
and since Light comes from the Sun,
the Sun creates Space: and since the Sun is nothing but Fire,
Fire creates Space.
But this is, undoubtedly, not the same Fire, or Light, as that depicted in the red of robes, literally speaking: it is an all-pervading, all-compassing, all-enveloping, almost immaterial Fire or Light.
The red-orange-golden fire we see, is a symbol & concrete manifestation of all this all-pervasive force.
Spengler is merely indulging in sophistry: I cannot imagine how can he make such statements.
Fire, on the other hand, is more complex symbol.
It is has more negative connotations than the Sun, as a physical body, it is not always the most supreme of elements, and red is not really considered the highest of all colors in Sanātana Dharma.
And yet, our most important literature consistently & ubiquitously displays a limitless fascination with Fire, Energy, Light, and “Effulgence”.
I have indicated several possible meanings and significances of the Fire-symbol, but in this context – the context of the “Faustian” personality – Fire most of all signifies Energy.
Thus, in extolling Arjuna as the foremost of wielders of the bow, Yudhiṣṭhira makes a series of comparisons as to those objects or entities which are the most surpassing in the unique qualities they possess, or categories which they fall into {Virāṭa Parva, Chapter 2, Verses 15-16}:
X
“...as
the sun {Sūrya} is the Supreme amongst those that radiate heat {pratapa},
X
as the Brāhmaṇa is the
most excellent of all the two-footed,
X
as the
cobra {āśīviṣa} is the greatest of all serpents,
X
... Fire {Agni} is the foremost of those possessed of
energy {i.e. tejasvins, or those possessed of tejas},
X ... the thunderbolt {vajra} is the foremost of all weapons...”
The greatness of every great character – the brilliance of every brilliant man – the power of every powerful man – the ability to accomplish things, terrible thngs, great things – the very aura & splendour of a man whos has successfully accomplished his spiritual & psychological goals – is invariably conveyed by this term “tejas”, with explicit references made to blazing & burning fire.
“Whatever {in existence} is endowed with beauty {or splendor, glory} {śrī-mat},
whatever is possessed of magnificence {or magnitude, expansiveness, pervasiveness} {vibhūti-mat},
whatever is possessed of power {or strength, vitality, etc.} {ūrjita},
know it to spring from but a spark of my Effulgence {tejas}.”
So says Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavat Gītā {10.41}.
All opulence, all majesty, all comeliness, all gracefulness all liveliness, that exists, emerges from this Fiery Power from which the universe emerges.
{Salvator Mundi, Jesus Christ as the Savior of the World; on the left, by Marco d’Ogiono, c.1500; on the right, by Hans Memling, c.1481. {partially cropped}}
It goes without saying that the idea of dawn, and the new-born sun – a new birth of the world & an awakening of life anew – are all related to the fact of actual birth of man.
Hence, the red of the morning sun & of dawn, is very much a symbol also of the so-called “physical” birth of Man, of the body-blood.
Nobody can deny that red is the color of “carnality”, but that is a profoundly & revealingly constricting persp
It is undoubtedly the color of Life itself – and here we’re concerned overwhelmingly with human life – since red is the color of blood, which contains Man’s Life-force.
Life is impossible without heat, and the abandonment of the Life-Force from the body results in its becoming cold.
Life is heat {hence, Agni is Prāṇa} – and its preservation, progression, perseverance, and progression – are all inextricably bound up with heat – as in literally getting heated up.
Yes, I am referring to sexual heat, and the whole process of sexual intercourse, beginning with the kindling of desire in the mind.
In this specific context, red definitely belongs to the Mother, than the Father.
Color-symbolism, names & epithets, all emerged from the basic facts of life: the Mother-blood is red; the Father-essence is white.
Methinks the Catholic priests have chosen their symbols & colors very accurately.
But I do not see Red as a particularly feminine color.
It is the color of Birthing alright, but there are several forms & types of Birthing than the human-biological.
Christ is depicted in red more often than in blue, and Mary, more often in blue.
This is correct.
Blue is the passive color, and red, the aggressive – or let us say, assertive, imposing, & intrusive.
I wonder if this aspect of the color symbolism has ever been explicated upon, clearly.
Spengler misses the point completely, or rather, doesn’t allow the reader to think about it, by directing his attention somewhere else.
We all know from direct experience that red is the most conspicuous color – or at least one of the most conspicuous –{remember this discussion is about serious, high art, i.e., which usually leaves out jarring, or fluorescent, or blindingly bright shades} – which immediately attracts one’s attention.
It can be seen from a great distance – and stands out, in any pictorial depiction, with unusual vividness.
Isn’t this aggression? – a phallic quality – a form of penetration?
Amongst colors, isn’t this (one of) the most distance-conquering, of all?
Isn’t that the essence of Spengler’s Faustian Man: the deep longing to overcome distances?
And is this the quality of Blue & Brown, or is this the quality of Red?
You can see how change in context changes the entire nature of the subject.
Red emerges as the most phallic, most aggressive, most commanding, of all colors – hence, most appropriate to power & authority, to the Commandment, so cherished by Spengler.
This applies to all Light: Light (inseparable from Fire) pervades Space.
Certainly, Space pervades the whole universe, and we cannot even form any conception of existence without it, but philosophically, the Fire-Light of Pure Consciousness precedes Space – the most important point – and the pervasiveness of Space is a passive, unresisting pervasiveness.
The point here, is that Red is the most Bullish, Masculine color: the most “Faustian”, so to speak, if the hallmark of the “Faustian” psyche is a “thrust into the depth”.
Agni is called the “Red Bull” (“aruṣó vŕ̥ṣā”) in the Ṛig Veda {6.48.6, for instance}.
The correct interpretation of the term is Effulgent Showerer – the word for “red” and “radiance, effulgence, luminous” being thus equated.
Fire – always associated with red, always moves upwards {think of Spengler’s “vertical upthrust”} – Water – invariably associated with Blue, always moves downwards.
Space – also associated with Blue – is motionless, it doesn’t possess motion at all.
{Christ Pantocrator, or Christ the “All-Powerful”, from a Church of St. Michael, probably somewhere in Italy, from Wikimedia Commons.
I don’t know the date of this fresco, but do note the animal-heads of two of the four Evangelists.
This kind of depiction – so derided in India & Egypt by “Monotheists” today – was not altogether uncommon.
The authors of the four Gospels – Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John – were symbolized by the Man, the Ox, the Lion, and the Eagle, respectively.
This iconography is known as the Tetramorph.
It is somewhat latter, that these figures were always depicted human, with their associated animal positioned nearby – there was a time when they were portrayed much like our Lion-headed avatāras, and Elephant-headed or Ram-headed gods & goddesses.
Here Luke is Bull-Ox/headed {on the right} & Mark, lion-headed with a man’s body {on the left}, Matthew is probably shown fully human, while the depiction of John has been eroded & obscured.
This makes me think that the fresco is either very old, i.e. 14th century CE or before, or has been modelled on some images of that era.
Besides, note the lavish use of warm colors.
Jesus is, as in all Pre-Renaissance, Medieval depictions, seated inside a “Mandorla”.
Say what you might, the Mandorla would remind anybody of the Yoni – but then there’s no necessity to carnalize & demean the symbol.
I wonder, though, if Spengler would consider the Pantocrator frescoes to be “Faustian” – none of the Eastern Orthodox art & iconography {let alone Russian} would be “Faustian”, as far as I understand – they’d be “Oriental”, “Byzantine”, and “Magian” {“Russian” being an altogether different soul-type, according to Spengler}.}
Red proclaims itself with intense power, and more or less dims everything around it.
Observe the Rubens painting above, and how clearly the deep red garment of Jesus stands out with bold, proud clarity.
It dominates – but does not devour.
In a painting, it holds your attention, asserts its presence, perchance with a sense of unease {if your nerves are overly sensitive & weakened}, but it doesn’t dissolve your will, or liquidate your identity.
It acts like a “tongue” of flame shooting forth for greater height – like a ray of the Sun tearing through mist & cloud – like a lance or sword.
Used as paint on a wall, for instance, it hedges you in, clasps you close – probably imprisons you – implicitly, it blocks out the horizon, the distance, the far-off-space – with all the imperiousness & authority of something unyielding, impenetrable, and powerful.
And yet, red heightens the individuality, sovereignty & identity of the individual or object it encompasses, or furnishes the background of, hence it has been used extensively as a background in many painted depictions across the world.
It does not represent a Negative Female out to destroy the Male: a vagina threatening to bite off the penis.
{God The Father & The Holy Trinity, miniature from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany, Queen consort of France (1477-1514).
Both God & Jesus draped with regal pinkish-red robes interlaced with lustrous gold-thread, the inner garment of Jesus being purple.
They are seated inside a mandorla: very common motif in Pre-Renaissance art.}
To close this monstrously long post {and make it a little more ponderous}.
Strictly speaking, I see Blue as neither Feminine nor Masculine, and Red as both Masculine and Feminine.
Blue is essentially neutral, like Green, the color of plant-life, of vegetation.
It is the negative pole of which green is the positive.
Yet, if I were compelled to assign a gender-significance to them, my thoughts would be somewhat as follows...
I see Blue as the color of passivity, of motionlessness, of receptivity: in Nature, it is spontaneously associated with Space, which is devoid of action & force, and with Water which is yielding, formless, & downward-flowing.
Yes, it is associated with the Sky {or Heaven, which is high above} but, truth be said: is the sky an actual thing?
I have often wondered if there is any-thing that can be called the “sky”.
What is it, that we call “the sky” or “the skies”?
It is merely space.
Unconsciously, we all treat it like a dome-like, cavern-like, spherical cover stretching from each point or arc of the horizon to all others, far, far above our heads.
It is actually an endless vacuity – a nothingness.
We use the word simply to refer to the realm in which the celestial bodies & clouds move.
It is an abstraction, not a concrete object.
We cannot not use the word for it – and yet, I consider the “sky” or “firmament” to be essentially a mental construct & an optical illusion.
As I said above, in a certain intellectual sense, it is the Fire-Sun, which creates Space, and this is correct when we realize that the Blue of Space is a creation of Sunlight: the same Sky, or Space, becomes black, or blue-black, when the Sun disappears.
It changes color with the change in Light, or the source of Light.
The appearance of the Agni-Sun is the appearance of Something: the disappearance of the Agni-Sun more or less annihilates everything.
Also, one has to distinguish between “heaven” {Sk. svar, svarga, dyu, div}
and “sky”.
The latter maybe better understood better as the Vedic antarikṣa.
Svarga is the realm, abode, and source, of light – Sūrya-loka.
“The heavens” are not necessarily equivalent to the sky, and infact, I don’t think the ancients thought so.
There is no absolute reason to assign the color blue to heaven or the heavens.
As a mere receptacle or field/realm within which clouds tumble & toss, the wind flies & scatters, celestial bodies glide & sparkle – thunder roars – lightning flashes – fog creeps – mist descends – and dew evaporates – the sky is basically a passive element.
Being the color of the womb-like, container-like, receptacle sky, blue is again, essentially a color of passivity: feminine.
The Distance and The Depth itself is Blue – but that which penetrates, permeates, soars, rises, spreads, and fills it up, is Red.
Let us constantly remind ourselves that blue is neither the color of the “sky”, nor of Water.
Neither does the Sky, nor does Water, in itself, have any color.
In this sense, Blue is very much an optical illusion.
An optical illusion created by Fire-Light, especially manifested as the Sun.
In a stunning series of metaphors, an Upaniṣad, the Tejobindu Upaniṣad, discoursing on the unreality & illusory nature of the universe, says:
“... if a powerful elephant be killed by means of the horns of a hare, then the world (really is).
If one (person) can quench his thirst by drinking the waters of the mirage, or
if one should be killed by the horns of a man, then the universe really is.
When the blueness of the sky really exists in it, then the universe really is...”
In other words, there is no blueness, in the sky {and if the sky is blue, then the universe indeed is real}.
I see Red as the color of Action, of Dynamism, of Motion, of Energy, of forceful action, of creation & creativity, of Fire & Light & implicitly of all their manifestations, of Fire which is upward-moving, and of rays of light which pierce, penetrate & permeate passive Space.
“Agni is head {mūrdhan} and height {kakud} of heaven {diva},
The Master of the earth is he {pṛthivī pati}:
He quickeneth the watery seed {“apāṃ retāṃsi jinvati”}.
Upward, O Agni, rise thy flames, pure & resplendent, blazing high,
Thy lustres {jyoti}, fair effulgences {arcis}.
For, Agni, thou as Lord of Light {suvar-pati}
Rulest o’er choicest gifts: may I,
Thy singer, find sanctuary in thee.”
– Ṛg Veda 8.44.16-18
Hence it is quintessentially a Masculine color.
I have repeatedly said that Red-Yellow-Gold-Orange-White are all colors of light, enlightenment, radiance, knowledge, cognition, vision, manifestation, awakening, revelation, etc., and of these, Red is the most aesthetically captivating, complex, sophisticated, lofty, regal, and serious.
But it’s not as if these are the only perspectives, the only ways of look at these colors.
If red is the color of emergence, of breaking forth, of bursting out, of arising, of resurrection, of kindling, it is also the color of ravaging, of annihilation, of destruction, of conflagrations, of anger, of rage, of devouring.
Agni is the Eater.
He is glorified as the terrifying, powerful, formidable force that burns up forests, eating up trees, razing vegetation to the ground.
“Wise (vicarṣaṇa) Agni Jātavedas, I beget a song of praise for thee. ...
Thy sharpened flames, O Agni, like the gleams of light that glitter through,
Devour the forests with their teeth.
Gold-coloured (“harayo”), bannered with the smoke, urged by the wind (vāta-jūta), aloft to heaven (“upa dyavi”)
Rise, lightly borne, the flames of fire.”
– 8.43, Ṛg Veda
{Certainly, the gross, material fire of our terrestrial Earth cannot be called wise – the hymns are completely esoteric & symbolic – but that’s a different subject altogether.
We’re dealing with the choice of symbols, and the raison d’etre behind the choice.}
He is viśvād – the one “who devoureth all things” – 6.16.10, Ṛg Veda
In the Paurāṇika system, Agni-Rudra is associated with the metaphysical attribute {guṇa} of tamas, which directs the periodical annihilation of the universe at the end of the appropriate time cycle.
Red is not necessarily a soothing color, but paradoxically, for all the negative associations & connotations, it’s also not a harsh, cruel color.
As I said, in clothing for instance, it conveys a sense of happiness & enjoyment.
It may be too warm, too heavy on the eyes if used in excess, but it is never harsh.
On the other hand, blue often has a positively chilling feel about it – harsh & chilling – especially what we call the “sketch-pen” blue.
Blue is rarely a soothing, calming color: only the more pastel, soft, flowery, “baby blue” varieties.
Or sky-blue.
Bright blues tend to stand out jarringly & unpleasantly.
No doubt, Red has a complicated, layered nature, and can be easily associated with the fleshly, carnal, Mother-womb-blood, feminine aspect of life.
“Bones, sinews & marrow {asthi, snāyu, majjan} ... are derived from the sire.
Skin, flesh, & blood {tvac, māṃsa, śoṇita}, we hear are derived from the mother.”
– Verses 5-6, Chapter 305, Shānti Parva, Mahābhārata
The blood – red – is from the mother, feminine.
The rudhira of the yoni is associated with Agni, golden-red – the śukra of the father, with Soma, the white Moon.
{But Agni is masculine, and Soma is feminine: this is, again, a rather esoteric, complex topic.}
This blood is life itself: higher life, human life, intelligent life, intellectual life, loving life {plants also live, but don’t possess this red blood}.
In our flowing, “living”, thundering blood itself dwells the life-force, the energy, the vigor, the vital spirit, of Man {& not just any creature}.
Hence, we come back to the ideas of dynamism & forceful action – of intelligent & purposeful {read “directional”} action – of the force that moves the mass – the will that overcomes space – the triumphant, tearing, searing energy that soars into heights & dives into depths.
The “directional energy” – which is such a passionate idea with Spengler, resides in the blood – red blood – is red.
And for all those arguments and examples, the matter is not half as simple.
There is much more to it, and Spengler is aware of it – but, not as aware as he ought to be.
This pertains to the ideas concerning Space, even the “Firmament” – ākāśa or kha – in Ancient India.
I will come to the use of Blue in Indian culture later.
P.S. I shall have to repeat what I’d written at the end of the last blog-post.
All the pictures embedded in this post have been taken, as far as I remember, from Wikimedia Commons.
They have been collected by me over years, from the Internet.
These images do not belong to me.
It would take me an enormous amount of time to point out the precise web-location of each picture.
If asked to do so, I shall do it.
As I have said before, I am not making any money through this blog, nor is it sponsored or paid for, in any way.
I can only hope there is no Copyright infringement in the use of these images.
If there is, please contact me at somewheredeepintheocean@gmail.com, and let me know.
The image will be removed, if the uploader wants me to.
Needless to say, I am deeply thankful to all those ladies & gentlemen who have been gracious enough to upload so many high-resolution pictures of all these great works of art.
I also hope it is clear that I intend to prove that European-Christian art uses red and other warm, fiery-solar & light-oriented colors abundantly, and thus, I am compelled to disagree with Spengler on many points, if not completely.
His interpretation of Non-“Faustian” cultures is far from satisfactory.
I intend to write further on this topic, because of its complexity, and all necessary details cannot be provided in one post.
