IMAGINE GOSSIPING PASSIONATELY about the color yellow, making a pass at orange or displaying a spectacular indifference towards crimson. It would be crazy, insane. The colors of things are, after all, only a laminate—too delightfully ephemeral to take personally. Yet, it is just this kind of rainbow reactivity that taunts and haunts us every day of our life. We are talking, of course, about the archetypal hues of personality.
The problem is not our predilection toward color preferences—but the confusion between these shimmering, prismatic flecks of personality and the sky of pure awareness they hover in. Part of us recoils at the prospect of “reducing” our beloved friends and acquaintances into ephemeral bands on the rainbow of consciousness. Oneness is hip until we encounter its disorganizing transpersonal ramifications.
This is where Astrodharma comes in. By naming the constituent colors of ego (a.k.a. astrological signs) and learning to consciously feel our conditioned biases for and against them, we learn to locate our self as the witness of them. We learn to enjoy our own and others’ spectral style without grasping at them or pushing them away. In this sense, learning to see the world through the lens of astrology is a bonafide path of awakening—a path of extroverted mysticism.
The following is my best shot at correlating color with the twelve “styles of awakening.”
As you feel into them, pay particular attention to the hues that feel foreign. These are the bands of the great rainbow body you may have disowned, and are most likely to either deify or demonize. Catching yourself doing this is, from an Astrodharmic point of view, the operational definition of “waking up” and the beginning of genuine compassion.
CRIMSON RED (Aries)
Crimson initiates, risks, competes—if only with its own previous record. It’s the color of adrenalin, the sudden, membrane-piercing kick it takes to push undifferentiated being into time-bound form—to thrust full a human egg with genetic predispositions or to penetrate each moment with a boldly dreamed story of self. Combative, impulse-honoring and heroic, this blood-stained hue risks everything for the chance to fully incarnate and howl “carpé diem!”
FOREST GREEN (Taurus)
Green relaxes and ripens. These metabolism-soothing hues of nature—the ever-restful, ever-ripening emerald realms that so dependably sooth and ground our robo-sapien minds— return us over and over to a fecundity of heart and art; a sensual savoring of the eternal in form, flesh and finance. Remember: there’s a musky, mystical troll inside that business suit.
LEMON YELLOW (Gemini)
Yellow quickens, inspires— a chromatic tribute to our inner and outer blossom-time. Reaching skyward from stem, a peripheral streak in the glen, Gemini lemons are exotic, unpossessible— forever youthful, pivoting— unfatigued by the shape-shifting nature of now. Proven stimulator of brain and metabolism, Gemini yellows were born to squeeze flirtation into separation, philosophy into sound byte.
SILVERY WHITE (Cancer)
Consider the difference-dissolving light of the moon— the shimmering, milky haze thrown over multicolored leaves and dark trunks. Moods do not validate our unique predicament, they are light-reflecting surfaces that unite us— luminous proclamations of our selfsame journey from sentimental reactivity to sympathetic embrace. Behold the silvery white wisdom of Cancer.
SUNBURST ORANGE (Leo)
Orange radiates and encourages. A combination of I AM red and now-savoring yellow, the shameless orange-gold hues activate healthy self expression— extracting genuine divine pride from the self-conscious reserve that too often passes for “humility.” According to the nondual teachings of Orange-ology, the cheeks of ego were born to be pampered, smeared in a sweet, papaya-colored karma and illumined by a passionately animated nobody-ness.
NAVY BLUE (Virgo)
Formal, cool and resolute, navy blue stirs sky with mud—visionary longing with the subdued and humble hues of everyday routine. This is the color of conscience, karma yoga and the true-blue feeling of repose after an honest day’s work. Inspiring rudder-like principles, this tidy, interpersonally ethical ray downloads a ship shape etiquette into each psyche that keeps our mangy crew of subpersonalities civil in the midst of feeling lost at sea.
PEACH (Libra)
Peaceful yet energizing, the subdued warmth of peach is a favorite among interior decorators and entirely apropos for the sign sometimes called, “the polite Aries.” Smeared onto adobe archways, these organically elegant earth tones balance pastel harmony with fiery individuation—cooperation without collapse. Inside the artsy, sophisticated hues of Libra is a pragmatic wisdom: it takes a delicately tempered conflict to keep oneness from becoming blandness.
WINE RED (Scorpio)
Imagine a vial of sticky truth serum—a face-screwing mash of autumnal berries aged into a dark and dangerous wine. Spill a few drops on the feverish microbial nightmare waiting patiently on the underside of your shoe. Is it vintage red or dirty black? Squirt a few drops on your Lily-white logic. See the charred edges of the holes where the vile, thought-murdering juice burned through? Is it perversely fascinating or evidence of a sick and twisted experiment? A silly question, says Scorpio, who sees everything through the lens of dire beauty.
ROYAL PURPLE (Sagittarius)
A combination of introspective blue and stridently expressive red, purple is the color of the counselor, the sage, the sacred bureaucrat. Mad enough to be mortal, sane enough to disappear— this time-honored hue captures the mood of the student or monk who is “cooked” enough to advance into ego-tempting ordination. Christened by the karma of privately and publicly failing the very souls of men, purple keeps throwing us back into ego-purifying contemplation and self-respecting repentance. Thank god for the holy torment of the plums.
WALNUT BROWN (Capricorn)
Color of authority, realism and hard-shelled boundaries, walnut and its surrounding civil servant tans enclose and even cut us off from the distraction of mood and others’ competing agendas. A friendlier version of big brother black, this firmly veiled but personable hue panels our heart and life with roles and laws, purposeful relations and time-bound agreements, giving us a tangible, unambiguous way of reality testing our so-called “caring” self-image. How else could our tender hearts ever feel at home in the matrix?
TURQUOISE BLUE (Aquarius)
Oceanic yet now-focused, bohemian yet all-inclusive, turquoise is the color of friendship in service to community. According to the Turquoisian worldview, personalities were designed to individuate like outrageous bands of the rainbow, eyeballs should stop claiming ownership of seeing and “evil” is simply a code word for “provinciality.” Could this shocking, mind-altering hue really be the color of the collective human psyche, the great global heart? If so, we have some serious eccentrifying to do before we can honestly say we belong.
SEA GREEN (Pisces)
Strong spine of seaweed, ambition reabsorbed, sea green is the color of flowing, faith and artful submission. Wispy elegance without, naked Sadhu within, this swoony Bodhisatva hue finds boundaries and grounding nowhere except in the feeling of being submerged in a psyche of cosmic dimensions. Like forest green on a mushroom journey, this nether-worldly shade might never have crossed back into the visible spectrum had not so many lost touch with everyday awe—and the deities that peak from driftwood and sea glass.
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