Aktion 23 Fnorum

Discordic (Discordian magic) theory of colours

From the handbook of the UniversCity of Sockovia.
Written and translated by Cpt. Bucky "Saia" Stardancer - Masterphool in the Outer Space

There is also something like a theory of colour in discordian magic. Discodianism refers specifically to some very special colours, the meaning of which should be explained briefly here from a discordo-magic point of view.


Gold

Ah, nice gold. Gold is pure, unadulterated and valuable. Gold has always been given special importance. Despite its apparent futility, wars for gold have always been fought and many people have lost their lives for absolutely unbelievable reasons (see Note 2). In Discordianism, gold is the colour of the Eris' apple. If you look at the apple as a symbol of its meaning in early religious groups, you can quickly see that the apple is often revered here as a fertility symbol and is generally associated with beginning, creation and fertility. The scholairly Phool may quickly discover certain parallels here. Thus we have the golden apple of Eris and because gold is not rarely the color of beauty but unfortunately also of destruction is symbolized here the aspect of the season "aftermath". The apple, on the other hand, symbolizes fertility and a new beginning and stands under the aspect of the season "chaos". In this sense, the golden apple is thrown at the end of the seasons, the cards are shuffled and everyone is waiting for the events of the new year. Maybe it is this deeper insight that connects the gold with the divine, which makes people worship gold and assigns it to strange magical peculiarities. For the discordians, gold is the color of the divine. Eris himself touched the apple and in it lies her extraordinary ability to walk in chaos. It stands for the fertility of chaos and the old gods, but also for destruction and war. Just think of the legend of the Trojan War in its Discordic version of history, in which the only golden thing is the apple and gold is, for once, not the main reason for a war.

Another reference to gold as a magical Discordic colour can be found in R. A.'s Illuminatus books. Wilson and Robert Shea. Hagbard's submarine is also made of gold and hides golden statues in the ruins of Atlantis that were more than just perfect (aspect divine).

So whenever a Phool wants to call the divine powers, the color gold should also be in play. Gold can also be used in lower rituals that are devoted to either fertility or destruction.

Gold:
Aspects: Divine, Creative, Destroying
Seasons: Aftermath, Chaos
Special item: Golden Apple, Submarines
Special holiday: The night of the 73rd aftermath of the 1st chaos
Residence: Anarchy, Spirituality
Direction: Top
Saint: Hagbard Celine
Serape: Billbob Cipherpants
Power animal: Starfish
Reagent: Gold, apples, starfish powder
Element: Boom

Note 1 It is advisable from Discordo's magical point of view to place rituals containing an apple throw at the end of the year, exactly into the night when the seasons change. This symbolic action also reinforces the apple throwing as a symbol for the destruction of the old by the new.

Note 2 An old discordic proverb that I heard from the Dude of Germs at the time does not say "if you want to blind an army, throw gold in their faces".

Note 3: The starfish is chosen as a power animal because it represents the beginning as well as the end, according to Starfish Cult. In the Starfish Circle it is an exploding star in fom by Big Motha Starfish who sends a small starfish to Earth and lets it all begin there. The circle ends with the small starfish returning to the cosmos. This is also where the cycle of decay and depletion can be seen. The golden cut also shows that the Starfish has a direct connection to Eris.

Grey

Grey is also a Discordic colour. She stands for grey face and grey bureaucracy on grey computers in grey buildings. Grey are grey days and the boredom that such days occasionally cause is horrible. Grey is monotonous. A meaningless mass in which all fountains in the grey fog become one and no separation between black and white can be seen. Grey thus represents the dissolution of concepts and black and white thinking. If you think grey, you think monochrome, not even another aspect is allowed besides grey, because grey covers everything. On the one hand, grey symbolizes the monotony or also the stubbornness with all the consequences of just one way to follow, on the other hand, the black and white one will just think that bureaucrats are so often subordinated to being dissolved in grey. Here, as with gold, you can see the contrast inherent in every discordic colour. Gray is the monotony, but it hides all aspects and facets that are hidden in the scale black and white. This represents the absolute tolerance that can be found in the discordo magic context in grey. That tolerance stands in direct connection with the proverbial black and white thinking and the ignorance people show when they simply hide unpleasant things. Since grey is also in connection with the fog, which hides everything from the eyes as a cloudy, grey mass, the colour grey is also suitable for discordo magic rituals that make something or someone disappear. Maybe on a grey day some nice gentlemen who are dressed in black and white, have a bureaucratic background and are ignorant and make something or someone disappear. In Discordianism, grey is also directly associated with Gruad Greyface, as well as with the curse of the grey face and the people we generally call "Greyface". Despite this, for the discordant quite negative interpretation, Phools know the duality inherent in grey.

In the sense of the doctrine of emptiness and the dissolution of concepts as well as the blurring of boundaries, rituals containing the colour grey are often used in connection with the sacrifice of hard drugs.

Grey:
Aspects: duality, resolution, monotony
Seasons: Bureaucracy
Special item: jug, stamp
Special holiday: Bureauflux and every 4 years especially St. Tibs Day
Residence: Empty, Bureaucracy
Direction: Without
Saint: Anonymous
Serape: Ormek, Smith 51
Power animal: single-celled organism
Reagent: cabbages, bureaucratium, hard drugs
Element: Prickle

Note 1 The House of Emptiness uses a jug of water for certain rituals related to bureaucracy, disappearances or conformity. This may sound paradox at first, but it should also. Only together do the benefits of jug and water come together and so two things merge into one, black and white becomes grey. In addition, Larry lives in a jug and Larry is often seen as a protective demon of the home of emptiness.

Orange

Orange is one of the most classic colours offered by Discodianism. It is even so classical that it has its own element. Orange is strongly associated with gold and so it is hardly surprising that even orange has classic destructive gold aspects. Finally, orange is formed from the mixture of yellow and red. Fire is often depicted in orange, red or yellow, and just as fire has a destructive component, fire also stands for enlightenment and light in general. Fire is progress but also destruction and orange symbolizes just that. Progress by overcoming the old. Orange may well destroy, but the old is always followed by the new and Orange shows this in all its facets. Thus destruction can mean that this planet will eventually burn in the orange fire of the sun, but also the old ideas will be replaced in favour of new knowledge. The torch is a typical object whose orange features are more than obvious for initiated phoolics. Prometheus gave fire to the people and with it progress, knowledge and prosperity (gold/yellow colour) but also many villages were razed to the ground by the targeted throwing of a torch, not to mention how many people died on the pyre of the Middle Ages. And so, in Orange, the powers of destructive are united with the powers of constructive and prosperity. Orange is always used when it comes to invoking the powers of destruction or knowledge and creative creation. Orange thus clearly shows those aspects that have such a decisive influence on discordanism. Orange impressively combines the concepts of destructive and constructive order with the concepts of destructive and constructive chaos. And just as the warm fire in the huts and caves of our ancestors brought them safety, so Orange brings us security at least in the question of what comes after the end.

Orange:
Aspects: Destruction, Enlightenment, Security
Seasons: Finish
Special item: Torch
Special holiday: Afflux
Home: Wisdom, Anarchy
Direction: Bottom, Top
Saints: - unknown -
Serape: Maloy
Power animal: Butterfly
Reagent: Oranges, book ash, candles
Element: Orange

Note 1 Remarkable is that the color yellow from which orange is formed contains the aspect of creation and destruction as well as red the other color. Here, too, we find the astonishing connection between the four assumptions of the Discordians about the nature of chaos and order.

Note 2 As described below for purple, Orange is a transformer color capable of transforming something or someone. Often associated with the burning of a fire, wood is more rarely transformed into ashes than a torch or light of enlightenment, which transforms the seeker into a finder.

Bist du sicher, daß du "diskordisch" mit "discordic" übersetzen willst? Das ist als Form im englischen eher unüblich... eher "discordian"...

unüblich = schlecht?

Kommt einfach drauf an, was du vorhast. Wir haben ja das englische "discordian" sowohl als "diskordisch" als auch als "diskordianisch" ins Deutsche übertragen. Falls du jetzt mit "discordic" etwas anderes (und zwar... was?) ausdrücken willst, als es "discordian" bezeichnet, dann behalt' es bei... ansonsten würde ich sagen: Nimm' "discordian".

Purple

Purple is considered the colour of kings. Many noble men and women were described as "dressed in purple" and many high positions, whether secular or ecclesiastical, are only too happy to dress in this colour. Purple as a dye, was and is rare in demand. Whoever can afford it must have something (a crate of golden apples, for example) and whoever has something has the right to look down at the mob from above. That's the way it is. It is astonishing to see the origin of purple as a dye, which is appreciated by the high people. The basic ingredient is the purple snail. Add salt and urine and the dye was almost ready. The whole thing must not only have stank horribly so somehow also remains a silent suspicion that the dyers gave their urine only too gladly into the mixture. This shows the first magical property of purple. For when the high Lord wears a robe of purple, he also carries snail secretion and urine. Purple has a balancing effect where inequality prevails. It syncronizes the room and provides a harmonious balance in which, in contrast to grey, it makes it easy for people to do what they want. Where grey aggresiev and dominant occurs, purple is rather soft, subtle and unpredictable. Purple is considered to be a high, possibly divine colour even in the Christian sect, and it is used to clothe the most important and highest offices or to decorate the most important and highest objects. Through this charge of purple, which has been recalled as a shade of colour, one can safely assume that purple also possesses a certain heightened degree of spiritual and magical nature. In Discordianism we find purple as the color of the Purple sage. An obviously wise man who was presumably dressed in purple or painted purple. We find him as a remark in the Principia Discordia, which refers to the Honest Book of Truth. There is also a legend about a stone of the Purple sage which is said to contain the chaos in its purple purest form. This stone is said to transform (grey lead) into golden apples, which in magical form means that purple is a transformator capable of magically turning discordomagic grey to discordomagic gold. Snail glands and dyer's pipi become a king. For this reason, Phools like to use purple as a transformer color or for transfering rituals. Also in rituals that include the Phool as a fool or a joke amused about authorities is occasionally used purple to depict this. The fool is only too often king because he has more freedom to say what he thinks than anyone else. Likewise, many a king is a fool if he thinks he can control everything. However, purple is also the colour of wisdom that is obtained when the way gives the seeker a saying that appears meaningless.

Brother Ron Oxymo of the monastery Santa Pippilotta auf dem Besen writes to Purple

Purple/lilac/violet (not even an unambiguous designation has been achieved so far) is a highly transcendent color that breaks the frame and therefore stands outside of this color system. Each colour has its own specific oscillation, from blue (low frequency) to red (high frequency), but violet, since it is a mixture of red and blue, has both high and low oscillation. Because of this inherent contradiction, it is also regarded as a colour of irrationality or religiousness (which is not a contradiction for discordants). It is also suitable as a symbolic color for the contradictory DISCORDIA, as YOUR actual symbol color hyperpurple (a mixture of infrared and ultraviolet) is unfortunately invisible to human (and many other) eyes.

Since hyperpurple is not visible to the human eye, it can be assumed that there is also a strong connection between purple and Shmoo (the 5th colour). For Phools, this insight is invaluable when inventing spells and rituals that are supposed to transfer "base" qualities, things or persons into outer space. Here, too, the person to be transferred or transformed is wrapped in purple as a symbol of the transformation that the artifact in question is currently going through.

Purple:
Aspects: Transforming, Balancing
Seasons: All
Special item: robe,
Special holiday: All Flux days
Residence: Wisdom, Spirituality
Direction: Right, left
Morph: Betty (Bapheris)
Saint: - unknown - (the purple way can be used)
Flying monkey: - unknown-
Power animal: octopus
Reagent: red wine, a glass of snails, urine
Element: Piercing

Note 1 Just as purple can be understood as a transformer for the base to noble, so orange can be inspired as a counterpole transformer. Where purple used marble and fine wood to create palaces and temples, orange burns them down and transforms them into ashes.

Note 2 Purple is a soft, balancing transformer. If Orange transforms then with power and the result is unambiguous and not infrequently unchangeable. Purple as a magical color possesses the ability to transform gently. Almost imperceptibly the snail becomes the colour of the king's robes and here purple is also very special. Where Orange is consistent, purple is balancing despite the transformation. The king remains dressed in fabric dyed with snails and urine.

Schmu

The last of the Discordo magic colors forms the invisible. The invisible color is that of the suspicions and suppositions and so some Phools suspect that the Principia Discordia also contains some pages that have been written with schmu and give a deeper insight. The invisible colour is, as already mentioned, related to purple but is rather in opposition to grey. When the spectrum is decolorized, every color in it is grey. Schmu looks the opposite. It covers the whole spectrum as well as grey but it intensifies the colours in it to the extreme. One can therefore also assume that schmu is a color from the inner part of the spectrum itself (a color of the inner cosmos). A common example under Phools says one should look into a star that emits all spectral colors. If you practice this only long enough you are able to see the invisible color (even if you don’t see anything after that). However, this comparison really hits the nail on the head and so schmu as well as grey is one of the hiding colors. Normal people and even the most discordians are not able to perceive schmu at all. It is a very phoolistic colour and from the similarity of the schmu in the outer space the name for this invisible colour finally resulted. Explaining schmu as a color is even more complex than explaining red or green to a blind person. Therefore, we should not even try to formulate a comparative explanation here. The color schmu is described by Phools as the color of the schmu of the outer space and for this reason and of course for reasons of simplicity this name was chosen. Schmu also has in common with grey that it is out of the spectrum. Where grey does not contain any colour, schmu combines all colours at the same time. In the ritual, this is clearly demonstrated by the use of rainbow colors or dust as a substitute for (invisible) schmu. Schmu is also often interpreted as the traditional magical colour of the Phools. However, this is usually done by uninitiated people because the inaugurated Phool knows that every colour is magical in equal parts and can therefore be regarded equally. Ultimately, all colours come from the same source anyway.

Schmu:
Aspects: Mixing, Dissolving, Hiding
Seasons: Chaos, Confusion
Special subject: Eristic focus,
Special holiday: - unknown -
House: All
Direction: Without
Saint: - unknown -
Serape: - unknown -
Power animal: - unknown -
Reagent: Rainbow dust
Element: - unknown -

Note 1 Phools also use schmu to describe the color of the particularly powerful, eristic antifacts. For example, this or that object is said to be very schmu saturated, or this or that book is very schmuy. This shows a particularly strong connection to the eristic energy which maybe corresponds to the opposite pole of grey, which is more associated with aneristic energy.

Note 2 There is virtually nothing known about schmu. This is probably due to the fact that only Phools can see this color and to the strange character of the Phools and the schmu itself. Ultimately you only know that this color exists in the discordic spectrum and somehow covers everything that the other colors can’t cover. This is the nature of schmu because schmu is made up of all colours.