The Color of Magic

[TeaDidikai]

Octarine

So, the idea of "white" magic, "black" magic and a slue of other colors and their magical associations pop up quite often.

Rather that repeatedly beating our heads against this, let us discuss this in depth here in the rehab guild. Some people use color associations and the like in daily practice.

Some limit it to a philosophical understanding of pattern and metaphor while others ascribe a morality to it.

Where do you fall in this scale? How does the aesthetic of lightwaves speak to your spiritual tradition and your UPG and how do you feel about the very concept being built around color and magic.  

[Morgandria]

I think I'm pretty much on the one end of the scale: magic itself has no 'colour'. I don't use colour as a descriptor for my magical practices, since I find it leads to confusion when one person's definition and understanding of a particular color doesn't synch up to someone else's. If I speak of anything more particular than just 'magic', I tend to identify it by method: eg. sigil magic, candle magic, knot magic, etc.

Colour does play a part in my practices. I am highly "keyed" to colour - each one representing particular moods, themes, concepts. Sometimes the context of the colour is just as important as the colour itself.

Because of this personal experience, I pay very close attention to colour in my home, in my artwork, in my jewelry work, in my dreams. I think my only really valid skill as an artist is my particular eye for colour, so I keep it sharp.

Some of my most vivid and meaningful spiritual experiences have been black and white, with one blazing color to significant objects.

I don't think I actively ascribe morality to colours, but I have absorbed the 'scale of good and evil' - the black vs. white dichotomy - having grown up in North America. It's a prevalent theme in literature, drama, and art - I'm not sure I could have escaped it. As it is, often these colours appear in dreams keyed visually as white=good, black=bad....but then when I begin interacting more in the dream, it often turns out to me that white is not as virtuous as it tries to look, and black isn't really black anyway. I dunno.

I am also, if it matters, a synethstete. Words, numbers, individual letters, names, concepts, sounds - they each have their own colour.  

[sol_oriens]

I imagine I'll say more later, but I'm almost disappointed that this wasn't a Discworld discussion. Almost.  

[too2sweet]

I also tend to see magic as being colorless, and am more likely to classify it by what can be done with it, rather than by any certain color. Personally depending on how they are used, spells that some people consider "white" can be used in harmful ways, and "black" can be used to heal. It's all in the way they are used.  

[TeaDidikai]

Ready to be befuddled?

I believe magic has no color, but colors have magic.  

[Violet Song jat Shariff]

TeaDidikai

Ready to be befuddled?

I believe magic has no color, but colors have magic.

Makes sense. Not befuddling at all.  

[puerdemon]

TeaDidikai

Ready to be befuddled?

I believe magic has no color, but colors have magic.

Ohhh very nice Ms. Tea!

On occasion I have associated colors with my spirituality. Most commonly I associate a dark purple with protection as it was the primary color that my mental protector assumed when I was growing up. I associate black with safety, and a burnt red, or the color of dried blood with "evil" or malevolent spirits if you will, as the one time I encountered one that was its primary shade.

Curious, did anyone else play a "fortune telling" game similar to this one when they were growing up? It was supposed to tell you depending on the shade of the color where you would go when you died ("warm" colors, your yellows, pinks, reds meant heaven; where as "cold" colors, your blues, greens, purples meant hell), or depending on the rhyme you used what would happen to you.

Person having their fortune told sits, and closes their eyes while the "fortune teller" sits behind them and begins to gently pound their back with their fists alternating, while saying/singing
Chorus:
"People dying children crying
Concentrate! Concentrate" (at this verse, for each "concentrate" a rapid double pound on the back occurs)
Repeat 1x
"Crack an egg on your head, let the yolk run down" (a fist is brought down on the person's head and then goes to an open pale that is dragged down through their hair and down their neck) Repeat 1x
"Concentrate! Concentrate!"
Chorus
"Stab needles in your back, let the blood run down!" (clawed fingers stab the person's back and are dragged down) Repeat 1x
"Concentrate! Concentrate!" (repeat as in the first verse)
Chorus
"Stab a knife in your back, let the blood run down!" (a fist is brought against the middle of the back and dragged down) Repeat 1x
"Concentrate! Concentrate!" (repeat as in the first verse)
Chorus

"You're at the end of the world, and you're all alone, but you hear someone call your name so you turn your head" person's head is turned, eyes remaining shut. "But no one's there. You here your name again," person's head is turned the opposite way. "But no one's there. Then you realize you're surrounded, and there's no way out, so you jump!"

At the point of saying jump a fist is slammed as had as possible into the back of the person's head (coincidently where the occipital lobe that controls vision is) or center of the person's back, and usually a flash of color is seen underneath the closed eyelids.

"Now! What color did you see?" The person says the color and then the "fortune teller" interprets it as he/she sees fit. Some of the more unusual readings are if seeing yellow, you fall into the sun and die, or blue you land in the ocean and survive, black you land on the pavement and die, green you land on the grass and survive and white you land in the snow and survive.  

[error-dot-tar]

I want to be the only person in the world to use rust colored magic.  

[PoeticVengeance]

I always thought black magic was the magic that painters used to make black and white paintings. O_o

And that white magic was the best way to erase your mistakes on paper. >.>

In all seriousness, I've never thought magic to have a "color" in the moral sense or any other sense. I do note that the mind perceives different things in different ways, so one could see some kind of color as a way of perceiving certain magics.

It would certainly not be inherent and probably just limited to that one person. I know I personally do not see any colors associated with magic, but more shapes and textures.

Channeling the water Aspect has a different texture and feel then channeling the Star/Radiance Aspect and the energy flows appear different, not really in terms of color but in shape, movement and consistency.

Being that this is mind's eye at work, I consider it more of my way of interpreting what I'm perceiving in a way that makes sense to my addled brain. It also makes it highly intuitive to me while perhaps highly unintuitive to others and really difficult to put into words. >.>  

[PoeticVengeance]

error[dot]exe

I want to be the only person in the world to use rust colored magic.

Imagine if you had Synesthesia?

"Wow this magic tastes like magenta. Now I'm confused..."  

[Morgandria]

PoeticVengeance

error[dot]exe

I want to be the only person in the world to use rust colored magic.

Imagine if you had Synesthesia?

"Wow this magic tastes like magenta. Now I'm confused..."

*waves* Flavour has colour and colour has flavour. And some magic does indeed taste funny.  

[PoeticVengeance]

Morgandria

PoeticVengeance

error[dot]exe

I want to be the only person in the world to use rust colored magic.

Imagine if you had Synesthesia?

"Wow this magic tastes like magenta. Now I'm confused..."

*waves* Flavour has colour and colour has flavour. And some magic does indeed taste funny.

A friend of mine has it and says that my voice sounds like orange satin.  

[patch99329]

Puerdemon- yeah I did that. biggrin

I associate EVERYTHING with colour, magic is no different.
For example, Tea (person) is associated with midnight blue or maroon. Nuri is red, hellenic reconstructionism is beige, this guild is pale blue.  

[Sir William Black]

White, with red highlights and a lingering Black impurity.

Synesthesia is one of those things I have never been able to fully wrap my head around.