A symbolism involving more than one colour came into being with the growth of organized religion in the Neolithic age, when the sun and moon were conceived to have an influence over the growth of crops, and the civilization centering around the great rivers relied on celestial indications for their reckoning of the occurence of the rains, tides and floods. Chief of the heavenly indicators was the moon, whose monthly periods were associated with the cycle of life-giving-magic of the female. It will have been noticed that the full moon is often blood red when it is near the horizon and seen through a haze. In most primitive and prehistoric painting pride of place amongst the colours has most often been given to red, possibly on the analogy of blood. Indeed, blood itself is used as a pigment in some Aboriginal art; and in some languages the word for colour is the same as the word for ‘red’ to judge from the earliest writings, such as the Indian Upanishads of c.1500 BC. Many of the most ancient legends make blood red the symbolic colour of the full moon; the Assyrians sacrificed red haired and ruddy complexioned people to the red planet in a temple draped with red.

The first primitive system of colour symbolism included white, red and black, as the colours of the phases of the moon. The white of the new moon stood for the gods or goddesses of birth, perhaps from the colour of milk. Red, colour of blood, was the colour of the gods or goddesses of war or passion, while black represented the gods or goddesses of magic and the underworld. The first of the three colours, white, became associated with the new moon’s colour, and the white stones that were buried with the interments as, for example, at Rushen Castle on the Isle of Man, appear to have been symbols of the fertility of the Great White Mother Goddess, as the novelist, Robert Graves, called her. In pre-classical cultures the cold and whitish colours of aromatic gums, and various vegetable juices, were believed to take their properties from the moon, which also gave an opalescent filmy colour to some stones and crystals. Black, the colour of the dying moon, graded into sky blues to become the colour of mystery, magic, divination and death.

Wierd black shapes are made by the Malayans for their presentation rice baskets in the form of birds, step pyramids or dangling cylinders (to baffle evil spirits). Black wefts as in an Iban example can be obtained by soaking the strips in black mud or staining with elderberry, or sumach, oak galls or rusty iron. Dark purple is obtained from amaranth or iris petals. By contrast, alder roots give orange; and berberis, yellow. The outer sheath of guinea corn makes a dull red used in Nigeria, whilst the Indians of Washington mixed chewed alder bark and salmon eggs for their red vermilion. The North American Indians favoured mostly red, yellow and blue. On the North West coast the following colours were used: yellow ochre, red ochre, cinnabar and red berries, maroon and brown from Lignite, black and grey from charcoal, and green from fungus and moss.

In Africa colour symbolism used to be particularly important. White tended to symbolise spirit colours whilst red tended to repel spirits, as on the lips of a M’pongime mask from Gabun. Blue was used for scars on, for example, the Yoruba masks of a Gelede society in Nigeria. Red, white and blue were painted on the Congo masks of the Bena Biombo style. In the Transvaal there was a favoured use of maroon pigments; and a purplish claret in Zimbabwe. The Bushmen use bole or haematite for red and brown, and blue is from iron and silicic acid. Other colours they use are yellow ochre, zinc white and charcoal black.

Amongst the Pakot of the Suk, Kenya, there is a conventional concept of beauty of colour as applied to beads. While all colours or pigments are pretty, so long as they’re not too faded, coloured beads arranged in a pattern are beautiful, but the Pakot have preferences which exclude various arrangements. Some colours are preferred, such as blue, but any colour may be strung out in a solid line and be contrasted with any other solid coloured string and called pretty. But, when differently coloured beads are put together on the same string, an alternation of blue and white or of red and white is acceptable, while alternate red and yellow, red and blue, or yellow and white is not considered pretty, no matter what pattern they form.