From SourceryForge

Yellow is a colour that is symbolically ambiguous. On the one hand, it is a chearful and pleasant colour, the colour of the sun and "light", on the other hand it also has negative connotations such as envy, cowardice and warning.

Contents 1 Physics 2 Yellow in nature 3 Colour symbolism 3.1 The Elements (western) 3.2 Yellow in Kabbalah 3.3 Yellow in ancient Egypt 3.4 Yellow in ancient rome 3.5 Negative symbolism in mediaeval times 3.6 Colour symbolism in Tantra 3.7 Yellow in interior design and colour psychology 3.8 mundane colour symbolism 4 Pigments and dyes 5 See Also 6 References 7 Resources

Physics

Yellow is any color of light that stimulates both the red and green cone cells of the retina, but not the blue cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 565-590 nanometers is yellow, though light with both red frequencies and green frequencies, such as mixing orange and lime light, or red and green light, is also yellow. It is not an additive primary colour. Its scientifically defined additive complementary colour is blue.

It is a subtractive primary colour, its subtractive complementary colour is blue too. Mix of Cyan and Magenta in equal parts should be blue.

The CMYK system for color printing is based on using four inks, one of which is a yellow color. The others are magenta, cyan and black. This is not in itself a standard color, though a fairly narrow range of yellow inks are used.The printer's yellow ink color is sometimes called Canary.

In the traditional colour system, which regards red, blue and yellow as subtractive primary colours, its complementary colour would be blue-violet. Due to the peculiarities of painter's pigments, which in fact often produce a mix of subtractive and additive colour mixing, blue-violet will work as complementary colour in practice most of the time, while blue will not. Also, the contrast yellow/violet is one that was used as complementary contrast for centuries, and we've gotten used to it. For magickal purposes, usually blue-violet is regarded as the complementary colour of yellow.

Yellow in nature

The most obvious thing about yellow is that to us, it apears to be the colour of sunlight. This is the sourse of most of it's positive symbolic meanings. Also, many flowers are yellow, and we all like flowers. So this reinforces it's meaning as a colour of light, warmth, energy, summer and pleasant growth. This mainly pertains to warm shades of yellow.

Yellowish ochre is the colour of loess, a kind of soil that is very fertile and guarantees rich harvests. It is present in thick layers in China and other places in Asia, it gave the yellow river it's name because it is colouring it. It is also present in parts of Europe, but in much thinner layers. Beside the saffron symbology and the similarity to gold, this may contribute to the Chinese association of yellow with richness and well-being.

On the other hand, cold or desaturated yellow is the colour of purulence, jaundice and rotting things. So yellow can mean sickness and all kinds of other unpleasantness when encountered in some contexts. Also yellow or greenish skin colour (in caucasian whites) is widely associated with sickness and disgust. It is not generally a symbol of sickness, but this may have contributed to some of it's negative symbolic meanings.

In combination with black yellow is a strong warning colour in nature. Many animals which are poisonous or can bite or sting sport black and yellow stripes or spots. Examples would be wasps, bees, fire-bellied toads and fire salamanders. This specific meaning has been adapted for human use, as in the atomic energy warning sign and the biohazard warning sign.

Colour symbolism

In western symbolism, yellow is a rather ambiguous colour. Yellow is a bright, cheerful color, often associated with happiness and peace. But it has also negative associations, such as envy, jealousy, cowardice and traitors. Often, the positive aspects are connected, with warm shades of yellow, that means shades containing traces of red, and the negative aspects with unclean or cold (containing traces of green) shades of yellow.

The Elements (western)

In the western elements yellow is used to represent Air. Thus it represents the intellect, the spirit, ruach and all else that is implied by the element air

Yellow in Kabbalah

Yellow in ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians were the first ones who used really vibrant yellow pigments such as orpiment for painting and saffron for dyeing. Of course they also used yellow ochre. The Hieroglyphs used colour for meaning (the only writing system that ever did so), and the sign for woman was always written yellow. Generally, yellow seemed to be a nice colour for them, it is still the colour of weddings in Egypt.

Yellow in ancient rome

There isn't much known about the relationship of the Romans to yellow. But in later times, Venus/Aphrodite was always painted in yellow garments. So, yellow became a colour of love, and later, in medieval times also a colour of voluptuousness.

Also, according to the antic theories about the humours bile, which is more or less yellow, was the source of anger and agression.

Negative symbolism in mediaeval times

Because of the aforementioned connection with voluptuousness, it became a colour of prostitutes, who were sometimes required to wear yellow by law. Strangely, at the same time it was a colour for the dresses of noble ladies, but in this case true saffron colour, not something cheap such as the stuff prostitutes might wear. It also was used to single out Jews and other unwanted groups by requiring them to wear something yellow.

Yellow also became the colour of envy and avarice, because these emotions were thought to produce the respective facial colour. Now these are capital sins, too, so for the catholic church, yellow was a no-good colour.

A yellow flag was used to signal that the black death was in a town, or aboard a ship. This was because of the connection yellow - sickness. For other uses as warning, see mundane symbolism.

Colour symbolism in Tantra

Yellow is considered an auspicious colour for a variety of reasons. It symbolises both the Sun and Gold. It also is said to be the colour of ripe grain - hence associations to abundance and fecundity. In the scheme of the five elemental Bhutas, yellow is the colour attributed to Earth. It also has associations with marriage as it is the colour of Tumeric.

The colour Yellow is particularly associated with the goddess Bagalamukhi - one of the ten Mahavidyas.

Yellow in interior design and colour psychology

Yellow in small amounts may be energizing and conductive to concentration, but in massive ammounts it seems to appear threatening, overwhelming or even disturbing to some people. Generally it is considered to be a good colour to use in work environments, but not in sleeping rooms and other places for spending leisure time. Yellow, and the excessive preference for yellow, has also been connected with mental illness.

mundane colour symbolism

• In the English language, yellow has traditionally been associated with jaundice and cowardice. In American slang, a coward is said to be "yellowbellied" or "yellow." In Europe, yellow is often associated with envy and jealousy. See also light green for that.

• Giving yellow roses for a present is difficult. According to some sources it can mean envy, accusing the reciever of unwarranted jealousy or questioning the reciever's fidelity. Especially greenish yellow impies all that. Other sources have camarderie or close friendship without any romantic interest. In both cases they make a bad present for a lover.

• In China, yellow is associated with prosperity, and also a "Yellow Movie" means a pornographic film; contrast "blue movie".

• Because it is similar to the gold colour and precious metals such as gold or bronze, yellow is associated with coinage and bullion.

• "Yellow journalism" was sensationalist journalism that distorts, exaggerates, or exploits news to maximize profit. The term came from Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal American, who engaged in sensational reporting during the late 19th and early 20th century, most famously during the Spanish-American War. The term was derived from the color comic strip The Yellow Kid, which appeared in both papers. Today, the tabloid press{pulp magazines are sometimes called yellow press in english-speaking countries.

• Yellow also seems to relate to electricity, particularly in the Pokémon series, where most of the electric types are yellow. In Germany, a big electricity supplier is called yellow Strom (Strom = electricity, yellow - means nothing in German), and of course they use massive ammounts of yellow (combined with black) in their advertisement stuff.

• The combination yellow/black implies danger both in nature and in man-made symbols. Bees, wasps and some poisonous spiders have yellow and black stripes. Signs such as the radioactivity symbol and the biohazard symbol mimic this, although red seems to be the more commonly understood warning colour.

• Yellow is internationally recogniced as the colour of liberal political parties

• In Germany (and other countries), yellow is the traditional colour of the postal service. It used to be the colour of telephone boxes before postal services and the state run telephone company were separated, and the latter one turned into a private company. It is still the colour of postboxes.

• In Germany, most rubbish that is meant to be recycled has to be put into yellow dustbins or yellow bags so that it can be collected separately from the other rubbish.

• many manufacturers of sunscreen products use warm yellow on their product packages and advertising campains, because it symbolizes the sun, energy and supposedly having fun

• The yellow rose of Texas is a symbol of that state memorialized in a song.

Pigments and dyes

The first availiable pigment that is kind of yellow was made from clay and other natural minerals. Such pigments date back to the cave paintings, and thus were among the first pigments known to man.

The ancient aegyptians used yellow ochre, a pale and somwhat brownish yellow. Ochre is made from natural yellowish soils that contain ferrous oxide, or nowadays from artificial ferrous oxide. Ochre was mainly used for human skin, and for painting backgrounds.

Another yellow pigment that became availiable in the western world at the same time was orpiment, an arsenic sulfide that produces a very clear warm yellow. The name is derrived from Auripigment, that's Latin for golden pigment. It was also much used in the Aegyptian papyri. Today it is no longer in use despite it's beauty because it is very poisonous and it's lightfastness leaves modern artisists wanting.

One of the most important ancient yellow pigments was saffron, which is made from the flower styli of a crocus like flower (Crocus sativus). Naturally, it is very expensive because you have to grow so many crocuses to obtain sufficient ammounts of material for dying. It is very well suited to dye all possible natural textiles, and can also be used to produce painter's pigments. The plant and it's use hailed from the mediterranean countries, but were brought to Asia early, most probably by the Persians. It was sometimes used for dying, namely by the ancient Egyptians and in medieval times for the clothes of noble women. But in Europe, it was not used for dying or painting on a large scale, probably because it was so sought after for other uses. Saffron was used as a spice and food colour, but also as medical herb and potent drug (and poison!). It is still a very sought-after and expensive spice.

Thanks to saffron, in China warm yellow has the role crimson has in Europe. For many centuries, saffron dyed clothes were forbidden, exept for the high nobillity and the clergy. The typical orange-yellow clothes of the buddhist monks and nuns all over Asia were originally dyed with saffron.

Cheaper plant pigments that could replace saffron in textile dying were mignonette (Reseda luteola) and Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius). Safflower and turmeric (Curcuma longa) can replace true saffron as food colour, but not as spice. Mignonette and Safflower were widely known and used in medieval Europe, and turmeric throughout Asia. As a textile dye, mignonette is as beautiful and lightfast as saffron, but it only works on wool and silk, not on plant fibers. The dying process is also much more complicated than with saffron. Dried marigold petals were sometimes used in Europe as a home-made saffron surrogate for food purposes, but they neither give taste nor that much colour.

In the late medieval age some artificial yellow pigments were discovered, such a chrome yellow, chrome-tin yellow (which are clear yellows) and Yellow of Naples, a lead and antimony pigment which is pale yellow. All of them were poisonous and some lacked lightfastness, so they fell out of use when cadmium yellow became availiable. As an odd coincidence, the yellow pigments share the poison problem with the traditional vibrant green pigments, while there always have been good non-poisonous red and blue pigments availiable. Especially in the case of green, that hasn't exactly been beneficial for the colour's reputation. Maybe it's the same about yellow.

Another famous yellow painter's pigment is Indian yellow. This is a luminiscent pigment which appears pale in darkness or artificial light, but bright and warm in sunlight. It was originally made from the urine of Indian cows which were only fed mango leaves and given just enough water to not die of dehydration. Often they died slowly of the effects of malnutrition and long-term slight dehydration. This process was outlawed 1n 1908 because it was considered profoundly inhumane even back then. Today, a mix of Azo pigments is sold as indian yellow, but they are no real surrogate because they lack the luminiscense.

One of the most important modern yellow pigments are Cadmium yellow pigments. Cadmium pigments come in various hues ranging from lemon yellow and warm yellow to various orange hues and Cadmium red. All of them have excellent hiding power and lightfastness. They are moderately poisonous in themselves, but turn into very poisonous substances when burnt. They are no longer legal for any use exept artist's colours because of this, and the pigment manufacturers are desperately looking for good surrogates.

Vanadium yellow has similarly good properties, but comes in only one hue so far, a kind of lemon yellow. Most organic yellow pigments are not lightfast and durable enough to satisfy the needs of artists, and generally artists tend to be suspicious of new pigments and slow to adopt them. Another surrogate, Hansa yellow, a synthetic organic pigment, is probably just as poisonous as cadmium yellow, but is said to give more clear secondary colours when used together with other synthetic organic pigments.

See Also

References

• [1] wikipedia article as acessed July 6, 2006
• [2] actual wikipedia article
• [3] article about the symbology of yellow in german

Resources

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.org article "Yellow". You may wish to read this explanation of Why we are using content from wikipedia.org.