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Nuée
Black is a color with a double connotation, positive and negative. This opposition is marked in the Latin language, “niger” designating shiny black and “ater” matt and disturbing black. The black of mourning comes from a double heritage, from the Romans in which the clothing of mourning was gray, for the color of the ashes and from Christianity which required a dark color for the mourning. Conversely in Ancient Egypt, black had a positive symbolism, the word "kem" from the word "black", meaning to carry out, to rise to, to accomplish ect.. and the verb "kem" to want say "complete, perfect, duty". The Reformation period had an influence on the use of colours. From the 14th century, bright tones were banned and the moralist movement ordered Italian dyers to produce “sober colours” including black. The law of austerity and darkness prevailed. As a symbol of temperance, the great reformers, princes and monks adopted black to dress themselves. From this fashion were born our current gala outfits, such as smocking. Through this use, black has become a sign of elegance, refinement, dignity, nobility and sobriety.
Ingenue
White is of all the colors that retains the most constant symbolism across time and continents. White represents innocence, virginity, purity, cleanliness but also emptiness, lack, absence. White is associated with birth but also with old age, the origin of the world and the transcendent, the big bang imagined as a burst of white light, but also ghosts drawn in white echoing the world of the dead. White symbolizes both the beginning and the end. In many Asian countries, white symbolizes the color of mourning, the color towards which the soul of the deceased turns.
Psyche
The mirror, reflecting surface, covers a rich, complex and ambivalent symbolism. "Symbol of symbolism", bridge between the world of knowledge and the world of being, the mirror fascinates and disturbs.
It reflects our own image: it can be faithful, illusory or unexpected.
Moreover, the mirror introduces the other. The other is the mirror of ourselves, as Plato says: You have noticed, have you, that when we look at the eye in front of us, our face is reflected in what we call the pupil, as in a mirror; whoever looks sees his image there.
The mirror is also associated with the moon, water and the feminine principle to represent the changing soul.
The moon evokes reverie, illusions, the world of the night and its mysteries, as well as the power of the unconscious.
Water reflects a more or less distorted image of ourselves, depending on whether the surface is calm or rough. Water is like our psyche: more or less calm, more or less clear. In physics and alchemy, water can be attracted downwards (liquid form) as well as upwards (gaseous form).
The mirror can also be synonymous with narcissistic jubilation, anxiety or love. It can also evoke the sleep of the soul or, on the contrary, awakening.
The mirror invites you to go beyond illusions to access self-knowledge, a springboard to universal knowledge. This quest for immanence opens us to transcendence.
Both reason and intuition, truth and imagination, the mirror leads us on the path of the mystery of existence, between being and non-being, unity and duality.
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