Colors in magick and witchcraft : A definitive guide
Why are colors in magick and witchcraft important? Can paying attention to colors improve your magickal abilities? How do we utilize colors in your magick and witchcraft practices?
There are two distinct things we as humans can perceive using our sense of sight: Darkness and Light. Among these, only light has variability.
Darkness represents all that we cannot directly perceive (we need props like mathematics and physics, for example to perceive things like x-rays and even dark matter) and even phenomenon we cannot perceive at all.
But what do we have in our arsenal, if we do not use these props? The visible light spectrum in fact, consists only of 0.0035% of the total light (VIBGYOR).
And it is in this small, miniscule spectrum that we can use our senses to perceive the light aspect of the universe directly. All in all, we have very little to see and experience the universe.
Whatever miniscule spectrum of light that we can sense directly is always represented in colours to our visual centres in the brain.
In magick, subjective understanding of your subconscious and knowing how to program the subconscious is extremely key. Franz bardon's book, initiation into hermetics (Arguably one of the best books written on training for practical magick) in fact, begins with learning how to perform auto-suggestions.
Through human evolution, we as a species developed our visual centres and a strong sense of color for survival.
Sight makes up more than 80% of our life experience, unlike dogs for example, who rely mostly on their olfactory senses.
Sight of course, is dependent on light, and color is nothing but the brain's way of representing different wavelengths of visible light using color cones that are situated in the retina. Red for example, has the longest wavelength while blue has the shortest.
Colors in magick and witchcraft can play a very important role in shading different experiences and navigating the psychocosm.
Experience of colour shading can not only represent different psychological states but also different aspects in magick.
Magickal color correspondences
As much as there are different aspects of drive in life, magick can be divided in the same way: Love, Thought, Sense of self (Ego), Wealth, War, Reproduction (Sex) and Death. There is also the pure magickal and mystical aspects of life.
As far as our sense of perception is concerned, each aspects can be represented in different shades of color.
If you are a practitioner of magick, you will have your own sense of color for your experiences in magick (take for example, your astral projection, trance and out of body visions). Often times, such experiences will be “color tinted” and this can be used to gauge the nature of the magickal experience.
Often times in witchcraft and magick, almost all your experiences in trance states, visions, deity form manifestations and so on, may be tinted with one unique color of your own. Peter J Carroll describes this phenomenon in his book Liber Kaos and terms it as the color of your magick, or your pure magickal color.
My pure magickal color, to give you an idea, is a shade of red and black (a blend of war and death to my sense of subjectivity). This can of course, change based on the phase of your life.
This subjective sense of color in organizing different aspects of life and magick plays an important role, especially to the beginner in navigating their own sub-conscious realms when it generates experiences.
If you are able to identify the color of your experience and categorize it, you will be better equipped to understand the message your psychocosm is trying to direct at you.
The problem that many people face with using magickal color correspondences is that they simply seem to refer to the myriad of different magickal color charts and their associated meanings that they can dig up online or in books, often made by other practitioners of magick.
The issue with this is that the color correspondences in the chart may not be how you personally perceive different aspects of magick sub consciously, although certain colors (or non colors) like red is usually associated with “war and energy”, black with death and destruction etc.
According to top psychological research in the field of color, different colors can have different effects on the human psyche. For example, the color pink is observed to calm down violent, lunatic prisoners while excessive presence of the color yellow is observed to make babies cry.
However, the main challenge with color research is that it can only make general assumptions for most of the population.
On a personal level, you may find that your mind associates a certain color completely differently than that which is observed observed true generally, for the population at large.
Hence, I'd like to recommend that you find your own magickal color correspondence within your own psyche. This can be mainly done in two ways:
Visualize colors and observe the emotions and feelings that follow. For better success, look at each color before closing your eyes and visualize it while observing the emotions and memories of experiences that follow.
Bring up emotions and feelings and observe the colors that follow.
Remember to note your findings in your magickal journal/diary. This will be useful in setting up your magickal rituals - that is - the color of candles, the attire you wear, color of the sigil/deity and so on.
Color symbolism in magic, colors in Witchcraft: “What color witch am I”?
It is quite common among people in the witchcraft circles to not only give importance to color symbolism in magick, but to also ask the question - “What color witch am I”?
The question is to be not mistaken with the type of witch (which is a whole another thing).
There's a whole lot of effort going on to identify their witchcraft practices to a certain primary color.
This primary color is the same as the “pure magickal color” that I described earlier. It depends on how your psychological structure is organized.
You may for example, be attuned to nature on a deep and personal level. The color “Green” is associated with nature and you may decide to call yourself a “green witch”. Magickal acts pertaining to and performed in nature might be your primary strength.
Now this may sound silly to some but we must remember that categorising, organizing and managing the magickal psychocosm only makes life easier. Color is one of the best categorising elements in the psyche.
If you are a witch who likes to play around with asking a question like this, I would once again ask you to refrain from using online “quiz” apps and color correspondences charts.
Learn to discover and organise the magickal color correspondences in your psyche independently.
Colors of your magickal articles: Magickal Crystal Colors, Candle colors etc.
So far, we've talked about organizing feelings and emotions associated to different colors and the importance of noting it down in your magickal journal. But how can you utilise what you have found?
One way would be to pick the color of the magickal articles and ritual setting. For example, if black in your mind represents death and destruction, then casting a hex spell to your psychocosm would be “black”.
In this instance, you could setup a ritual space where you charge a dark, black crystal. Black candles and other articles can be also used.
If you are using a sigil that you made, you could draw it on a black paper with red ink.
Similarly, for something to do with “growth” and “life”, Green color (or whatever color you associate the phenomena with) articles could be setup.
If you are performing purely visual magick (like in many Shamanic traditions), you could paint the visuals in your visions with the appropriate color for maximum effect.
The categorization you did with colors can be used in a variety of ways in almost all contexts in magick.
Aura colors in Magick
Everybody exudes an “aura”. People who practice meditation and magick on a regular basis exude more aura than the average person.
Some have a “positive aura”, some “negative”, but this aura is that of the feelings.
There is another kind of “aura” that is visual and the most important part about it is the color it takes.
You can usually observe this clearly when you meditate or when you get into a semi trance state and look at the outline of your own body.
The color of the aura and it's strength can be a useful measure to observe what magickal abilities are dominant in you. You can also use it to see where your weaknesses are.
Once again, I would ask you to not rely on online aura color correspondence charts and to only focus on your own subjectivity. I will not be going into significant depth here on what each color aura represents for this reason, as it will not be of much value.
To observe the aura state of your body, do the following:
Get into a meditative state or trance state. Both states would work, but the unconscious nature of a trance state can be used for unique findings.
Observe your entire body from a third person perspective. This can be done either sitting in front of a dimly lit mirror or by visualizing your entire body in the mind’s eye.
Allow the contours surrounding your body to get stronger and stronger. Notice how it starts to take the form of a particular color. Note your experience in your magickal diary.
Conclusion
In your journey as a practicing mage/witch, the exploration of the depths of your own psychocosm is key. Organizing the very many different aspects and phases of your subjectivity is important in this exploration, as it will help as a navigation “compass”. This is where colors in magick and witchcraft come in. Colors are one of the best organizing elements of the psyche.
Maximize your magickal abilities by paying attention to the detail of the colors that manifest behind your experiences, and also by choosing the appropriate colors in your ritual and magickal acts.
