Colors

The New Yorker has an interesting article this week on the theories of Color Marketing. There is a science behind the colors of the pills you take, the little purple pill, the blue pill. Apparently, color makes the medicine go down. Right now, the world over, the Color Marketers are telling us we love the pale Yellow-Greens, aptly named as the Mint Greens, the Pistachios, or, if you ask me, the "Mental Hospital" Greens. According to the article, Color Marketing began in 1907 (officially in 1915) when paint manufacturers began to suspect that they could sell household paints by matching the latest craze for colors in womens' clothing. Wonder if this was an after-effect of the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Gemini from the year before: Jupiter-Pluto people tend to be a bit more obsessive about style and trends. This first color was a Copper Brown or Reddish Brown that all the Ladies were raving about that year. Copper is ruled by Venus, and Red by Mars and Brown by Saturn according to Rex Bills. Wonder how this fits into the transits at the time, if at all. I quickly looked and didn't notice anything.

Color Marketing officially began in 1915 because the U.S. clothing manufacturers were having trouble ordering textiles from Europe due to the War. They began to place their orders together in one big batch and had to agree on the same materials and colors.

Here's a list of Color Symbolisms from Rex E. Bills The Rulership Book for anyone who enjoys staring at long lists of things:

(Bills says that Venus rules Color in general. I have found that Capricorns actually have a strong aesthetic for color, mainly because their sign has to do with Perception in general plus they're decisive and know what they want. Leos, of course, are the most colorful people and the Water Signs are so sensitive absolutely everything sends them into a tizzy.)

Red:
--bright or fiery reds: Mars, Aries, Scorpio (Leo, Sagittarius)
--crimson: Libra, Mars
--deep blood red: Scorpio (Neptune)
--magenta: Mars
--murky: Scorpio
--red-orange: Taurus
--red-violet: Pisces

Yellow:
--Sun, Leo, Venus, Libra, Taurus (Mercury, Sagittarius)
--yellow-brown: Sun
--yellow-green: (Virgo)
--yellow-orange: (Cancer, Libra, Sagittarius)

Blue:
Venus, Mercury, Jupiter
--azure, electric or sky (Aquarius)
--navy blue: Virgo
--deep navy or indigo: (Saturn, Virgo, Jupiter)
--pale or crystal: Mercury, Gemini, Venus
--blue-green: (Cancer, Neptune, Venus)
--blue-violet (Virgo)
--aquamarine: Gemini, Neptune

Green:
Moon, Cancer (Venus, Saturn, Pisces)
--olive: Sagittarius
--pale green: Moon, Sagittarius
--sage green: (Saturn)
--sea green: Neptune (Moon)
--greenish-blue (Scorpio)

Orange:
Sun, Leo (Mercury, Mars)

Purple:
Jupiter, Sagittarius (Venus)
--light purple: (Mercury)
--royal or deep purple (Sun, Pluto)
--violet: Jupiter, Mercury, Gemini, Virgo (Venus, Aquarius)

White:
Moon, Neptune, Pisces (Venus, Libra, Aries)
--pale-yellowish: Moon
--silvery or dazzling: Moon, Uranus

Black:
Saturn, Capricorn (Pluto)

Brown:
Scorpio
--dark brown: Scorpio, Saturn, Capricorn
--burnt sienna: Neptune

Maybe someday I'll track down a list of color trends year by year and laboriously try to see if there's a trend between transits and current crayon picks. I can't believe that woman makes a living off of picking pill colors. Maybe they should put little pictures of palm trees on blood pressure medicine and baby sheep on sleeping pills.