Color Dice: Part 2 - Building a System

Since my color system is based on my personal associations and my energy body, I'd be surprised if it clicked in the same way for others. Not to mention that other things may be more meaningful than colors to another witch - maybe shapes, musical tones, textures, or doodle patterns. I'm going to be saying "color" a lot but you can substitute what you want. And just as the tree ogham isn't the only ogham out there, you can have more than one kind of symbol associated with each concept in your system.

Write down a list of basic colors and leave space under each one. Use the space to write down what you feel and what you think of when you see this color. That could include emotions, things that are that color, energy that "feels" like that color, etc.

Bring your awareness to your feet, and working your way up to your head, scan your energy body. If you haven't done this before, you're trying to sense the energy underlying your physical body. Are there focal points or places where the energy is more concentrated? Make note of where they are and what they feel/look like. (Whatever sense this information comes through, is fine! Not everyone "sees" energy.) Do you associate these centers with different colors, or see how the sensations you get from each of them may correspond to sensations you wrote about in the last exercise?

Even if you don't find centers or don't have a strong sense of what's going on with them, do you associate any part of the body with the categories of sensations from the first exercise? For me, the area around the heart and lungs is associated with green because I started out with that "rainbow chakra" model, and I associate green with the element of Air. So I'm more inclined to think of that center as "the lungs" which circulate air, and not "the heart". But if I did associate it with the heart, it would be worth asking myself if I see green as a color of love.

Raise some energy that's tinted with a specific color and see if the energy has any other distinct characteristics.

Look at the colors of your belongings and home - are there any symbolic patterns you notice? Look at the colors that predominate in your surroundings for a week - are there any other patterns there?

Do you think of any colors as opposites, and how does that affect how you relate to them? I think of black as containing all colors of pigment and white as containing all colors of light, not as bad and good. How does your acceptance or rejection of cultural symbolism around color affect your thoughts about color?

Jan Fries includes three color magic exercises in Chapter 6 of Visual Magick; try one or more. The cup exercise in Chapter 7 may also be helpful.

Compare your notes from each exercise: Do you see consistency in what you observed? Do you have anything to add now that you've done this review?

At this point, you may have enough data to start experimenting and see if the associations hold up. If not, you can continue observing...or you can decide "color X means Y because I say so" and see if that works.

Once you have your symbol set, practice with it! Use the colors when you want to evoke the symbols behind them and see how it feels. If anything feels off, you can go back and make adjustments based on those observations.

Once your first symbol set is working well, you can consider adding another. My color system associates colors with directions, a time of year, a ritual tool, etc.

I wouldn't order any new dice for a color divination system until you feel comfortable with your color associations. Then, you'll know what colors you need.

(Unless you're an unrepentant dice goblin, and want all the dice anyway. I'm not going to judge!)