Violent Prayers: Goethe, Creation, and the Colors That Bind Me

Sumit Kumar
Nov 22, 2025
10 min read

Updated: Jan 6

Black. White. Red.

Accident. Then, A law.

Goethe's treatise on color was dismissed by scientists as the delusion of a poet playing physicist. Newton had already won with his prisms and mathematics. The academics mocked him. But Goethe wasn't wrong. He was asking a different question.

Newton asked: "What is color, objectively?"

Goethe asked: "What does color do to us?"

One question is for laboratories. The other is for the living, the creators, the mystics and me & you my dear readers. I am writing this essay after receiving your enlightening (sometimes irritating) feedbacks and suggestions on my art. I would love to get your feedbacks on this article if any of you brave souls manage to read it through the end. I recently received a copy of Goethe's Theory of Colors from my super sister & elite visual designer Soumya and was unsurprisingly stunned both as an engineer & an artist with its revelations. Goethe understood what Newton's prisms could never reveal - color is not just physics. Color is experience. Color is what happens when light and darkness meet inside the human eye, inside the human soul. Newton saw light splitting into spectrum —measurable, quantifiable, dead. Goethe saw color as the marriage of opposites. The alchemical wedding. The moment where thesis meets antithesis and something new is born. He was writing about more than optics my dear art thieves. He was writing about creation itself.

The Law

The medieval alchemists—those mad poets working in darkened laboratories, trying to transmute lead into gold, death into life, suffering into wisdom—they knew about three colors too. The three colors that have bound me for the past two years. The three colors which have haunted me in my sonic journeys as well and in life itself. Borrowing from Carl Jung who borrowed from Goethe -

Nigredo. The blackening. Decomposition. Death. The necessary destruction before transformation. In music: the silence between notes. The space where sound dies. The void that gives rhythm its power.

Albedo. The whitening. Purification. Resurrection. The emergence of form from chaos. In music: the first note after silence. The birth of melody. Consciousness crystallizing into structure.

Rubedo. The reddening. The final stage. The Philosopher's Stone. The marriage of opposites. The moment when all the suffering and purification culminates in something that lives. In music - the climax. The crescendo. When Adam Jones's guitar reaches maximum gain and the feedback becomes prayer.

Black. White. Red. The alchemists weren't trying to make gold from lead. They were documenting the process of becoming. Like every artist, every musician, every painter, every poet who's ever stared into the void and tried to pull beauty from it.

Color as a Tool

When I compose, when I design sound for film, when I'm lost in a mix at midnight with my eyes closed and my hands on the board—I see colors & patterns. Synesthesia but something older. Something Goethe would understand.

Low frequencies = Black. Sub-bass. The rumble. The thing you feel in your chest before you hear it. The void vibrating. The cosmic hum. The OM. The drone that holds everything else up.

High frequencies = White. The shimmer. The edge. The thing that cuts through. Consciousness as blade. The screaming feedback. The glass breaking. The moment of clarity that hurts.

Mid frequencies = Red. The human range. The voice. The scream. The moan. The guitar at maximum overdrive. The place where emotion lives. Where music becomes message. Where sound becomes meaning. Listen to the guitar tone: not clean (white), not muddy (black), but that perfect crimson CRUNCH. That red rage. The powerful chug. That color that makes your blood move faster.

Lets get Back to Goethe my dear readers. He placed Red at the apex of his color wheel—the point of maximum intensity, maximum polarity, where the tension between black and white reaches its screaming peak before collapsing back into synthesis. I have learned that red is not a middle ground - Red is the battleground. It contains both: the blackness of blood in veins and the whiteness of fire. Red is the only color that pulses. You cannot stare at pure red without feeling your heartbeat. Cannot sketch with red without violence entering the line. Cannot make love under red light without something primal taking over. Cannot hear a guitar drenched in red distortion without your body responding. This is why red dominates religious iconography and why it marks both birth and death, why it's the color of both roses and wounds, why every goddess of creation is also a goddess of destruction, why blood sacrifice was never about the gods - it was about making the invisible visible. Red is the Philosopher's Stone made manifest.

The Battleground

As my sonic adventures declined recently owing to other work obligations, I channelled my energies compulsively into visual & erotic domains. While sketching silently - cosmic bodies, geometries, women who are also goddesses who are also celestial beings - women who move me - poetically & spiritually- I subconsciously discovered these magical properties of colors. Inspired by the visual artist Jean Giraud’s aka Moebius’s works - in Black and White, after some time into my journey as a B & W illustrator, I upon a lucky coincidence stumbled upon a lady which left me with no other choice but to sketch her hair red. Upon completing the sketch in my usual B&W style, I realized that the sketch was not complete. My cyberpunk friend Lara had enchanted me with her absolutely stunning Red hair. And my sketches were failing to capture that. Red had to be introduced. And that’s when I first glimpsed the philosopher’s stone. Choice started becoming Law. In fact, so obsessed was I with the magical Red flowing through her hair - the shade of red I now use - Lara's Red - had to be captured digitally via a professional camera under studio lights & subsequently extracted for further use in all my future sketches! Hence forward it also allowed me to use & understand Black & White more precisely and allowed me to add a new dimension in what I wished to express.

As I am writing this I also realise that I was unconsciously following the same alchemical process during my sound design & music composition journey for Incubus with master Alchemist Rohit Singh Rathore. The scenes were divided into three categories -

White - The protagonist's memories. His past & present. Western classical music by Chirag Macchar accompanied by soft ambient sounds.

Black - The Incubus - The Daemon - The protagonist's fears & traumas distilled - Analog electric music composed by myself with heavily modulated sound design.

Red - The Brutal Reality - What Happened - The battle which left scars - The only scene which depicted raw ultraviolent reality - No music. Only violent sound design. The only scene is the entire film with no background music.

The Accidental Discovery

Almost a year back, during my teaching stint at FAMU, I had the privilege & pleasure of meeting one of the most inspirational anti-heroes in real life and an A/V Alchemist who for years has me obsessed with her electrically tragic ultraviolent films - Julia Ducournau. I was unable to resist the urge to get her feedback on my electro-visual art. I will never forget the look on her face after she looked at my sketches and in her broken english told me - “ Violent Prayers.... Use more Red... Good balance...". From a master Alchemist to a budding Alchemist. The look and the words. The message was transmitted. My work evolved henceforth and thanks to Goethe's beautiful & poetic insights now I reflect. What started out as a way to make cool, sensual, raw sci-fi art had turned into a beautiful alchemical discovery.

Black: The void from which forms emerge. The negative space. The unconscious. What we cannot see but feel. The dark matter holding galaxies together. The silence before the first note. The Nigredo. Death. The womb.

White: Pure form. Bone. Light. Structure. Consciousness trying to crystallize itself. The moment before or after orgasm when time stops. The flash of insight. The Albedo. Purification. The flash of lightning that illuminates everything for one instant.

Red: The blood that animates dead matter. The violence of becoming. Sexual heat. The wound that won't close. The lipstick trace. The guitar at full distortion. The orgasmic scream. The Rubedo. The proof that something happened. The mark of having been alive.

Another fascinating discovery which I stumbled upon my dear readers is the medium - my medium. I have been obsessed with the relationship between art & electricity since venturing into this field 15 years back. Art in the age of electricity. Most of you are aware of my decade old journey as a sound engineer & sound designer. In the world of sounds my fetish for analog medium still reigns supreme. But in the visual domain, the digital medium has taken over. Electricity remains the binding undercurrent in both. Paper and pen don't give me the same creative ecstacy & freedoms & productivity as drawing on my ipad does. Another digital tool which has become a part of my arsenal has been the digital camera ( or my Ultra-Poetess Norah's camera ). Our industrial paradigm comes with its own blessings and curses. This digital visual alchemy is a blessing which I have chosen not to ignore.

Digital Alchemy

I have publicly exhibited my works at 4 occasions so far all thanks to the brave efforts of my heretical friend Nayana Keyswani. 3 of them were simply digital displays of my work via projectors & OLED screens. The audience loved it, felt it, got it - the electricity. The one exhibition where I took small and large prints of my work was the worst - further strengthening my fetish for the digital in all things visual. Electricity has to exist for my work to express what I wish to express. It also gives the three colors - White, Black & Red all the power they need to transmit my electro - erotic - cosmic messages. Especially the power of Red, it gains its violent power even more when driven through electricity. My website hence, still remains the best place to view my alchemical art for whomsoever interested. Only on a few occasions I have bothered to take print outs of my artworks for varying purposes. Unlike audio engineers & musicians, who would prefer that their audience listen to their music on vinyl or analog playback mediums, I as a visual artist, through my visual art finally managed to appreciate the power of the digital.

Now lets get back to our master Alchemist once more. Goethe knew - we don't just see colors. Colors see US. Black reveals what we hide. White exposes what we pretend. Red shows what we desire and what desires us back. Electro - Cosmic - Erotic - Sci-Fi art in black/white/red - They demand - Choose. Live or die. Light or dark. Fuck or flee. No pastel compromises. No safety. Just the rawness of: I am here. I want. I bleed. I exist. My own art reveals this to me now.

Live or Die

I've met many people in my life on this planet across the spectrum. But the ones I remember, the ones who remember me, I now understand - they all understood red. Not wearing it. Being it. Especially women. The way certain women carry violence and tenderness in the same gesture. The way a hand on your throat can feel like prayer. The way some lovers leave scars you're grateful for. The way a woman's voice at the right frequency can shatter you and rebuild you in the same breath. My sketches aren't about women. They became about what happens at the intersection of light and void when consciousness gets aroused. When form desires. When geometry becomes flesh. When sound becomes body. The cosmic is erotic because creation is sexual. ( I apologize to my dear friend and alchemist Aditya Watts for mocking this exact same revelation many years back!! )

Please allow me, my dear art thieves to be even more precise about something sonical, because precision matters even more in mysticism. When Jimmy Page played "In my time of dying" through a fully cranked Marshall stack in 1975, he wasn't just playing guitar. He was performing sonic alchemy. Taking the black (the silence, the void, the blues, the suffering) and the white (the pure voltage, the electrical current, the light as electricity) and creating RED. That tone. That scream. That sound that makes teenagers want to fuck & fight & create & destroy. That's the Philosopher's Stone in audio form. When Maynard James Keenan screams "SPIRAL OUT, KEEP GOING" over Adam Jones's crimson guitar cascade in Lateralus, he's not giving advice. He's describing the alchemical spiral. Forever. The spiral of transformation. Each cycle going deeper, higher, MORE. The spiral is red because evolution requires blood. I am sure my dear readers you will find upon broader reflection & introspection that everything is dutiful to this spiral of becoming in all aspects of life -art, friendships, love affairs, careers, corporations, families, civilizations.

Creation is Sexual

People often ask why I limit myself. "Why not use blue? Green? Yellow?" Because I'm not decorating. I'm transmuting. Or found myself trying to. Like the artisans who carved out superb paleo-erotic art from rocks & stones at the Khajuraho temple - Electricity & Photons are the rocks & stones which I am using to build my own digital Khajuraho. But why not other colors? Allow me to put back my Goeth-ian glasses. Blue is beautiful but it's water, It doesn't create, it reflects. Goethe writes - “ Blue is darkness revealed by light." Green is life but it's vegetative, it's slow, it's horizontal. Yellow is light but it's mental, it's abstract, it doesn't incarnate, it illuminates. Goethe writes - “ Yellow is light stained by darkness.” I had stumbled upon a trinity that makes things real. For me at least, everything else, for now, is - commentary. Goethe describes remembrance & knowledge as seeing the moon's reflection in a river. Under the blood moon though, he writes - "Even that thought bleeds, memory becomes desire."

Conclusion - Goethe's Revenge

Goethe died in 1832, never convincing the scientists. Newton's math won. The physicists ignored him. The reductionists laughed. But artists knew. Rothko knew. Caravaggio knew. Moebius knew. Kubrik knew. Adam Jones knows. Julia Ducournau knows. Nicholas Winding Refn knows. Every alchemist working in darkened labs knows. Every guitarist who ever cranked an amp to 11 and felt the feedback become conscious knows. You and I know my dear art thieves. Color is not what light does. Color is what we do when light and darkness touch inside us. Sound is not what air does. Sound is what happens when silence and vibration fuck inside our skulls. Art is not what materials do. Art is what happens when death and life touch the artist's hands. In mathematics, symmetry is equilibrium. In alchemy, it is foreplay - the poised stillness before the red pulse breaks the pattern open. This is why I sketch in three colors. Not limitation. Liberation. Not poverty. Precision. Because if you want me to draw or compose or design the truth - not the pretty lie, but the actual pulsing red truth of being alive & wanting & bleeding & creating - I only need three.