It Really IS a Question of Black and White (Cultural significance of colors)

Photos

La vie en noir

see larger image

uploaded by denseatoms

Why is it that black is the color of mourning in the West, but white is customary in Asian cultures?

Somber clothes at times of grief go back at least as far as the Old Testament. Rudolph Zehnpfund ("Mourning Customs. Hebrew" in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge) wrote that the Hebrews wore dark clothing or sackcloth in mourning, wore no items of adornment, and went barefoot. Rending of garments also was customary.

According to Arnold Whittick in Symbols, Signs and their Meaning, black is one of the five liturgical colors (besides white, red, green and violet) of the Catholic and Anglican churches.

Pope Innocent III established them in the year 1200 as symbols of each season in the church year. These colors appear in the priests' vestments at prescribed intervals. Black is the ecclesiastical color for funerals, Masses for the dead, and Good Friday. In 1000 Symbols: What Shapes Mean in Art & Myth, Rowena and Rupert Sheppard added that black is the color to wear on days of fasting and penitence.

Although white is the color for bridal dresses and baptismal gowns in the West, it means mourning, old age and death in Buddhist countries. This also is true in Slavonic cultures. Japanese brides wear white robes not as a token of purity, but to show that they have "died" to their former home life with their parents. White does also signify purity in Buddhism, however, as the color of the lotus flower.

Colors, of course, have no inherent meaning. Their significance depends on how various cultures interpret them, as is plain to see in the "black and white" differences of mourning colors. For instance, it is yellow ocher that colors the death ceremonies of Australian aborigines. Other differences can be as subtle as the spectrum of a rainbow.

Green and blue, for example, are not as sharply distinguished as separate colors in Japan and China as in Western culture. The Chinese associate both colors with the eastern point of the compass, wood and the blue-green dragon.

Judeo-Christian tradition represents cherubim as blue in color, and blue is the color associated with the Virgin Mary.

Because the Greeks made blue the color of their chief god, Zeus, the color also came to symbolize earthly kings and queens.

Images of the Hindu deities Krishna and Shiva are painted sky blue, as were those of the ancient Egyptian god Amun. For the Navaho Indians, blue means south, fertility, rain and the heat of the sun.

To the ancient Egyptians, the vegetation god Osiris was green (green was also associated with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite).

In the Roman Catholic Church, liturgical green denotes eternal life and regeneration.

Green also has great significance in Islam, as the color of paradise and all things spiritual. Because it was the color of Mohammed's cloak, green robes adorn martyrs and saints in the afterlife.

Westerners see red as the color of blood, fire, war and danger. Red was the color for Greek Ares, god of war, and the "Angry Red Planet" is named for Mars, his Roman counterpart. As a Catholic liturgical color, red stands for blood, love and sacrifice, and is tied to Christ's passion, the Feast of Pentecost, and the apostles and martyrs.

To the Chinese and Japanese, however, red is a festive color that brings warm thoughts of happiness and prosperity. Chinese brides wear red, and as a sun-color, it represents life in Korean and Japanese traditions.

Yellow is another sun color, although it sometimes symbolizes gold in the West (especially in European coats of arms, with an additional meaning of faith, glory, wisdom and steadfastness).

The yellow dragon and the emperor embodied the "Middle Kingdom" of China itself, and yellow meant "center" and "earth." Likewise, the yellow "tattva" (meditational shape) of Hinduism also indicates the earth.

Because purple dyes were once extremely expensive, only the richest and noblest persons of antiquity could afford to wear them. In fact, the full name of the imperial compound in Beijing was the "Purple Forbidden City."