Cold pale blue is a colour of immense distance and crystalline stillness. The adjective 'cold' here denotes not temperature but a quality of light: a blue that has been drained of warmth, approaching the colour of high-altitude ice or the shadowed face of a glacier. In the Emperor Scale of Colour, this hue is the fixed, formal expression of the colour scale associated with the Sephirah of Chesed (Mercy) on the Tree of Life.

Position on the Tree of Life

This colour corresponds to Path 13, the path that connects Chokmah (Wisdom) to Binah (Understanding). In the diagram of the Tree of Life, this is the uppermost horizontal path, often called the 'High Priestess' path in the Tarot. The colour cold pale blue here is the Emperor Scale's version of the colour that, in other scales, appears as deep purple (Queen Scale) or brilliant blue (Prince Scale). It is the colour of the fixed, crystallised idea of mercy and expansion, before it descends into the more active and emotional realms.

Historical context

The Emperor Scale of Colour is one of the four colour scales used in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, derived from the four worlds of the Kabbalah: Atziluth (King), Briah (Queen), Yetzirah (Emperor), and Assiah (Empress). The Emperor Scale corresponds to the Yetziratic world, the world of formation and the fixed patterns of the Sephiroth. The colour cold pale blue appears in the original 1888 manuscripts of the Order, notably in the 'Book of the Concourse of the Forces' and the 'Cipher Manuscripts'. It is a colour that appears in the descriptions of the 'Path of the High Priestess' in the Tarot, where it is associated with the lunar, receptive, and deeply reflective nature of that path. In later works, such as Aleister Crowley's 'Liber 777' (1909), the colour is listed as the Emperor Scale value for the 13th path, reinforcing its connection to the fixed, formal aspect of the lunar current. The colour is also found in the descriptions of the 'Thoth Tarot' deck, where the High Priestess card (Path 13) is often depicted with a cold, pale blue background, symbolising the veil of the sanctuary and the unmanifest potential of the universe.

In the table of Liber 777, cold pale blue appears as the Emperor Scale colour for Path 13, the path of the High Priestess, and is the fixed, formal counterpart to the more fluid and emotional colours of the other scales.