Healing with Stained Glass

image courtesy Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France

"Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways."

~ Oscar Wilde

When my husband and I were raising our children, the church we attended was blessed with several Louis Comfort Tiffany windows. Every Sunday we enjoyed their beauty and color along with the music and inspirational words we heard. It was always a wonderful experience for me.

And it seems that wonder and inspiration is shared by many. On my blog a reader mentioned the stained glass and music at her church in Dunedin, New Zealand: "One of the things I really love is the mix of gorgeous, soul-stirring music and the beauty of the light shining through the stained glass windows of the Cathedral."

It is no accident that our churches developed a tradition of combining stained glass with music. Color has been used for healing for centuries. Before Christ, the cultures of Egypt and Greece were known for their temples of healing, which had "stained glass windows" of each color. People would have a consultation and be placed in the room or rooms with the color that related to their issue(s). For example, if someone had depleted energy they would no doubt have been placed in the room with red windows, and if they had heart problems the destination would likely have been the room with green windows.

As the Church in Rome extended its power, healing temples were abandoned, viewed as paganistic. But the tradition of colored glass in sacred places continued. Cathedrals incorporated stained glass windows, and later, churches used scenes made from stained glass to teach Bible stories to the illiterate and the poor.

Music may also have been employed in ancient Egyptian and Grecian healing temples. Perhaps there were stringed instruments, which speak to the heart and were found in profusion in Egypt and Greece. Perhaps, too, brass horns, or flutes, whose resonance is carried directly to our cells to move and change them for the better.

As ancient cultures recognized the power of music and sound and color to touch our bodies and souls in healing temples, so do we now, when we sense the healing energy of sunlight through stained glass.

I wish you the peace and the power and the healing of color and beautiful sound resonating in your body and life.

Color Preferences

I received a thought provoking post on my last blog entry and it got me to thinking that a post on color preferences, and dislikes, might be fun to read and mull over. When I was studying color as a healing tool, I learned that people’s preference for certain colors is important but what is equally important, or perhaps more so, it their aversion to certain colors.

The example I can think of most readily is the color olive green. We in the class were asked which colors of the 14 in front of us we disliked the most. Olive green turned out to be the one most disliked. Well guess what….we were all women in that class and olive green turns out to be the color of feminine leadership! And all of us had that issue at the time, being fearful of stepping into our leadership shoes as women. We all had issues of self worth, and fear around speaking up. So we all shrank from this powerful, beautiful color.

The other thing I learned was that the saturation of a color also had an impact. The lighter the color, the more intense the “lesson” or message. The darker the color, the more mystery there was to it and things weren’t so out in the open.

The blogger wrote:
“In East Indian culture, we can be all shades of brown from the most pale and fair to the darkest hue of brown, almost black. So many prefer the lighter version. Though I try to rise above this labeling, even I get sucked into the idea of what is aesthetically pleasing.

May we love our colors, but learn that their borders can stretch to hold a wide variety of meaning.”

And it’s so true. We can be easily influenced by society into thinking what color is hip (look at the fashion industry….when they decide that browns and oranges are the colors of the moment, that’s all you can find in the stores, and when it shifts to purple and orange, the same thing happens.), but it’s important to remember where YOUR heart is. Is it with the brown of the moment or with blue? Is it with green or a dark purple?

The great thing about color is there is no wrong answer! Every color you choose is perfect in that moment. There is a lot of freedom in this as well as support. When I go into my closet, pull out a garment, don it, and then take it off right away it is because my body knows instinctively what it needs at that moment. So I will go back in, something will catch my eye, I’ll put it on and voila~the perfect color for me at that moment in time. I don’t even need to be conscious of this for it to work! How easy it that!

Quickly, I’ll tell you why that happens. When we go through our challenges, and who doesn’t!, we use up the color that is associated with that challenge. It gets depleted out of our energy body, so we need to replace it. Color in our wardrobes is an easy way to put it back in. Ditto foods. Have you ever craved a food of a distinct color like oranges or blueberries? Well, that is your body sending a message to you: I need orange or I need dark blue/purple. Amazing isn’t it, this Divine intelligence of the body!