Another good post at Unurthed. Using a Greek skyphos (I didn't know what this was, but it needs to have a good mystery novel written about it), excerpts from Benson's Inner Color of Nature are used to explain the four elements in relation to the colors white, yellow, red, and black (which are used much in Greek painting, leading one to reconsider the meanings of icons and their colors). I need hardly point to an obvious fact here : mankind is divided into white, red, yellow, and black races (roughly). Are these arbitrary? According to many, yes. If one believes in the Logos of John (the Christ) then this is nonsense. The various skin colors of man symbolize their inner, spiritual nature. Black is always more solid/physical, white is always the least physical (most subtle), and yellow and red exchange places (depending upon the cycle of the stars). Of course, within the various races there is the fact of various subgroups - for example, the white race has a "black component". Naturally (as well), we could say that all of the races undergo a continual movement or dance between or amongst themselves.
“Having established a structured visual paradigm for the relationship of the four elements among themselves [see previous post], we can now consider the associated colors when the paradigms are repeated to show the effects of the respective dominant process… [As] Empedokles himself envisioned: ‘Those elements and forces are to be understood as equally strong and coeval, yet each of them has a different function, each has its own characteristic and in the rounds of time they take their turn being dominant” (p46).
This is hardly to say (practically) that all races are different species, or that all races are One (this would be to take one of two modern positions). What it tells us is that everything we see means something, even the color of our skin.
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