Aura Colors and Meanings (+ Free Aura Color Quiz)
Aura colors are the colors that some spiritual traditions say surround a person and show their state of mind: red for drive, blue for calm, pink for love. The best-known chart comes from a Theosophical book of 1902; aura photos record hand sensors, not light. Take the 8-question quiz, then read what each color means.
Aura color quiz: 8 questions
Answer about what you did in the last few weeks, not who you’d like to be. About two minutes; answers stay in your browser.
Example result (for one set of answers: 3, 2, 3, 1, 4, 3, 3, 2)
Pink. You are gentle, and people feel safe with you.
Why: answers that gave points to this color
- Q1: “Looking after someone” +2
- Q3: “Stay near, listen, say little” +2
- Q4: “You’re so much fun to be around.” +1
- Q5: “Crowds and small talk” +1
- Q6: “Cooking for friends or family” +2
- Q7: “In a long talk with someone I love” +2
- Q8: “Curious” +1
Runner-up: Orange (3 points). If it fits you better, read both.
A question for you: Are you as gentle with yourself as you are with the people you love?
Try this: Tonight, put a hand on your chest for three breaths and notice its warmth.
This is the color whose traditional meaning is closest to what you described. It is not a reading of an energy field.
What is an aura?
In spiritual and New Age use, an aura is a field of light or energy said to surround a person, visible to some people and colored by their thoughts and feelings. The word itself is Greek and Latin for “breeze” or “breath of air”; in medicine it names the warning signs before a migraine or a seizure, and in today’s slang it means presence or cool.
The colored aura as most charts describe it is a fairly recent idea. Halos around holy figures are ancient, but the system in which each color stands for a feeling was laid out by Theosophists around 1900, as the sections below show. Healthline’s guide puts the science plainly: no scientific evidence shows that auras exist.
How to know your aura color
No tested method can see or measure an aura, so there is no way to know your aura color in the sense of finding a color that is really there. Readers who say they see auras did no better than chance when tested (see the 1997 experiment below), and aura cameras turn hand-sensor readings into colors by software. What you can do is decide which color’s meaning fits you best right now. The 8-question quiz at the top of this page is a self-observation exercise of that kind: you answer what you actually did in recent weeks, and the quiz matches it to the traditional meaning of each color by a rule printed below. If you want to discover or determine your aura color another way, read the color meanings and pick the one you recognize; the result is the same kind of thing.
Aura color meanings and interpretation
Aura color definitions differ from guide to guide, so we give each color two readings side by side: how modern aura guides interpret it, and what the 1902 key it descends from actually said. The two often differ. Tap a color for its full entry.
| Color | Modern aura guides | Leadbeater’s key, 1902 |
|---|---|---|
| Red | energy, passion, being grounded in one’s goals | Red, of all shades from lurid brick-red to brilliant scarlet, indicates anger |
| Orange | happiness with friends and family, making friends easily | Deep orange imports pride or ambition |
| Yellow | intellect, optimism, a playful spirit | The various shades of yellow denote intellect”: dull yellow ochre for intellect turned to selfish purposes, “pale luminous primrose yellow” for “the pure reason directed to spiritual ends |
| Green | a kind, loving heart, care for animals, plants and people | Green seems always to denote adaptability”: at its lowest deceit, higher up the wish to please, and in its highest form “the divine power of sympathy |
| Blue | communication, calm, a support system for friends | The different shades of blue all indicate religious feeling”, from selfish devotion to “the beautiful pale azure” of self-surrender |
| Indigo | intuition, sensing other people’s energy, seeking hidden truths | not in the key |
| Violet | intuition, the larger picture, artistic and guiding | A mixture of affection and devotion is manifested by a tint of violet |
| Pink | happiness and harmony with others, gentleness to oneself and others | Affection expresses itself in all shades of crimson and rose”, and “pure pale rose marks that absolutely unselfish love |
Can you see or photograph an aura? What aura photos really show
- Kirlian photographs show a real glow: a corona discharge that appears when an object on photographic film sits in a high-voltage field. In 1976 researchers reported in Science that most of the variation in such images of fingertips “can be accounted for by the presence of moisture” on or in the skin. Sweat changes the picture; mood does too, through sweat.
- Aura cameras, the kind at wellness fairs, work differently. You rest your hands on sensors, and the camera’s software turns the readings into colors around your portrait. The company that makes the best-known model describes its prints as aura visualizations and adds: “For entertainment purposes only.”
- Seeing auras. When aura readers have been tested, they have done no better than chance. In a 1997 experiment, ten aura-seers and a control group tried to tell which of four screens hid a person, by the aura that should show above it. The aura-seers were right 185 times, the control group 196, against 180 expected by guessing.
- Synesthesia, where one sense triggers another, gives some people real colors when they see faces. A 2012 study compared four such people with aura readers and found the experiences differ: each synesthete’s colors are personal, while aura readers claim to agree on what they see.
The same moisture problem shows up elsewhere. One study of hand mudras measured their “effect” with an electrophotonic camera that records the same kind of glow.
Each aura color in detail
Red aura meaning
When nothing is happening, you are usually the one who starts it.
- What aura guides say today
- Energy, passion, being grounded in one’s goals (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “Red, of all shades from lurid brick-red to brilliant scarlet, indicates anger”; a dark red “almost exactly the colour called dragon’s blood” marks “animal passion”. In the 1902 key, red sits with black and brown among the darkest feelings.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The root chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Orange aura meaning
You bring people and new things together.
- What aura guides say today
- Happiness with friends and family, making friends easily (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “Deep orange imports pride or ambition.” That is all the key says about orange; the cheerful, sociable orange is a later reading.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The sacral chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Yellow aura meaning
Curious first, convinced later.
- What aura guides say today
- Intellect, optimism, a playful spirit (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “The various shades of yellow denote intellect”: dull yellow ochre for intellect turned to selfish purposes, “pale luminous primrose yellow” for “the pure reason directed to spiritual ends”.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The solar plexus chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Green aura meaning
You look after things and they grow.
- What aura guides say today
- A kind, loving heart, care for animals, plants and people (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “Green seems always to denote adaptability”: at its lowest deceit, higher up the wish to please, and in its highest form “the divine power of sympathy”.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The heart chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Blue aura meaning
Plain words, said calmly. People tend to believe what you tell them.
- What aura guides say today
- Communication, calm, a support system for friends (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “The different shades of blue all indicate religious feeling”, from selfish devotion to “the beautiful pale azure” of self-surrender. Calm and honest speech are later readings.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The throat chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Indigo aura meaning
You pick up on what nobody says out loud, often before you can explain how.
- What aura guides say today
- Intuition, sensing other people’s energy, seeking hidden truths (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- Not in the 1902 key at all. Indigo arrived with the rainbow chart of the chakras later in the 20th century, as the color between blue and violet.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The third eye chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Violet aura meaning
A big picture and a vivid imagination.
- What aura guides say today
- Intuition, the larger picture, artistic and guiding (color-meanings.com, “purple”).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “A mixture of affection and devotion is manifested by a tint of violet”; the paler shades show “the capacity of absorbing and responding to a high and beautiful ideal”.
- Chakra it is paired with
- The crown chakra, in the modern rainbow chart; the old chakra text gives the centers other colors.
Pink aura meaning
You are gentle, and people feel safe with you.
- What aura guides say today
- Happiness and harmony with others, gentleness to oneself and others (color-meanings.com).
- What the 1902 color key says
- “Affection expresses itself in all shades of crimson and rose”, and “pure pale rose marks that absolutely unselfish love”.
Where aura color meanings come from
Most aura charts online go back, directly or through other charts, to two books by members of the Theosophical Society. In Man Visible and Invisible (1902), Charles W. Leadbeater described the aura of people as he said he saw it “by means of trained clairvoyance”, with painted plates of the average man, a man in a rage, a miser, a devotee. In Thought-Forms (1905; reprints misdate it 1901), he and Annie Besant restate the key from the earlier book, with the rule “quality of thought determines colour”, and the frontispiece gives a table of what each color means.
The key is blunter than modern charts. Red “indicates anger”. Black “means hatred and malice”. Clear brown “shows avarice”. Green is adaptability, which at its lowest “becomes deceit”. Blue is religious feeling, yellow intellect, rose love, deep orange “pride or ambition”. The brighter and deeper the color, the stronger the feeling.
Over the 20th century the key softened. Red turned into passion and energy, orange into sociability, blue from devotion into calm communication, and indigo appeared, a color the 1902 key doesn’t mention, when aura colors were merged with the rainbow chart of the chakras. Pink is the one color whose meaning barely moved.
How the aura quiz works
Each of the 8 questions has 4 answers. Every answer gives 2 points to one color and 1 point to another, because most habits fit more than one meaning: “stay near, listen, say little” is mostly pink and a little blue. The color with the most points wins. If two colors are level, the one with more 2-point answers wins; if they are still level, you see both.
Each color is the 2-point color in exactly 4 answers and the 1-point color in 4 others. When this page is built, it checks every possible set of answers, all 65,536 of them: each color wins in 9.7% to 11.0% of them, and 16.9% end in an exact tie. So no color is “rare” in the quiz.
| Color | 2-point answers | 1-point answers | Wins, of 65,536 answer sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | 4 | 4 | 7,224 (11.0%) |
| Orange | 4 | 4 | 6,466 (9.9%) |
| Yellow | 4 | 4 | 6,713 (10.2%) |
| Green | 4 | 4 | 6,938 (10.6%) |
| Blue | 4 | 4 | 6,924 (10.6%) |
| Indigo | 4 | 4 | 6,701 (10.2%) |
| Violet | 4 | 4 | 6,363 (9.7%) |
| Pink | 4 | 4 | 7,147 (10.9%) |
What the quiz does not do: it doesn’t see, sense or photograph anything. It matches what you say about your recent weeks to the traditional meaning of a color, and nobody sees your answers.
Other aura colors people ask about
These are not results in our quiz, because most guides treat them as passing states or rare types. As with the eight above, these are readings from a tradition, not measurements.
- White
- Modern guides read white as a mind turned to spiritual things, with little interest in possessions, and call it “energy protection” (color-meanings.com). The 1902 key has no white. There, brightness only shows how strong a feeling is: “the brilliancy and the depth of the colours are usually a measure of the strength and the activity of the feeling.”
- Gold
- Guides pair gold with the solar plexus chakra and read it as insight, confidence and sometimes wealth (color-meanings.com). In the old key, gold appears once, as “golden stars of great brilliancy” shining through the blue of devotion.
- Silver
- Color-meanings.com calls silver “the color of abundance”, spiritual or material. The 1902 key does not mention it.
- Black
- Guides say black means anger or grief held for a long time and not yet forgiven, and add that it is not a “bad” color (color-meanings.com). The key is blunter: “black means hatred and malice.”
- Brown
- Modern charts link brown with greed and self-absorption (color-meanings.com). The key splits it in two: clear brown “shows avarice”, hard dull brown-gray “is a sign of selfishness”.
- Gray
- Guides often list it as a “blocked” or tired aura. In the key, deep heavy gray “signifies depression” and livid pale gray “is associated with fear”.
- Magenta
- A modern name, read as a bold, original person who mixes the practical and the imaginative, “non-conformists and visionaries” in one guide’s words (colorpsychology.org). It sits between red and violet on the color wheel, and guides read it as a mix of the two.
- Lavender
- Read as a gentle, dreamy, imaginative person who needs time alone (colorpsychology.org). Guides treat it as a pale violet; the nearest reading in the 1902 key is its violet of “affection and devotion”, whose paler shades it ties to a high ideal.
- Teal and turquoise
- Both are read as blends of blue and green. Teal stands for intuition and a calm presence, turquoise for a friendly, caring person who recovers quickly from setbacks (color-meanings.com). The only blue-green in the 1902 key is “grey-green”, which it calls “a signal of deceit”, the opposite of the modern reading.
If you were told you have a black or gray aura and it worried you, notice that the label came from a chart, not from a measurement. Judge it by how you have actually been feeling. Two weeks or more of low mood, poor sleep or loss of interest is worth raising with a doctor or counselor.
What is the rarest aura color?
Sites name different ones: white, gold, silver, indigo, sometimes “rainbow”. None of them counts real people, so “rarest” only ever means rarest on a particular site. Some quizzes print a share of people for each color without saying where the number came from. In ours, every color wins in 9.7% to 11.0% of all possible answer sets, by design.
Aura colors and chakras
Many guides say the seven main aura colors are the seven chakra colors: red for the root chakra up to violet for the crown. That pairing is a 20th-century Western overlay. The 1577 Sanskrit text behind the seven-chakra system, the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa, gives the centers other colors: the root chakra’s petals are crimson and its square of earth is yellow, for example. Historian Kurt Leland traced how single rainbow colors were attached to the chakras from the 1930s on. Our chakras overview compares the old colors with the rainbow chart, center by center.
Migraine aura is something else
If you see flashing lights, zigzag lines or a shimmering blind spot that spreads over several minutes and is followed by a headache, that is a migraine aura, a neurological symptom, not a spiritual one. Mayo Clinic advises seeing a doctor right away for new symptoms like these, especially with temporary loss of vision, trouble speaking or weakness on one side of the body, to rule out more serious causes such as a stroke. Halos around lights can also come from eye conditions, which an eye doctor can check.
What this page does not promise
We don’t claim that auras exist, that anyone can see yours, or that a color reveals your health, character or future. The quiz matches your answers to traditional color meanings by a rule you can read above. Treat the result as a prompt for a minute of thought, not a reading. If something in your mood or body has been wrong for weeks, a doctor or counselor will help more than any chart.
If you liked matching yourself to a symbol, the spirit animal quiz works the same way, with the scoring shown, and the mudras guide has a few minutes of quiet practice with a timer.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out my aura color?
There is no measurement that finds one. Aura readers say they see it, aura cameras compute it from hand sensors, and quizzes, ours included, match your answers to color meanings. Our quiz shows the rule it uses, so at least you can see where your result came from.
Is there a free way to test my aura color?
This quiz is free, needs no email and shows the result on the page. Paid aura photos are not more accurate: the hand sensors measure things like skin conductance and the software picks the colors, and the maker itself labels the result “for entertainment purposes only”.
How accurate are aura readings?
When tested, they have not done better than guessing. In a 1997 experiment, people who said they saw auras tried to tell which of four screens had a person hiding behind it, judging by the aura above it. They were right 185 times out of 720, against 180 expected by chance; a control group scored 196.
What color is a depressed aura?
In the 1902 color key that most aura charts descend from, “deep heavy grey signifies depression”. That is a symbol, not a sign anyone can check. If you have felt low for two weeks or more, that is worth talking about with a doctor or counselor, whatever color any chart gives it.
Can your aura change color?
Aura guides say yes, and the Theosophists who drew up the key describe colors flaring up with a sudden emotion and fading. In this quiz the result can change too, because it asks about the last few weeks: a busy month and a quiet one can give different colors.
What does a purple and teal aura mean?
Aura guides read purple as intuition and imagination and teal or blue-green as a mix of calm speech and care for others. The 1902 key has violet as “affection and devotion” and green as sympathy. Two-color readings are an invention of modern guides and aura photography, so treat them as a prompt.
Which aura color is the most powerful?
No chart agrees on one. Guides often name violet, gold or white; the 1902 key rated pale shades of each color as the highest form of that feeling. In this quiz no color is stronger than another and each wins about as often.
Sources (18)
- A. Besant, C. W. Leadbeater. Thought-Forms (chapter “The Meaning of the Colours”; the reprint’s “first printed 1901” is a misprint for 1905)
- Thought-Forms: The Meaning of the Colours (full passage)
- C. W. Leadbeater. Man Visible and Invisible: Examples of Different Types of Men as Seen by Means of Trained Clairvoyance
- Theosophy and visual arts (on the color key in Thought-Forms and Man Visible and Invisible)
- Thought Forms (book): publication history, after J. L. Crow
- J. O. Pehek, H. J. Kyler, D. L. Faust. Image modulation in corona discharge photography. Science 194(4262): 263–270
- About AuraCamera (history of aura imaging; “For entertainment purposes only”)
- L. R. Gissurarson, A. Gunnarsson. An experiment with the alleged human aura. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 91: 33–49
- S. Blackmore. Out-of-Body Experiences: The Human Aura (summary of the screen test and doorway tests)
- E. G. Milán et al. Auras in mysticism and synaesthesia: a comparison. Consciousness and Cognition 21(1): 258–268
- 22 Aura Colors and Their Meanings
- What Is an Aura? FAQs about seeing auras, colors and layers
- The Meaning of a Teal Aura
- The Meaning of a Turquoise Aura
- The Meaning of a Gold Aura
- Aura Colors and Meanings (magenta and lavender entries)
- Migraine with aura: symptoms and causes
- K. Leland. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan