Golden Dawn Thoth Color Scales Study Group - Introduction

ravenest

For anyone who had it, the Cicero's Golden Dawn Magical Tarot and companion book is a really useful tool to understand the colors. It uses them in a very basic clear way, which assays with Harris's more creative use.

Lelandra's page is really great also http://www.lelandra.com/tarotbook/TreeofLifeColors.htm

That is quiet good (I liked the 'rayed' effects). Could be areference chart for the thread? Computer screen generated color charts? Hmmm ... leaves out the light and latitude problem :)
 

Emily

I know, the meanings for Black on the chart grate with me too. I am a night owl and function much better at night. I don't see black as that chart suggests.

Also I know there are too many colours in the chart but it was interesting to see so many variations so I thought I would post it again. I like the simplicity of the other charts linked so I've saved them - they will come in useful with my other decks too.
 

ravenest

I know, the meanings for Black on the chart grate with me too. I am a night owl and function much better at night. I don't see black as that chart suggests.

:) ah yes .... but, as well as that, you are a mum (comprehending the 'embrace of Nuit' and the value of relationship between 'creatrix' and 'creation' - its a beautiful thing :) ) and a gardener (realising the neccessity of the night cycle in nature - aside; I have a 'Queen of the Night' climbing ...?vine? that only blooms and scents at night).
Also I know there are too many colours in the chart but it was interesting to see so many variations so I thought I would post it again.

I actually liked the list of colors, their display and titles.

I like the simplicity of the other charts linked so I've saved them - they will come in useful with my other decks too.

Yes, that's right, a particular chart of color RELATING to a particular form of Tarot ... or relating to the phliosophy or outlook of a particular deck (and what a collection of other decks you have !)
 

Zephyros

Golden Dawn Thoth Color Scales Study Group - The Fool

Again I apologize for the delay, but I was debating how to carry out the group in the best and simplest way. In the end I decided upon my original premise of posting the color scales, together with the colors of the zodiacal attributions. I thought of posting the notes to Liber 777 as well, in the style of the Book of Law study group, however that proved to be inefficient and confusing, so in order to simplify things I will assume you have all have the book in question. It is a freely available pdf, so there should be no problem. I will post the download link in every post as well, for people who haven't been in on things from the beginning.

I don't hold a monopoly of this, so if anyone wishes to discuss the complete notes not as part of any card, I would be grateful for any insight and help you might have, and I think it would be useful for the thread's name to use the format I did, so that I will be able to post an index after a few cards. However, patience is a virtue, and all things we be revealed in time, and this the point of this study group, so let's try not to get too much ahead of ourselves.

My ultimate hope is to create an index of the colors themselves, so that in the end we will have a list of, for example, all the cards that bear the color of Libra or Fire.

The cards bear many influences in addition to the simple scales, which I hope to bring to light in the course of the group. These include jewels, plants, elements and Harris's simple insanity. In every card I hope to bring to light as many influences as we can, so if anyone, of course, has more sources for the colors, please (please!!!!) discuss them. I am now posting the Fool.
 

Always Wondering

a Thoth tarot student might use The Wheel of Fortune. In Hermetic studies we are trying to comprehend a remenant of the way human thought used to work (and still does in many cases outside the modern 'western' mind set, i.e. everything is related within fields of resonance and each thing is not seperated from another).

Oh, okay. Guess I was complicating things.

E.g. in (more) recent terminology relating to Cultural anthropological studies of Australian Aboriginals they have virtually incomprehensible (to 'us') terms of; the real, the really real and the really really real. (e.g. My firend Lewis, he's really a ring-tail possum - a 'Gurran'. My rational 'western' brain tells me, no he's not, he really really is a man. But on the most important level (relating to his whole culture and environment) he really, really really is [ :) ] a 'Gurran Yalladuhrah' ( Man with ring-tailed possom dreaming), that means his social rights and responsibilities, his hunting rights, his area of land, those animals, potential wives and relationships, times of day, that group of stars up there (and what time of year they are in which position and what planets move through them, etc et). make up the holistic pupose and meaning of the man. There is no real differenace between the man, the animal, the stars etc.
Fascinating.

, in our current context the use of the words Jupiter and Tzadeq are a bit misleading. Maybe we could say key 14. or key 22, and realise that everything in that field is 'any function or phenomena' . But we do need a reference point. Crowley, above, chose Jupiter.

When I learnt my 777 correspondences (for an exam) I thought, how the hell am I going to learn all that? I did it by using my most familiar subject, tarot and cross-related everything back to a card. An astrologer might use the planets, signs and elements, and so on.
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This helps. Thanks.

AW
 

Always Wondering

Without even considering what violet-purple looks like, or lavender ... back to the color charts and ideas about naming colors (I'll post on that soon). 'Your' lavender might not be 'my' lavender.
(Hence artistic license and modualting tonal qualities.)

Color charts are useful as term of reference for exercises like this thead. But where they the charts originally used?
Is violet-purple or lavender on the windsor newton color chart? Maybe the GD or whoever mixed it from the windsor newton paints, if thats what they used.

I hadn't thought of this.
I was thinking somewhere along the lines, change violet purple to lavender by meditating ie. lighten color by mixing with scintillating lightness. But I like your point of view, point of view. ;)

AW
 

Tzadkiel

Hi everybody,

I've been studying colours (in theory and therapy) for about 15 years now.

I'd like to share some of my thoughts with you in regard of the colours of the (Golden Dawn) rose:

>> The three mother-letters are shown in the three PRIMARY colours which can be mixed up to every other colour.

>> The seven double-letters are shown in the seven SPECTRAL colours.

>> The twelve remaining letters correspond to the classic colour WHEEL - three primary, three secondary and six tertiary colours. (The in-between-tones whose actual names may vary. For example blue-green could be described as turquoise.)

In a way there is a difference between the red of Atu XVI and Atu IV. Not in appereance but in rank/order, backround and significance. (For example: the red of XVI being one of the seven spectral colours as Mars is one of the seven old planets. The red of IV is the first colour on the wheel as Aries is the first sign [spring equinox] of the Zodiac.)
 

Richard

Here is the Rose with the letters and colors. I think Shin should be a brighter red than is shown here.
 

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Barleywine

For anyone who had it, the Cicero's Golden Dawn Magical Tarot and companion book is a really useful tool to understand the colors. It uses them in a very basic clear way, which assays with Harris's more creative use.

Lelandra's page is really great also http://www.lelandra.com/tarotbook/TreeofLifeColors.htm

I have the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot but not (yet) Robert Wang's Golden Dawn deck. Is there any reason to prefer one over the other for color study purposes?

Lelandra's color samples are invaluable. I have extensive (although not recent) experience mixing pigments in various media (oil, acrylic, tempera, watercolor) and fully understand that what you think you're getting on the palette is often not what you actually see when you apply paint to surface. Every medium behaves differently, and adjustments invariably have to be made. It's nice to have a ready reference.

Even getting your head around all of the color variants to the point that you can comfortably relate them back to their qabalistic origins is a mammoth undertaking. Actually applying them correctly to the task of creating individual cards would seem to be monumental. First the creator has to decide which symbols to portray (e.g. "Why a pelican? Why a tiger and not a dog?") and then deduce which colors are most symbolically suitable for each one. Paul Foster Case made a stab at explaining esoterically why so-and-so has a white cloak and yellow hair, but I know of no attempts to systematically codify each of the commonly-used tarot symbols according to the color or colors best suited to their purpose as part of a card's selected imagery. Artistic license must certainly enter in, but I doubt even an artist as assured as Frieda Harris had much of a free hand with AC holding her accountable to his unique vision. If the colors in the Thoth deck apparently deviate from the ideal, I would venture to say that either Crowley had a good reason for it, or Harris was wrestling with uncooperative performance of the medium. (Another possibility is that age has taken its toll on the purity of the pigments, not all of which are persistently stable.)

I know a little about the difficulty since I've been creating what can only be described as "qabalistic heraldry," using numerological reduction and gematria to produce a kind of magical "coat-of-arms" derived from a person's name. Considerable discernment and discretion are required to ascribe the "right" colors to each of the symbolic elements, using the color correspondence tables and other sources, and then to successfully apply them in a way that gels aesthetically. It's challenging but also a lot of fun.

ETA: Here is a sample. Not tarot and very far from great art, but it gets the point across using symbols and colors appropriate to the message. You should be able to discern the qabalistic attributions for many of the elements, although some are from other esoteric traditions. (Public domain clip art pasted up and colored by me using colored pencils and artist's watercolor markers.)

http://i1309.photobucket.com/albums/s624/Zaphodor/NancySigilColorFinal.jpg
 

Aeon418

Aleister Crowley said:
The four scales of colours (Columns XV.XVIII) are attributed to the four letters of Tetragrammaton. The King Scale represents the root of colour; that is, a relation is asserted between the essential significance of colour in the Atziluthic world, and that of the path understood as well as possible, in the light especially of Columns II, VI and XIV. But the King Sclae represents an essence of equal depth with the columns mentioned. It is an attribution of the same order as they; i.e. it is a primary expression of the essential ideas.
Always Wondering said:
So that is all well and fine, “essence of equal depth with the colums mentioned” is a little tricky, I can only imagine it reaches down to Malkuth?

What Crowley is getting at here is summed up in the last line where he says the King scale colours are "a primary expression of the essential ideas." Becase the King Scale is the the first emanation of colour at the Atziluthic level it is assumed to be a truer and clearer expression of the fundamental nature the Sephiroth and Paths. The other colour scales, while still important, represent movement away from the initial source.

Aleister Crowley said:
By "Tzedeq" we should understand any function of a phenomenon which partakes of the nature of Jupiter. At the same time the Heavens of Assiah do not refer directly to pure number but indirectly through the astrological and cosmographical conventions.
Always Wondering said:

In this instance Crowley is pointing out that the conventions of astrology play a greater part in this column than the actual numbers of the Sephiroth or Paths. Although we can classify phenomena according to astrological convention (i.e. Jupiter type things go in the Jupiter file) they only correspond to the numbers indirectly. Using the Tzedeq example we might see something and decide that it corresponds to the nature of Tzedeq/Jupiter. This also means that it corresponds to Chesed and the number 4, but the connection to Chesed is indirect because we've come via Tzedeq/Jupiter.

Aleister Crowley said:
8. Violet-purple. Should this not be lavender? Meditate.
Always Wondering said:
What do you all make of this?

I don't make much of it. It reads like a note that Crowley made for himself. (The extra material in 777 revised comes from Crowley's unpublished notes and annotations in his personal copy of 777.) I suspect that in this case Crowley was merely querying the correspondence and making a note to meditate on it.

In the Book of Thoth (p.281) the corresponding colour is simply Violet.