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From Spiritfold, Australian Spiritual Alliance: https://spiritfold.com/Colour_therapy

Colour therapy

From Spiritfold
This is the approved revision of this page, as well as being the most recent.

Colour therapy, also called chromotherapy, is the practice of seeking healing through colour. Practitioners work on the premise that particular colours carry healing energies, and they commonly use the seven colours of the rainbow.[1] Its modern forms emerged in the nineteenth century, drawing together occult ideas about colour, the scientific study of light and psychological research on how people react to different colours.[2]

Description

Methods

Colour therapists apply particular colours to particular parts of the body. The colour may be physical light or imagined. A person may sit in a spotlight that shines a coloured beam onto the body, or, in meditation, imagine a colour shining on the body or being breathed in.[2] Other methods include colour-filtered light, wrapping a person in coloured cloth, and choosing the colours of rooms, furnishings and clothing.[1]

Some methods use water. In 1878 Edwin Babbitt proposed charging water by putting it in a coloured bottle and leaving it in strong sunlight.[2] A similar method, which the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine describes as Ayurvedic, wraps a glass of water in coloured paper or plastic and leaves it in direct sunlight before the water is drunk.[1]

Colours and the chakras

Holistic practitioners who use colour therapy often link the seven colours of the spectrum with the seven chakras, running from red at the base of the spine through orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo to violet at the crown.[1] The Theosophist Ivah Bergh Whitten, who began publishing in the 1930s, taught that white light divides into seven colours, or rays, which correspond to the chakras among other things.[2]

How practitioners explain it

The explanation most often given for colour healing is that colour stimulates the glandular system in some way.[2] Some practitioners also combine colour with crystals, and some interpret what they describe as a person's aura.[2][1]

Scope

What it includes

  • Coloured light directed at the body[2]
  • Meditation in which colours are imagined or breathed in[2]
  • The use of coloured cloth, surroundings and clothing[1]

What it is not

  • It is not a proven treatment. According to the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, attempts to verify the healing effects that colour therapists propose have not succeeded, and most effects reported for colour healing can be put down to other causes.[2] The Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine notes that the benefits of colour therapy have not been studied extensively, and that conventional medicine still regards it as a fringe therapy.[1]
  • A 2005 review in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that a few researchers had tried to identify the scientific principles behind chromotherapy, but without quantitative study.[3]
  • Colour therapy is not a substitute for medical care. The Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine advises that people with serious chronic or acute health problems should not rely on it alone and should seek advice from a qualified medical practitioner.[1]

Traditions and lineage

Sources disagree about where colour therapy began. The Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine traces it to Ayurveda in India and says it was also used in ancient Egypt and China.[1] The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology instead traces its modern forms through the nineteenth-century writers and twentieth-century Theosophists described below.[2]

Nineteenth century

Augustus James Pleasanton is usually credited with starting modern enthusiasm for colour healing. He claimed that alternating sunlight with blue-filtered light increased the yield of grapevines. News of this set off a "blue glass craze", in which people took sunbaths under blue panes of glass despite criticism from many of his scientific colleagues. The first formal studies of chromotherapy followed in the 1870s, including S. Pancoast's Blue and Red Light (1877). The most important early figure was Edwin Dwight Babbitt, whose The Principles of Light and Color (1878) claimed that colour acts directly on people. Babbitt offered no firm data for his claims.[2]

Spectro-Chrome

Dinshah Pestanji Ghadiali (1873–1966) took up Babbitt's ideas, moved from India to the United States before the First World War, and in 1920 announced his "Spectro-Chrome" therapy. He set up an institute at Malaga, New Jersey, and in 1931 the government moved against him for fraud. His legal troubles, some of them over attempts to market a colour healing device, took nearly a decade to resolve.[2] A notice of judgment issued by the United States Food and Drug Administration in November 1950 records 27 seizure actions against Spectro-Chrome devices shipped by Ghadiali from New Jersey, for misbranding.[4] It is an early example of a regulator acting against the marketing of a colour healing device.[4]

Theosophy and the New Age

Ivah Bergh Whitten, a Theosophy lecturer, built on Annie Besant's and Charles Leadbeater's occult ideas about colour. Study groups formed around her teaching organised as AMICA (the Amica Master Institute of Color Awareness) in the late 1920s, and she began publishing in the 1930s with What Color Means to You (1932). She also developed a healing meditation in which a person imagines breathing in a particular colour. Her student Roland T. Hunt combined her teaching with psychological findings about colour in The Seven Keys to Colour Healing (1940), and Corine Heline linked colours with astrology in Healing and Regeneration through Color (1943). Linda Clark's The Ancient Art of Color Therapy (1975) brought colour therapy into the New Age and holistic health movements.[2]


Context

Within Spiritualism

The documented links are courses and books offered by Spiritualist organisations alongside mediumship and spiritual healing, not Spiritualist teaching about colour therapy itself. Around 2001 the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology listed colour therapy, with relaxation, meditation and acupuncture, among the wide range of courses at the Arthur Findlay College, the Spiritualists' National Union's residential college in Essex, England, besides subjects directly related to Spiritualism such as mediumship.[5] That describes the college's programme at the time, not its current courses. In London, the Greater World Christian Spiritualist Association's bookshop lists two titles on colour healing in its Spiritual Healing section.[6]

In Australian Spiritualism

In a 1981 thesis based on fieldwork at a Sydney Spiritualist church, Paul Gillen described a Spiritualist colour symbolism. It applied above all to the colours of auras, but extended to clothing, jewellery, decoration and the flowers brought to services.[7] A development circle he attended was lit by a blue globe, blue being regarded as a spiritual colour.[8]

More recently, the New Age Spiritualist Mission in Unley, Adelaide, says on its website that its past workshops have included colour healing.[9] In Western Australia, a healer profiled by the Spiritualists National Union of WA lists colour and sound therapy among her own qualifications; this is not a service the Union says it offers.[10]

A Spiritualist perspective

Colour has long carried meaning in Spiritualist circles, as the Sydney fieldwork above shows, but that symbolism is not the same thing as colour therapy. Colour therapy grew from its own sources, among them nineteenth-century colour healers and Theosophy. A Spiritualist would treat it as a separate practice that some people value, rather than as part of Spiritualist healing.

A teacher would encourage anyone who uses colour in their own practice to be clear about what they are offering. Imagining a colour during meditation or healing can be a gentle aid to attunement, but it should never be presented as a cure, and the colours someone senses around a person are not a diagnosis. As noted above, attempts to verify colour therapy's effects have not succeeded. Offer it honestly under its own name, keep it distinct from spiritual healing, and encourage anyone who is unwell to see their doctor.

Safety and good practice

The Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine reports no known side effects from the usual practices of colour therapy, but advises that people with serious health problems should not rely on it alone.[1]

The greater risk is delay. Victoria's Better Health Channel warns that relying on a complementary therapy alone can delay diagnosis and medical treatment, which in a serious illness such as cancer can lead to serious complications or death. It advises people to see their doctor for diagnosis and to talk to their doctor before starting a complementary therapy, and notes that the complementary therapy industry in Australia is largely self-regulated.[11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Ford-Martin, Paula. "Color therapy". Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, updated 8 June 2018 (accessed 11 October 2026).
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 "Chromotherapy". Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, updated 8 June 2018 (accessed 11 October 2026).
  3. ↑ Azeemi, S. T. and S. M. Raza. "A critical analysis of chromotherapy and its scientific evolution". Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2, no. 4 (2005): 481–488. doi:10.1093/ecam/neh137. Abstract read via Europe PMC (accessed 11 October 2026).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "3149. Misbranding of Spectro-Chrome. U. S. v. 1 Device (and 26 other seizure actions)". FDA Notices of Judgment Collection, Drugs and Devices 1940–1963. US National Library of Medicine. Issued November 1950 (accessed 11 October 2026).
  5. ↑ "Arthur Findlay College". Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 5th ed. Gale, 2001, via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 12 October 2026).
  6. ↑ The Greater World. "Spiritual Healing" (bookshop category; no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
  7. ↑ Gillen, Paul. The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, 1981, PDF p. 172. doi:10.25949/19431146 (accessed 12 October 2026).
  8. ↑ Gillen, Paul. The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, 1981, PDF p. 66. doi:10.25949/19431146 (accessed 12 October 2026).
  9. ↑ New Age Spiritual Mission Inc. "Activities" (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
  10. ↑ Spiritualists National Union of WA Inc. "Healing" (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
  11. ↑ "Complementary therapies – safety and legal issues". Better Health Channel, Department of Health, State Government of Victoria. Last reviewed 28 February 2014. Read from the Internet Archive copy of 21 July 2026, as the live site was under maintenance (accessed 11 October 2026).

Further reading

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