In the color green, light and darkness meet and find a living equilibrium. Kees Veenman’s experiments with color invite us to explore this mysterious interplay of balance.
At the end of May, Christine Gruwez’s new book De Logos naderen (Approaching the Logos) was published in Belgium.1 It contains eleven of her articles, several of which are previously unpublished. In the article “The Grail Between East and West,” she draws on the work of Rudolf Steiner. He described the encounter between the Western Grail stream—the life spirit of Christ,2 which he had left behind on Earth before his incarnation, and the Eastern Grail stream—the Christ who continued to live in the hearts of people after his death and resurrection.3 Christine Gruwez goes on to write that from the “encounter of Christ with himself,” with the heart as an interstice, a completely new, future-oriented activity will arise. In the heart, the life-giving and resurrection activities of Christ converge.
Why is an “interstice”—an in-between space—a suitable setting for the working of Christ? And why is the heart an interstice? I will address the latter question first. In thought, we distance ourselves from the world; in the will, we act within the world. Feeling lies in between. When we feel, we are close—we are right in the thick of it. A feeling of compassion arises in our heart, not in our mind. To allow this, we must step back a little to create space. We say of someone with great empathy that they have their heart in the right place. A remarkable expression, for that is precisely what the heart is for: to empathize with others, to feel love. The heart acts as an interstice because it is a place where two people can come together. It is also within the heart that the human etheric stream—rising from the blood as it flows from the heart to the brain—can unite with the etheric stream of Christ’s blood.4 Christ needs an in-between space to be effective. “For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”5 An interstice is a space where two beings can meet. In a Christian context, this encounter is shaped by freedom and love—qualities that are mutually dependent.
Green as an Interstice
While I was doing my research on color, I came to the realization that green is the color behind which the power of Christ is hidden. In brief, when I was 37 a new experiment led me to a profound spiritual experience. I perceived all colors as healing beings, with Christ as the center and leader of this circle of colors. I also understood that Christ had bestowed a new future perspective upon each color for the further development of humanity. My ongoing research showed that green is the color of restraint and balance (more on that later.) It was not until I was 55 that I discovered what this future perspective given to the colors by Christ entails. For the color green, it is the creative power of the Word, the Logos. From this, it became clear to me that although Christ has given all colors a new perspective, He himself is specifically connected to green: Christ is the being behind the color green. Later, I found this confirmed by Steiner.6
So, if Christ stands behind green, then an important question is whether green also possesses the quality of an interstice, like the heart. Can an encounter between two forces or beings take place in the color green like it does in the heart? To investigate this, I would like to present three color experiments.
In the collected works of British color specialist and Goethe expert Michael Wilson, published in 2018, there is an interesting problem presented in the foreword.7 Wilson and his philosopher friend Jonathan Westphal had been discussing the question of how green is formed when light passes through a prism. To illustrate what they meant and why this is curious, let’s consider the following experiment (Figure 1).
We shine the light from a wedge-shaped light source (in a dark background) onto a screen. The image on the left appears. Then we place a prism in front of the same light source. The image on the right now appears on the screen. Goethe said of this experiment that the cyan and yellow “meet” to form the green.8 This seems perfectly logical; after all, mixing blue and yellow paint produces green. But in this case, we are “mixing” colored light and if you mix yellow and blue light, you get white! So how does the green emerge in the midst of this experiment? “Had Goethe been mistaken?” Westphal asked. “Well,” Wilson responded, “you can see the green appearing. It happens! You can see that the green appears where the yellow and the blue darken one another.” That is, where yellow and blue disappear. The facts speak for themselves!9
It’s an interesting puzzle that warrants further investigation. Let’s consider a second experiment. (Figure 2) We project the image of the spectrum from Figure 1 through a second prism. (This can be done by projecting the original spectrum onto frosted glass, masking a portion with black paper, and photographing it from behind through the second prism.) The image on the right appears.
According to Goethe, in every prismatic experiment colors arise from the interaction of light and darkness. We can see in the spectrum from Figure 1, that red exhibits a compressed form and violet a radiant one. From this, I conclude that red arises where light shines into darkness and is not admitted by the darkness, resulting in a compression between light and darkness. In the arising of violet, the opposite is true: the light is absorbed by darkness, resulting in a radiance of light within the darkness. Goethe therefore referred to the formation of red and violet as active and passive, respectively.
Figure 2 shows that when the red light from the left passes through the second prism (from p to q,) it does not develop into violet on the right. Similarly, violet light from the left does not develop into red on the right. Both colors had already developed in a completely one-sided manner during their initial formation (Figure 1). As a result, red can only continue to develop actively through compression, to the left and not to the right. With violet, the opposite is true. Green does not seem to develop either actively or passively. It holds back and does not specialize. In the green formed in Figure 1, the light neither compresses at the darkness nor radiates into it. We see the same with the green in Figure 2, when the original green is deflected by the second prism. The relationship between light and darkness remains in balance.
The situation is different with yellow and cyan. To illustrate this clearly, I have taken a detail from Figure 2 to show the further development of both colors alongside the green. Yellow has already developed somewhat in an active direction and, after passing through the second prism, is capable of continuing to develop actively to the left into the compressed red. However, yellow cannot develop passively to the right into violet; it is already too active for that. And this is precisely where green emerges. The same applies to cyan. Cyan is already a passive color and can continue to develop to the right toward a radiant violet. However, cyan cannot actively develop into red. And here, too, is where green emerges.
How should this appearance of green be interpreted? Green expresses that the development in both yellow and cyan is held back! And what about the appearance of green in the middle of the first experiment, which so perplexed Westphal? This can be seen as the combination of the restrained developments of yellow and cyan into green: neither develops in a direction that is simply no longer possible. Viewed in this way, Goethe’s intuition to speak of “meeting” rather than “mixing” was accurate.
The restraint that exists solely in green does not necessarily make green an interstice. What forces, then, come together in green like they do in the heart? These experiments demonstrate that the forces of light and darkness meet in perfect balance within green. Goethe also notes that every color arises from an interaction of light and darkness, but not with as much restraint and balance as in green. Think of red and violet with their gestures. It is like with people: only when one person creates space for another can a dialogue arise.
Christ in the Green Foliage
We can take this inquiry a step further. Does the green of nature also possess the character of an interstice? Do we encounter Christ in green foliage? This question leads us to a fascinating observation. If we examine the transition of yellow and cyan to green in the spectrum (Figure 3,) it is striking that this transition is very even and gentle for both colors.
The situation is quite different with the transition from the yellow of butter to the yellow of a lemon, or from the yellow of a buttercup to a blooming rapeseed. Especially when the rapeseed is nearly past its bloom, the yellow seems exaggerated, almost too intense—as if the rapeseed lacked restraint. (Figure 4)
Something similar happens with a blue-green stone like turquoise. It glows so brightly, almost like neon! And then there’s the beautiful spring green of a freshly sprouted beech leaf. You have to see it in person; a photo doesn’t do the beech leaf justice. If you hold the leaf up to the sunlight and the spring green shines through, you’ll be enveloped by a sense of perfection. A space in between.
In anthroposophical painting, natural pigments such as plant dyes, are sometimes used. This seems important to me. A color that is freshly created or still close to its source carries the qualities of the being active behind that color more strongly. In color bath therapy in Gouda, the Netherlands, the bath was illuminated with green colored light using plant dyes.10 From the research I conducted there together with the physician Georg Maissan, it became clear that the best results were achieved using green plant pigments. The “green bath” was effective in three ways: patients felt better in their bodies, had more control over their thoughts, and slept better. It is the power of balance that dwells in the space between.
Translation Laura Liska
Footnotes
- Christine Gruwez, De Logos naderen, Adventum, 2026. This book was actually my idea, because I know so many people who appreciate her articles!
- According to Rudolf Steiner, the life spirit is the etheric body transformed by the “I.” At the moment, human beings have only a seed of their life spirit, the development of which lies in the distant future. But higher beings, starting with the archangels, already possess a life spirit.
- Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships 8, Esoteric Studies, GA 240, Lecture of August 27, 2015, SteinerBooks.
- Rudolf Steiner, “The Etherization of the Blood”, in The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric, GA 130, Lecture of October 1, 1911.
- Matthew 18:20.
- Rudolf Steiner, Farbenerkenntnis—Ergänzungen zu dem Band Das Wesen der Farben [Color Perception, Supplements to the volume The Nature of Colours,] GA 291a, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1990, p. 156. Here Rudolf Steiner answered in the affirmative when asked whether the seven colors of the color spectrum express the character of the seven Elohim. When asked where Christ could then be found in the color spectrum, he replied: He is behind the green.
- Michael Wilson, What is Color? The Collected Works, Phänomenologie in der Naturwissenschaft, Vol. 12, Logos-Verlag, Berlin 2018.
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Farbenlehre, Zweite Abteilung-Physische Farben [Theory of Colors, Part Two: Physical Colors], § 216, Verlag freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1979. “Nach und nach können in dem ersten Falle Gelb und Blau dergestalt übereinander greifen, dass diese beiden Farben völlig zu Grün verbinden.“ [”Gradually, in the first case, yellow and blue can overlap in such a way that these two colors meet to form green.” Translation by author.]
- In the original German version of this article, I wrote that Wilson answers: “You can see that the green appears where the yellow and the blue disappear.” However, Wilson actually said “… where yellow and blue darken one another.” But I prefer disappear. That is a fact and not an interpretation: the yellow and blue disappear and the green arises.
- Kees Veenman, Color Meditation, Chapter 8, Lindisfarne Books, New York 2024.
