The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols: The Ultimate A–Z Guide from Alchemy to the Zodiac

Although it’s the opposite of white, both shades are, in fact, due to an absence of color, and technically speaking black is not a “color” at all. This doesn’t stop it having a wealth of symbolic meaning.

Black often has negative connotations for the reason that it is the color of the night, or the absence of light. It doesn’t require a great leap of the imagination to extend this light/dark, day/night symbolism to good/bad. A fundamentally natural occurrence to do with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, therefore, has had far-reaching consequences, resulting in fear, racism, superstition, and bigotry which even continues today simply because of skin color.

In the West, black is the color of mourning and funerals. In some cultures, white is used in this context, in which case it carries the idea of rebirth. Black, however, is not so sanguine. It is final, conclusive, the denial of life.

Despite the mirthless sobriety of black, it depends how you wear it. The “new black” is a term applied to anything that is in vogue, since black is also somehow dangerous and sexy as well as practical, therefore always fashionable as a color.

The “black sheep” of the family refers to the one who is a bit of a scoundrel, and the “black dog” means depression. Conversely, a black cat is a very lucky symbol in the UK and other parts of the world. A person who holds a black belt in any of the martial arts is considered to be at the pinnacle of their abilities, and indeed, in Japan, black is the color of wisdom, experience, and maturity. In this instance, black is a color of perfection, an idea shared by the Cathars who also saw black as a symbol of completion and purity.

Black is a secretive, mysterious color and used as such in rite and ritual. A polished black mirror provides a perfect, glossy surface for scrying or seeing into the future.

BLUE

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: truth and the intellect; wisdom, loyalty, chastity; peace, piety, and contemplation; spirituality; eternity.

Blue is the color of the Heavens and is related to the fifth chakra. Blue is traditionally worn by the Virgin Mary, the very embodiment of all the qualities described above. Whereas the reds, oranges, and yellows carry with them a carnival atmosphere, blue is more sober, even somber, despite its many variations. If we’re “feeling blue” then we’re depressed or melancholy. And yet the bluebird is a universal symbol for happiness. The color has even given its name to a rich vein of music. The “blues” actually refers to “blue notes.” These are notes, either sung or played, that are pitched down a little for expressive purposes. An example is Billie Holiday’s heart-breaking rendition of “Strange Fruit.”

There’s something cool and detached about blue that gives rise to its reputation for spirituality and chastity. Above all, blue is the color of the sky. Like the sky, blue is infinitely spacious. It contains everything, and yet contains nothing. The color is therefore associated with ideas of eternity. When filmmakers and animators want to place a subject against a different background, they film against a blue screen since the color can be made invisible. In Jewish tradition the city of Luz, where the Immortals live, is also called The Blue City. Similarly, the mythical sacred mountain of the Hindus, Mount Meru, is constructed entirely of sapphire on its southern face and it’s this that is said to tinge the skies with blue.

To put any color out of context can have an alienating and often frightening effect. Knowing this, early British warriors daubed themselves in woad. These blue-skinned savages must have been an alarming sight for Roman soldiers.

Members of the aristocracy or the royalty are described as having “blue blood,” but why? The phrase originated with the Spanish, sangre azul, and refers to the pale-skinned Castilian ruling classes who prided themselves on never having interbred with darker-skinned races. Therefore, their blue veinous blood was plainly visible underneath the surface of their skin. There’s even a particular shade of blue that is meant to represent this color, called Royal Blue.

BROWN

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: poverty, humility, practicality.

Brown is the color primarily associated with the Earth, soil, the raw element before it is covered with greenery. The word for earth, in Latin, is humus, which carries the same root as humility. Religious ascetics wear brown as a reminder of this quality and also of their voluntary material poverty.

GRAY

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: sobriety, steadiness, modesty.

Gray is the midway point between black and white, and tellingly the “gray area” is an area of indetermination, indecision, or ambiguity. To be described as gray is rather less than flattering, since gray is such a subdued and neutral color, and implies that the person blends into the background. However, gray is also a color of balance and reasonableness and is the color used, in photography, to balance all others.

Because people’s hair turns gray with age, the word is often used to describe elderly people and is also a color of wisdom.

For Christians, gray is the color of resurrection and is worn when people are coming out of the full black of mourning as the midway point on the journey to other colors.

GREEN

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: new life, resurrection, hope; the sea; fertility and regeneration; recycling, environmental awareness; a lucky color; an unlucky color.

Green is an amalgam of blue and yellow, and is the color of the fourth chakra. Green is the universal symbol for “Go!” to red’s “Stop!”

In common with yellow, there seem to be several anomalies in the symbolic meaning of green. To call someone “green” means that they are inexperienced or innocent and obviously refers to fresh young shoots, yet jealousy is also described as the “green-eyed monster.” This saying is actually Shakespearean in origin. In Othello, jealousy is described as being like the green-eyed monster, the cat, “which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” Probably the same origin gives us “green with envy.”

Green is a soothing, refreshing color, so it is interesting to discover why it’s sometimes believed to be unlucky. It’s still a statistical fact that fewer green cars are sold in the UK than any other color because of this superstition.

In the Middle Ages, green was meant to be the color of the Devil. He’s even depicted on a stainedglass window in Chartres Cathedral as having green skin and green eyes, strangely similar to a generally held belief about the appearance of Martians. In this sense the color denotes an alien, nonhuman, possibly threatening being; no surprise, then, that it’s the color of the Fairy Folk, and it might well be that the color is lucky or unlucky depending on their attitude toward you. If you dressed in green, it was believed that the fairies could claim you as their own.

In Islam, green is the color of paradise, and Mohammed has a green banner. Paradise actually means “garden,” and in the arid desert landscape of the Bedouin, any stretch of lush green land must indeed appear heavenly.

The epitome of the nature God in the Western world is the Green Man, the pre-Christian deity whose leafy face peeps out from bosky woods and verdant forests and reminds us that Mother Nature is supernal. However, the Green Man is not exclusive to the West. He also exists in Islam, as Al Kadir. Al Kadir is the patron of travelers, and he’s said to live on the very edge of the world where the oceans of Heaven and Earth merge. Be mindful if you meet Al Kadir that you should do as he tells you, however outlandish the instructions might be.

In alchemy, full of hidden meanings, the Green Lion itself has more than one meaning. It is a symbol for vitriol (sulfuric acid), which is created by distilling the green iron sulfate crystals in a flask. But the life-force itself was symbolized as the blood of the Green Lion, blood contained in a green vessel; this was a reference not to real, physical gold, but to Philosophers’ Gold, far more valuable and elusive.

MOTLEY

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: wealth; a chameleon personality.

Not strictly a color as such, but a combination of many other colors. The word is generally used to describe cloth or clothing. The rainbow nature of motley means that whoever wears it has as many aspects as there are colors, a chameleon personality, and it can indicate the trickster or fool (as worn by the jester, or the Fool in the Tarot) as well as kings, emperors, and deities. In the Bible, Joseph’s coat of many colors is the object of much envy.

ORANGE

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: balance between spirit and sexuality; fertility and yet virginity; energy; the Sun; like yellow, orange is believed to be an appetite stimulant.

Orange has two aspects that we see time and time again, pivoting between the material and spiritual worlds, which is not surprising given that the color itself is a balance between red and yellow. As such, it represents the second chakra, the first being red, and the third, yellow.

Orange is a vibrant, cheerful color that definitely lifts the spirits. The orange blossom is the traditional flower for brides because the fruit and the flower can appear on the orange tree at the same time, hence the virginity/fertility symbolism.

Similarly, a Hindu bride has an orange powder smeared on her forehead once she is married, a sign of her status. Hindu places of worship are indicated by an orange flag or banner, which is replaced once a year in a colorful and effusive ceremony.

Why is the color orange so closely associated with the Netherlands? Originally it was because of the Dutch ruling dynasty, the House of Orange. Loyal Dutch farmers who gave the world the first orange carrot further cemented the association. It might be impossible to associate the carrot with any other color these days, but originally they came in black, red, or purple and were a much more bitter vegetable than the modern varieties. By the 1700s, the Dutch had succeeded in hybridizing pale yellow carrots with red ones. It might be a coincidence, but a recent Unicef survey showed Dutch children to be the happiest in Europe; given that happiness is one of the symbolic associations with the color orange, could there be a link?

PINK

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: femininity, innocence, good health, love, patience.

Pink is the ultimate feminine color, being flirty, girlish, and innocent at the same time. Pale pink is used as the symbol for a baby girl, just as pale blue is used for baby boys. This feminine angle is why the color pink has been adopted as a symbol of gay pride.

Pink is the color of universal, unconditional love.

PURPLE

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: royalty and pomp; power, wealth, majesty.

Purple, or indigo, is the color associated with the sixth chakra.

Since it was first discovered, purple has been the color of choice to denote wealth and power. Emperors, kings, and the more powerful members of the clergy—such as bishops—choose the colour as a way of defining their status. This is because the dye itself was originally available from one source and one source only; the secretions of a certain gland of an unfortunate sea snail called the Murex brandaris. Therefore, purple was extremely costly to produce and strictly the color of those who could afford it, since the dye itself was more expensive even than gold. The most popular shade of the color is called Tyrian Purple (named for the city of Tyre, where it was manufactured). Heracles’ dog, which had a predilection for snacking on the snails he found along the seashore, is credited with having discovered the dye after his owner noticed the purple staining around his mouth. It is likely, however, that the Minoans on Crete discovered the purple pigment quite some time before Heracles’ dog trotted into the picture.

If the Minoan theory is true then the rare purple dye has been with us for at least 3500 years, so its associations with all things glorious and splendid are well embedded into the human psyche even with the advent of synthetic dye alternatives.

RED

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: vitality and life-force; fire, the Sun, the South; blood; good luck and prosperity; power and authority; masculine energy; war and anger; passion, energy, sexuality.

One of the three primary colors, bright red pops out of whatever environment it happens to be in and grabs our attention more than any other color. Moreover, it is the first actual color that is seen by babies. Because it has a lower vibrational frequency than any other color in our visible spectrum, it is associated with the base chakra and symbolizes passion, sexuality, fertility, and animal urges. Red-light districts are so called because of the dim red shades of the prostitutes’ quarters.

Red is the color of blood, which means that it is associated with the life-forces and vitality. Hunters daub themselves in the red blood of the kill, which they believe will give them empathy with the spirit of the animal. Red is also the color of fire, the Sun, and the Southern direction.

The word for “magic,” in German, is directly linked to the word for “red ocher.” A recent archeological discovery provided unusual evidence of the reverence in which the color was held by early man. Lumps of red ocher, as well as tools stained with the substance, were found in early graves in an Israeli cave, indicating its importance as a symbol of vitality, life, and resurrection.

Pure colors used to be very difficult and expensive to produce, and so red cloth was used by people in positions of power, such as the monarchy and the clergy. Byzantine emperors were dressed from head to foot in red. In Rome, red was the color of nobles and generals, and the Holy Roman Church still dresses its cardinals in pure, bright, cardinal red. To roll out the red carpet for someone is to honor their presence.

Red is a color of protection and has been viewed as such for at least the last 2000 years. Amulets made from rubies or garnets were far more valuable than any other kind, able to make the wearer invincible.

And how about the red planet? Mars has a preponderance of iron oxide in its soil, giving it a red appearance that is clearly visible to the naked eye. This color is partially responsible for its association with war and warriors.

In India and China, red is the traditional color for weddings. Indian brides wear saris of red or pink, and the Chinese happy couple will be surrounded by a veritable sea of red; clothing, souvenirs, and gifts. Even the home of the bride and groom are decorated with red banners and ribbons. Roman brides, too, favored red for their wedding veil, which was called a flammeum. This tradition is shared by modern Greek brides.

In Ancient Egypt red was synonymous with evil, because it was the color of the God Seth, who haunted the arid desert places, the personification of destruction. Seth was called the “Red God,” and an Egyptian charm of the time goes like this;

Oh, Isis, deliver me from the hands of bad, evil, red things!

Similarly, in Christian symbolism, the Devil is sometimes depicted as a red creature. Like Seth, he also has a predilection for scorched places.

In alchemy, the Red Stone is mercuric sulfide, a compound of sulfur and mercury that is also called vermilion. The creation of vermilion was a very important primary stage in the process of making the Philosopher’s Stone, which is itself disguised as the Red Lion, since this elusive substance was characterized by turning red in its final stage.

SAFFRON

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: spirituality, holiness, good fortune.

Named after the saffron crocuses whose stigmas create the color, the harvesting of these delicate plant parts is a labor-intensive and time-critical matter and so the actual dye is costly to produce. Saffron is an extremely auspicious color for Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and a saffron or orange banner indicates a place of spiritual worship. The foreheads of Hindu deities are daubed with saffron paste to denote their celestial status, and although the Hindu pantheon is vast and complex, the use of saffron is a unifying factor across the many different manifestations of the faith.

Saffron is paler and more golden than true orange, and is said to be the color of wisdom, the rising Sun, and of Mother Earth.

VIOLET

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: knowledge and intelligence; piety, sobriety, humility, temperance; peace and spirituality.

Violet is the color associated with the seventh chakra.

There are many shades of violet ranging from ethereal pale shades through to the darker mauve, considered the only color acceptable as a relief from the relentless strict mourning convention of black and gray in Victorian times.

Violet is a combination of red and blue, and its association with temperance is indicated in some Tarot suits. Temperance is the 14th card of the Major Arcana and is depicted by a woman holding a jug or vase in either hand, one red, one blue, pouring a clear liquid from one to the other.

Violet is often worn by people predisposed toward psychic matters, and is the perfect symbol of the “higher” mind, combining as it does the earthy, fieriness of red with the cool reasonableness of blue to forge an entirely different hue. Its association with the seventh chakra, at the crown position at the top of the head, gives violet the power to connect with the world of spirit.

The humble qualities of violet as a color come from the flower. The tiny violet grows close to the ground, hidden modestly in among the grass, yet noticeable because of its striking color.

WHITE

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: purity, virginity; death and rebirth, a beginning and an end; in the Far East, mourning.

White is both the absence of any color and the sum of all colors together, so in a sense it can mean everything or nothing. This combination of all colors has given white the name of the “many-colored lotus” in Buddhist teachings.

Probably the most telling of both ends of white’s symbolic spectrum are reflected in its associations with purity and a fresh start (as worn by brides in the Western tradition, as an optimistic sign of virginity) and as the color of mourning in the East, a use that used to be common in Europe, too. Cadavers all over the world are still wrapped in white shrouds and, as death precedes birth, the white here has an optimistic meaning, since in this instance, white symbolizes rebirth. White is also used to denote initiation, another form of rebirth. Children wear white at their First Communion, and in Africa, boys smear their bodies with white paste after circumcision to show that they are apart from their main society for a time. When they re-enter, it is as men, their bodies painted red.

White is the color of expectation and contains all the potential of the blank canvas. The pristine glory of a fresh fall of snow makes the world look clean and pure but white shows up every mark, hence its usefulness in hospitals and other clinical environments.

White is a symbol of peace, and the white flag is a universal sign of submission and surrender. However, the white feather is a sign of cowardice. This originates in the days of cock-fighting when a bird with a white feather in its tail was believed to be a poor fighter. The potency of this particular white symbol is such that, just after the Second World War, an “order of the White Feather” was started as a method of goading men into joining the army. Womenfolk were encouraged to hand the white feather of cowardice to any man not wearing a uniform.

YELLOW

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: the Sun; power, authority; the intellect and intuition; goodness; light, life, truth, immortality; endurance; the Empire and fertility [China]; cowardice, treachery.

Yellow is one of the three primary colors and is related to the third chakra which lives in the region of the solar plexus. This is apt, since yellow, like red and orange, is one of the Sun colors. It could be argued that yellow is the most dazzling of the three, so the association makes good sense. The Ancient Egyptians had only six colors available in their pallet, and wherever yellow was used this indicated endurability and timelessness.

In China, yellow was the color of the Emperor. The average man in the street was forbidden from wearing it until relatively recently. It is also the color of fertility, since healthy soil in China is a yellow color. Because of this, all the hangings, sheets, and pillows of the bridal bed were dyed in vibrant shades of yellow as well as red.

However, there are some contradictions with yellow. In the UK and USA, to call someone “yellow” or to say that they have a “yellow streak” means that they are cowardly. There are several theories about why this should be. The one that seems to fit best is that Judas Iscariot wore yellow robes, and his own cowardly act was to betray Christ for thirty pieces of silver.

Jewish people were made to wear a yellow Star of David by the Nazi regime in the Second World War. Similarly, in 1215 the Lateran Council ordered Jews to wear a yellow circle to identify themselves. It was probably small comfort for these persecuted people that they believed yellow to be synonymous with beauty. In tenth-century France, the doors of criminals were painted yellow. Conversely, in the fourteenth century, the yellow chrysanthemum was worn by warriors as a symbol of courage.

Because leaves turn yellow and then to black with the onset of fall, in several places, including Ancient Egypt, yellow is a color of mourning. A yellow cross was painted on doors as a sign of the plague, possibly for the same reasons, and even today yellow marks off a quarantined area.

The Claddagh symbol features a heart held by a pair of hands. A crown usually surmounts the heart. These features represent love, friendship, and loyalty.

CLAVICLE

See Key.

COMPASSES

See Freemasonry.

CORN DOLLY

These days, the corn dolly generally gathers dust in gift shops, an innocuous souvenir for tourists in rural areas, particularly in the United Kingdom. However, its origins as a powerful magical symbol go back thousands of years to pre-Christian times. It may come as a surprise that the corn dolly hanging on the kitchen wall can trace its roots back to a particularly bloody ritual.

In any agrarian culture, the success of the crop is all-important and in Northern Europe the harvest produce was essential to survival during the winter period. It was the generally held belief that the spirit of the harvest—in this case, the versatile grain crop—resided in the plant, and once the plant was cut down then the spirit effectively became homeless. In order to provide a new home for this spirit, the farmers made a corn dolly from the very last stalks of the crop. The dolly would spend her time indoors over the winter, waiting to be ploughed back into the ground at the start of the new season. In places where the corn dolly custom was not established, the last few stalks of corn were violently beaten into the ground, thus driving the spirit back into the Earth.