::Compares 17,345,132.32 intro to magic books::
There seems to be a single cohesive idea in every Magick 101 book you’ll ever find, and that’s the power of colors. It seems that all you have to do in order to fix all of the financial problems in your life is to burn a green candle all night. I mean, that’s it right? Every intro book I’ve ever read has pressed this idea that the color of the candle that you burn or the color of the gemstone you have is really all that matters when you’re setting up your spell/ritual.
I don’t want to say that colors aren’t important because they are absolutely important, but they’re not the only part of magick. I’d say that the color of something determines about 15% of its magickal nature. A red candle is definitely going to influence your magick towards something more passionate than the purple one, but at the same time it’s still a candle. It’s still fire energy, so they’re both going to push towards passion and energy and anger as well as shortness of duration and lack of steadfastness. The red one is just going to be a bit stronger of an influence while the purple will have a little more air and water energy.
Gemstones and crystals are most commonly classified by their color when deciding what type of magickal energy they have. This seems like a good way to go about it since it’s one of the only noticeable differences between two different crystals (similar to the difference between a red and purple candle), but at the same time an emerald and malachite are both green yet have drastically different effects. Remember that stones have all sorts of natural physical differences while two candles truly can differ solely on color. Many things have to be considered when judging a gemstone’s magickal character, and the only true way to decide it is to have an active relationship with the stone. It is important to keep in mind that every stone has gone on a completely different journey since its creation.
Truthfully, there’s much more to talk about with the problems dealing with characterizing the world based on color, but I simply do not have the time today to go incredibly in depth about it. There will be another day that I can delve more deeply into the subject.
I’m glad to see this post. I completely agree that we need to move beyond the commonly accepted associations with color and let the stone/item, energy and experience be our guide. What we really need is that relationship with something. It’s not just about what that stone might inherently do or what characteristics its energy holds, but it is also about what your body, your energy does and how you receive that energy of the second body. In Ayurveda, you try to balance the energies. If you are Kapha dosha, then you need the other two energies (Pitta and Vata) b/c adding like to like stagnates. So there is a subtle balance in determing what effect you will get from using a stone (or anything) for a particular purpose. If malachite and emerald really were both for money, which I think is an arbitrary association based on the color or our printed exchange paper (remember, most other countries don’t have green paper money), then a whispy, airy person might do better with a denser stone, or a grounded person might ground out and get stuck without an airy stone. Or it might be completely opposite. It might be that your system is too dense to be able to translate the airiness of a stone, so you are better off with an earthier stone that matches your energy. it’s all in what you do with it, what you learn about it from personal experience.
And this makes me think about those candles. If both candles are alike in all things but color, then, yes, that is the only difference, but what if you varied the wax content– palm wax, bees wax, parafin, food-grade parafin, or just used an oil lamp. The flame would have different characteristics energetically. Obviously, if you varied the scent, herbal content, etc then that would influence the energetic makeup as well.