Chromotherapy, the practice of healing with color, emerged in the nineteenth century as the object of scientific speculation and research, out of which various practitioners created new forms of alternative healing. Modern color healing combined occult thought about color with scientific investigations of the physical properties of light and behavioral psychologists' studies of human reactions to various colors.
Early Beginnings
Augustus James Pleasanton is usually credited with beginning the contemporary enthusiasm for color healing by initiating what became known as the "blue glass craze." Pleasanton claimed that in experiments on grape vines in his laboratory, he had been able to increase the production of grapes by alternating clear sunlight with blue-filtered light. News of his findings led many to purchase blue panes of glass under which they took sunbaths, seemingly oblivious to the denunciations of many of Pleasanton's scientific colleagues. Pleasanton's work led to the first formal studies of chromotherapy in the 1870s, which led to the publication of Blue and Red Light; or, Light and Its Rays as Medicine (1877) by Dr. S. Pancoast.
By far the most important of the early chromotherapists, however, was Edwin Dwight Babbitt. As early as 1876 he had announced his explorations of the means of atoms interacting with "etheric" forces to produce the effects of heat, light, and electricity. He further claimed in his 1878 book, The Principles of Light and Color, that color directly affected humans. He suggested a method by which people could make practical use of his claims—water should be charged by putting it in a colored bottle and then placing the bottle in strong sunlight. Babbitt produced no hard data to back up his claims, and they were soon forgotten by most. Among the few who took them seriously was a young Indian scientist-inventor, Dinshah Pestanji Ghadiali (1873-1966).
Twentieth-Century Chromotherapy
As a young physician in India, Ghadiali tested the chromotherapy ideas on patients with seemingly great success. Shortly before World War I he migrated to the United States and became a citizen. He aligned himself with the emerging community of naturopathic physicians and worked on developing chromotherapy into a usable form of alternative therapy. In 1920 he announced his perfection of "Spectro-Chrome therapy," which he envisioned as an attuned color wave healing science. Meanwhile he worked on a degree in naturopathy and in 1924 he purchased land in Malaga, New Jersey, to open his institute.
Ghadiali worked quietly in Malaga through the 1920s, but in 1931, the government, which had been developing ways to combat what it considered medical quacks, moved against Ghadiali for fraud and tried to have his citizenship revoked (a real possibility under recently passed anti-Asian immigration laws). Ghadiali was at the time completing his magus opus, the three-volume Spectro-Chrome Metry Encyclopedia, which appeared in 1933. After almost a decade in resolving his legal problems, some of which swirled around attempts to market a color healing device, Ghadiali settled into a private practice, which he continued until his death in 1966. His son has continued his work at Malaga, but has emphasized vegetarianism rather than color therapy. Ghadiali's color healing was picked up by fellow Indian-American N. S. Hanoka of Miami, Florida.
While Ghadiali was trying to perfect a scientific perspective on color healing, Theosophist Ivah Bergh Whitten picked up on the occult speculations on color of Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater. Whitten experienced a personal crisis following the death of her husband in 1907. While recovering from a nervous breakdown she was contacted by someone she later spoke of as an Elder Brother, a member of the Great White Brotherhood. He offered her a choice, death or a life as a lightbearer to the world. She chose the latter, soon recovered from her illness, and became an active and avid Theosophist. Eventually she became a lecturer for the Theosophical Society on her chosen topic, the occult meaning of color. As a result of her travels, study groups formed to examine her ideas. In the late 1920s these groups organized AMICA (the Amica Master Institute of Color Awareness).
Whitten began to publish her findings in the 1930s, beginning with a booklet, What Color Means to You (1932), soon followed by The Initial Course in Colour Awareness. She developed the theosophical perspective on color by which the highest white light is broken into the seven colors (rays) of the light spectrum. Each ray symbolizes a set of human characteristics over which a particular ascended master presides. The seven colors also correspond to various other universal structures, such as the seven subtle spiritual centers of the body, the chakras. Ultimately, this set of correspondences became the basis of an occult color healing system. Whitten was quite aware of Ghadiali, and she praised his healing devices. She also developed a form of healing meditation during which a person imagines breathing in a specific color.
During the 1930s, British Theosophist Roland T. Hunt emerged as Whitten's leading student. While he studied Whit-ten's writings, he was also becoming aware of the new psychological findings about the effects of color on human behavior. These were combined in his 1940 text, The Seven Keys to Colour Healing. Hunt moved to California following World War II and became the head of AMICA. He wrote a number of books before passing the work to Paola Hugh and the Fleur de Lys Foundation in Tacoma, Washington.
Concurrent with but independent of Hunt was the activity of Rosicrucian Corine Heline, the founder of the New Age Bible and Philosophy Center in Santa Monica, California. In 1943 she wrote Healing and Regeneration through Color. Heline, in the astrological tradition of her teacher Max Heindel of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, saw colors related to astrological signs. She also believed that illnesses affecting specific parts of the body had correspondences to astrological signs. Traditionally, for example, diseases of the head were related to Aries. Color treatment should be given in conjunction with astrological analysis. Light, she suggested, also stimulated glands. Glands serve as connecting points between the physical body and the invisible mental and causal bodies (which many occult-ists believe each individual possesses). Stimulating the glands with light (either visible or imagined) can lead to the glands secreting healing substances.
During the 1970s, color therapy entered the New Age and holistic health movements through the work of health journal-ist Linda Clark. Her 1975 The Ancient Art of Color Therapy be-came the first of a series of books to reintroduce the topic to a more mainstream audience after it had been pushed to the edge of the occult community in the 1960s.
Evaluating Color Therapy
Contemporary color therapy is grounded in scientific re-search on light and psychological findings on the beneficial effects of color. Such research has, for example, been widely utilized in the design of public institutions, possibly the most famous instance being the banishing of black boards in schools in favor of green boards. It is also widely known that sunlight, in moderate doses, stimulates the production of vitamin D by the body, that colored rooms can assist the healing of some psychological disorders, and the rights colors in offices can stimulate employees.
Physicists have explained light as part of a spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Each part of the spectrum manifests as radiation that vibrates at a specific rate. Visible light appears somewhere toward the center of the spectrum. On one side of the spectrum are cosmic rays, gamma rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet, and on the other side are infrared, electricity, radio, and television. Light is thus a form of radiant energy, and human beings can be seen as living systems that absorb and radiate energy. Many psychics and occultists claim that the body radiates energy just outside of the visible light spectrum, which surrounds the body as an aura. Some people claim the ability to see this radiation, or aura, and interpret its meaning.
While many advocate the beneficial effects of sunbaths, chromotherapists go far beyond to a sophisticated analysis of the application and use of very specific colors on specific parts of the body. Such color may be received by sitting in a spotlight shining a colored beam on the body. Alternatively, through meditation, a particular color can be imagined either to shine upon the body or be taken into the body through breaths. Color therapy has also been associated with crystals, which also come in a variety of colors, and some have hypothesized that crystals of varying colors radiate different healing energies. The most common explanation of the healing power of color relates to stimulating the glandular system is some way.
It should be noted that a variety of attempts to verify the healing effects of color as hypothesized by color therapists has proved unsuccessful. Thus, the sale of machines that can radiate specific beams of color for healing purposes is against the law and can lead to an arrest for fraud. To date, most of the effects with color healing can be attributed to other causes.
Sources:
Amber, Reuben. Color Therapy. New York: ASI Publishers, 1980.
Clark, Linda. The Ancient Art of Color Therapy. Old Greenwich, Conn.: Devin-Adair, 1975.
Ghadiali, Dinshah P. Spectro-Chrome Metry Encyclopedia. 3 vols. Malaga, N.J.: Spectro-Chrome Institute, 1933.
Heline, Corine. Healing and Regeneration through Color. Santa Barbara, Calif.: J. F. Rowney Press, 1943.
Hunt, Roland. The Seven Keys to Colour Healing. Ashington, England: C. W. Daniel, 1954.
Whitten, Ivah Bergh. What Color Means to You. Ashington, England: C. W. Daniel, 1932.
