The Ontology Spectrum

It was my good fortune some years ago to participate in an extended workshop on Celtic Shamanism with Geo Cameron Taylor who is a native practitioner of an Irish shamanic tradition.  Among the many things she taught us was a scheme within her tradition that associates the color spectrum with a kind of ontology from un-manifest potential (black) through fulfillment in the Divine (white).  She analogized the scheme to chakra systems, though the color ontology doesn’t associate the energy centers (colors) with points on the body as chakra systems do.  She lead us in a meditation on the colors that left me so energized I felt as though I could run down a deer.  The scheme goes like this:

Black

Potential, the void brimming with energy

Red

Ancestor spirits, our human ancestors certainly but also the universe, the stars, the Earth from which we come.  Red is associated with sexuality since through our sexuality we become ancestors ourselves

Orange

The body as soul, hence a healing color

Yellow

The self as servant of the soul

Green

Love

Blue

Manifestation/expression of the spiritual within the physical

Indigo

Other worldly vision

Violet

Personal connection with the Divine

White

The Divine

In the course of the guided meditation Geo spoke words similar to these: “You are imbued with <color> light.  You are glowing with light, luminous with light.  All of your fears, tensions, and wounds rise up into this <color> light and are dissolved.

As a way of connecting with the color ontology I wrote poems expressing the energies of the colors as I feel them.  Here are a few of them:

Yellow

Bright banners fly in the yellow Sun

Sing glory of the bright Sun dawning

Glorious Self abroad earth walking the
Journey of the Soul

Yellow eyes of panther stalking
Owl eyes spinning, turning, swirling
Deepening trance and piercing gaze
Companion of the Soul

Golden yellow?

Shiny metal pales before the
Yellow quickening, risk taking
Power outpouring, joy exuding
Servant of the Soul

Blue

She wore blue velvet, I
A blue scarf
Blues harmonies of our duet
Echoed in an eastern evening
Sky of deepening velvet blue

We heard the spirits sigh to touch

And sang their lyric longing into the
World of breezes, streams, of
Firelight and of stone

Blue throated song bird floats
Between the worlds and so
The worlds are one

Indigo

I knew the place the bunting lived!
A woodlot and old farmstead clearing
Bright shadowy space with all that’s needed by
A creature from another world

The thrill to catch a glimpse
Of violet-blue feathers flickering
From branch to branch and thought to
Thought and vision upon vision

Breathless sight opening worlds

To the indigo eye
Gift of the bunting whose
Woodlot home I knew

Violet

Softer than soft, sweeter than sweet
Suffusing the highest sight beyond sight
See beyond seeing, know beyond knowing
Personal Devine

Because of you, because of me
Violet emanations suffuse the
Shining void the
Ancient song silent and sweet

Christ begins in violet light
Christ concludes in violet light
Christ in dwells violet light
And so do we

White

Let there be White
Pure White busting
Forth from White outpouring
White

No prism to divide one thing from
Another all thought one thought the
Thought of All

She speaks pure White
Eternally and Her
Moment did not begin
And does not end

May we all be blessed