I’ve come to really look forward to Pantone’s Color of the Year selections. 2022’s color was Very Peri, an absolutely wild and original dark periwinkle blue that I cannot get enough of. The most interesting thing about Very Peri is that it’s a colour they created, that didn’t really exist anywhere else before. Colour is one of my most-used magical tools and I was excited to discover the magical meanings behind a brand new colour through research, trial and error. (yes yes, NERD ALERT)
For those who don’t know, Pantone is a “color institute” that studies and catalogues colours, and of course sells things in these colours they create. Each year they select a colour that they feel exemplifies the state of the world, and inspires you as you move forward into a new year. The reason I love this is because this is something I do on a personal level! Every year seems to resonate with a particular colour (or colours) in my life. I notice the colour everywhere, all of a sudden I’m wearing it all the time, or I find myself seeking it out in crystals and flowers and candles when I work magic. It’s not always on purpose, but it is a bit obvious when I look back. Colours all have magical associations and the colours that reach out to me every year reflect some of the things I go through and create in that time. This year’s Pantone colour is Viva Magenta, a vibrant purpleish, pinkish, red that gets the blood pumping and just captivates the mind. It’s such an attractive, meaning magnetic, colour with lots of magical potential.
Magenta Magical Meanings
Magenta is a vivid purplish pink that reads as a warm colour IRL but digitally is quite cold. The digital version of magenta – that bright purple-pink you might associated with Microsoft Paint, is a bit much for me, but in real life I find it both warm and deep, cool like the earth (instead of the ocean) but with the warmth of rushing blood. If you were creating the colour with paint you’d mix together blue and red to make a violet-toned purple and add a rich yellow to bring in the earthy tone needed for the final colour. Magenta is considered an extra-spectral colour, which means it’s not a part of the regular light spectrum and can’t be produced with a single beam of light and a prism like Isaac Newton. You can, of course, create magenta with multiple wavelengths and it’s super interesting that a magenta colour is so common in strings of Christmas lights in recent years. I feel it adds a distinctly whimsical and fascinating tone to strings of multicolour lights that have been mostly unchanged since they were invented.
To determine the magical properties of Pantone’s Viva Magenta in particular, we have to look at both the intentions behind it’s choosing and the colours that blend together to make this fascinating shade.
Blue is the colour of the intangible, the invisible, and the spiritual while red represents all things living, moving, and loving. Like Very Peri, Viva Magenta is simultaneously a hot and cool colour, both blue and red at once. It bridges the gap between the spiritual and material and expresses the human need to live in both worlds at once. It’s dreamy and cool but also sexy and hot. It’s hot pink passion and cosmic ultraviolet at the same time. Here’s what the Executive Director of Pantone said about the colour:
In this age of technology, we look to draw inspiration from nature and what is real. PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta descends from the red family, and is inspired by the red of cochineal, one of the most precious dyes belonging to the natural dye family as well as one of the strongest and brightest the world has known.
Rooted in the primordial, PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta reconnects us to original matter. Invoking the forces of nature, PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta galvanizes our spirit, helping us to build our inner strength.
Leatrice Eiseman
Executive Director, Pantone Color Institute
This colour straddles the worlds of the mundane and the magical, but it also exists in both the future and the past with it’s roots in the colour of Cochineal or Carmine, one of the oldest natural pigments in the whole world. It’s an ancient colour made modern for a world constantly in flux. Magically speaking, aren’t witches always trying to combine the ancient ways with those of today? It’s innovative, just like us, and that makes it an amazingly powerful colours for witches and magical practitioners of all backgrounds.
In terms of what branches of magic this colour could be used for, I think the case could be made for just about anything. Love and sex? For sure. Success and abundance? Yes! Especially if it’s rooted in your own ambition and drive. Anything to do with the idea of “not only surviving, but thriving” can be enhanced by the addition of magenta. It’s a colour of finding your soul’s purpose and bringing that energy into the real world. In expanded chakra systems, magenta is the colour of the Soul Star Chakra which exists outside of our physical body right above the crown. This chakra is our access to the akashic records, past lives, and the voyage of our soul. It’s where the information of where we’re going and were we’ve been is stored, and it’s through this chakra that we harness spiritual truth and creativity to bring those spiritual concepts into the living world. Magenta is, therefore, THE colour for making your dreams a reality and communicating what lives in your soul.
Chakra: Soul Star
Planets/Zodiac: Venus and Mercury; Libra
Element: Aether/spirit
Magical keywords: strength, vigor, bravery, fearlessness, exuberance, joy, optimism, power, passion, experimentation, bold self-expression, audacious, inclusive, primordial, ancient, intensity, abundance, satisfaction, attraction, technology, innovation, past lives, the akashic records
Magenta in History and Culture
The first ever synthetic dye was produced accidentally in 1856 by William Henry Perkin while attempting to create a synthetic malaria vaccine. “Mauvine” produced a soft purple we still recognize as Mauve that has a bit more grey and blue than a light shade of magenta. (I’m actually reading a book about this discovery right now, and it’s fascinating!) In the wake of this invention, other chemists started working on synthetic colours and in 1859 François-Emmanuel Verguin created a new colour he called Fuchsine, after the flower of the fuchsia plant. A year later, two British chemists, Chambers Nicolson and George Maule, created a similar reddish-pink and called it Magenta, after a battle in a town of the same name in Lombardy, Italy and the colour just took off. To this day, the names Fuchsia and Magenta are often used interchangeably. It’s interesting that the first synthetic dyes were all purple colours because the first coloured glass in the world was made with Manganese, which created a mauveish colour! Purple is the colour of magic and innovation for a reason!
In the 1890s magenta found a new purpose in the world of printing. Magenta may not be the most common colour out in the natural world, but in the printing world it is a primary colour. In kindergarten you probably learned that red, blue, and yellow are primary colours and that they can be used to create every other colour. They are the root of all other colours. When it comes to inks and dyes, however, these primary colours when mixed together come out very muddy. Instead, we use a model that hinges on magenta, cyan (a very bright blue), and yellow in much brighter tones. That makes magenta a top tier colour for any magic involving technology, printing, or photography, which is why I associate it with Mercury.
The dye wasn’t just for newspapers and photographs, of course, painters around this time also found inspiration in this colour that combined the magic of heaven and earth.
Psyche, the Greek goddess of the Soul was depicted in magenta twice by painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The colour is perfect to show both her relationship to love and eroticism through her husband Eros, and her connection to the soul and love that nurtures us on a deep and immortal level.
In the early 1900s artists like Henri Matisse embraced bold colours and daring techniques in their work over trying to present any sort of realism, and magenta was used to shock and fascinate people. It allowed people to see the world in a new way without the trappings of what is “normal”.
Psychedelic art in the 1960s also embraced Magenta for all of these reasons combined. It had become a colour of subverting the norm but was indelibly tied to love and spirituality.
Magenta Magical Ingredients
In nature, Magenta is mainly found in flowers and serves to signal to pollinators that juicy nectar can be found within. Most flowers of this colour are found in tropical southern regions and often make us think of warm, humid environments full of buzzing bees and hummingbirds. The most obvious choice when looking to work with natural magenta magic is its former namesake, the Fuchsia flower.
Europeans first came into contact with Fuschia on the island of Hispaniola, or the Dominican republic and Haiti, in the 1690s and in the 1800s it became very popular in gardens throughout the british isles where it oddly thrives. Most Fuchsia is indigenous to Central and South America, but there are a few varieties that grow in Tahiti and New Zealand. Fuchsia excorticata‘s Maori name is kōtukutuku and was used extensively as a food, a natural dye, and was added to vapor baths after childbirth to aid healing. Fuchsia doesn’t have many established magical uses in witchcraft, but it can be used for all the purposes of the colour magenta above as well as working with the heart chakra. Fuchsia flower essence is used to help release difficult emotional issues from the heart, making space for transformation and healing.
The shade of Magenta chosen by Pantone has it’s own specific vibes, though. Viva Magenta has a little more of an edge than we find in the Fuchsia flower, and to capture this specific energy look to orchids, dahlias, and one of my personal faves, snapdragons.
The magnetic passion of the colour is like, Orchid’s whole THING. Orchids are Venusian in nature and used for sex, love, pleasure, uniqueness and self love, and exemplifying goddess energy. They are beautiful in an otherworldly way. Tess Whitehurst recommends adding orchid flower essence to champagne and pink wine in her book The Magic of Flowers for everything from cultivating sex and romance to success and wealth.
Viva Magenta’s connection to the world of spirit and soul is exemplified in Dahlia flowers, which are all about mystery and dreams. Bringing the flowers into your room or taking the flower essence can help you connect to realms like the spirit world and that of the akashic records. This flower can also help you connect with and understand occult or magical information, so it makes a good study guide for those on a spiritual journey.
Snapdragon brings the same energy, strength, and fire to magic as Viva Magenta. In the Magic of Flowers, Tess Whitehurst recommends it for owning your power, discovering and expressing the truth, and spiritual protection. Snapdragon brings the heat! It can be combined with orchids in love spells to help find a partner that respects your agency and individuality, with dahlia to keep you safe while exploring the spiritual realms, and used on it’s own to help you feel confident and strong in any situation.
When I went searching for Magenta crystals I realized that almost none of them are in “pink” categories, but are rather red stones. Pink crystals tend to veer lighter and brighter, like rose quartz, but some red crystals do have the violet undertones we need to make magenta. It turns out Magenta flowers are pink but Magenta stones are red. NEAT. Pink crystals are thought to have softer energy while red is active and fast. Pink is watery but red is firey. This is a perfect example of the duality of Magenta’s magic.
Garnet is the most accessible stone on the list so let’s start there. Though this is often thought to be a purely red stone, some garnet does have purple tones that push it closer to magenta, especially this variety chosen by Pantone. Garnet is a root chakra stone that exemplifies Viva Magenta’s associations with power, passion, and strength. It’s been in use since ancient times for healing, adornment, and spiritual purposes. It can help you focus on your own growth and development, and provide the motivation to make changes in your life.
The rest of these crystals are fairly new finds or are rare and a little harder to get hold of, but if you can they’re wonderful magical tools. They are all associated with the heart chakra and can help move stuck and painful emotions, open the heart to love, and help you express your authentic self without fear. Ruby Aura Quartz is clear quartz bonded with metals like platinum, silver and gold to produce this wild magenta colour with an iridescent sheen. In addition to it’s loving qualities, it’s a great stone for creativity and vitality. It helps you feel alive with joy. Ruby Star (or Star Ruby) is a variety of Ruby that is built in such a way that light reflects out the center like a star. (Fun fact: Sapphire also has a star version!) Ruby Star has very strong healing powers and is especially great at releasing anger and protecting you from anger lobbed at you by others. It’s also a great amplifier of your own energy, which is why it’s recommended to those who focus their healing efforts outward. Rubellite, a red-toned tourmaline has the same protective energy of the other varieties and shares a lot of the same powers as pink tourmaline but with a little extra oomph. While it still opens and soothes the heart, it works on a deeper soul level. In relationships it can help you form these connections with others, and of course can help you explore your own soul and spiritual purpose. Cobalto Calcite is a variety of calcite with cobalt (yes the same mineral that makes blue in glass) inclusions that turn the stone magenta. This calcite variety helps you feel safe and protected in moments when you’re emotionally vulnerable, and can help you drop your walls around others. It can help you feel bolder, fearless, and loving. The more you use it or wear it, the harder it works and it’s a great crystal for making long-term changes in your life.
Barbie Pink
I began writing this blog post in December 2022, when Pantone’s colour was announced, and hadn’t planned to wait this long to post it. Of course, I ended up taking a long break and had never finished it. When I got back to work I peeked in my drafts to refresh my memory on what I had been working on and was so pleased to find this! One of the most anticipated and hyped movies of this year is the new BARBIE movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and directed by Greta Gerwig. Barbie is the absolute QUEEN of pink! Most of her packaging and promotional material has been a brilliant shade of magenta-pink since the 1970s, and in trailers for the new movie everything seemed to be dripping in every shade of pink there is!
Now, there’s no doubt that Barbie is a controversial figure to some, but honestly pink is a controversial colour! Pink was a very popular colour with people of all genders even before the word “pink” was used to describe the colour! In the 1920s US department stores started claiming pink for girls and blue for boys, which was never intended to have as much impact as it did. It was just an arbitrary selection they would use for marketing, but it took off in both beautiful and terrible ways. For a hundred years pink has been THE colour of femininity, which makes it Public Enemy No. 1 to toxic misogynists, and has been used to offend and mark certain men as weak or girly. The most horrific example being Nazi concentration camps during World War 2 marking homosexual men with a pink triangle. This symbol was reclaimed in the 1970s and became a powerful symbol of pride for anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community who needs a symbol of power. My generation, the millenials, have taken up pink as a very powerful symbol ourselves, using it to represent “girl power”, strength, intelligence, authenticity, and forward thinking.
Which brings us to Barbie. Some people hate barbie, and any doll with a similar body type that’s considered unrealistic, too thin, and too overtly sexual. Honestly, I get it, but I think the belief is also misplaced. Barbie’s body shape reflecting the ideal is just that, a reflection. It’s not the cause of the problem, it’s one tiny shred of proof of a much larger problem. That being said I can absolutely promise that for many young kids, those kind of thing just never really comes up. It never occurs to them. Barbie isn’t concrete, barbie is fluid. Barbie is whoever and whatever you want her to be. She is a blank slate onto which kids project their imagination and creativity. Barbie is also the only woman in history to be the president of the united states. Barbie was an executive in 1963, an astronaut in 1965, a surgeon in 1970, and a pilot in 1999! She’s been a model, a singer, a veterinarian, a soldier, a firefighter, a teacher, mountie, lifeguard, astrophysicist and olympian. She’s also a big sister, a girlfriend, a best friend, and everything else women want to be. She’s a symbol of opportunity and empowerment for young girls (and anyone else who loves Barbies!) and most kids see them that way until someone tells them not to.
My love of pink really started in my 20s, after “hating it” since childhood because it was weak, naive, and GIRLY. In my teens I lived in a very old farm house that had been painted pink and teal in the 1980s and was ugly and kind of infamous around town as a joke, and so to me it was also a symbol of being white trash. The inside of that house was ALL blue with a bit of white, because it needed to be comfortable to my dad and brother, and “girly shit” wasn’t welcome. Blue was, apparently, gender neutral. When I got my own apartment I decided I fucking hated that. Masculinity is not the default! So many married and coupled friends complained about how masculine-coded their home decor had to be otherwise their male partners would complain or even refuse to use something. PATENTLY ABSURD. I made my entire kitchen pink, I bought pink accessories and decorations and paint, and even found pink appliances from the 1950s just because I could. Just because it was my house and damnit, if I want it to be girly then men will just have to be ok with it. I slowly started to like it more, adding it to my hair and wardrobe and seeing it as a symbol that I refused to see femininity as weak. Now I love it, and it still makes me feel strong and even a bit rebellious. Especially the magentas and fuschias of the world. I’m going to see Barbie later today, and from what I’ve gathered this is exactly the message and vibe to take away from it. I can’t wait!
Pantone’s Barbie Pink is a little different than Viva Magenta, but they both have the strong, beautiful, and rebellious spirit of our favourite plastic heroine. Barbie Pink’s make up is about 87.84% red, 12.94% green and 54.12% blue, while Viva Magenta is 74.51% red, 20.39% green and 33.33% blue. Viva Magenta is a cooler colour while Barbie Pink is full of fire! I guess they had to give her a feistier colour to match her personality.
Lighter and softer pinks like the colour of rose quartz are used in magic for things like sweetness, love, beauty, friendship and self love. It’s associated with Venus and is the secondary colour of the heart chakra. Pinks can be cooler in tone, like the aforementioned rose quartz, or like the pink of cotton candy, and these are associated with the element of water. When pinks are warm like coral, the duality comes shining through. They often represent innocence and naivete, but this can often feel patronizing and derogatory to me! Forget the “girly” associations with pink for a minute, and look at it’s magical ones – the heart chakra isn’t just about love or romance! It’s Sanskrit name, Anahata, means unhurt, unstruck, and unbeaten. The decisions you make with your heart are the decisions based on the knowledge of your higher self. Venus is not simply the planet of love and sex, but also of financial success, social connections, art, and pleasure of all kinds. In Chinese astrology it’s aligned with the element metal or gold, which is strong and persistent. Pink to me is always a reclamation, a statement about not being ashamed of who I am or what I am. It’s courageous and rebellious, no matter the shade or tone. You don’t have to be a Barbie Girl to capture this energy and use it in your magic, or just in your every day life!
Want more colour magic? Check out Color, Form, and Magic (Amazon Canada and US) and the Prism Oracle (Amazon Canada and US) by Nicole Pivirotto and read my review of both of them at the following link: Book and Deck Review Combo: Color, Form, and Magic & Prism Oracle by Nicole Pivirotto
Paige Vanderbeck, The Fat Feminist Witch 
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