Colour scales
-
I would appreciate some help with the colour scale ie king queen emperor empress. I know they relate to the tetragrammaton and Atziluth through assiah and are used for ceremony eg: Venus = green. But how are they derived and do they have other uses and why is the queen scale most often used eg Venus = green.
-
@Coagvla said
"I would appreciate some help with the colour scale ie king queen emperor empress. I know they relate to the tetragrammaton and Atziluth through assiah and are used for ceremony eg: Venus = green. But how are they derived and do they have other uses and why is the queen scale most often used eg Venus = green."
My take is that Venus is green because Venus is the 2nd House ruler of personal wealth (fruit) and green (going green, earning green, being green) seems intuitively linked with young fruits.
-
@Coagvla said
"I would appreciate some help with the colour scale ie king queen emperor empress. I know they relate to the tetragrammaton and Atziluth through assiah and are used for ceremony eg: Venus = green. But how are they derived and do they have other uses and why is the queen scale most often used eg Venus = green."
They were derived psychically (from astral exploration) by Mr. and Mrs. Mathers. There are a lot of criticisms that could be levelled against Mathers (and a lot of them have come out of my mouth), but this one piece of work was genius. At worst, they produced something that has served 125 years of magicians in a practical way. At best, they genuinely unlocked keys of nature.
The scales nominally refer to the four worlds. This is misleading, since differentiated color only exists in Yetzirah and Assiah. So, one can, at best, say that they are tools that represent the ideas of the four worlds in Yetzirah, using emanations of color the way it behaves in Assiah.
In the most common versions of the colored Tree of Life, the Queen scale color is used for the sephiroth and the King Scale for the paths. This is because the sephirth are more representative of states, plateaus, and contexts, whereas the paths are more reprentative of forces in motion. (Compare these to Yod/Fire vs. Heh/Water.) So, for Venus, green is the color of Netzach in the Queen scale, but of Daleth in the King Scale.
On "how they are used" ... that's a big question! One could easily write a book on that one question. In theory, you use the King Scale for Aztiluth, Queen Scale for Briah, etc. But it's not that simple. For example, the four archangels of the pentagram ritual are usually seen robedf in the King Scale colors, but they're Briatic, so I suppose that custom came from the idea that they are "draped" in the Atziluthic idea. (Bad analogy, actually, since the Atziluthic idea would be more interior, not more exterior. So we're better off IMHO thinking of it as their bearing the Atziluthic idea of which they are messengers and voice.) The King and Queen scales get the most work, but the Princess scale has some seriously major stuff about it! In fact, some would consider the Princess almost dangerous, especially for the psychologocially unstable, or those who are highly sensitive natural psychics that don't have much skill in turning their psychism on and off; because the Princess Scale is the key to those astral gateways immediately behind physical manifestation.
In realizing that this made the Princess scale the gateway to the astral (gateway drug! LOL), I created the technique called The Ladders that is in the back of 776 1/2 (also in Black Pearl No. 7). It's a technique for passing a gateway into the astral and then ascending the color scales of a particular principle. I've had some bad ideas in my day, and some good ones - this is one of the good ones! It's quite a powerful tevchnique, both for general exploration and for practical magical work.
Speaking of 776 1/2 and Black Pearl, my Sample Ritual #8, an instruction in evocation, has some good examples of switching off between the scales in a given ritual. You could study that as a practical example, asking yourself, in each case, why the particular color was selected. This is in the back of 776 1/2, or in BP #8.
I'll try to answer any other particular questions (though I'm hitting the airport in the next couple of hours to head up to PantheCon, and won't be back until late Sunday - will only be able to answer things I can do on the fly).
PS - In the back of the most accessible copies of Crowley's 777 (properly titled 777 Revised), he has sections explaining each color in each scale. This is valuable stuff. The gist of it is that the King Scale shows radiant (additive) color, emanating in particular sequences down the Tree; the Queen Scale shows reflected (subtractive) color. Despte this, the color blendings in both of them behave like subtractive color. King and Queen "wedded" (blended as pigments) gives the Prince Scale. The Princess Scale is then... harder to explain, but seems intuitively obvious in most cases after you see the others.
-
@Jim Eshelman said
" I've had some bad ideas in my day, and some good ones - this is one of the good ones! It's quite a powerful tevchnique, both for general exploration and for practical magical work. "
Why do I have the impression that the bad idea had some sort of relationship with the Middle Pillar ritual plus princess scale?
-
@Faus said
"
@Jim Eshelman said
" I've had some bad ideas in my day, and some good ones - this is one of the good ones! It's quite a powerful tevchnique, both for general exploration and for practical magical work. "Why do I have the impression that the bad idea had some sort of relationship with the Middle Pillar ritual plus princess scale?"
Not one of my ideas!
-
@Jim Eshelman said
"
@Faus said
"
@Jim Eshelman said
" I've had some bad ideas in my day, and some good ones - this is one of the good ones! It's quite a powerful tevchnique, both for general exploration and for practical magical work. "Why do I have the impression that the bad idea had some sort of relationship with the Middle Pillar ritual plus princess scale?"
Not one of my ideas!
"Worst that that? Now I am curious!
Of course, saying that something is a bad idea is almost the same of saying “you should try it”.I’ve seen the princess scale being used in evocation by the Aurum Solis guys. I think as some sort of materialization focal point. Sounded like a good idea.
-
@Faus said
"
@Jim Eshelman said
"
@Faus said
"Why do I have the impression that the bad idea had some sort of relationship with the Middle Pillar ritual plus princess scale?"Not one of my ideas!
"Worst that that? Now I am curious!
Of course, saying that something is a bad idea is almost the same of saying “you should try it”."Mostly, I don't mean "got hurt from it" ideas but, rather, worthless ideas - things about which I was all excited, which turned out to be duds. Ah, well, not every recipe works.
"I’ve seen the princess scale being used in evocation by the Aurum Solis guys. I think as some sort of materialization focal point. Sounded like a good idea."
Yes. You have to use it in the right place. See my Sample Ritual No. 8 in the back of 776 1/2 (or a similar piece in Black Pearl No.
for the same sort of thing. -
-
@Jim Eshelman said
"
Mostly, I don't mean "got hurt from it" ideas but, rather, worthless ideas - things about which I was all excited, which turned out to be duds. Ah, well, not every recipe works."What a shame, I was looking foward to get hurt. Now I will have to deal with a injure-free Sunday.
@Jim Eshelman said
"Yes. You have to use it in the right place. See my Sample Ritual No. 8 in the back of 776 1/2 (or a similar piece in Black Pearl No. 8 ) for the same sort of thing."
Cool, I am taking a look at it! I’ve seen The Ladders before but not this evocation. Thanks
for the same sort of thing."