Color Divination

by Nancy Vedder-Shults, Ph.D.

A profusion of color surrounds me as I sit on my deck: the bright-orange day lilies lining my street, the deep-blue summer sky, the forest-green trees reflected in Lake Mendota, plus the red, yellow, orange and rose flowers in my own yard. Colors provide us with some of life’s simple pleasures, as Alice Walker rightly noted in her novel The Color Purple: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”[1]

As a major component of visual symbolism, color has played a significant role in the world’s religions. Seasonal colors adorn shrines — think of Christian churches with their purple altar cloths at Easter or red and green at Christmas. Color designates a person’s religious station — consider the saffron robes worn by Buddhist monks or the red miters of Roman Catholic cardinals. Color marks the sacred directions in many indigenous cultures — for instance, the Lakota association of white for north, red for east, yellow for south and black for west. It has symbolic significance on religious paintings — for example, on Tibetan thangkas, medieval Christian canvasses, and Hindu yantras. It shouldn’t surprise us to learn that color can also connect us with our inner vision in divination.

Visual stimuli contain two main elements: shape and color. Many visual divinations depend on identifying shapes. Color can provide similar oracular guidance, but I think it affects us in a deeper, more emotionally charged way. Why else would we talk about feeling blue? seeing red? being green with envy? calling someone yellow (cowardly)?

In fact, quite recently the emotional significance of color came to light in school systems on the East Coast, where parents objected to the use of red ink on their children’s assignments. For Americans over thirty, red ink means “wrong,” “mistake,” or “incorrect” and usually a “bad grade.” The parents saw red — both literally and figuratively — finding the color “stressful,” “abrasive,” and “negative.” Instead purple has emerged as the new color of choice for teacher’s ink, seen as positive and reinforcing rather than negative.

Divination Methods

Anchor yourself firmly in the here and now in preparation for your color divination. Once you’ve decided on your question, begin by relaxing and attuning yourself to the energies of earth and sky, using your favorite means of grounding and centering. When you have finished, thank the universal energies as well as the palpable presence of color for the guidance you have received.

Color Cards
This is the most straightforward of the color divinations I have gathered here.

Interpretation of your color often concerns personal experience. As usual, if you have a specific tie with the color you have chosen, that correlation overshadows any associations I offer in the sidebar. The qualities listed there resonate with what most people in our culture think of these colors, but not necessarily what you would associate with them. Beyond that, the specifics of your question may also predispose you to understand the color you have chosen in a particular way. For instance, if your issue concerns fear, white might indicate white knuckles. If it involves whether or not you should give up in some arena of your life, white might have to do with the white flag of surrender. If, however, your question relates to whether or not you need to safeguard yourself, white might imply surrounding yourself with the brilliant white light of protection.

Clothes Make the Oracle
This is an excellent divination method for early morning when you’ve just gotten out of bed. You barely have to awaken for it to work. In fact, it’s better if you’re still half-asleep, in what scientists call a hypnagogic state. To perform this oracle:

You can adapt this divination in a number of ways. Instead of beginning the night before, you can remind yourself of your question before you rise, and then note what color clothes seem to beckon to you. If you wear jewelry, you can also use your choice(s) for the day as color signs pointing to the oracular answer(s) you seek.

Walking your Rainbow
Whether you choose colors in nature or the varied hues of an art gallery, strolling through a place full of tints and shades will probably light up your intuition.

A word of advice before you begin: An oracular result may elude you unless you select a place that has a number of colors, but not an overabundance. Until you feel secure in your own intuition, I wouldn’t choose a grocery store for this oracle. I also wouldn’t walk through an overcast, snowy landscape. Either extreme — either too little or too much color — complicates this divinatory method. An outdoor location in the spring or summer is optimal, because you will find flowering trees and bushes as well as traffic signs or even colorful trash. To begin this oracle:

If you want a simple answer, “first color” is probably the way to go, since an open-ended rainbow walk will give a more complex response to your divinatory question. Of course, even if you decide to perform a “first color” oracle, you may notice more than one hue, giving further nuance to your divination.

Food Colors
In the past few decades, scientists have discovered that the more vibrant our food, the healthier it is for us. Brightly-colored edibles contain flavonoids and anti-oxidants that protect us from a variety of ills. In fact, flavonoids constitute the color pigments in plants such as grapes, green leafy vegetables, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, grains, cabbages, beans, garlic, onions, berries, and many fruits, among others. Some of the best-known flavonoids fight cancer, including resveratrol — found in red wine as well as green tea and pomegranates, lignins — found in tomatoes, flaxseed, barley and wheat, and genisteins —found in beans, peas and lentils.

In this divination method, you consume the color that calls to you. This literally allows you to digest your divination, and figuratively, permits you a longer period of reflection and intuition concerning your query. Choose wholesome foods; the divination is enhanced when you know that what you’re eating actually supports your health. To begin: