Entertain - Perceptible - Colors
white,
the color of all colors
Part 2 — The Full Color of
Light and the Beginning of All Colors
Look through the eyes of
the mother or the children! Look through your eyes! And the
rainbow that announces the joys of life will accompany you
regardless of the fog from which it appeared…
This is light, this is the color white…
Some psychological studies “suggest” that the one who preferentially chooses a color, through this choice, reflects his emotional state and personality. Whether for that moment of his choice, for that moment of his life…
If you, today, make that choice, the studies say that you are manifesting the desire for neutrality, distancing from something… To be able to control what follows in the face of the choice or the obligation to be open to the experience that follows, regardless of a relative lack of manifestation of one’s own identity in the “direction” of subsequent events.
So:
1. Neutrality:
White is considered a neutral color or the ensemble of all colors, which does not have a specific emotional connotation or, perhaps, denotes the impossibility of emotional choice.
Perhaps that is why it is associated with a lack of stimuli and can be interpreted as a desire for calm and peace in the multitude of options that lie before life.
2. Distance:
White can symbolize detachment, distance, and lack of involvement.
People who choose white may avoid conflict or want to protect themselves from negative emotions, possibly the implications of a potential choice.
3. Control:
White can be associated with the need for order, control, and perfection.
People who choose white can be organized, efficient, and detail-oriented, seeking maximum control over the results of their involvement.
4. Opening:
White can symbolize openness to new experiences, possibilities, and change.
It can represent a desire to start over or explore new directions, perhaps due to the obligation to start on a new path.
5. Lack of identity:
In some interpretations, white can be associated with a lack of identity, direction, or purpose in life, a perceived lack of identity due to fears raised by the unknown of the new beginning.
People who choose white may be indecisive or looking for a new direction in life, regardless of uncertainties.
What you have gone through is only a snapshot, a pose of the moment, and is not a psychological analysis, it does not reveal the personality of the one who prefers white at that moment…
The interpretation of the preference for the color white depends on the individual context and the other colors chosen and does not have an exclusively positive or negative connotation, but can reflect a variety of aspects of personality and emotional state.
I’ll wrap up this introduction now, but you’ll understand along the way what it’s all about…
This is light, this is the color white…
Some psychological studies “suggest” that the one who preferentially chooses a color, through this choice, reflects his emotional state and personality. Whether for that moment of his choice, for that moment of his life…
If you, today, make that choice, the studies say that you are manifesting the desire for neutrality, distancing from something… To be able to control what follows in the face of the choice or the obligation to be open to the experience that follows, regardless of a relative lack of manifestation of one’s own identity in the “direction” of subsequent events.
So:
1. Neutrality:
White is considered a neutral color or the ensemble of all colors, which does not have a specific emotional connotation or, perhaps, denotes the impossibility of emotional choice.
Perhaps that is why it is associated with a lack of stimuli and can be interpreted as a desire for calm and peace in the multitude of options that lie before life.
2. Distance:
White can symbolize detachment, distance, and lack of involvement.
People who choose white may avoid conflict or want to protect themselves from negative emotions, possibly the implications of a potential choice.
3. Control:
White can be associated with the need for order, control, and perfection.
People who choose white can be organized, efficient, and detail-oriented, seeking maximum control over the results of their involvement.
4. Opening:
White can symbolize openness to new experiences, possibilities, and change.
It can represent a desire to start over or explore new directions, perhaps due to the obligation to start on a new path.
5. Lack of identity:
In some interpretations, white can be associated with a lack of identity, direction, or purpose in life, a perceived lack of identity due to fears raised by the unknown of the new beginning.
People who choose white may be indecisive or looking for a new direction in life, regardless of uncertainties.
What you have gone through is only a snapshot, a pose of the moment, and is not a psychological analysis, it does not reveal the personality of the one who prefers white at that moment…
The interpretation of the preference for the color white depends on the individual context and the other colors chosen and does not have an exclusively positive or negative connotation, but can reflect a variety of aspects of personality and emotional state.
I’ll wrap up this introduction now, but you’ll understand along the way what it’s all about…
Interpretation
of the “preference” for the color white
But it is also associated with renunciation, fear, sickness, mourning or marriage. At the same time, white is the color, the presence that suggests sincerity, cleanliness, truth, the beginning, the search.
This color is the favorite of those who enjoy observing those around them and taking advantage of their every misstep, always taking care to camouflage themselves as perfectly as possible for similar but opposite actions.
Their “adaptive” dissimulation ability is also characteristic, being able to often react exactly when anyone least expects it and, of course, stronger than expected.
The attitude of those who like (prefer) the color white is a virginal one in which they compose a puzzle full of virtues related to life which they display as a benchmark for their considerations or as rules imposed by them.
It should be noted that I have enough common sense not to make those analyzed feel judged, but simply want to instill in them the rules of the game which, until the end, become a kind of creed even for them themselves.
Perhaps for these reasons, they seem quite stubborn and conservative, being quite reserved precisely because of the events, and the triggers necessary for action.
So, the more white is a “preferred” color, the more we have to do with individuals who conform quite unconditionally to some principles or rules of life (the choice of/between benefic or evil being most of the time at hand fate) and, the “less preferred” white, the more we have to do with non-conformist personalities and more lovers of free action and without restrictions/rules.
White
is the color of maximum contrast, opposite to black (lack of
light, of color), the color that “conceives” the perfection of a
system bordered by the perfect black-white tandem, the extremes
of the chromatic range.It is often considered to be the absolute, “total” color, the one that has no other variations than those between matte and shiny, meaning either the absence or the sum of the colors.
This “extreme” placement makes it be considered a color that is placed both at the beginning and at the end of the day, of the manifested world and even of life, giving the color an ideal, asymptotic value (life starts with the great light, with the great white and ends with the divine light, with the divine white, the one that encompasses everything and everything in a moment of transition from visible to invisible, from unknown to all-knowing).
But, the symbolic interpretations of this color vary quite a lot depending on the populations/culture that makes the “perception”.
The
“cultural-historical” interpretation (the starting point of
the considerations)
Starting from the “candidus” interpretation, white is the color of the candidate, of the one who changes his condition (candidates for public positions wore white).
Like these candidates, it can be said that the white coat is a sign of Christian initiation.
Even if one can comment on the white shirt of the condemned to death, it is good to remember that this clothing is, in fact, the meaning of the one who rises above all things, of the one who will rise to the heavens to be reborn, conquering the cruel and the unfair trial, regardless of the charges brought.
And anyway, the passage of time has changed the perception of these circumstances becoming in many “places” the orange garment, like a backlash to the righteousness originally attributed to the color white.
The idea of initiation, of recognizing the value, even through martyrdom, transformed the white clothing into the Christian initiatory toga, into a symbol of affirmation, of the responsibilities assumed, of the powers gained and recognized (“The new Christian, born to the true life wears some clothes of brilliant white, escaping by a determined and divine constancy from the attacks of the passions and longing strongly for unity, what was disordered in him becoming orderly, what was wrong in him beautifying, coming to spread the whole light of a pure and holy life”).
The color white is also the symbol of the cardinal points east and west, the places where the sun appears and disappears for people. That is why white is assimilated with the extreme values associated with these cardinal points: extreme, mysterious, hope, the cyclicity of birth and sunset.
This fact will often be associated with the value of a privileged, passing color, being often associated with rituals (starting directly from the observation of nature, especially the cyclicity of the day, the sun).
For this reason, it has always been considered that death always precedes life and white becomes, from ancient times, the color of mourning (the whole East keeps this form of mourning and in Europe, it was kept mainly at the court of the kings of France).
The
Pueblo Indians attribute to the sunrise the color white, which
is not of solar affiliation. It is no longer the color of the
aurora and the dawn, that moment of “void” between night and day
when the world of dreams covers all reality (the human being
inhibited, suspended), but it is the moment of returning to
life, to safety, to the road to becoming.These perceptions tend to be generalized because the white of dawn chases away that auspicious moment of searches, surprise attacks, great losses, and, at least in the old days, capital executions.
Perhaps for this reason, the tradition that requires the condemned to die to be dressed in white persists, the white shirt being the symbol of submission and availability. Perhaps this is where the tradition of the communion garment being white comes from.
The Aztecs, a population for whom the sun is everything, associated the color white with the sunset. Their religious thinking considers the life of man and the path of the whole earth to be conditioned by the path of the sun. Or, at sunset, the sun enters the “house of fog”, compatible with death.
To ensure that the sun would rise the next day, human sacrifices were made (warriors or prisoners of war) which, through the bloodshed and the rites performed, brought/maintained the sun in the cycle of life.
The symbolic essence of the white color required that the sacrificed persons be adorned with white fluff and white sandals.
This “meaning” through the use of white color was compatible with the declaration of the state of exit from this world, they enter the other world before the actual sacrifice (white is the color of the first steps of the soul before the detachment to the heights of the sacrificed warriors).
It is good to remember that the Aztec deities were almost always dressed in white, even to “contrast” the royal jade or the gods.
Religious manifestations could not “benefit” from the purity and sign of the white color.
Thus,
for the ancient Celts, white is the color of the sacerdotal
class, the druids being dressed in white, as a sign of “class”
demarcation and power.Except for the priests, only the king was “authorized” to wear the color white, and this was because he was charged by the divinity in his function, being the warrior charged primarily to defend the religion.
Moreover, an association of white color with silver was also made, it becoming the royal color (King Nuada) which was often associated with gold — white and gold are the colors of the Vatican flag, which affirms the kingdom of the Christian God on earth.
Neighboring peoples accepted the Celtic interpretation. Thus, the Gauls had the adjective “vindo-s” which meant white and beautiful, the Irish had “find” which meant white and holy, “drong find” meant the white host of angels, the Gauls had “gwen” which meant white and blessed and examples would continue.
The sunrise with its white light is the moment of the return to life, to activity, revealing a celestial vault without colors but loaded with the manifestation potential of all known elements, implicitly of the cyclical manifestations of the sun on its way to the sunset, towards the end of the day.
The sun, the star of thought, gives added value to the privilege of “using” the color white, “valuing” for it the cyclicity, the harmony of life and death.
The human being thus perceives the transition from the sunrise of birth, life, heat, and light to the dullness of the sunset, of death, which absorbs the being and introduces it into the lunar, cold, and feminine world, leading to the absence and nocturnal void, to the disappearance of consciousness and daytime colors, towards extreme perceptions (in matte white and pure black — dark).
Among the most well-known beneficial interpretations of the color white, we can mention the traditions related to the white clothes of the bride going to the marriage ceremony.
It symbolizes purity along with submission, and fulfillment along the new lives that will appear.
The
“primitive” essence of the wedding dress was the association
between the ceremonial white and the nuptial red (blood),
between the white of the dawn and the red of the goddess
(planet) Venus, when talking about the wedding of the day.This association can be easily correlated with the whiteness of the surgeon’s operating field where the vital blood will flow (and by association with the white equipment of doctors and medical personnel).
Buddhism associates the white halo and the white lotus with the fist of knowledge gesture of the great enlightener Buddha, in opposition to red and the gesture of concentration.
It can be said that it is a similar interpretation to the Christian one related to initiation, where the white color is easily assimilated to revelation and the divine, to the state of grace, to the transfiguration that amazes, awakening the faculty of understanding and overcoming it at the same time becoming towards the absolute of perception the color of the theophany, a remnant of which will surround the head of all those who have known God (in the form of a halo of light that represents the sum of all colors (“And after six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John and he took them to a high, special mountain, by themselves, and was transfigured before them. And his garments became bright, very white, like snow, as no bleach can whiten so on earth. And they were showed Elijah together with Moses and they were talking with Jesus.”).
Everything becomes even more interesting if we remember that Elijah is the master of the vital principle symbolized by fire, and its color is red.
Moses, according to the Islamic tradition, is associated with the intimate forum of the being, whose color is… white, the occult white of the inner light, the light of that “sirr” which represents the secret, the fundamental mystery of Sufi thought.
Thus, white becomes the symbolic color of wisdom, coming from the ancestors and carrying with it the human call to progress. In combination with red, the color of the being entangled in the fogs of the world, unable to overcome its obstacles, you will reach the crimson archangel quite quickly. And, from here to… “I come from ancient times, I am a sage whose essence is light. — … — But I too am thrown into the dark Tunnel. — … — Look at the sunset and the dawn, they are moments of border; of — on one side the whiteness of the day, on the other the darkness of the night, hence the crimson of the day and the evening. — … — I am the crimson archangel.”.
Another fairly well-known “symbolism” of the white color is milk, the maternal essence, the first impulse of human vitality. Most of the time, milk is associated with primary impulses, the desire for life, and the divine power that rewards the courage of those who start a new life and are ready to face the whole adventure, pain, or joy of life.
It is also the “liquid” of knowledge, being the first perception of the baby in everyday life, before he perceives the light of day or becomes aware of what is around him (even his mother). Perhaps, this is where the human “impulse” to assimilate the color white with initiation and initiatory rituals comes from?!?
In
“Black Africa”, where initiation rituals condition the entire
structure of society, the white of kaolin is the color of
circumcised young people throughout their entire isolation.They anoint their face and body with white to show that, for the moment, they are outside the social body, reintegration being compatible with the replacement of white with the red of fulfillment, of maturity.
Widows have a similar ritual, marking with white, to “signal” the exit from the collective body. An interpretation of the Bambara population associates white teeth with the symbol of intelligence.
From the point of view of sinister interpretations, the white color is the color of corpses, of disease, of bloodthirsty vampires, a condition of daily life, it is the color of ghosts, of all specters, of all ghosts, of undead.
Even African populations associate this color with the deceased, with death, being similar to the initiatory ritual where the child dies to be reborn as a young adult.
The first white man to meet the Bantu blacks was called Nango-Kon (the albino ghost) and, after an initial reaction of flight, they began to ask him for news of deceased relatives and friends because he could not have come from anywhere else but from the realm beyond, from the land of the dead.
For some interpretations, we arrive at “perceptions” that place white in the absolute category, far exceeding its aesthetic value (of color, harmonizing) or, in the antithesis, it is compatible with non-color.
And, to reach a practical side of our presentation, white suggests to those around cleanliness, innocence, sobriety, tranquility in balance with a fine shade of expansiveness, lightness, softness in balance with manifest robustness, with divine shades, attracting the subtle balance between purity and coolness, without forgetting the feeling of peace and reconciliation.
It is a color that facilitates visual perception, concentration, and nervous disconnection, attracting a state of mental comfort, refreshment, and good mood.
It is the preferred color of people who have reached a maturity sufficient to know others, being the “statement” of the presence of a person who will almost always know how to get out of a critical situation and will know the potential and quality of the people in his life (friends, family, social, professional environment, etc.).
Its main attributes will be diplomacy, firm conviction, and strength of character.
Practical
interpretation — neuromarketing
White is often used in branding to create an image of purity, professionalism, and trust, it can be used to make a product appear more modern and elegant, or it can be used to create a sense of space and airiness.
For example, pharmaceutical companies often use white to create an image of purity and safety; technology companies often use white to create an image of modernity and innovation; fashion companies often use white to create an image of simplicity and elegance.
And, perhaps, there would be more to say… But we still have many other colors to discuss…
Merticaru Dorin Nicolae
Note: Images are created
by me, Merticaru Dorin Nicolae, using Microsoft Bing Image
Creator.
Dorin, Merticaru
(11.01, 2001 - 2024)