Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols - Adele Nozedar - Страница 151

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.