A Note on Aura

I had my aura photographed as a birthday treat on Friday. That experience & this ongoing heatwave seem to be conspiring to get me thinking about bodies again.

For one, I don’t like being photographed at all, which is why I wanted to have this moment in time captured in the first place—which made one of the color associations on the little info-card they gave me even more interesting, once my photo had developed: my dominant “vibrational energy” was associated with “new beginnings.”

I also don’t like to feel sweaty and gross and physically encumbered by needs & anxieties, & I certainly don’t like to try and look presentable at the same time—which is why I wanted a photo taken that was so unique & non-duplicable that I couldn’t second-guess myself or want to make choices between different iterations—it was to be what it was to be, with literally no “safety.”

All of this made the aura colors I did end up with even more interesting: two smears of red on two ends of a faint circle coming in and out of my rib cage and circling over my head, nearly closing the loop with “a subtle violet,” according to the photographer.

I thought it looked great and the explanation was intriguing and unexpected; red was connected to the root chakra & the subtle violet was connected to the crown chakra—opposite ends of the spectrum. Yes it sounded and looked great, but I still found myself a little surprised—& maybe kinda embarrassed?—to be presented with such visceral associations.

Passion, strength, leadership, action, vitality, practicality, new beginnings, adventure—all these words sound good but still feel alien to me. Is that really the energy I carry around?

The easy answer would be to say that it’s all a bunch of baloney, but it’s so telling that I had those thoughts about a photo that showed an arc of something subtle that the card called magical, visionary, manifestation, inspiring, charming, unconventional, and humanitarian. According to the same card, “when there is an arch shape,” that color represents hopes and aspirations.

This body—much like this earth that birthed it—is a churn of molten lava spiraling out into the stars.

What it will be, it will be.

x

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *