Red Across the Traditions

Red is the colour of blood and fire, and most of its symbolism follows from those two associations rather than from any single doctrine. Because it signals blood, it stands for both life and violence: for vitality, fertility and love on one side, and for war, danger and sacrifice on the other. In the Roman world red was the colour of Mars and of the general's triumph; in the Christian liturgical calendar red marks Pentecost and the feasts of martyrs, tying it to the Holy Spirit's fire and to blood shed in witness.

In China red is the colour of luck, joy and celebration, worn at weddings and given at the new year, an emphatically positive value that contrasts with the Western sense of warning. In Hindu practice red is auspicious and bridal, associated with the goddess and with the married state through the vermilion sindoor. In the modern chakra scheme red is placed at the root centre, the base of the spine, a twentieth-century Western assignment. Its use for prohibition and alarm is a modern convention built on the same visibility that made it the colour of danger everywhere.