Violet is the shortest visible wavelength, near 380 to 450 nanometers, at the far end of the spectrum bordering the unseen ultraviolet. In the astrological color scale it is the electric, visionary hue of Aquarius, the fixed air sign of Saturn and Uranus, and it carries that sign orientation toward the future, the ideal, and the collective. It rules the crown chakra, the highest center, where individual consciousness meets the divine. Symbolically violet joins red energy and blue calm into a color of spirit, magic, and transformation; long the rarest and most costly dye, it signified royalty, penitence, and the mystical reach beyond the material.
Facts
Disputed
Origin Period1666 to 1704 2Tradition: Newtonian optics: the seven-colour spectrum Isaac Newton's own account in Opticks (London, 1704) describes how he arrived at seven spectral colours: his earliest prism observations distinguished five bands, and he settled on seven, adding orange and indigo, by explicit analogy with the seven intervals of the musical octave, a numerological choice rather than a further optical finding. Reading Newton's own text against the continuous gradient a prism actually produces shows the seven-fold division is an interpretive choice about where to draw lines in that continuum, not a count nature supplies; observers from Newton's own time onward have disputed whether indigo is visually distinct from blue and violet at all. Any scheme in this atlas that treats seven colours as given inherits Newton's seventeenth-century analogy to the octave rather than an independent observation. Attributions
Zodiac SignSourced to the subject's own account Ruling PlanetSourced to the subject's own account Meaning
ThemesSpirit, magic, and transformation; royalty, penitence, and mystical reach beyond the material 4 Symbolic MeaningViolet is the liturgical colour of the penitential seasons, Advent and Lent, in Western Christian tradition, marking a season of preparation and repentance. 5Tradition: Western Christianity Origins
Attributed Author / CompilerIsaac Newton, who divided the spectrum into seven and stated the analogy with the seven intervals of the musical octave as his reason for the number. 2 Origin of the NameNamed for the flower. The Latin viola is the plant, and the colour word follows it into English through Old French. 3 Learn More
Violet, the Edge of the Visible
Violet is the shortest-wavelength light the eye perceives, at the far end of the spectrum from red, and it should be distinguished from purple: violet is a genuine spectral colour produced by a single wavelength, whereas purple is a mixture of red and blue with no single wavelength of its own. As a symbol violet and purple overlap and both carry senses of spirituality, penitence and the mystical.
In the Christian liturgical calendar violet is the colour of Advent and Lent, the penitential seasons of preparation, and it is used for mourning; this liturgical purple descends from the ancient prestige of the dye. In the modern chakra scheme violet marks the crown centre, the highest, associating it with transcendence and union, a recent placement dependent on the seven-colour spectrum. Its position at the visible edge, beyond which lies the invisible ultraviolet, has made violet a natural emblem of the threshold between the seen and the unseen.
How Violet Was Made
Violet sits at the short-wave end of the visible spectrum and was for most of history the hardest region of it to reproduce with any permanence.
The distinction from purple matters here and is routinely lost. Violet is a spectral hue, a single band of wavelengths that the eye can be shown directly. Purple is not: it is a mixture, produced by stimulating the red and blue ends together, and it corresponds to no single wavelength. Newton's spectrum ends in violet and has no purple in it at all.
The pigments were poor. Mixtures of red and blue lakes shifted and faded. A stable inorganic manganese violet did not arrive until the nineteenth century, and cobalt violet was expensive. Painters before that period who wanted the colour generally glazed a red over a blue and accepted that it would not last, which is one reason surviving old paintings under-represent violet relative to what was originally there.
The decisive change came from dye chemistry rather than pigment chemistry. In 1856 William Henry Perkin, then eighteen and attempting to synthesise quinine, obtained instead a purple aniline dye he called mauveine. It was the first commercially successful synthetic organic dye, it made him wealthy, and it began the coal-tar dye industry that within decades replaced most of the natural dyestuffs described elsewhere in this atlas.
A colour that had been the mark of rank because it could not be had cheaply became, within a few years, the colour of a fashion.
Connections
Associated With
Violet is the vestment colour of Advent in the Roman Rite, marking the season as preparatory rather than festal. English usage calls the same colour purple as often as violet, and the missal itself does not distinguish two shades.
Source General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical editionCongregation for Divine Worshipthe holders' own account
Violet is the vestment colour of Lent in the Roman Rite, the other penitential season. It may also be used for the Office and Mass of the dead, which is why violet and black overlap in funeral practice.
Source General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical editionCongregation for Divine Worshipthe holders' own account
Namesake Of
Named in 1813 by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac from the Greek iodes, violet coloured, for the violet vapour the solid gives off when warmed. An etymological link only, not a claim that the element carries the associations of the colour.
Source Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the ElementsJohn Emsley
Related To
Purple, Colors Purple and violet name one liturgical colour in English usage rather than two: the Roman Missal specifies a single penitential colour, and English translations and vestment suppliers render it either way. A parish that says purple and one that says violet are not describing different vestments.
Source General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical editionCongregation for Divine Worshipthe holders' own account
Ultraviolet is defined by its position beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum, and was found within a year of the infrared by looking for a matching invisible band at the opposite edge. Neither is a colour in the sense the other twenty entries here are.
Source A History of Ultraviolet Photobiology for Humans, Animals and MicroorganismsPhilip E. Hockberger
Sources
1. The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th edition
2. Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light
Isaac Newton, Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, London, 1704Book I, the seven-colour spectrum and the edge of the visibleView the Source 3. The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressviolet, n. and adj.View the Source 4. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source 5. Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction
John Gage, Thames and Hudson, 1993violet and purple; the penitential liturgical colour
General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical edition
Congregation for Divine Worship, Congregation for Divine Worship, 2002the holders' own accountView the Source Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
The Seven Rainbow Colors Share One Contested Claim, and It Is About Newton, Not the Rainbow
Violet, one of seven spectral colors carrying the identical Newton origin note word for word
Read the EssayReader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.