Friday, January 3, 2014

Colors


Color is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, blue, yellow, green and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, light sources, etc., based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra.

Individual colors have a variety of cultural associations such as national colors.  The field of color psychology attempts to identify the effects of color on human emotion and activity. Chromo therapy is a form of alternative medicine attributed to various Eastern traditions. Colors have different associations in different countries and cultures.

It's a proven fact that colors have an effect on our intellect and they invoke different emotional responses. Use them in candles, cloths, rooms or anywhere you are doing work or just relaxing.  Colors used in magic are similar in that they evoke a response, but keep in mind, response to color in an individual matter, so go with your instincts. The colors must have meaning to you.


Black

Black is not a color, strictly speaking.  It is the absence of all color.  Black is the color of coal, ebony and of outer space. It is the darkest color, the result of the absence of or complete absorption of light.  It is the opposite of white and often represents darkness in contrast with light.

Black was one of the first colors used by artists in Neolithic cave paintings. In the Roman Empire, it became the color of mourning, and over the centuries it was frequently associated with death, evil, witches and magic.  In the Western World today, it is the color most commonly associated with mourning, the end, secrets, magic, power, violence, evil and elegance.  

The German and Scandinavian peoples worshipped their own Goddess of the night, Nott, who crossed the sky in a chariot drawn by a black horse. They also feared Hela, the Goddess of the kingdom of the dead, whose skin was black on one side and red on the other.

They also held sacred the crow. They believed that Odin, the king of the Nordic pantheon, had two black crows, Huginn and Muninn, who served as his agents, traveling the world for him, watching and listening. It was new beginning (as night and winter herald the birth of day and summer), all potential, the root of all things, knowledge of hidden things, concealment and the container of light.

Elemental earth, deities of the Underworld. It is linked to the unknown or the unseen.  Repel and banish evil and negativity, protection, breaking free from bad habits and addictions, deep meditation, opens up deep unconscious levels.

 

Blue

The Blue color ray is assimilated by the spiritual center in the head.  It awakens within a knowledge of divinity. We will in blue - intention.

Blue is the color of the clear sky and the deep sea.  On the optical spectrum, blue is located between violet and green.  Surveys in the U.S. and Europe show that blue is the color most commonly associated with harmony, faithfulness, and confidence. In U.S. and European public opinion polls it is overwhelmingly the most popular color, chosen by almost half of both men and women as their favorite color. 

Blue was a latecomer among colors used in art and decoration, as well as language and literature.  Beginning in about 2500 BC, the ancient Egyptians began to produce their own blue pigment known as Egyptian blue, made by grinding silica, lime, copper and alkalai.  The earliest known blue dyes were made from plants - woad in Europe, indigo in Asia and Africa, while blue pigments were made from minerals, usually either lapis lazuli or azurite. 

Blue was the color of working class clothing; the nobles and rich wore white, black, red or violet.  It was considered the color of mourning and the color of barbarians.  Julius Caesar reported that the Celts and Germans dyed their faces blue to frighten their enemies and tinted their hair blue when they grew old.  It is the all encompassing, all penetrating and omnipresent mystical force of men, a sign of restless motion, the color of Odin's cloak.

Elemental water and elemental air. Using blue to relax will encourage feelings of communication and peace.  Deities of the sea and sky, truth and wisdom. Peace and tranquility, calmness, truth, wisdom, justice, counsel, guidance, understanding and patience, loyalty and honor, sincerity, devotion, healing, femininity, prophetic dreams, protection during sleep, astral projection.


Brown

Brown is the color of dark wood or rich soil.  It is a composite color made by combining red, black and yellow.  The color is seen widely in nature, in wood, soil and human hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation.  Brown is the second most common color of human hair, after black.  Culturally, it is most often associated with plainness, humility, the rustic, and poverty.  Some shades of brown create a warm, comfortable feeling of wholesomeness, naturalness and dependability.

Brown has been used in art since prehistoric times. Paintings using umber, a natural clay pigment composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide, have been dated to 40,000 BC.  Paintings of brown horses and other animals have been found on the walls of the Lascaux Cave dating back about 17,300 years.  The female figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings have brown skin, painted with umber.  Light tan was often used on painted Greek amphorae and vases, either as a background for black figures or the reverse.

In the late 20th century, brown became a common symbol in western culture for simple, inexpensive, natural and healthy. Bag lunches were carried in plain brown paper bags; packages were wrapped in plain brown paper. Brown bread and brown sugar were viewed as more natural and healthy than white bread and white sugar.

Elemental earth, stability, grounding, conservation, protection of household, family and pets, healing animals, finding lost objects, buildings, material increase, to make relationships solid, to increase decisiveness and concentration, to attract help in financial crisis.

 

Gold

Gold, also called golden, is one of a variety of yellow-brown color blends used to give the impression of the color of the element gold.  The first recorded use of golden as a color name in English was in 1300 to refer to the element gold and in 1423 to refer to blond hair. 

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the color metallic gold as "A light olive-brown to dark yellow, or a moderate, strong to vivid yellow."  The visual sensation usually associated with the metal gold is its metallic shine.  This cannot be reproduced by a simple solid color, because the shiny effect is due to the material's reflective brightness varying with the surface's angle to the light source.

This is why, in art, a metallic paint that glitters in an approximation of real gold would be used; a solid color like that of the cell displayed in the box to the right does not aesthetically read as gold. Especially in sacral art in Christian churches, real gold (gold leaf) was used for rendering gold in paintings, e.g. for the halo of saints.  Gold can also be woven into sheets of silk to give an East Asian traditional look.

In Ancient Egypt, the skin and bones of the Gods were believed to be made of gold. The Egyptians used yellow extensively in tomb paintings; they usually used either yellow ochre or the brilliant orpiment, though it was made of arsenic and was highly toxic. A small paint box with orpiment pigment was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Men were always shown with brown faces, women with yellow ochre or gold faces.

Statues of Buddha are usually painted metallic gold, are made of the metal gold or have gold plating.  It is the light of the sun and spiritual light shining from the sun, the force of the universe and a symbol of honor, reputation and power in all realms.  In all world religions, the golden rule is promulgated as a basic standard of human conduct.

Sun-deities, solar energies, and masculine energy. Abundant self confidence, creativity, perfection, wealth, success in investments, luxury, health, magical power, overcoming bad habits and addictions.


Green

Green is the color of growing grass and leaves, of emeralds and of jade.  In the continuum of colors of visible light, it is located between yellow and blue.  It is also one of three primary additive colors, along with red and blue, which, combined in different combinations on a computer or television display, make all the other colors.  Green is the color most commonly associated with nature, the environmental movement, Ireland, Islam, spring, hope and envy. You should eat raw green foods for good health.

Neolithic cave paintings do not have traces of green pigments, but Neolithic peoples in Northern Europe did make a green dye for clothing, made from the leaves of the birch tree.  It was of very poor quality, more brown than green. Ceramics from ancient Mesopotamia show people wearing vivid green costumes, but it is not known how the colors were produced.  The Apache tribe consider the colors green, white, yellow and black to be important as they also represent four sacred mountains.

For the ancient Egyptians, green had very positive associations. The hieroglyph for green represented a growing papyrus sprout, showing the close connection between green, vegetation, vigor and growth. In wall paintings, the ruler of the underworld, Osiris, was typically portrayed with a green face, because green was the symbol of good health and rebirth.  It is an organic life, the manifested force of fertility in the earth and in the sea, a sign of earth and nature, passage between worlds.

Animals typically use the color green as camouflage, blending in with the chlorophyll green of the surrounding environment.  Green animals include amphibians, reptiles and some fish, birds and insects.  Perception of color can also be affected by the surrounding environment.  For example, broadleaf forests typically have a yellow-green light about them as the trees filter the light.  Humans have imitated this by wearing green clothing as a camouflage in military and other fields.

Elemental earth and elemental water. Nature and fertility deities, Mother goddesses. Nature, fertility, growth, rejuvenation, recovery, healing, harvest and abundance, prosperity, harmony, balance, peace, hope, home, plants and animals.  It also often symbolizes money.


Orange

Orange is a color located between red and yellow on the spectrum of light and in the traditional color wheel used by painters. Its name is derived from the orange fruit.  In Europe and America, orange is commonly associated with amusement, the unconventional, extroverts, fire, activity, danger, taste and aroma, the autumn season and Protestantism.  In Asia, it is an important symbolic color of Buddhism and Hinduism.

In ancient Egypt, artists used an orange mineral pigment called realgar for tomb paintings and other uses. It was also used later by Medieval artists for the coloring of manuscripts. Pigments were also made in ancient times from a mineral known as orpiment. Orpiment was an important item of trade in the Roman Empire and was used as a medicine in China although it contains arsenic and is highly toxic. It was also used as a fly poison and to poison arrows. Because of its yellow-orange color, it was also a favorite with alchemists searching for a way to make gold, both in China and the West.

The high visibility of orange made it a popular color for certain kinds of clothing and equipment. During the Second World War, U.S. Navy pilots in the Pacific began to wear orange inflatable life jackets, which could be spotted by search and rescue planes. After the war, these jackets became common on both civilian and naval vessels of all sizes, and on aircraft that flew over water. Orange was also widely worn by workers on highways and by cyclists to avoid being hit by cars, and for the flights suits of the crews of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.

Orange is a power color. It is one of the healing colors and is said to increase the craving for food. It also stimulates enthusiasm and creativity. Orange means vitality with endurance.

Deities of good luck and good fortune. Charm, kindness, encouragement, stimulation, optimism, success, abundance, prosperity, feast and celebration, achieving business goals, investments, success in legal matters.

 

Purple

Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue.  The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as a deep, rich shade between crimson and violet.  Purple was the color worn by Roman Emperors and magistrates and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Since that time, purple has been commonly associated with royalty and piety.

Purple was one of the first colors used in prehistoric art. The artists of Merle Cave and other Neolithic sites in France used sticks of manganese and hematite powder to draw and paint animals and the outlines of their own hands on the walls of their caves. These works have been dated to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC.

Beginning in about 1500 BC, the citizens of Sidon and Tyre, the citizens of two cities on the coast of Ancient Phoenicia, (present day Lebanon), began to exploit a remarkable new source of purple; a sea snail called the spiny dye-murex. This deep, rich purple dye made from this snail became known as Tyrian purple, or imperial purple.  The process of making the dye was long, difficult and expensive. Thousands of the tiny snails had to be found, left to soak and then a tiny gland was removed and the juice extracted.  Tyrian purple became the color of kings, nobles, priests and magistrates all around the Mediterranean.

In the 20th century, purple retained its historic connection with royalty, but at the same time, it was becoming associated with social change.  Purple, green and white were the colors of the Women's Suffrage movement.  Purple Rain Protest was a protest against apartheid that took place in Cape Town, South Africa.

Elemental spirits, angels, and Gods of divination and prophecy.  Purple is the color of good judgment and the color people seek for spiritual fulfillment.  Psychic abilities, divination, counter-acting negativity and black magic, reversing curses, psychic healing, psychic power, inspiration, meditation, spirituality, spiritual power, astral projection, third eye.

 

Red

The Red color ray provides sustenance for the physical body, gaining entrance by way of the breath. We feel in red - activity.

Red is the color of blood, rubies and strawberries.  Next to orange at the end of the visible spectrum, red is commonly associated with danger, sacrifice, passion, fire, beauty, blood, anger, Christmas, socialism, communism, and in China and many other cultures, with happiness.

Late Stone Age people were scraping and grinding ochre, a clay colored red by iron oxide, probably with the intention of using it to color their bodies.  Red hematite powder was also found scattered around the remains at a grave site in a Zhoukoudian cave complex, near Beijing.  The site has evidence of habitation as early as 700,000 years ago. 

But, like many colors, it also had a negative association, with heat, destruction and evil.  A prayer to God Isis said: "Oh Isis, protect me from all things evil and red."  The ancient Egyptians began manufacturing pigments in about 4000 BC.  Red ochre was widely as a pigment for wall paintings, particularly as the skin color of men.  An ivory painter’s palette found inside the tomb of King Tutankhamen had small compartments with pigments of red ochre.

It is for magical might and main, protective power, spiritual life and vigor, aggressive force. The principal color of the runes also a sign of death and blood.  Red and blue were common colors in Nordic lands, and red was commonly used on the sails of the ships (at least those from Scandinavia).

Red is the color most commonly associated with love, followed at a great distance by pink.  It the symbolic color of the heart and the red rose, is closely associated with romantic love or courtly love and Saint Valentine's Day.  Both the Greeks and the Hebrews considered red a symbol of love as well as sacrifice.

Elemental fire, deities of love, passion, sexuality and war. Courage, will-power, determination, speed, assertively, aggression, masculinity, independence, physical strength, sports, competition, conflicts, health, sexual attraction and potency, love and passion, fertility.


Silver

Silver is a metallic color tone resembling gray that is a representation of the color of polished silver.  The visual sensation usually associated with the metal silver is its metallic shine. This cannot be reproduced by a simple solid color, because the shiny effect is due to the material's brightness varying with the surface angle to the light source.  In art one would normally use a metallic paint that glitters like real silver.

Like turquoise, orange and purple, silver has no common rhyme.  The first recorded use of silver as a color name in English was in 1481.  In English heraldry argent (silver) or white signified brightness, purity, virtue or innocence.

The disk of the moon, change transmutation, striving for higher knowledge. A metallic version of white.  In folklore, and now later in fiction, silver is said to do many things, from channel magic, to stopping evil, making magic mirrors, to turning water into a 'Healing Potion'.  Silver, especially if blessed, was thought to ward off or harm certain supernatural beings (including vampires and werewolves) since the Middle Ages.

Moon-goddesses, female energy, cycles, rebirth, reincarnation, healing of hormonal imbalances, emotional stability, remove or neutralize negativity, intuition, dreams, psychic abilities and psychic workings.

 

White

Strictly speaking, white is not a color, but the manifestation of the presence of all color - the complete energy of light.  It stands for wholeness and completion.  White is the color of milk and fresh snow.  It is the color produced by the reflection, transmission or emission of all wavelengths of visible light, without absorption.  As a symbol, white is the opposite of black and often represents light in contrast with darkness. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, white is the color most often associated with innocence, perfection, the good, honesty, cleanliness, the beginning, the new, neutrality, lightness and exactitude.

White was one of the first colors used by Paleolithic artists; they used lime white, made from ground calcite or chalk, sometimes as a background, sometimes as a highlight, along with charcoal and red and yellow ochre in their vivid cave paintings.  In ancient Egypt, white was connected with the Goddess Isis. The priests and priestesses of Isis dressed only in white linen, and it was used to wrap mummies.

White is the color associated with ghosts and phantoms. In the past the dead were traditionally buried in a white shroud. Ghosts are said to be the spirits of the dead who, for various reasons, are unable to rest or enter heaven, and so walk the earth in their white shrouds. White is also connected with the paleness of death.  Seeing a white horse in a dream is said to be presentiment of death.

Today white is the color most associated with cleanliness. Objects which are expected to be clean, such as refrigerators and dishes, toilets and sinks, bed linen and towels, are traditionally white. White was the traditional color of the coats of doctors, nurses, scientists and laboratory technicians, though nowadays a pale blue or green is often used. White is also the color most often worn by chefs, bakers, and butchers, and the color of the aprons of waiters in French restaurants.  It is the total expression of light as the sum of all colors totality, purity, perfection, nobility, the disk of the sun.

Always burn at least one white candle to symbolize and reinforce the contact with pure spirit. Elemental spirits, Angels, Gods of wisdom, divination and prophecy. Purification and cleaning on all levels, contact with higher self and spiritual helpers, aura-healing, truth seeking, consecration, spiritual enlightenment, protection against negativity, breaking curses, exorcism, meditation, divination, inspiration, and clairvoyance. White can be a replacement for any other color.

 

Yellow

The Yellow color ray stimulates mental growth by way of the brain. We think in yellow - wisdom.

Yellow is the color of gold, butter or ripe lemons.  In the spectrum of visible light, and in the traditional color wheel used by painters, yellow is located between green and orange.  Yellow is commonly associated with gold, wealth, sunshine, reason, happiness, optimism and pleasure, but also with cowardice, envy, jealousy and betrayal.

Yellow, in the form of yellow ochre pigment made from clay, was one of the first colors used in prehistoric cave art.  The Cave of Lascaux has an image of a horse colored with yellow estimated to be 17,300 years old.  The ancient Romans used yellow in their paintings to represent gold and also in skin tones. It is found frequently in the murals of Pompeii.

Yellow was particularly valued in the 20th century because of its high visibility. It is also often used for warning signs, since yellow traditionally signals caution.  It often replaced red as the color of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, and was popular in neon signs, especially in Las Vegas and in China, where yellow was the most esteemed color.

Yellow has strong historical and cultural associations in China, where it is the color of happiness, glory and wisdom.  Turmeric, is one of the rare dyes that is also a spice and food colorant.  Saffron was used to dye the robes of the senior Buddhist monks, while ordinary monks wore robes dyed with Gamboge or Curcuma longa, also known as Turmeric.  The name of the legendary first Emperor of China, Huang Ti, meant literally 'the Yellow Emperor.'

Yellow, as the color of sunlight, is commonly associated with warmth. Yellow combined with red symbolized heat and energy.  A room painted yellow feels warmer than a room painted white, and a lamp with yellow light seems more natural than a lamp with white light.  It has Earthly power, a sign of desire and lust in a will towards manifestation.

Elemental air. Deities for trade, travel, knowledge and magic. Vitality, change, progress, contact, communication, and trade. Confidence, joy, cheerfulness, learning, knowledge, mental clarity, concentration, speaking and writing and visualization.

 

Blessed Be!



 


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