Mixing Colours

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 30 Jan 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Nycelle	30 Jan 2004
I know a lot of people use the colours in Tarot to interpret them, but in the course of my 78 week study (now in its, um, second week. . .) I have noticed myself pondering the origins of colour. For instance, Matt Myers' Art Nouveau Fool is predominantly orange and purple. Orange is a mixture of the primaries red and yellow - red to me implies passion and danger, while yellow is innocence and purity, slightly tainted. The red also suggested blood to me, which has connotations of sexual maturity and suffering. Yellow is also a colour of jaundice and illness. Purple combines the passion of red and the serenity of blue. It is also the colour of sexual frustration, allegedly! These seem to enahnce my thoughts on the Fool. Maybe I'm getting too detailed here, but I find breaking the predominant colours down to their primary componants can yield interesting things. Thoughts?

HudsonGray	30 Jan 2004
I think it would, in part, relate to which deck you're looking at vs the color selection available at the time. The Marseilles decks were all back around the Middle Ages, their color choice went with the basics that the printmakers could get in quantity. While illuminated manuscripts have a wide range of color plus beaten gold on them, those were special items & not mass printed. The masses, well they were limited with a 4 or 10 color selection, whatever would look good or stand out on what was 'mass produced' cards at the time. Modern decks are different. The artist may have gone with what looked good to them rather than base their color choice on any in depth cultural studies. White in our culture (well, European based) means pure, but go to Asia & it means death. Wedding dresses over there are yellow or another color. We wouldn't use yellow over here. Possibly the Rider Waite deck went with what inks were being used by printers at the time (1920's) so we'd be limited with the printer's choices rather than what the cards COULD have been printed as. The Thoth deck is richer, but that one waited till after the 1920's to be printed I believe. Modern decks, possibly the artist did base their choices on what you're describing, but you'll have to either contact them or read any books they've done or interviews they've given to know for sure. But every way a person reads is valid, so by all means, see if the color choices on the decks you use do follow a pattern for you. If they do, you've got an extra key to them all that others may not be using yet.

Macavity	30 Jan 2004
I think you can get a good visual idea of the (slightly arbitrary!) use of the artistic "colour wheels" to derive the basic colour schemes of many Tarot majors - Notably from the Rose Cross Lamen? They are kinda/sorta the primary, secondary and tertiary colours too! Definitions do vary though... and a certain artistic license must come into the equation too? ;) Macavity

The Mixing Colours thread was originally posted on 30 Jan 2004 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.