On Octagons

As reported in a previous post – here – the moment one ventures from the Indian world into the Chinese world one is confronted by a wash of the lucky colour red. Red, or more correctly vermillion, or cinnabar, is the colour of the Chinese and Chinese-influenced traditions. It is very conspicuous. It is everywhere. And along with it, also conspicuous, is the profusion of eight-sided figures, octagons, within the Sino-Asiatic order. They are nowhere to be seen in Hindoo temples, nor in Boodhist temples even though Boodhism features an eightfold path – this takes the form of the eight-spoked Dharma Wheel in typical Boodhist iconography. The octagon, however – the eight-sided plain figure with or without an eight-pointed star – is conspicuously Chinese. 

The author of these pages is currently resident in the old city of George Town on the Prince of Wales Island, the only city in Malaysia that boasts a Chinese majority. A feature of the old city is the beautiful temples and clan houses, some of them very extensive and sumptuous, some very old. They are among the best Taoist and Confucian temples outside of China proper. Chinese from both Formosa and the mainland travel to George Town to visit them. It is a major temple city and a major centre of traditional Chinese religion.

An immediately obvious feature of such temples, and the attending buildings, and the Chinese domestic terrace houses too, is the proliferation of octagonal forms – tile designs, floor patterns, sacred insignia, altar iconography, and so on. The Chinese “lucky colour” is vermillion. The “lucky number”, as the Chinese will tell you, is eight. Sets of eight, preferably arranged in octagonal forms, are considered auspicious. It is by far the most common geometrical motif in traditional Chinese decoration.

Below are a few examples of octagonal forms to be seen around George Town. Some of the roads feature large octagonal designs and octagonal tile designs are everywhere to be seen. The geometrical tiles themselves were originally imported from Sheffield by the British, but the Chinese were so taken by them – such is their love of the octagonal pattern - that they adopted them as a standard feature of their homes, temples and pathways. The present author has noted the tile patterns of George Town - one of the most striking and beautiful features of the old city - in a previous post here.

 

Octagons feature as a design on several streets in George Town old city. 

Design on the wall of the Chinese clan association building in George Town

Octagonal tile patterns found throughout George Town

What, though, is the significance of the octagon, both in principle and specifically to the Chinese? It is, of course, not exclusive to the Chinese tradition; it does feature in the symbolism of other traditional orders as well, but nowhere so extensively. In the occidental order we find it the symbolic form of baptism. Several famous baptistries, such as that in Florence, are octagonal, and – a residual continuation of the same symbolism - baptistimal fonts in Catholic and some Anglican and Lutheran churches. Amongst Christians, though, it is a form more typical of the Eastern churches where it occurs naturally with a sacred architecture featuring a dome atop of rectilinear understorey. 

This is the form appropriated from the Byzantine Christians by the Mahometans when they built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem – perhaps the most impressive octagonal building in the world. It was possibly from this inspiration that Emperor Frederick – who had seen the Dome of the Rock during the Crusades - built his mysterious octagonal folly, the Castel de Monte, in southern Italy. All the same, these architectural examples are exceptions. The octagon is not as conspicuous as a symbol in the occidental world as it is in the orient. It occurs naturally in Mahometan geometrical patterns, but there it is not imbued with the same symbolic value – marked as “auspiciousness” – that we find among the Chinese. 

The Castel del Monte

Basically, the symbolism of the octagon is this: it is an intermediate form between the circle (of heaven) and the square (of earth). Its primary meaning therefore is: regeneration. It signals: the square that returns to the circle. That is, it consists of two superimposed squares which are in the process of returning into a circular form. Thus the association with baptism: the rite of regeneration. In the Chinese (which is to say Taoist) context, though – and this is quite apart from its correspondences with the eight trigrams of the I Ching and other symbolic parallels such as the eight directions – the signification of regeneration is overtly alchemical. 

As with the colour red, the meaning behind the “luck” the Chinese associate with the symbol is to be understood via the strongly alchemical nature of the Chinese order. Alchemy concerns exactly this: regeneration. The regeneration of matter into spirit (if we are to describe it dualistically). The regeneration of base metals into gold. In the octagon, the square (matter, earth) is regenerating into the circle (spirit, heaven). It is for this reason that it finds such a prominent place in the Chinese tradition – it is the pre-eminent (stable) expression of the doctrine of alchemical regeneration, which is the core theme of Chinese spirituality. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

In Defence of the Colour Blue

The internet is a sad, lonely world where people will grasp at any novelty to stir them from digital ennui. Recently – or actually it has been over the last several years – a story has kept resurfacing in various internet journals, blogs, social media outlets and “memes” (whatever a “meme” might be) that is supposed to tantalize readers and viewers with the improbable assertion that the colour blue is a modern invention. It is a novelty story in the “stranger-than-fiction” category designed to brighten the dull days of the world-weary. 

The story, which takes several forms, appeared yet again in a recent edition of ‘Business Insider’ – exactly the sort of content you would expect to find in ‘Business Insider’! - under the heading NO ONE COULD SEE THE COLOUR BLUE UNTIL MODERN TIMES. It was thereafter reposted by well-meaning but bored individuals who were taken in by the headline, and thus it began yet another round of self-perpetuating appearances on the world wide web as it slowly but surely insinuated itself into the daily conversation of the digital class and twitterati. It soon became an item of received wisdom. People who should know better started coming up to you saying “Did you know that no one could see the colour blue until modern times?” 

In the ‘Business Insider’ article we are told:

Ancient languages didn't have a word for blue - not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the color, there's evidence that they may not have seen it at all.

This, really, is the crux of the whole matter. It is a linguistic argument. Someone has claimed that words for blue are missing in old languages and since there was no word for it then people in olden times must not have been able to see the colour at all – as unlikely as that might be. No other evidence for this proposal is on offer, except for some extremely dubious experiments with an obscure Namibian tribe who, apparently, have trouble distinguishing between blue and green. This leads to the logical leap that asserts that the colour blue is a modern invention, a recent social construction (you know, like gender.) As the ‘Business Insider’ puts it:

Before blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they didn't know they were seeing it.

And they ask:

If you see something yet can't see it, does it exist?

We arrive at the real point of the story: the tiresome trope that knowledge is socially constructed. We have the physical receptors to see the colour blue, sure enough, and we can safely assume that ancient people did too, but if there is no corresponding construct of knowledge (which is purely subjective and has no necessary correlation to objective facts) then it may as well have not existed at all. We make reality. Reality is a social construct, a gentleman’s agreement, and nothing more.

A story as absurd as this should give us reason to pause. The moment one encounters a headline such as NO ONE COULD SEE THE COLOUR BLUE UNTIL MODERN TIMES one should immediately suspect that it is a piece of post-modern relativist twaddle, and, indeed, so it turns out to be. It is a good example of how post-modern intellectualism operates. Typically, you take some flimsy linguistic evidence and add to it some half-baked anthropological study of a colour-retarded tribe no one has ever heard of - the exception that disproves the rule - and use it to demolish one of the most obvious standards of common sense. It is disconcerting and it is intended to be. If even the colours we see are invented, if they are just social constructs, then every thing we ever held to be normal or true about ourselves and our world is open to question since it is probably equally false as well.

As it happens, though, this particular exercise in post-modern absurdity is easy to refute. It is extraordinary that we should hesitate to think otherwise. Is it true that ancient languages had no word for the colour blue? Of course not. It is demonstrable nonsense. Could pre-modern people see the colour blue. Of course they could. 

The roots of this nonsense lie in the late XIXth century. The entire idea is a ludicrous falsity first proposed by the British Prime Minister Gladstone. It has since been taken up, extended, amplified and digitalized into an internet phenomenon. 

Gladstone, readers should be aware, is the most odious Prime Minister in British history prior to Tony Blair. This is the man who turned British foreign policy against the Ottomans and embraced the family of Ibn Saud. This is the man who, as Prime Minister, would often take to the back streets of London and lecture prostitutes on Christian morality. In his student days, it seems, he once sat down and trawled through the epic poems of Homer noting references to various colours. An unimaginative simpleton, he was perturbed by the famous Homeric description of the “wine-dark sea”. Why “wine-dark”? Did Homer not know that the sea is blue? Never mind the tradition that Homer was, in fact, blind. It was Mr Gladstone – a counter of instances - who first determined that Homer lacked a word for blue. What about the Greek word “cyan” one wonders? Gladstone overlooked that. He hit upon the theory that the Greeks could not see the colour blue. (Apparently, by the same reasoning, they didn't defacte either, since Homer makes no mention of toilets. The old 'argument from silence' fallacy.) Gladstone was not only politically loathsome, he was dim as well. 

Getting more to the point, what, let us ask, about the very many instances of surviving works of Greek art - not to mention Minoan and Egyptian and others - that feature blue enamel or traces thereof? These alone demolish the entire case. Mr Gladstone - not an artistic sort of soul - overlooked that too. Is there no evidence of early people using the colour blue in art work? Of course there is! An abundance of it! 

It is true that the earliest cave art tends to lack the colour blue, but that is purely because permanent blue dyes are relatively rare in nature, difficult to procure, difficult to make and quick to fade. All the same, one can find plenty of blue in ancient art. Is it really necessary to show examples of it in order to expose Mr Gladstone’s theory as the nonsense it is? See the pictures on this page. Mr Gladstone was a vicious political revisionist, a toady, a self-righteous moral puritan and a literal-minded philistine who could see no better purpose for the texts of Homer than to count instances of adjectives – and that, badly. That is where this whole story comes from. The idea that the Greeks - and by extension other noble people of ancient times - could not see the colour blue should be known as Gladstone's folly. 

Regrettably, we still live with the disastrous realignments of British foreign policy first made by Mr Gladstone, and now it seems we must endure his ridiculous undergraduate theory about colours as well. After all, let us recall that, as well as knowledge, stupidity is also socially constructed. The story that no one could see the colour blue before the modern era is itself a social construction and reveals much about the forlorn age in which we live. That anyone – anyone! – could even countenance such a headline is testament to just how eager we are today for some new stimulation, some novelty to shake us from our jaded seen-it-all-already post-modern lethargy.  We are now so prepared to dismiss common sense, so prepared to throw away every eternal verity, so ready to believe that the entire testimony of the human race heretofore is bunk, that we will entertain even the most ridiculous of propositions. Is it true that ancient people could not see the colour blue? The correct answer to such a question is: Don't be stupid. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Taoist Portal Deities

The old city area of George Town, and other older areas of Pe Nang, boast some of the most beautiful and illustrious Chinese Taoist temples outside of China proper. The Chinese settled Prince of Wales Island and the straits of Malacca at an early period for purposes of trade. At first they established temples to gods sacred to seafarers, but over time they also established clan temples devoted to ancestral worship. It is now the clan temples that are most prominent. They house the gods of the various clans, memorials to ancestors, as well as acting as social organisations and meeting halls for clan members. In the XIXth century there was often fierce or even violent competition between rival clans, sometimes leading to outbreaks of killing and riots. The sagacious British rulers of the isle had to sort it out. Today, the rivalry between clans can be seen in the efforts each has made to render their respective temples bigger and better and more beautiful than others. This has made these temples especially splendid, and in recent times there has been an effort to restore them to their original state. 

Some of the Chinese temples in George Town have Boodhist features, and some - including the central Temple of the Goddess of Mercy in Pitt Street - include Hindoo deities, but most are Toaist and house Taoist gods. One of the keys to understanding Chinese religiosity is that its dominant theme is the continuity of life and death. This often leads it to be characterised as "ancestor worship". Very often, illustrious and important ancestors become worshipped as gods. This is a Taoist extension of the institution of the boddhisatva in Mahayana Boodhism. A famous physician, for example, will be said to forgo eternal felicity (nirvana) after he dies in order to continue to assist the ailing among the living, and in this way he becomes a god of healing. His image is set up in temples and prayers are made to him for intercession. Famous ancestors of particular clans are elevated to the status of deity after the same manner. Prayers concern the prosperity of the clan, wealth, good fortune and social advancement. The dead do not move on. They continue to look over and assist the living. This is one of the main themes that the Chinese take from Mahayana Boodhism. It goes neatly with their "ancestor worship". 

One of the most outstanding features of the George Town clan temples are the portal doors. In many temples these large, heavy wooden doors are painted with images of protective deities who prevent evil spirits from entering the temples. The protective deities are two generals who lived in the Tang Dynasty. They once stood as guards for the emperor. Now, in the afterlife, they have sworn to continue in this role and so they are worshipped as guardian deities; their images adorn portals and doorways and other places where it is necessary to prevent the entry of malevolent influences. 

The photographs on this present page show examples of the protective portal guardians from several George Town clan temples, as well as some images of the interior spaces of the temples themselves. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Nuptial Number Revisited

The so-called 'Nuptial Number' is by far Plato's most intractable mathematical problem. It is so dense and so obscure that many commentators, both ancient and modern, have decided that it has no rational solution but is instead an item of satire, not to be taken seriously. Others - including the present author (an admitted obscurantist) - see it as one of the great keys of the Platonic canon, if only it is understood correctly. Like the impossibly obscure formulae of the alchemists, it is the key to the Mysteries. 

It is not the purpose of this post to offer any sort of detailed solution to the 'problem' posed by this most difficult of passages from Plato's Republic; rather its limited purpose is simply to present the passage in question in a clear, accurate translation usefully divided into its component parts. The Greek text is impossibly convoluted and many of the words used are both rare and esoteric. No translation can save the passage from what seems to be deliberate obfuscation on the part of the author. But much of it can be disentangled and made clearer by some explanatory additions and a careful break down of its parts. 

What the infamous 'number' might be and what its significance might be is another matter, but the drift of the passage in itself  - leaving aside the formula of the number - can be straightened out into a largely lucid account. That is what is attempted below. The rendering is based upon those of Benjamin Jowett and James Adam (with copious references to the lexicon of Liddel & Scott. We begin at Republic 545D:

THE PROBLEM: WHAT CAUSES STATES TO DECLINE?

“Come, then,” I said, “and let us try to discern the way a timocracy will develop from of an aristocracy. Or is it the simple and unvarying law that in every form of government disturbance begins among the ruling class itself, when sedition arises among it, but as long as it is at one with itself, disturbance will not occur?”

“Yes, that is so.”

“How, then, Glaucon,” I said, “will disturbance arise in our ideal city, and how will our auxiliaries and rulers fall out and be at odds with one another and with themselves?

INVOCATION TO THE MUSES

Shall we invoke the Muses as Homer does in order to tell us “‘how faction first fell upon them,’” and shall we, like a tragic poet, picture the Muses speaking in an elevated style, as if they are speaking seriously when in fact they are playing with us and teasing us like one child teases another?

“How?”

“In some such fashion as follows:

THE WORDS OF THE MUSES

[Having been invoked in the Homeric manner - albeit ambiguously - the Muse now speaks, and it is through this quasi-Homeric Muse that we are given the Nuptial Number. It is an open question as to how seriously we should take this entire construction, although let us note that Plato uses this "Muse" in other contexts in other dialogues. Many of the 'Platonic myths' are introduced in this way.]

ALL THINGS PASS

It is indeed difficult for a state ideally constituted as we have described to be shaken and disturbed; but since for everything that is born there is also a time of destruction, even a constitution such as ours will not last forever, but it shall surely be dissolved eventually.

This is the manner of its dissolution:

THINGS MOVE IN CYCLES

Not only for plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a cycle of fertility and barrenness of soul and body as often as the revolutions of their orbs come full circle, in short cycles for the short-lived things and long cycles for long-lived things.

BEGETTING CHILDREN OUT OF SEASON

Concerning human beings, there are also laws of fecund birth and of infertility, and there will come a time when these laws will escape the men you have bred to be the rulers of your city. For all their wisdom, and combining calculation with observation, they will beget children out of season.

A PERIOD COMPREHENDED BY A NUMBER

Now for divine creatures there is a period comprehended by a number that is final and perfect, but for a mortal the number is the first in which multiplications of root by square - when they have attained three distances, with four limits, of that which makes like and unlike and waxes and wanes - have rendered all things commensurable with one another.

THE BASE PRODUCES TWO HARMONIES

The base of this, containing the ratio of four to three, yoked with five, produces two harmonies when increased three times.

1. One of them is equal an equal number of times, so many times a hundred.

2. The other is equal length one way but oblong

- one dimension of a hundred numbers determined by the rational diameters of five diminished by one in each case, or of the irrational by two; the other dimension of a hundred cubes of three.

LORD OF BETTER AND WORSE BIRTHS

The sum of these - this entire geometrical number, a number measuring the earth - is lord of better and worse births.

THE NEGLECTFUL GUARDIANS

When the guardians of your ideal state neglect this and marry brides to bridegrooms out of season children of ill-nature and ill-fortune will be born.

NEGLECT OF THE MUSES

The best of their predecessors will indeed make rulers but these offspring, being unworthy, when they have succeeded to their fathers' offices of power, will begin to neglect us muses, though they are our guardians, and will pay too little heed to music, and then to gymnastics, so that the children will deteriorate and grow up without us.

THE METALLIC RACES

And the rulers who come after them will have little of the guardian in them for testing Hesiod's races and your own - races of gold and silver and copper and iron. And iron will be mixed with silver, and copper will be mixed with gold, and this will engender unlikeness within them, and an unevenness which is disharmonious, which things always create war and enmity wherever they are found. This surely is the pedigree of sedition, wherever it arises. As Homer says, "Of this lineage, look you!" (Iliad 6:211)

CONCLUSION

[Here the Muses finish and we return to the conversation between the interlocutors of the dialogue, namely Socrates and Glaucon.]

"And quite right too," said Glaucon. "We affirm what the Muses say as correct."

"Indeed," I said, "because they are Muses."

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Chinese Red - Temple Vermillion

The moment you take even a step into the Sino-Asiatic world - any part of east Asia with a significant Chinese population or under Chinese influence, or else into your nearest Chinatown - you enter a world coloured with red. It is very conspicuous. The Chinese adore the colour red. It features in all of their adornments, both domestic and public. But it is not just any colour red - it is a very particular type of red. Not fire engine red. Not Santa Claus red. Not Red Cross red. Not communist red, either. No. It is Chinese lantern red. Chinese temple red. It is a particular, unmistakeable shade of red usually identified as "vermillion" or else, in the past, as "cinnabar". See the colour square above for an example. 

There is no official definition of the exact shade but in the sample given above "vermillion" has the Hex value #E34234. Any shade of red near to it will pass as "Chinese red" as we will call it here. You will find it used in a thousand different ways. Red lanterns. Red ribbons. Red signs. Red seals. The present author has recently arrived in the Chinese section of George Town on the Prince of Wales Island and this "Chinese red" is on display everywhere. He recently ate at the "Red Garden Food Paradise" which is literally "Chinese red" from top to bottom - red tables, red chairs, red writing, red uniforms on the waiting staff. Everything in this distinctive "Chinese red". 

The standard explanation for the love of this colour among the Chinese is entirely unsatisfactory. We are told, unhelpfully, that the Chinese regard it as "auspicious" and that it brings "good luck." More detailed explanations are equally uninformative. We are told that it "symbolises fire" and this "represents spring" and the "direction south" and is therefore "lucky" or "auspicious" for this reason. Certainly, the Chinese are given to preoccupations of "luck", but surely something more lies behind the ubiqitous use of red, and this particular red. How do we explain that this red - this "vermillion" - is regarded as "auspicious", and also why it is so completely and comprehensively "auspicious" that the Chinese use it so extensively in all contexts great and small? What is it about this red, this particular red, that renders it so important to the Chinese? In the pictures below we see some examples of its many uses:

Tradition lacquerware

Temple entrance with lanterns 

Row of lanterns

Traditional seal (or "chop")

Chinese wedding 

Calligraphy

* * * 

The present author offers the following explanation for this characteristically Chinese phenomenon. It is not difficult to piece together the symbolism of this colour in the Chinese tradition:

Until the development of synthetic alternatives, this particular shade of red was traditionally prepared from 'cinnabar', which is to say from Mercury Sulphide (HgS). Cinnabar is a sulphide of mercury that, when ground into a powder, yields a strong, stable permanent red that can be used in paints and lacquers. Good, stable red colourings are relatively rare in nature, so this preparation - a by-product of mining and metallurgy - was especially valued. 

It was not exclusive to the Chinese, though. Cinnabar (the name comes from Greek but is probably Persian in origin) was known and used in other cultures as well.  We see it used as a red ink in medieval European manuscripts, for example, and as a paint used in the murals of Roman Pompei: 

But the Chinese adopted it as their own. The reason for this is that the Chinese tradition - and especially Taoism - is essentially alchemical and cinnabar, as a metallic essence, is a key ingredient in Taoist alchemy. In the Occident alchemy is, and has always been, a peripheral or 'fringe' tradition. In the Chinese spiritual order it is far more central and mainstream. The colour symbolism of 'Chinese red' and its associations with 'good luck' have a basis in and are to be explained by the significance of cinnabar in Chinese alchemy. 

The primary alchemical significance of cinnabar is this: during the mining of gold the miners might encounter 'veins' of red cinnabar (Mercury sulphide)in the bedrock. Gold and cinnabar are often found together. This is because both gold and mercury are heavy metals and such metals tend to be found in the same geological strata. (For the same reason, arsenic and other heavy metals are often found with gold.) 

Thus cinnabar is associated with gold and in the alchemical mythology of gold mining is often called 'Dragon's blood'. Dragons are believed to store and protect gold in their 'lairs' in the womb of the earth. When miners encounter 'veins' of blood-red pigments running through rocks near and around gold deposits they imagine them to be veins of Dragon's blood. This idea is suggested by the word 'vermillion' too, since it comes from the same root as the word 'worm', and a dragon is a 'worm' in many languages. 'Vermillion' means 'the colour of the dragon/worm'. 

The basic idea here is simple and straightforward. Vermillion - dragon's blood - is "lucky" because it signifies the proximity of gold. When a miner encounters cinnabar (dragon's blood) he is in luck, because he knows there is likely to be gold nearby. When he strikes dragon's blood he has struck gold. 

By extension, this colour is associated with gold and with the auric properties of gold in a general sense. Gold here carries its alchemical significance. It is not merely a precious metal valued in terms of wealth; it also signifies spiritual perfection. Accordingly, the Chinese surround themselves with things the colour of 'dragon's blood' because it points to the perfections of gold. Indeed, as we see in the case of the calligraphy illustrated above, we often find the colour gold with 'Chinese red'. Cinnabar/vermillion/dragon's blood goes with gold in Chinese colour symbolism. You can walk into any Chinese temple and see instances of this. 

By understanding these alchemical associations, and by appreciating the inherently alchemical character of the Chinese tradition, we are in a position to appreciate why this particular colour red is so highly regarded by the Chinese. To a large extent, of course, the traditional connections may be forgotten, and so people will merely regard 'Chinese red' as "lucky" in a superstitious way, but the reasons behind the superstition can still be discerned and understood. In effect, the colour signifies gold, as well as all the things that gold itself signifies, especially the spiritual perfection of the 'Golden Race' and such other parallels. It is remarkable that this metallurgic symbolism has persisted and become so pervasive in the Chinese order. Understanding the symbolism of 'Chinese red' is one of the keys to the entire Chinese tradition. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Tile Patterns of George Town

George Town, on the Prince of Wales Island - or Pe Nang as the Malays call it (which means Land of the Betel Nut) - is possibly the best preserved of any colonial city. A defined area, extending outwards from the Chinese jetties, is a listed heritage zone and consists of superb colonial administrative buildings and extensive rows of terrace houses or what the locals call 'link' houses. Some are very old and many are very well preserved. In amongst them, in addition to these architectural riches, are many splendid Chinese clan temples some of which go back many centuries. As elsewhere, the Chinese and numerous other trading communities prospered here under the comparatively benevelent, tolerant and civilly constructive rule of the British. 

A terrace or 'link' house in the back streets of George Town. 

A striking feature of George Town architecture is the tiled floors, walls and pathways found throughout. This current post is a photographic essay illustrating samples of these distinctive tiles. In many instances, the floors have been redone in the 1920s, and it is largely from that era that these designs come, although some are considerably older. As readers can see, the designs are typically geometrical with those based upon the octagon predominating. Other patterns, less common, are floral. Please click on any image to see a large version. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black