Here we are again at the season of the Festivals of Light,whatever the religion or circumstance,reminding me of this study I wrote in 2008. I have always been interested in the play of light in all its aspects. I remember revising for school exams at the bottom of the garden under fruit trees,watching dappled sunlight dancing through the leaves.Why is it a blackbird can hear the sound of a worm moving below ground but not appear to hear the plane roaring overhead,I thought in that garden.Now I know the answer: the bird is not tuned in to hear the plane because it is not part of its existence, therefore the plane does not exist....if you are a bird.Likewise we are tuned in to the limitations of our own existence, and do not know that what we know is only part of something else.
THE STORY OF LIGHT AND COLOUR IN THREE LANGUAGES
The story of Light and its colours is always the same, whether told in the language of Science, Myth or Psychology because our Consciousness is the same. Everything, including ourselves, is painted and drawn by the Light much as an artist’s brush colours the canvas, and we are only Real in terms of this Light. The colours we experience are the “hidden treasures” of the light beam made known to us, made conscious. So the act of Light is an act of illumination made conscious inside as revelation or outside as revealed creation. The act itself cannot be seen/known directly, but out of nowhere it is reflected to us by the images of intellect inside, or by the coloured forms of matter outside. Beyond this is utter darkness or the uncreated unknowable. There we do not “see” or exist and are without reflection, like Dracula in the mirror.
The light beam strikes and a form is revealed. It enlightens and orientates, inside and outside, since the body can act as connective tissue. With the light we feel good, warm, comfortable, safe. Forms that most reflect or represent it are given spiritual values, like fire, gold, lightning, white and angels. Light properties appear weightless, invisible, ineffable, ascending, untouchable, mysterious, beautiful, powerful and Good because closer to the Light. Forms that imprison the light and prevent its reflection appear solid, dense, dark, black and disturbing, devils. Their properties are cold, heavy, impenetrable, repulsive, descending, corporeal and Evil because furthest from the Light. However this act of Light has created both out of itself, the light and the darkness that constitute the cosmic play. That which appears dark still contains a degree of light, as that which appears light also contains darkness. Anything beyond this cannot be known or told since we are bound by our light-sensitivity. We can only choose a language to tell the story that we know.
SCIENCE says the light ray is made visible by its interaction with Matter through the interpretive medium of Eye and Brain. This interaction concerns refraction, absorption and reflection, manifesting as shape and colour. An object that reflects all the light appears white or invisible. An object that imprisons most of the light appears black or solid.
When the light beam is diffracted, those light waves that are in phase or co-ordinated create more light in the form of bright lines, light upon light. Those waves that are out of phase and uncoordinated create dark lines. These dark lines come from the light beam and are not an absence of light. Light waves working together intensify the light and light waves in opposition create the darkness. So light produces itself and darkness out of its own action, alternating.
The light beam itself is invisible white light but the 7 colours of the spectrum can be dispersed through a prism (Newton) or projected colour can be superimposed to reconstruct white light (Young).The colours are contained in the light. When an object is illuminated it reflects and absorbs the light to varying degrees. All objects receive the three primary light colours of Red, Blue and Green, not the same primary colours as paint pigment. The secondary light colours are cyan blue (blue and green light), magenta (red and blue light) and yellow (green and red light).The painters pigment behaves differently with yellow as a primary and green as a secondary. In this way a tomato appears red because it absorbs the light colours except red, which it reflects back.
When light paints a black object all the light is being absorbed so the object is reflecting the least light and is “in the dark”, appearing black. When light paints a white object most of the light is being reflected and the object appears white or “in the light”. In terms of colour frequency and the nervous system, orange, yellow and red are at one end of the scale, reflecting the most light and appearing as warm, demonstrative, active or advancing. The blue/ violets are at the other end of the scale, absorbing more of the light and appearing as cold, reflective and retreating. Green is in the middle, a synthesis or integration, emitting at 540 terahertz where the human eye reaches its maximum sensitivity and is most attentive. So our coloured forms of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet are a system in reflection.
All Creation MYTHS begin with God as Light emerging out of the void. The Greek/Latin root meaning for Deus (god) is “shining/light of day”. Some myths emphasise the external, “God moved and said let there be Light and there was Light, and God saw that it was Good”(Genesis 1:1), or “God is the Light of the heavens and the earth, neither of the east nor of the west, who would shine even if no fire touched it, Light upon Light.”(Quran 24:35). Others emphasise the internal, “the Self is the Light reflected by all/ he, alone shining, everything shines after him.”(Katha Upanishad 5:15).
This original unity of Light, the “all seeing or omniscient God”, splits and descends into a creation that always spans the number 7 for its completion; 7 Biblical days of creation, 7 celestial planes of the Aryrans,7 valleys of the Way in Islam,7 ages of man in a lifetime,7 steps of the Buddha to enlightenment, 7 strings to Apollo’s lyre,7 pillars of wisdom in the Hebrew temple,7 levels to the Mesopotamian ziggurat ,7 heavens of perfection, 7planets and 7 rays to the sundisk in Christian iconography. This Creation is a Fall into division between polarities( “and god divided the light from the darkness”, Genesis 1:5) and the subsequent struggle of the light in Man to put itself back together or orientate itself with the darkness (solar hero/spark of light).
The oldest record of this myth is Indo/Iranian (800BC), where Vaya Zurvan (infinity/void) gives birth to twin brothers, Ahriman who consciously chooses the opposition of darkness, disorientation, Lies and Evil, and Ahura Mazda who chooses to stay with the light, orientation, Truth and Good. They differ by choice, not by innate nature. Their rivalry causes the Fall from heaven and struggle on earth until the final restitution of unity or endtime. Azura Mazda is always depicted in “flaming splendour” with light emanating from his head in the form of a halo. Though he appears to lose the battle, it’s his self-sacrifice and consequent enlightenment or transfiguration that restores the primordial unity.
This pattern repeats itself endlessly amongst the myths. For the Hebrews it became the battle of Shaher (the descendent one, devil, evil, later Lucifer) and Shalem (the ascendant one, saviour, light, later Jesus), brothers born of Asherah, the Great Mother. In Egypt it is the battle between Horus (light) and his twin brother, Seth (darkness), born of Osiris and Isis. In Celtic the battle is between Dylan (darkness) and Lleu/Lugh (light), sons of Arianrhud, the Goddess of Fate. In Greek the battle is between Apollo (light/sun/son) and his twin sister, Artemis (moon/ night).In Rome the twins are Castor (light) and Pollux (dark) sons of the sungod, Zeus. In Scandinavia the battle is between Baldur (light/saviour) and Loki (trickster/dark), sons of Odin. It’s Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau. In all these myths the created world is the battleground (Psychomachy) where the solar hero (saviour/light figure/lightbearer) tries to restore a unity that necessitates his own sacrifice since he is also part of that creation. His death is necessary to that Unity.
So, primordial unity falls into a conscious struggle to realise itself, creating the polar opposites of light and darkness interpreted by us as good and evil, a cosmic battle inside and outside us permeating all creation. Plotinus, standing between visual Myth and discursive Reason summarises the story, “Even the less Good has its contributory value in the All. Contraries may co-operate; and without opposites there could be no ordered Universe; all living beings of the partial realm include contraries....Unity is built out of contraries. All things, as they rise from unity come back to unity by sheer need of nature; differences unfold themselves, contraries are produced, but all is drawn into an organized system by the unity at the source...What we know as colour belongs to bodies by the fact that they throw off light.The light is constant and unsevered. On the dissolution of the body, the light passes away at the same moment, unseen in the going as in the coming” (Enneads).
The colour coding embedded in Myth, legend and fairy story is systematic, not random or ornamental, resembling the order of the spectrum and carefully placed to trigger associations or stages of psychic development. The so called three sacred colours of white/red/black are the three “threads of life” (gunas), woven together into a chord by The Hindu goddess of Fate, Prakriti. They represent youth, maturity, age. These three colours are connected constantly in the stories, mentioned in Isaiah and Ovid and throughout medieval literature, the coloured tents of Tamberlaine, the coloured knights of the Quest, the “blood-coloured snow that compels” Parsifal to his Ladylove. They are the colours of the changing metal in alchemy and they repeat like a refrain in the story of Snow White, her black hair, white skin and red lips.
Otherwise, Green has a special place in the stories. It’s the colour of Mercury, Hermes and Khdir who appear to guide the soul on its way towards transformation, usually at the approach to the heart/ centre. It’s in Gawain and the Green Knight, the green lion in alchemy. It’s the green light of fairyland, the “grass green samite cloak” in Parsifal, the sacred colour of Islam embodied in Mohammed’s cloak, entrusted with his innermost secrets to his “near ones” prior to death. It’s always the most magical and fascinating of the colours, holding our attention most, just as the scientists describe. Clearly, it’s always been known that colour activates certain states within the psyche, nothing occult about it, just common sense.
PSYCHOLOGY tells the story differently. Mystics and psychologists, both exploring the nature of Consciousness, often speak in terms of Light. The mystics of the Upanishads talk about “the brightly shining Self of Atman”, Corpus Hermeticum discusses “God as archetypal Light”, Jung says “in man there is an invisible sun, an inward Light”. Light is always associated with Consciousness and Ego, darkness with the Unconscious and Self. Whole areas of the personality “lie in the Shadow” waiting to be exposed by the Light, to be accepted and integrated or opposed and rejected.
Those working in depth analysis with the Individuation Process talk about “the light of conscious knowledge. Only in the light of consciousness can man know. This act of cognition, of conscious discrimination, sunders the world into opposites, for experience of the world is only possible through opposites, as seen in the motif of the hostile twins, the archetypes of self-division. The Light, symbol of consciousness and illumination, is the prime object of all” (Neumann).The healthy “integration of the personality” or Individuation Process of life is described as the interaction of Ego and Self, Consciousness and Unconsciousness from its initial unreflective wholeness, through division, to restored unity. This process is a movement towards the centre rather than any linear development and accompanied by a sense of Illumination or enlightenment, light as liberation and darkness as suppression or imprisonment. This centre is called the Undivided Self (Jung) or “Inner Controller” (Idries Shah), a place of Light and synthesis.
The psychologists’ research on the influence of colour on the psyche affirms the findings of scientists and myths. Jung makes reference to white/red/black in the Individuation process in the same order as the alchemists that he studied. He describes dark colours as “chthonic” and light colours as “aerial”. In his work on mandalas he describes red as the colour of blood and active, blue as the colour of spirit and reflective, and green as the colour of mediation, between the two. Red and blue signify the duality of existence, while green signifies the Inner Self mediating at the centre. This placement concurs with the scientists’ spectrum, with the seven Hindu Chakras or the seven colours of the seven stages of the soul in Islamic mysticism. All of them have the reds/orange at one lower earth end as active with the blue/violets at the other higher sky end as reflective, and in between the emerald green synthesis of the heart centre as mysterious and numinous where transformation is possible. This basic pattern remains constant, for as Najim Kobra says, “colour is not a passive impression, but the language of the soul to itself”. It’s an objective enduring reality of the universal Psyche and not subjective.
Some of the finest psychologists were early mystics and some of their paintings illustrate this story of Light and Colour in their practice. As the Hesychast monks of Greek/Russian Orthodoxy worked on their psyche they worked on their paintings and both were a precise science as much as revelation, influenced by the earlier Manichean tradition. Their icons represent the transformation of Matter via the illumination of intense concentration, creating a luminosity and vibrancy of colour that glows in the darkness. It is unmistakeable, found in the Cretan/Novgorod schools, the work of Theophanes the Greek, Rubliev and the countless Anonymous. So the inner illumination of the painter concentrates the visible illumination of the painting and this psychic/material intensity becomes One. It’s an alchemy where the Inside informs the Outside and transforms both.
The painter prepared the materials of his Being using techniques akin to Yoga as recorded in the Philokalia, while preparing the materials of his art, as recorded in the Dionysius fragment. This fragment proves their knowledge of the white Light Ray as “light penetrates matter to endow form”, their understanding of the properties of light and colour, of harmonies and discord, pigment vibrations that glow or recede, the psychological effect of colour, the balancing of complementary tones, especially reds, blues and greens. These pigment colours were considered sacred, often gathered with difficulty from rocks and plants, the rare lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, the powerful red vermilion of crushed beetles, the glowing whites and gold leaf. Their skies are often red or gold with the light ray descending visibly; their faces are lit by a light within without shadows. They are painting the outside according to the inside and their knowledge of the laws of colour and light was synonymous with their knowledge of the laws of Creation and Consciousness. So when Rubliev painted his Holy Trinity he was demonstrating this Unity of light and colour in the materials and in himself. It was practical, not speculative. They knew what science now knows, but spoke it in a different language.
SUMMARY
Behind the different languages of the story of Light and Colour is the universal Psyche. This Reality is the same, whether we talk in terms of a white light wave split into 7 colours, or a God of Light who completes Creation in 7 days, or an Inner Self/Light initiating 7 stages of development. It’s a display that dazzles and fascinates, this spectrum of Existence with its polarities and diversity, the struggle to orientate and know the source. We associate our sense of Good and Evil, Knowledge and Ignorance, from our sense of Light and Dark, feeling Good when connected to the Light and Bad if disconnected and “in the dark.” It’s in the fascination of candlelight in Lonelyville or moonlight in Amends or firelight in Self-made.
We belong to this Light Play and are intimately connected with it, setting our values by it. Our greatest fear is to be cut off from the Light and “cast asunder into an Outer Darkness” like Lucifer, the lightbearer and God’s lover, who rebelled and became unloved, isolated and disconnected. This place of separation is the dark hell of torment,”a weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12/25:30). It’s different from the darkness in the world, which is part of the Light and part of our struggle, known to us and experienced. It is absence and nothingness, where we cease to be, our negation. We only know this Outer Darkness by our fear of it, that fear of the unknown that the horror story amplifies or religion presents in afterlives, something alluded to beyond , but any portrayal of it never matches the fear of it as we cling to the Light.
“In the Light of Understanding...
We see things in their true colours....
We see the light....."
These daily expressions are residual reminders from ourselves of that story of Light and Colour.
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