Peculiar question of the day: what colour is Christ?

[tree_and_leaf]

The trip to Weimar involved - as how could it not? - a trip round Goethe's house. Now Goethe, as well as being a mostly brilliant poet (and egotist), rather fancied himself a scientist, with particular interest in what he called the 'urform' of life, and in optics and colours. His scientific stuff is a characteristic mix of sharply intelligent observation and wilfully eccentric flannel† - Darwin mentions him appreciatively in "On the Origins of the Species", and some of his practical observations of how the human eye perceives colour are spot on (for instance, the changes the ring of colour you see after looking at a bright light progress through, and how this changes depending on background, and the like). On the other hand, he thought that light could not be broken - largely because he disliked the idea, I think - and, even more oddly in a way, that there were only two primary colours, namely blue and yellow. Colour, according to him, arose from 'Betrübnis' - the obscuring of light.

That wasn't, really, what caught my attention, though, but rather the colour circles which he and Schiller made together, and associated, though not consistently, various human traits with various colours. On one of the wheels, 'mysticism' was marked as a sort of bluey-purple (a negative colour, I think, though I'm not sure entirely what G meant by 'mystik') "Strange, that, I think of mysticism as more a gold or white" said my companion, and, as I stared at her, added "Well, what colour do you think of it?"

"I don't", I replied. "I don't think I've ever thought of abstract concepts as colours."

"I suppose I don't mean mysticism, exactly, I mean Christ. Like a candle flame, only clearer and brighter: light, but a warm light. What colour do you associate with Christ?"

This was not, in fact, a question I'd considered before, so my answer was along the lines of "Red. Or more purple, I suppose. Or possibly green" - and was on the point of saying "a sort of purpley-green" before I realised that I seemed to be describing octarine, and instead, thinking about it further, added that I could see white-gold as well.

Further consultation with acquaintances produced the answers (i) white (twice) (ii) green (iii) purple, and, from one person who'd misunderstood the question, 'sort of Mediterranean, I suppose, and definitely not blond'.

So, question of the day: what colour is Christ for you? Or, if you don't like the question, are there any concepts/ people/ emotions/ things that you associate with a particular colour?


† A bit like the more theological aspects of his thought, really.

Comments

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

In a seminar I learned that Goethe apparently thought that light could not be broken. According to my lecturer (and some references in Goethe's letters I didn't bother to look up) he tried to recreate the experiment in which light is broken, but he forgot to add a prism. Surprise surprise, he wasn't able to break light, and thus concluded that the other scientists were victims to some optical illusion. Great how Goethe was able to bend the world around his ego... ;)

I don't really think of colours when thinking about abstract concepts as well, but for me numbers have colours. When I see a 5, it flickers lime-green, an 8 is brown, 7 yellow-orange, 9 a deep green and so on. When I think about it, all numbers smaller than 100 have individual colours, after that I usually "see" the components. 1024 e.g. is white for the 10 and sunny yellow for the 24.

[rustica.livejournal.com]

I have colours for particular numbers too (though I'm not at all convinced that they don't change over time).

To me, Christ is white (but octarine is way cooler!).

[tree_and_leaf]

I think I've been reading too much mystic theology. They - at least the paradox-loving kind of mystic - would have been all over the concept of octarine, had it occurred to them.

White seems appropriate, too.

[tree_and_leaf]

According to my lecturer (and some references in Goethe's letters I didn't bother to look up) he tried to recreate the experiment in which light is broken, but he forgot to add a prism. Surprise surprise, he wasn't able to break light, and thus concluded that the other scientists were victims to some optical illusion. Great how Goethe was able to bend the world around his ego... ;)

ROFL! I can absolutely believe that. Anyone else would have wondered what they had done wrong, but JWG was clearly above all that...

Am interested by your numbers - I certainly have never experienced anything like that.

Numbers...

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid I always wrote the 5 the wrong way round, like mirrored. Somehow it looked "correcter" to me (still does btw, but I write it the right way now). You can imagine the trouble I had in elementary school. ;)

And I have no idea if this is connected to the colourful numbers in any way. Any neuroscientists on your flist? ;)

Re: Numbers...

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

Do you have any other sort of synathaesthesia? A friend of mine (an orgnists, as it happens) is quite clear that notes (and sometimes keys - pieces in E get a sort of blue wash, etc.) have colours attached.

Re: Numbers...

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

It really is strongest with numbers.
When I listen to specific pieces of music, mostly classical music but also one or two pieces by Apyocalyptica, I get a kind of spectrograph vision when I close my eyes. Black background, thin, coloured lines forming a kind of spectrograph of the music, each instrument/voice has its own line and colour, and it's a bit more like a network than the 2D-linear visualisation of a spectrograph.

But as I said, that happens only with a few pieces of music (and I really enjoy it). ;)

Re: Numbers...

[tree_and_leaf]

Wow, I'm rather jealous of that. Like the way iTunes visauliser ought to work.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Red and gold, flame, bright light.

[tree_and_leaf]

Red seems to come up quite a lot. Combined associations of blood and light, perhaps?

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

Um, well emotions have colours, and things like hope (purplish) and justice (white) and some people I know very definitely have colours associated with them, but I've never though of it in terms of Christ.

I'd be tempted to go for octarine!Jesus, but actually I think of more of a russetty red, witih shots of both browner and brighter red running through it.

[tree_and_leaf]

Hope as purple? How interesting. I think it's green, for me.

[penguinity.livejournal.com]

'sort of Mediterranean, I suppose, and definitely not blond'.

I understand your question and that's my answer, too. I don't see things in abstract colors. :/

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't generally - or at least, I can concieve of things in colours, but I'm not synaesthetic, mildly or otherwise. It seems to be more common than I thought, though.

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

I have never seen any abstraction as a colour, but then, I am not a visual thinker at all.

Is it wrong of me to be giggling like mad at the thought of octarine!Christ?

[tree_and_leaf]

I wouldn't worry ;) I'm fairly confident that God has a sense of humour. Probably quite a weird one, at that!

[owl]

Oh, yes. Bright white. I'm mildly synaesthetic, practically everything has a colour. Abstracts are mostly luminous.

[tree_and_leaf]

The luminosity of abstracts makes sense to me, though as I understand synaesthesia, there's no reason why it should (or have I got that wrong?)

[owl]

Well, I'm not sure how well I understand it myself, as opposd to experiencing it. Sometimes I'm not sure what is bleed-over from collective consciousness (like other people talking about warm and cold colours), and what's just me. I don't even think luminous is quite the word for it, either. And it isn't just abstracts=luminous. Some sounds are, and numbers aren't.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

A sort of orangey-red, I think, but that's purely because I'm working backwards from the concept of warmth, and possibly have the church at Taizé in the back of my mind. It seemed a very artificial exercise to me, but I find that I don't have a very visual imagination.

I've been to Goethe's house, but it was the one in Frankfurt where he was born (?), not Weimar.