The (Red) Soul of Plato and a Mysterious, Always-Returning Triad of Colour
In his work Symboles fondamentaux de la science sacrée, René Guénon makes his point that symbols are not human inventions, but of divine inspiration, d’inspiration divine. According to him they express universal truths in a mode that precedes deliberate thought.
Rene Guenon
Once you learn to see, you can discover recurring symbolic structures everywhere.
In this article we look at the colours black, red and white, which appear throughout history in traditions, rites, legends, fairy tales, games and folklore.
One of these patterns is particularly striking: the triad black, red and white.
It is the sequence of colours we find in Plato, in alchemy, among Vedic sages, in Ruusbroec the mystic, in pagan circles, in Arthurian legend, and elsewhere.
Coincidence, you think?
Within an Indo-European context, it is helpful to begin with Haudry’s La Religion cosmique des Indo-Européens.
He proposes that Indo-European cosmology contained a threefold structure of the heavens
1. the daylight sky, associated with the colour white,
2. the dawn and dusk sky, associated with red,
3. the night sky, associated with black.
He connects these three celestial realms with symbolic colour-layering, and logically also with the social functions of society, in which everything is an image of that cosmic ground-structure. This tripartite worldview was brought forcefully back into awareness by Georges Dumézil (1898–1986). He formulated it as the tripartite structure of Indo-European culture, a vision that can even be recognised outside the strict Indo-European sphere.
Dumézil observed that all Indo-European religions, myths and social systems display a threefold ordering:
The sacred or sovereign function, the priestly, magical and juridical authority (WHITE),
The warrior function, courage, heroic power (RED),
The productive or fertile function, farmers, craftsmen, abundance (BLACK).
He formulated this first in an essay in 1940, calling it the triptyque fonctionnel, the threefold system recurring from India to Iceland. This is because all Indo-European cultures stem from a proto-Indo-European religious, mythological and linguistic root originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppes (present-day Ukraine).
The first explicit references to the colour-structure appear in:
• Mythe et Épopée II (1971), in chapters on the Mahābhārata and the Ṛgveda,
• and in lectures later collected in Les Dieux des Indo-Européens (1952).
Here Dumézil refers to the Indian varna-system, where varna literally means “colour”. So in essence: the Indian system of white, red and black.
He links the Brahmins to white, evoking wisdom.
The Kshatriya warriors to red, the heat of battle.
And the Vaishya to black, the fertile earth.
This worldview persisted until the French Revolution (1789), which sought to destroy it entirely. The King, the Monarchy (Second Estate, the Nobility), acted in this classical tripartite order as mediator both horizontally and vertically. He was the continuer of the Pontifex Maximus, the rightful envoy of God, linked to red.
Horizontally, on the earthly plane (the middle world), he bridged the producers (Tiers État, the people) and the clergy (Premier État). The king was literally and symbolically central, governing from the sacred centre.
Vertically, he mirrors the ruler of the heavens, the moderator between humankind and the divine. In the pre-Christian worldview this role belonged to the chief god or divine pair invoked by each class
1. WHITE: priest-god, law and order,
2. RED: warrior-god,
3. BLACK: fertility deity or earth-mother pair.
With this key, one can classify entire pantheons. For example, Mars, Donar/Thor, Hercules and Mithras belong clearly to red (Martial). Later Christian figures such as St Michael or St George inherit this as slayers of the dragon, the world-monster.
This colour triad also appears in philosophy. Plato speaks of the soul as a chariot in Phaedrus (246a–254e).
The charioteer is reason, the nous.
He guides two horses:
the white horse of higher longing,
and the black horse of the lower impulses.
Between them arises tension,
and from that friction comes warmth, fire,
the red middle, the flame of the soul, above the red cape…
Later Neoplatonists saw in this middle the secret of the human being>Sacred Centre<
Plotinus writes:
“The soul is an intermediate nature, burning between heaven and earth.” (Enneads IV.3)>>>or red (soul) between black (earth) and white (heaven)
In Freemasonry and other Mystery traditions, matter or earth is linked to black, spirit or heaven to white. The soul stands between, as a king between worlds. Red is therefore the connective tissue of existence, the living middle between spirit and matter, between knowing and feeling. Vertically and horizontally, the king (Pontifex) governing the three worlds.
One may see it as the blood flowing through the veins, holding everything together, just as the king (red) mediates between the head (spirit = white) and the body (matter = black).
From philosophy to alchemy>>>
The alchemists worked explicitly with this triad in their Great Work:
• Nigredo (black): dissolution, chaos, the death of the old form,
• Rubedo (red): fire, desire, the burning union of opposites,
• Albedo (white): completion, clarity, the philosopher’s stone.
Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381), the mystic of Groenendaal (Brussels), spoke the same threefold pattern. In The Spiritual Espousals he describes the three lives of the soul:
The active life: the black of self-knowledge and purification,
The interior, God-desiring life: the red of burning love,
The contemplative life: the white of unity beyond distinction.
“The soul must die in love, and in that dying become one with the Bridegroom.”What the chariot is for Plato, the mystical wedding is for Ruusbroec: the red heart, the rubedo of the Christian soul.
In the Rígsþula, Heimdall begets three social ranks:
Thraell, the servant, with black hair,
Karl, the free man, rosy and red,
Jarl, the noble, fair and white.
In the Jomsvikinga Saga, King Gorm dreams of three oxen: white, red and black.
In the Völuspá, three Roosters announce Ragnarök:
the white rooster of heaven,
the red rooster of the world,
the black rooster of Hel.
Fairy tales are weakened myths. This was already understood by Max Müller (1823–1900), who held that myths and folktales derive from one symbolic root-language. The Grimm brothers, working in the Germanic regions of Germany, the Low Countries and Belgium, noted that these colour-forms were archaic and meaningful. Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) explains that fairy tales often preserve initiation rites.
Black is death, the underworld, the starting point.
Red is ordeal, passage, struggle.
White is rebirth, realisation, ascent.
Lévi-Strauss adds that mythic colours form oppositions mediated by a third; red is the mediator between black and white, the pontifex.
This is why the formula “white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony” in Snow White is not aesthetic, but initiatory..
In Arthurian traditions, the pattern returns.
Three knights: black, red, and white.
Three worlds. Three trials.
Chrétien de Troyes, the 12th-century court poet and founder of the Grail romance, describes Perceval staring at red blood on white snow while black ravens fly overhead. A moment of inner awakening, a vision arresting the soul.
In European folk magic, the same triad holds:
A 19th-century charm from Thuringia says:
“The worms may be black, white or red,
in one day they shall all be dead.”
In Icelandic legend Sigurd wraps three cloths,
black, white and red, to protect himself against the underworld. In Finland, boundaries were marked with red–black–white cord, acknowledging the spirit of the border.
The cosmos itself is bounded and ordered in three.
In the cult of the Matronae, the Three Mothers>
daughter (black), mother (red), grandmother (white), three ages, three times, three worlds.
Christianity, too, retained the pattern:
Liturgical colours:
black for death,
red for passion and sacrifice,
white for glory and purity.
The horsemen of the Apocalypse ride white, red and black, corresponding to spirit, war and commerce, precisely the triad Dumézil described.
In the 3rd-century catacombs of Priscilla, the Three Magi appear black, red and white in procession.
In 5th-century Ravenna, they appear again, now also reflecting three ages of life: youth, maturity, old age. Life-force, act, wisdom.
Plato himself (4th century BCE) describes the building material of Atlantis in Critias as taken from three natural stones: black, white and red.
Atlantis was conceived as the centre of the world. One may take this geographically, or philosophically; in every case, it is symbolic.
In Christian mysticism the earthly Jerusalem is built as the image of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Each is a centre around which the worlds rotate.
The centre is both earthly (horizontal) and spiritual (vertical).
Around it the three worlds unfold: black, red and white.
