Magic Therapy Of Colours: Holistic healing through colours

Chakras

The History of

Colour Therapy

White colour consists of seven different colours and can be split into its constituent colours by using a prism.

The seven colours that make up white light are:

Violet

Indigo

Blue

Green

Yellow

Orange

Red

The ancient Egyptians believed that their God Thoth was the one who developed healing with colour. The ancient Greeks were also using colour to treat various diseases. They had come to the conclusion that the human body contained various coloured fluids - like bile (yellow), blood (red), phlegm (white) and so on. They thought that these were connected with the functioning of the spleen, the heart, the liver and the brain and believed that good health resulted when these humours were present in the right proportion.

In an effort to cure a person of his illness, they used coloured garments, coloured plasters and the like.

In the first century AD, Aurelius Cornelius developed the doctrine of medicine established by Hippocrates where he mentioned the use of coloured ointments and coloured flowers in medicine.

Arab philosopher and physician Ibn Sina (AD 980-AD 1037) expounded the theory of colour healing in his book Canon of Medicine and was the first to indicate that red colour improved the quality of blood, white colour purified it and yellow colour reduced pain and inflammation. Known as Avicenna in the West, Ibn Sina recommended potions of yellow flowers to cure bile disorders and red flowers to cure blood disorders. He also gave contraindications for colour usage, wherein he advocated a ban on red colour in case of haemorrhoids.

Theophratus Bombastus von Hohenheim - a renowned healer, popularly known as Dr Paracelsus (1493-1541) - openly confessed he had gained his knowledge about the laws and practices of colour medicine from conversations with witches. In medieval times, witches were strongly dealt with by the Church and ordinary citizens were forbidden from having contact with them. Dr Paracelsus regarded light and colour as very essential to maintaining good health and used them therapeutically by exposing herbs and preparing elixirs to treat various conditions. He was successful in treating a variety of ailments by his methods and people from all over Europe visited him seeking cures.

During the Middle Ages, colour therapies lost credibility with the rapid strides made by science, which placed colour therapists in a difficult situation since they could not satisfactorily explain how colours achieved healing.

Rationalism, reason and appraisal became critical factors for the acceptance of a finding. Only what was certain and evident was accepted and whatever was doubtful was rejected. Gradually, the emphasis changed from the spiritual to the material. Medicine concentrated on the physical body, entirely ignoring the mind and spirit. Advances in surgery, the discovery of powerful antibiotics such as penicillin and their phenomenal success simply pushed healing systems like colour therapy into the distant background.

All the same, research in colour healing continued to survive in odd pockets, although it had lost much of its significance and no longer attracted public interest.

In 1876, the Frenchman Augustus Pleasanton published a book, Blue and Sunlight, in which he claimed that grapes grown in greenhouses with alternate blue and transparent panes of glasses increased the yield. He also claimed that blue light could treat disease and pain in humans. He credited colours with other attributes such as increased fertility in animals and physical