The Meaning of Yellow – the Colour of the Golden Sun

Yellow is the colour of light and the golden sun. The word is used to describe many things from sunshine to jaundice, and is one of the oldest colour words used in the English language (after white, black and red). It has its roots in proto-Indo-European language (which is the root of Afghan, Persian, Greek and English among others), although there is no written evidence for its existence. The original word for yellow in this language has been determined to be ghelwo, which entered proto-Germanic as gelwaz and then came into Old English and other more modern languages. It has the same Proto-Indo-European base, -ghel as the word yell; -ghel means bright and gleaming, as well as to cry out. Yellow is a color which cries out for attention. The oldest written use of the Anglo-Saxon word (geolu or geolwe) is in the epic poem Beowulf, in reference to a shield carved from yew wood.

Yellow was one of the first colours used in prehistoric cave art, such as at Lascaux’s image of a horse coloured with yellow ochre pigment made from clay (estimated to be 17,300 years old). Yellow was associated with gold by the ancient Egyptians, and was considered imperishable, eternal and indestructible (the skin and bones of the gods were believed to be made of gold). Yellow was used extensively in tomb paintings (either yellow ochre or the brilliant orpiment, though it was made of arsenic and was highly toxic) and small paintbox containing the paint was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. It also stood for female energies, for the gentle and sensual. The ancient Romans used it in their paintings to represent gold or skin and it is seen frequently in the Pompeii murals.

turmeric powder

Yellow has been shown to stimulate mental processes and the nervous system, activate memory and encourage communication. It has meanings associated with joy, force, vitality, energy, warmth (yellow lamps are more natural and feel warmer than white ones), brightness (as the color of sunlight, yellow is aften associated to knowledge and wisdom, and in the medieval world yellow was the colour of reason, as opposed to passion [red] and the spiritual [blue]), freedom, personal power, control, fire and the eyes. Yellow is also the colour of the solar plexus chakra, which is linked to fire. It symbolizes a new day, life, rebirth, awakening, rising and new beginnings - a new udaya. A new sun is beginning to rise within you. The colour of the rising sun has the unique and unmistakable glow of shining saffron-yellow or yellow-orange (the color is not actually saffron, it is ochre). The name alone, which comes from the arabic za’farãn, marks the characteristic color of the noble spice and bears the meaning “being yellow”. In Greek mythology, Eos is cognate to Vedic Sanskrit Ushas and Latin Aurora (Old Latin Ausosa), both goddesses of dawn, and all three considered derivatives of a PIE stem h₂ewsṓs (later Ausṓs), "dawn", a stem that also gave rise to Proto-Germanic Austrō, Old Germanic Ōstara and Old English Ēostre/Ēastre, and this agreement leads to the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess. Eos, a Titaness and the goddess of the dawn, who rises each morning from her home at the edge of the Oceanus and hastens from the streams to open the gates of heaven for the Sun to rise, and thus, to bring light to mortals and immortals, is described by Homer in the Iliad as a beautiful woman with golden arms (krokopakhos) and rosy fingers wearing her saffron-coloured robe (krokopeplos) embroidered with crimson flowers. Ovid tells of Her in his Metamorphoses that she may bring the light of day in her chariot which she rides into the sky ahead of the Sun. She has a purple mantle that spreads out behind her as she rides, and she scatters flowers before her. The Vedic dawn goddess whose name the Sanskrit cognomen of Eos is the saffron-robed Ushas. What we're looking at is saffron (krokos) as a signifier of female sexuality in the ancient world. Athenian girls between the ages of about 7 and 12 were required to participate in a festival at Brauron, the Arkteia, referenced by Aristophanes in Lysistrata. For this, they were dressed in the krokotis, a saffron gown intended to make them look like ruddy little bears. The point of playing the bear for Artemis and stripping from the saffron-bear clothes was symbolically to come of age, to be transformed from being an untamed little wild girl and single into a woman and wife/mother material. And in a rite going back almost a thousand years before the Ancient Greeks, the sky father and the nature mother lay down by a river, and a bed of saffron crocuses sprang from the earth beneath them.

saffron stories

In the acrylic paint world the brilliant orange-gold-yellow color of saffron the spice is known as Indian Yellow – which could also be thought of as Native American, or Aztec/Mayan (K'ank'in) – with reference to East Indian, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the saffron or yellow-ochre robes (the robes may not be dyed with costly saffron, but cheaper turmeric or ochre), the special magic of this color, its sacred quality. At a Roman wedding, the bride would wear a saffron colored veil on top of her clothing, indicating the eternalness of the wedding vows – a tradition, which was adapted in a large number of cultures. The enormous symbolism of the gold-red saffron palette reaches across Eurasia and back into the deep history of its people from India to Ireland.

Shades of Saffron by artist Lil McGill

redware pottery - Rare glazed red earthenware brown pitcher with yellow and green splashes. Together with an olive-green handled jug with rust and yellow spots.

warm earthy colors

Shades of Saffron strikingly look like the warm earthy ochre colors of redware pottery. In the Buddhist tradition yellow is the color of the Muladhara chakra. The most basic chakra in the body is Muladhara. Muladhara is stabilization, not realization. It is the journey work of growing stable, rather than flying off into a blissful experience, of shaking the world as a magnetic force when awakened. Yellow indicates the Earth element, representing the beginning of new life. Muladhara chakra symbol is a yellow square bearing the mantra LAM as its sacred seed, one that crawls forward and eventually sprouts, re-emerges. 

Seed by Mara Berendt Friedman

Rain Steam and Speed: the Great Western Railway by J.M.W. Turner

Georges Seurat was later fond of yellow as, most famously, was Vincent Van Gogh who loved the sunshine, as he wrote to his sister, “Now we are having beautiful warm, windless weather that is very beneficial to me. The sun, a light that for lack of a better word I can only call yellow, bright sulphur yellow, pale lemon gold. How beautiful yellow is!”

The pressures of living in an imperfect world cause cracks in us all; but the good we do for others and put out into the world is the gold that repairs us and makes us beautiful. Some people are broken more than once; some cracks are more difficult to repair; and some people can be shattered completely, seemingly beyond repair. But everything that can be broken can also be restored. It may take greater effort, a longer time, and a deeper commitment to repair - but it is possible, especially when you realize there are only two responses to having been shattered completely: to choose to remain broken and useless; or to choose to rebuild yourself into something greater, and become entirely golden. No one ever chooses to be broken. But everyone can choose whether or not to stay that way.

Pastel Pencils

Pencils, pencils, pencils...! if I colored my drawings, I would also do it with Dry Media: (Prismacolor or Derwent Artists, both with a waxy texture that allows to overlap layers of different colors) Colored Pencils, (Derwent) and Pastel Pencils will trace the paper playground along with Graphite Pencils, Charcoals, (Conté a Paris, Cretacolor, Faber Castell, Prismacolor) Sanguines and Sepia Pencils...

Las Mujeres de Humo, cocineras y magas

Yo llevo muchos años cocinando. Cuando me preguntan que cuándo empecé, les digo que yo nací cocinera. Nací amando la cocina.” Tardó tiempo en entender que estaba en proceso de convertirse en la mujer de humo que ha sido toda su vida, desde que nació. “Y mis canas son de humo, y yo huelo a humo, porque soy una mujer ahumada. Voy a seguir cocinando, yo digo que cuando me muera quiero que me pongan un fogón afuera de mi tumba, porque ni así quiero dejar de cocinar'. Porque su olor no es perfumado como el de las demás mujeres, su cuerpo ha tomado el aroma de la leña usada en el fogón; no traen su pelo de otro color, ni sus canas están pintadas; cuando envejecen sus cabellos no se tornan blancos, sino grises como las brasas y la ceniza que queda cuando el fuego se apagó.

“No somos chefs, somos cocineras. Somos mujeres de humo”. “La palabra chef es extranjera. Los que somos mexicanos somos cocineros.” En la tradición de las comunidades, las mujeres que se distinguen por su sazón y habilidad culinaria reciben el apelativo de “mujeres de humo”.

Sin embargo, es en su memoria y tradiciones donde el fuego de la cocina tradicional mexicana arde con mayor pasión. “No hacemos rescate, es lo que vivimos a diario. La auténtica cocina tradicional se encuentra en las comunidades, las rancherías, en el campo y en los montes. Ahí se vive de verdad esta cocina. Nosotras no estamos acostumbradas a montar y maquillar platillos. Lo que sí hacemos es darle el sabor y los aromas con lo que tenemos en el campo.”

Tienen muchas creencias… guardan las tradiciones, y tienen respeto por los alimentos y la cocina, porque _dice_ “cuando una relación es feliz debe mantener el amor y el respeto.” Las mujeres totonacas se congregan alrededor de los fogones, y llevan a cabo su ritual ancestral. barren la cocina, bendicen la lumbre, su masa y todo lo que van a cocinar. Estas magas, mujeres de humo, aseguran que la magia más grande que da el sazón de sus comidas son el amor, el humor y los sentimientos. "Nosotras no somos las chachas en nuestras casas. Nos merecemos un lugar grande en nuestras casas, porque nosotras somos las que les damos de comer, alimentamos, cuidamos, mantenemos nuestras casas." #reclamandomiancestralidad #reclaimingmyancestry

Earthen Pigments: Hand-Gathering & Using Natural Colors in Art

The colors that I like the most: vanilla, light yellow, yellow ochre, orange ochre, red ochre, green ochre (prismacolor colored pencil), peach, pumpkin, light orange, golden orange, copal, amber, wine reds and in general all red colors... Colorful Food: Recipes that Nourish the Body and Engage the Spirit by Lucinda Freeman.

Embers rising.

Smoldering blood red garnet, glowing amber, sparkling orange yellow and charcoal black colors are all about this Root Chakra, and have ties to earthy energies for grounding any excess fire.

Goddess Persephone Rising celebrates Spring and Seeds of Springtime. Ostara is the lunar festival honoring fertility, renewal, growth, birth and the goddesses of spring.

#PersephoneRising #AwakeningtheHeroineWithin

Red is the first color of spring. It's the real color of rebirth. Of beginning. - Ally Condie. "Flying into Spring" by artist Mara Berendt Friedman / New Moon Visions Sacred Art . Fire and Blood: Rubies in Myth, Magic and History by Diane Morgan.

...

Sitting on a sandy quartz hill between Luberon and Monts de Vaucluse, Roussillon en Provence shines in the ochre light. Located in the heart of the largest ochre bed in the world, Roussillon has been described as one of the most beautiful village sin France. Here the maze of lanes and squares are painted in rust colours, flamboyant reds and subtle lemon yellow, the importance of colour and ochre vibrantly display the earth’s generosity.

Just outside the village are the former ochre quarries. The land here is literally loaded with pigment. Hundreds of years ago the Romans exploited this, mining the ochre and carrying it on donkeys to Marseille by crossing Julien bridge and travelling along the Lourmarin valley, and from there was sent out to traders in all four corners of the Empire. Then came the decline and fall of the Empire. The quarries were deserted and centuries past before a villager Jean-Etienne Astier rediscovered the rich ochre pigment in the landscape. In 1780 he began to once again manufacture solid and beautifully coloured paints from his red and yellow land.

Today the process of manufacturing the ore remains the same and when my mum visited the ochre quarries a few years ago she brought me home some of these beautiful pigments. For some time I left them untouched. They seemed almost like a magical gift of nature; paint so near to its natural form … lifted straight from the flesh of Mother Earth.

I have now begun to use the colours, yet each time I do it is with a sense of reverence and awe. Admittedly I have only used them to do the illustrative work for my book Grow Your Own Gorgeousness, but to me – in my ongoing obsession with the gorgeousness – this seems like a worthy enough project for the Roussillon gold dust. #theoreofmamajuju #luberon #roussillon

- https://bethanstritton.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/the-ore-of-mama-juju/

Earthen Pigments: Hand-Gathering & Using Natural Colors in Art by artist Sandy Webster. Discover how to collect, process, and use pigments from the earth. Finding and collecting earth pigments can be both exciting and rewarding endeavor. 

- http://www.naturalpigments.com/art-supply-education/earth-pigments/

Coffee cup and squeezer for citrus by Provence Fragances, based in Apt in the Luberon (Provence, France). Most of their natural products and crafts are produced in this region and surrounding areas of Provence (Pays de Saut, Venaissin County, Pays des Sorgues).
<3 #franceiscallingmeagain #luberon #provence #apt #colorado

- http://www.produits-en-provence.com/

- Extra: http://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/96830966357/writing-with-color-description-guide-words-for

earthen organic pottery. Earthy Color Palette #earthworking #earthenware #redware #terracota

La Compagnie des Ocres

¡Oh, Yo! ¡Una Vida Mágica para Mí!

Potnia Theron, "La Señora de los Animales". Tabiti, una diosa más primitiva y esteparia, una amalgama sin desdoblar entre el reino de Hestia y los dominios de Ártemis, diosa escita del Fuego, el Hogar, la Familia, la Naturaleza silvestre y los Animales salvajes.

El Fuego, los alimentos, las plantas, las raíces, las hierbas... y lo artesano, lo creativo, lo sensible, la aventura, el Amor, el Hogar, la naturaleza, los animales. La Práctica del Oficio y del Arte. Es lo que Soy. Y hacia eso me muevo lenta e inexorablemente desde mi día primero, y sin quererlo evitar ahora tampoco. Sigo mi Raíz, como hilo de Ariadna, entre piedras y raíces hasta lo profundo de la Tierra. Soy una Mujer Salvaje, y no lo puedo, ni lo quiero... ni lo debo evitar. Lo llevo en los huesos. Mi alma tira con todas sus fuerzas hacia tierras antiguas y legados ancestrales. Mi sangre, imantada a la Tierra, sigue unos designios, caminos y tambores tan antiguos como la Humanidad. Voces del desierto "en el pasado que ha huído de la Tierra", como dijo el Poeta, pero que vale la pena escuchar, recordar, rescatar... Witches seek the sacred knowledge that the rest of the world has already forgotten {Witch: wicce: wise woman}. ¿Cómo podríamos olvidarlo, olvidar a aquellas madres, tías, hijas, amigas y abuelas, todas nuestras antepasadas, si acaso no nosotras mismas en alguna de aquellas piras, nuestra memoria matrilínea, nuestro linaje raposo, ratero, rastrero y sin embargo, inmortal?
Porque la Mujer Luminar es capaz de prender sobre sus propios huesos, sobre los que canta otra raposa tal vez desde dentro, y está de regreso. Pelo a pelo... hueso a hueso... vocablo a vocablo... sobre esa energía basal ir reconstruyendo tanto que se fue deshaciendo en el mundo.

Que no tienen cultura, sino folklore.

Que no hacen arte, sino manualidades.

Que no hablan idiomas, sino dialectos.

Que no practican religiones, sino supersticiones.

Que no tienen cara, sino brazos.

Según nos dijeron. Y maldijeron.

Igual que nuestros nombres.

Los mismos que cambiaron los huesos de sitio, y borraron las señales...

El Corazón traza la senda viva, entre las estrellas, en lo profundo del bosque, alrededor del mismo fuego, reconociendo cada vez la Voz mitológica cuando Llama tañendo el nombre como una campana... La Llama que Llama. Que interpela a la criatura que habita en el interior de la Mujer Salvaje para consagrarse con afán infatigable al trabajo interminable de buscar, encontrar, recolectar y juntar hasta el último hueso en su sitio, hasta que ha juntado un esqueleto entero, la hermosa escultura blanca y completa, tan blanca como la sonrisa de alabastro que se abre paso en ese instante, radiante corcel, entre los labios de la Niña-Mujer-Vieja, blanca como el origen de su alma y el destino de sus cabellos, puede entonces recuperar el sentido verdadero de las cosas, llamar las cosas por su nombre, cobrar hálito de vida, al brillo del cual reconoce su memoria, cuyo canto revela inequívoco su identidad ante los ojos extáticos de la Huesera, que entona la letra de la canción... una canción del alma que parece supiera de toda una vida. Porque es su propia arqueología sagrada, su psique más profunda, su memoria filogenética, la que desempolva con los huesos espirituales la Mujer Salvaje y Sabia, la que desoye las historias y escucha a cambio los cuentos, los dichos, los refranes, los mitos, las leyendas... rituales, sueños y creencias de la Antigüedad, de cuando el Hombre vivía más apegado a la Tierra en una comunión sagrada, y que hablan de una Espiritualidad tan sabia y remota como Ella. Todo lo que lleva intrínseco, impregnado, preñado el germen de lo Antiguo, la semilla del Legado Ancestral, el pneuma dorado que serpentea por el camino torcido, el camino rojo, el menos frecuentado, el Camino Astado, el que recorren, han recorrido y recorrerán, al hilo de los tiempos, las Brujas de la Casa de Aruru... valientes y osadas, ¡odiadas brujas!, para caminar por el filo, por los extremos, a saltos cuando todo se quema bajo sus pies, para llegar hasta donde a nadie le interesa ya estar, para forzar el blanco o el negro de las cosas, para vivir con el alma al aire y las palmas vueltas hacia el cielo, sin esperar nada más a cambio que vivir una vida con sentido. Y cuentan que la Luna y el Sol yacen en concubinato en el mullido nido que son las astas del Animal Sagrado que acompañará desde su nacimiento a algunas de ellas... una criatura mágica que guarda el bosque donde habitan y transitan.

El corro de brujas ríe y ríe mientras bailan, entretejidas en una chasca de pelos rojos, naranjas, castaños y blancos, todos encendidos alrededor de un fuego, y ninguna cara refleja la edad que tiene. Arden las puntas de las faldas de las brujas, y se dirían ascuas, elevándose de las brasas que pisan, que crujen, parlanchinas, igual de alegres que ellas, revelando secretos esa noche a voces, en un íntimo aquelarre entre una herencia infinita y un legado incondicional, memoria e instinto de estas mujeres al amor de la luna y la lumbre, que sienten natural inclinación _y que, pese a lo que digan, acaban siempre adaptando sus proyectos, ¡tan grandes, uy! ¡tan perfectos! a sus sueños personales_ por las tareas de cultivar, recolectar y cocinar los alimentos que conectan a estas brujas de fogón con las raíces de la Tierra a través de su comal o caldero en su Cocina Medicina, una runa de aire, de agua, de fuego y de tierra donde tiene lugar un tipo de Alquimia diferente. Si alguna vez te has extraviado un poquito y estás cansado, bien pudiera ser que alguna de ellas te encontrara, y si tuvieras la suerte de caerle en gracia, ella te enseñará una cosa... una cosa del alma.

RADIANCE

Radiance is the force that pushes away from a point, the simplest parallel is Light.

Radiance elementa people show traits of being extroverted and very willing to talk about their past, beliefs, and philosophies, without prompting. When they have had multiple bad reactions to this in their lives, they might be shy, still wishing to be extroverted but fearing it. They are quick to defend those who they perceive as being threatened, sometimes without knowing the whole story. They also like to be the center of attention and do not like brooding or dealing with negative emotions, causing them to attempt to cheer others up very often. They have what most consider to be a natural charisma, and value forthrightness.

At their best, they are charismatic and inspiring. At their worst, they are intolerant, authoritarian, and unflinching in their dogma, quick to point out flaws in others to cover their own.

Pencil Techniques for creating Texture

http://pencils.com/drawing-lessons-creating-textures/