Red - 5 Minute Freewrite Day 20

Red. In the Middle Ages, red was considered the intermediate color between black and white. Red was the union of body and soul forming the spirit, the resurrection of the phoenix, the color of dawn, sun and gold. Alchemists associated red with the philosopher's stone and the magnum opus (big work), in which the lead (black) becomes silver (white), and eventually gold (red). Red was the union of male and female, too, the color of the androgyne.
In general, red had a lot to do with opposites rejoining to form a higher union, or an original, unseparated form.
Red was the color of the blood of Jesus, too, intended not as death, but resurrection. Original chess pieces were black and red, then become white and red, since black and red couldn't match in the araldic chromatic theory (long story short: try to paint some red shape in a black shield...it would never be more visible from afar than white on black or red on white!); eventually, they become white and black.

But...

Redhairs were ever considered damned people. Judas was painted as a redhair, wearing a cape of yellow (the color of cowardice and betrayal. Attention! Yellow is not golden; gold was red). It was believed that redhairs were soulless, changelings, and jinx.
There's a saying in every italian dialect, I will write it in pavese dialect (the one of my paternal grandparents, from Pavia, NW Italy): "El pussee bon dei russ l'ha copaa so mader e l'ha traa so pader in t'el foss" (The most good-hearted redhair killed his/her mother and threw his/her father in the ditch).
There's a famous short story in the italian literature, called Rosso Malpelo (Red Badhair), by Giovanni Verga, in which is narrated the short, tragic life of a redhair child who worked in the narrow tunnels of a mine in Sicily. The other miners believed that Malpelo's father and best friend Ranocchio (Frogling) deaths were caused by bad luck due to red hair and "evil grey eyes" of the child, who eventually went lost in the most dangerous tunnel and left himself to die.

I don't know why that cruelty. I love redhairs, red is my favorite color, my first girlfriend was a beautiful curly redhead with green eyes and a thousand freckles.

The End.