Examining Correlations
Among Sound, Color and Form
Alice Leighton Cleather
Ms. Alice
Leighton Cleather (1846-1938)
A 2010
Editorial Note:
Alice L. Cleather was one of the direct disciples of H. P. Blavatsky in London. After H.P.B.’s death in 1891, Alice - unlike Annie Besant and others - chose to remain loyal to her teacher and to the ethical principles of Theosophy. The books by Alice Cleather are valuable testimonies on the history and the essence of the theosophical effort.
The following article examines
a central topic in esoteric philosophy. Studying the correlations and the inner
unity among different human “senses” and “sensations” is part and parcel of the
awakening of a “higher and universal consciousness”. The present humanity is
still undergoing this slow “buddhi-manasic birth”, and if it can get the right
speed in time, unnecessary suffering will be avoided.
The text “The Music of Colors”
was first published at “The Path” magazine, in its November 1895
edition, pages 249-251, under the title of “Color Music”.
On this subject, students are
invited to read the extraordinary article “Occult or Exact Science?”, by
Helena Blavatsky. [1]
The 1882 text “The Harmonics
of Smell” [2], which
a Mahatma of the Himalayas “caused to be written”[3], also brings most useful
elements for an understanding of the inner and higher unity among the different
human senses. Study and contemplation of these matters allow students to make significant
progress towards an awakening in consciousness.
Alice Cleather’s text refers
to a public concert in the 19th century which combined music and
colors. “The Harmonics of Smell” refers to a strange concert in ancient times
in Africa where the harmonics produced by a sort of special “musical” organ -
with its tubes, pedals, stops and keys - is in odours, not in sounds.
The subject relates to what is now known as aromatherapy. It is also an
essential matter in theosophy, or esoteric philosophy. [4]
The well-known Russian
musician and composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) met Mr. A. W. Rimington, the
inventor of the “color organ” to whom Alice Cleather refers in the following article,
and created several works dedicated to the combination of sound and color.
Scriabin was also a
Theosophist and a student of “The Secret Doctrine”.[5] He got under the
influence of the Adyar Society at the height of Annie Besant’s clairvoyant
fancies and distortions, coming to suffer from some lack of common sense and
equilibrium, and dying in his early forties.
Indeed the esoteric philosophy
must be studied with calm and discernment, for its researchers have to protect
themselves from many kinds of dangerous illusions.
The importance of the
interaction among color (sight), sound (hearing) and other senses remains as great as ever, and the several
contributions made so far to its study are of essential significance in
theosophy.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTES:
[1] “Occult or Exact
Science?”, can be found at “Theosophical Articles”, H. P. Blavatsky, a
three-volume collection published by Theosophy Co., in Los Angeles, in 1981.
See volume II, pp. 46-74. It can also be
read at the “Collected Writings” of H.P. Blavatsky, T.P.H., volume VII, pp.
55-90.
[2] “The Harmonics of
Smell”, “Collected Writings”, H.P. Blavatsky, TPH, volume IV, pp. 177-179. The article is available in our
associated websites.
[3] See “The Mahatma
Letters”, T.U.P. edition, Pasadena, 1992, Letter XVI, answer number 3, p. 102.
[4] The occult aspects
of sound and related vibrations are discussed in the book “The Secret
Doctrine”, by H.P. Blavatsky (Theosophy Co., volume I, pp. 564-565) and in
William Q. Judge’s article “Occult Vibrations” (Theosophical Articles, W.Q.J.,
Theosophy Co., Volume I, pp. 423-426) among many other texts and works of the
theosophical literature.
[5] See the article
“Scriabin, Composer, Theosophist”, in “The Theosophist” magazine, Adyar, India,
August 1945 edition, pp. 198-199, and the entry “Scriabin, Aleksandr
Nikolaievich”, in “Encyclopaedia Britannnica”, 1967 edition.
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The Music of Colors
Alice L. Cleather
“Color Music” is the name given by
Mr. A. Wallace Rimington to a “new art” of which he claims to be the
discoverer, and as this new art or discovery of his has taken him some
considerable way along the lines upon which many of us - pupils of H.P.B. and students
of the Secret Doctrine - are working, I have though that a short account
of it might interest readers of the PATH.
Mr. Rimington’s first
exposition of his new art was to a crowded audience at St. James Hall. Finding
that the gentlemen was an old family friend, I wrote to him on the subject and
obtained from him a copy of the address with which he prefaced the first
performance on his “color organ,” and in which he briefly sets forth the “how”
and the “why” of his discovery. I find from a study of the programme which Mr.
Rimington provided for his guests and a printed copy of which he sent me, that
this said “color organ” is the particular instrument which he has invented for producing
the color-music, although the mechanism used is entirely different from that
which we are accustomed to connect with the organ proper.
The new instrument resembles
an organ - hence its name - and is provided with a keyboard, constructed
exactly like that of a pianoforte, and upon which any piece of music suited for
a keyed instrument can be played. The result appears upon a large screen or
color-field of drapery, which - in the performance given at St. James’ Hall -
occupied the whole of the end of the concert-hall; and upon this screen every
note or combination of notes struck on the keyboard showed itself in floods of
color. The programme was a varied and most instructive one. The pieces of music
chosen were sometimes given simultaneously on the pianoforte and color organ,
and sometimes with the latter alone; but an extract from Dvorak was given in
both sound, color and form, the latter being “introduced during a few bars”
as the “form produced by musical sounds upon a liquid film on the Watts-Hughes
principle.” So here we have practically demonstrated the reality of the triad
postulated in the Secret Doctrine teachings as underlying all manifestation, viz,
form, sound and color, or more properly, number, color and sound. Wisdom is
again, as ever, justified of her children, and there are abundant signs that
H.P.B.’s prophecy is coming very near to its fulfilment, though we still number
five more years to the completion of the century.
That Mr. Rimington’s ideas are
very advanced and almost coincident with the teachings of the esoteric
philosophy the following extracts from his speech will show; he says:
“If
we take a ray of white light we have that which contains every color in nature.
Such a ray may be split up into all the colors which compose it, by being
passed through a prism and spread out into what is known as the spectrum
band.... In the instrument I have invented, and which I propose to call the ‘color organ,’ I have taken a certain number of points, at
carefully calculated intervals, along the whole of this spectrum band, and have
devised means for obtaining the color at these points as accurately as
possible, in much larger quantity, and in variable intensity. The colors thus
selected have been placed under the control of a keyboard like that of a
pianoforte....
“This
new art introduces three novel elements into the use of color -viz: time,
rhythm and instantaneous combination.
“It
is evident these three elements are associated with one other art only -
namely, music. Notes of music and notes of color can in these respects be
treated in exactly the same way. . . There are, however, other reasons for
attempting to use color as we use musical sounds, but about which there will be
some divergence of opinion. . . .
“Taking
the spectrum band as the basis of all color, there are two remarkable points of
resemblance between it and the musical octave.... The first of them is that the
different colors of the one, and the different notes of the other, are both due
to various rates of vibration, acting on the eye or the ear, ….. (passing to)
the second and equally remarkable analogy between the octave of color and the
octave of sound.
“If
we measure the rate of vibration at the first visible point at the red end of
the spectrum, we shall find it is approximately one-half what it is at the
extreme violet end. Now in music, as we all know, this relationship is the
same. If we take the first and last notes of an octave (by which I mean the
twelfth) the latter has nearly double the number of air vibrations - and the
first note of the new octave has exactly double.”
The point, therefore, that Mr.
Rimington goes on to suggest and emphasize is that as the blue end of the
spectrum shows a tendency to a return to red in the violet, and the red end of
the spectrum shows a similar tendency towards a reappearance of blue, in the
fact that it passes from scarlet to carmine before it fades away, so it may be
surmised to be almost a certainty that if our eyes could see them the
colors of the visible spectrum would probably repeat themselves in successive
octaves, in the great invisible portions beyond the red and the violet. This is
quite the nearest approach to our septenary scale, seven times repeated, that I know
of; and Mr. Rimington has worked from “these remarkable physical analogies” in
the construction of his new instrument, thus demonstrating their correctness as
hypotheses. Further, he seems to be of the opinion that “the close physical
analogy between the octaves of color and sound has its physiological and
psychical counterpart.” Mr. Rimington’s
ideas are therefore seen to be capable of a much greater development, and
Theosophists will watch with interest for indications of the particular
direction along which they will extend. At least he has done us an unconscious
but most signal service in thus proving by practical demonstration the intimate
vibratory correlation that exists between sound, color and form.
000
In September
2016, after a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement
worldwide, a group of students decided to form the Independent Lodge of Theosophists, whose priorities include the building
of a better future in the different dimensions of life.
000
