Deep indigo is a color situated at the extreme blue-violet end of the visible spectrum, darker than standard indigo and approaching black. The name derives from the Greek indikon (“Indian dye”), referring to the plant-based pigment that was a major trade commodity of the ancient world. In the Queen Scale of Colour, deep indigo represents a specific vibrational quality of light, not a mixture of inks.

Position on the Tree of Life

Deep indigo appears at Path 16, which connects Chokmah (Wisdom) and Tiphereth (Beauty). This path is the Heh of Tetragrammaton, the letter of the Great Mother, and its attribution to the zodiacal sign Aries in the Queen Scale yields a color that expresses the hidden, fiery potential of the Ram through the densest, most receptive hue of the scale. The Queen Scale itself corresponds to the feminine, manifest aspect of the Sephirah or path, so deep indigo here is the color of the Mother receiving and veiling the active impulse of Aries.

Historical context

The Queen Scale of Colours is one of the four color scales derived by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from the Sepher Yetzirah and later systematized in Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777. Each scale corresponds to a different world or aspect of divinity: the Queen Scale (the World of Formation) uses colors that are darker, richer, and more saturated than the King Scale of the World of Atziluth. Deep indigo as the Queen Scale color for Path 16 was selected to mirror the King Scale’s “Red” (the masculine active aspect) by taking that red through the prismatic descent: the red becomes violet, which then deepens into indigo as it absorbs black from Binah. This color thus symbolizes the Great Mother’s containment of the Martian/Arietine fire within the darkness of the womb. Later thelemic commentaries further stress that deep indigo is the color of the veil between the supernal and the ethical, a threshold through which the initiate must pass.

Usage in Liber 777

In Table I of Liber 777, deep indigo appears as the Queen Scale color for Path 16, directly opposite the King Scale red of the same path. Its other correspondences in the table include the Hebrew letter Heh, the zodiacal sign Aries, the Tarot trump The Emperor, and the magical image of the High Priestess on the veiled throne. In practice, deep indigo is used as the color for the banner or robe of an officer representing the Mother in rites of the Second Order, and as the dominant hue for the circle when invoking the force of Aries under its receptive aspect.

In the Queen Scale at Path 16, deep indigo is the visual signature of the latent power of the Ram held in utter stillness beneath the dark waters of Binah.