Black absorbs the visible wavelengths and is, strictly, the absence of reflected light, and its symbolism turns on that absence. It is widely the colour of death, mourning and grief in the Western tradition, worn at funerals and in bereavement since at least the Roman period, and by extension the colour of the ominous, the hidden and the evil, night, the underworld, the demonic. Yet black is also the colour of dignity, authority and renunciation: the black of judicial and clerical dress, of the scholar's gown, of formal wear, and of monastic habits from the Benedictines to Zen priests, where it signifies gravity, humility and withdrawal from vanity rather than menace.
In the Christian liturgy black is used for funerals and, formerly, Good Friday. In many African cultures black can carry positive senses of maturity, age and the fertile rain-bearing cloud. Its double life, negation and elegance, death and dignity, makes it, with white, one of the two colours whose meaning most depends on context.