Colors

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Colors." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/categories/colors.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Colors. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/categories/colors

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-colors,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Colors},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/categories/colors},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Colour correspondences run through almost every tradition in the Atlas: the colours of the chakras, the four Kabbalistic colour scales of the Golden Dawn, liturgical colours, planetary and elemental colours, and the colours of ritual dress. The assignments are not universal, the same colour carries different meanings in different systems, and the colour of mourning is white in some cultures and black in others. This category holds the colours with the attributions each tradition gives them.

Facts

Origins

Whose Classification This Is

The five liturgical colours of the Roman rite, white, red, green, violet and black, were set out by Lothar of Segni, later Innocent III, in De sacro altaris mysterio, and made binding by the Missal of 1570. 1

Whose Classification This Isthe subject's own account

The four colour scales assigned to the sephiroth and paths across the four worlds, the King, Queen, Emperor and Empress scales, are those of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 2

Whose Classification This Is

The rainbow spectrum assigned to the seven chakras is a Western twentieth-century construction, fixed in its familiar form by Christopher Hills, Nuclear Evolution (1977); the Indian sources give other colours. 3

Learn More

Colour Correspondences

Colour correspondences run through almost every tradition in the atlas: the colours of the chakras, the four Kabbalistic colour scales of the Golden Dawn, the liturgical colours of the church year, the planetary and elemental colours of magic, and the colours of ritual dress and the directions. A colour is rarely neutral in these systems; it carries a meaning tied to an element, a planet, a mood or a season.

The assignments are not uniform (red may belong to Mars, to fire, to the root chakra or to a season of the liturgical year depending on the system), and part of reading a colour is knowing which scheme is in play.

Sources Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition with Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland, The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Many schemes, many meanings

Because colour is used across so many systems, the same colour bears different meanings in each, and the atlas sets these schemes side by side rather than reducing them to one: the planetary colours of astrological magic, the four colour scales Kabbalists assign to the sephiroth in the four worlds, the chakra spectrum, the liturgical calendar's colours. Each is internally coherent.

The atlas gives each colour its meanings across the traditions that use it. The planets, elements, chakras and sephiroth the colours are keyed to are treated in their own categories, within Elements & the Natural World.

Sources Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions with Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland, The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Cross-Tradition Connections

Sources

1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. Colours, LiturgicalView the Source

2. The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th edition

Israel Regardie, Llewellyn, 1989the four colour scalesView the Source

3. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan

Kurt Leland, Ibis Press, 2016on Christopher Hills and the rainbow spectrum

Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions

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