Variants of Golden Dawn attributions by the Aurora Aurea

Richard

My feelings precisely. For me, the RYB alignment has always been as you listed. Just because modern printing technology has created CYM for its own purposes doesn't mean we need to import it into our qabalistic model.

It's too bad that RYB aren't the true primaries. For example, the best red, yellow, and blue pigments for things like fire and water are cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and ultramarine blue. You can make terrific fire colors with cadmium red and yellow, and ultramarine blue makes wonderful water. However, if you mix cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue, you get a greyish, dull olive green; and cadmium red and ultramarine blue mixtures are basically brown, not purple. There is nothing wrong with the basic colors. The problem is that the RYB theory is wrong. Someone even wrote a book entitled Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green (or something like that).
 

Barleywine

It's too bad that RYB aren't the true primaries. For example, the best red, yellow, and blue pigments for things like fire and water are cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and ultramarine blue. You can make terrific fire colors with cadmium red and yellow, and ultramarine blue makes wonderful water. However, if you mix cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue, you get a greyish, dull olive green; and cadmium red and ultramarine blue mixtures are basically brown, not purple. There is nothing wrong with the basic colors. The problem is that the RYB theory is wrong. Someone even wrote a book entitled Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green (or something like that).

If I remember from my oil-painting days (I threw my old paint-box away long ago), the cadmiums are highly saturated and heavy, tending to dominate whatever you mix with them. I do seem to recall mixing cerulean blue with a lighter tint of yellow to make a pleasing green. It's really only "wrong" if you sharply narrow your input options. That doesn't square well with finding "the one hue to rule them all," though.
 

Richard

If I remember from my oil-painting days (I threw my old paint-box away long ago), the cadmiums are highly saturated and heavy, tending to dominate whatever you mix with them. I do seem to recall mixing cerulean blue with a lighter tint of yellow to make a pleasing green. It's really only "wrong" if you sharply narrow your input options. That doesn't square well with finding "the one hue to rule them all," though.

Sure, cerulean blue (which is close to cyan) and a neutral yellow make wonderful greens. The problem is that any single choice of RYB pigments has a very limited color gamut. The GD had in mind that the gamut of the three primaries should be all colors, analogous to the air/water/fire elements being the basic components of everything in the universe.

I didn't mean to drag this out. It is a peripheral issue. I quit (I promise).
 

Babalon Jones

Interesting. Does the book follow and elaborate on the Golden Dawn attributions?

I've only just revisited it recently, but yes it does. It does have the tendency to veer off in speaking of the various "rays" and "octaves of rays" etc from which the actual GD attributed colors come from, which can make it denser and harder to read, for me at least. I tend to take it in small doses, and when I do I enjoy it.

It starts with an analysis of each of the sephiroth, in each of the four worlds starting in Assiah and working up to Atziluth, covering the color of each as well as the consciousness state associated with it. Then it does something similar for each of the paths.