Some years ago, I read an article about a prison cell that drained anger from violent and aggressive inmates. It was a standard cell, but had pink walls. Shortly afterward, I gave a series of talks at a high-security prison. One afternoon I asked the guard who was escorting me if this particular prison had a similar cell.

“Of course,” he told me in a matter-of-fact tone. “The pink room. It’s very useful.” Before I had time to ask any further questions, he continued. “You should write a book on it.”

Funnily enough, I had already been thinking along those lines. I had studied color for many years and enjoyed experimenting with the subconscious effects color has on us all. For instance, many fast food restaurants use red in their color schemes, as this encourages people to eat quickly and leave. When I was in high school I sometimes had headaches while attending classes in a room that was painted yellow. Years later, I learned that too much yellow causes agitation and headaches. A friend of mine owned a factory and had staff that constantly complained of the cold. When he changed the color scheme from blue to orange, everyone suddenly felt warmer, and much to my friend’s delight, became more productive. Color consultants make use of this information every day.

At one time I lived with someone who perceived colors whenever he listened to music. The term for this is synesthesia, or color hearing. I soon became used to hearing music described as “magenta” or “campfire-smoke gray.” A number of composers, such as Alexander Scriabin and Jean Sibelius, were synesthetic. Sibelius even asked a tradesman to repaint his stove in F Major.

As a child I saw auras, and discovered that common phrases, such as “green with envy” and “red with rage” had a strong basis in fact. Looking at auras helped me develop color consciousness, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that I began interpreting the meanings of the colors. In fact, the ability to see auras was something I seldom spoke about. This was because a friend made fun of me when I told him about the beautiful aura I saw around the organist at the weekly chapel services we attended at school.

At the age of seventeen I joined the Theosophical Society and starting learning about the esoteric and psychological meanings of colors. I had a keen interest in candle magic at that time, too, and this knowledge proved useful when it came to choosing the right candles for specific purposes.

This led me to color healing. Friends of mine were working as color healers, and I learned the healing power of color from watching them and talking to their patients.

Later still, I taught psychic development classes for several years, and this forced me to think seriously about colors and their meanings. Although they probably were not aware of it, the feedback of my students helped me enormously. In fact, virtually everything in this book was tested by my students years before I considered writing a book on the subject.

It was seeing the excitement in my students’ faces when they learned their own personal colors, based on numerology, that made me write this book. The three most important colors come from the person’s Life Path, Expression, and Soul Urge numbers, which are derived from the person’s name and date of birth. They are then converted into colors.

The Life Path is the most important number, as it describes the person’s purpose in life. It comes from the person’s full date of birth reduced to a single digit. Unfortunately, there are two exceptions. If, during the reduction process, you come across either an 11 or a 22, you stop reducing at that point. Here are two examples:

10 (month)

26 (day)

1980 (year)

2016

We reduce these to a single digit: 2 + 0 + 1 + 6 = 9

2 (month)

29 (day)

1944 (year)

1975

We reduce this: 1 + 9 + 7 + 5 = 22 (As both 11 and 22 are Master Numbers, this is not reduced any further.)

Each number relates to a color, which can then be interpreted. The words in parentheses are lessons that the person should be learning in this lifetime:

• 1=Red (Independence and attainment)
• 2=Orange (Cooperation, harmony, and diplomacy)
• 3=Yellow (Creative self-expression)
• 4=Green (Hard work, system, and order)
• 5=Blue (Constructive use of freedom and variety)
• 6=Indigo (Service, and home and family responsibilities)
• 7=Violet (Spirituality, intuition, and knowledge)
• 8=Pink (Material success)
• 9=Bronze (Humanitarianism, spirituality, and creativity)
• 11=Silver (Idealism and intuition)
• 22=Gold (Practicality, charisma, and inspiration)

This is just one of three main colors that every person possesses. Each color possesses its own specific power, quality, and meaning. Once you understand and recognize them, you can harness colors to achieve your goals. That is what Color Magic for Beginners is about.