The Seba library treats Violet in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Jodorowsky, Alejandro, Hillman, James).
violet (colour), representing archetype, 211, 212
Jung's index entry explicitly identifies violet as the colour that represents the archetype, anchoring it at the structural centre of his depth-psychological colour symbolism.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
black, white, red (the three most common colors of the alchemical work), flesh (human), and violet (the androgyne).
Jodorowsky classifies violet as the androgyne among the five fundamental Tarot colours, positioning it as the resolution of sexual and elemental opposition within the card system.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004thesis
spontaneous creative event occurring whenever the adept's fantasy (violet) is empowered by (red) certitude, even if inherently subject to rusting and bearing poison within it.
Hillman assigns violet to the adept's fantasy within the alchemical opus, making it the imaginative pole of a creative conjunction with the red of certitude.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010thesis
He makes his appearance 'crowned with a thick crown of ivy and violets' (212E1–2), making dress itself an image that tells the truth.
Nussbaum reads Alcibiades' violet crown in the Symposium as a polysemous truth-telling image simultaneously signifying Aphrodite, the Muses, and the city of Athens.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
It was not a canonical color as are violet, white, green, and black. Does blue carry an indelible etymological taint?
Hillman identifies violet as one of the canonical liturgical and alchemical colours against which blue's repressed or marginal status is measured.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
iOV [n.] 'violet' (Horn., Thphr.). LW Medit. COMP Determinative compound AWKO-·LOV = '(ov AWKOV 'stock, gillyflower'... io-oTEcpavoe.; 'crowned with violets'
Beekes traces the Greek word for violet to a Mediterranean loan-word substrate and documents its extensive compounding, including 'violet-crowned,' confirming the colour's deep classical symbolic vocabulary.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
lav6lVOC; [adj.] 'violet-colored' (Str., Plin., Aq., Srn.)... ETYM Properly 'violet-flowered', from av8LVOe; (see ἄνθος) and determinative first member 'lov 'violet'.
Beekes provides the etymology of the Greek adjective for violet-coloured, showing it derives from 'violet-flowered,' a botanical root with broad classical attestation.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
Colors are always ambivalent: their meaning cannot be purely positive or negative... the clues in the trail suggested here are therefore open propositions that make no claim to exhaust the study of colors.
Jodorowsky establishes the methodological principle of colour ambivalence that frames his treatment of violet as the androgyne — a colour irreducible to any single valence.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
offer them to the Lord, gold, and silver, and brass, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine linen, goat's hair, and ram's skins died red and violet
John of Damascus cites the Mosaic liturgical prescription listing violet among the sacred offerings, establishing its place within a theological colour hierarchy as matter rendered holy.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside