Cross Balance

A Spectrum Of Colours

Throughout these notes,
I have used colours, symbols, letters and numbers
to help explain and relate the different ideas.

I love colours...
their combinations, associations and physical basis.  
It was a delight to buy a colour printer,
so that all those millions of colours could be put on paper.
I find them a help in remembering things,
and so thought that they should figure prominently in these notes.

What colour should be associated with each faculty, I wondered?

Green seemed a logical choice for the faculty of observation,
using our five senses.
Much of our environment  - nature -  is green,
and it is a restful, passive colour, reflecting the phlegmatic temperament.  

In contrast, the choleric temperament
– always striving to do and apply, to seek the sensual –
can be associated with  red.
Red is an active colour.
It represents danger, people at work, going places,
and is the direct complement to green.  

Taking the other pair of temperaments,
blue symbolises thought well,
and so can  represent the faculty of interpretation
and its associated melancholic temperament.
The blue of the sky or sea is as vast and as creative
as the capabilities of human thought.

The final temperament,
choleric and its associated expressive faculty,
go well with yellow – bright and vibrant, joyful –
full of warmth like the sun,
and the beauty of so many flowers each vying for attention

If you put these colours on the two axes
and insert the combinations in between,
you will find – not by chance –
that all the colours opposite each other are complementary.
If they are the colours of shining lights,
they will add and produce white.
If they are pigments, absorbing light,
they will all subtract and make black.

I have used this colour circle (or rather octogon, from the way it is drawn)
 to represent the spectra of temperaments or personalities
and combinations of them,
throughout the notes.