Colour Meanings

Last week when I was at the library, I overheard a librarian reading a book to a group of little children. I can't remember the words exactly, but she was more or less reading the name of a colour and then reading things about it that related to attributes of the colour. For example, I remember that for the colour brown some of the things she read where soft and comfortable, and for pink she read cute. There were more associations and more colours, but that is all I can remember now.

As I walked home from the library, I started thinking more about these colour associations. (I even stopped to scribble down some ideas in a notebook that I carry with me.) To me, green is soft, blue is cold, and purple is comforting, etc. So where do these associations come from? How did they develop? Who was the first person to say that red meant passion and white was purity? And why, in general, are these associations so widely accepted? I can pick up a Tarot card from any number of groups and learn a lot about the meaning of the card through the colours used. Or I can pick up a stone and guess at its use because of its colour. I mean, it is fairly obvious that rose quartz is a stone associated with love and peace because it is pink.

Update: Interestingly enough, Kathryn over at Mindful Life also has an entry about colour--Color My World. Honestly, I didn't see it until after this entry was written and posted.