Why blue is more than just a colour

The other day I was watching Richard Powers being interviewed on You Tube. In the interview, David Perell was asking him to expand on his previous comment, “When you’re sure of what you’re looking at look harder.” He responded, “Yeah because when you’re sure, you’re not moving, and reality is always moving.” It probably comes as no surprise that I linked this idea with tarot as I do with so many other things.

Fast forward an hour and I’ve snuck into the shower for some peace and quiet and I realised something — I often fall into familiar ways of thinking. While I readily acknowledge that card meanings are influenced by many factors, such as the cards around them and their position in a spread, I hadn’t realised how much I rely on a default way of decoding symbols. Obviously primed by Richard Powers’ earlier comments I recognised that, for example, I routinely associate blue with communication because of the the throat chakra. But, a quick look around the bathroom reminded me it is so much more than that. So I decided to “look harder.”

As I looked out the bathroom window I saw my grandson’s blue cooler bag that in two days time we’ll once again be packing with a vegemite sandwich, a fruit of some description, some rice crackers, and a yoghurt because school holidays will be over. Then I saw the blue comb I was about to use to spread the conditioner through my hair; the blue face washer; and the blue on my daughter’s shaving cream can. All these things were immediately visible. What if each has its own story or message to share. Think that’s a little far-fetched? Maybe it is, but I decided to have a look anyway.

Blue cooler bag

I started with the cooler bag. The obvious is the constant reminders that my grandkids live with me now so themes such as expansion, change and upheaval come to mind. But, that wasn’t my first thought.

Instead I recalled my excitement that school holidays meant no school lunchboxes for two weeks. What I didn’t think about on that last day of term was that I would find myself spending way more time in the kitchen making vegemite or peanut butter and honey sandwiches; spiralling apples; cutting off crusts; apparently cutting sandwiches into the wrong shape; spreading hummus on rice crackers; filling water bottles; cleaning up crumbs; and washing plate after plate and bowl after bowl all the while listening to “but I’m hungry Nan” instead. This brings with it a whole new set of themes. Communication is but one of them.

The blue comb

Then I moved on to the blue comb. This is something I am overly familiar with. I see it every day. Normally there’s both a black and a blue conditioner comb hanging in the shower. They both look the same, but I prefer the black one because it feels much sturdier than its counterpart. I thought the message of the comb was going to be along the lines of detangling, or what you can add to make a process smoother, but then I saw it in simpler terms.

Those stories required the addition of the conditioner and therefore another layer of separation. Why complicate things. If you add one element, when do you stop? For now, I simply believe it is about appearances. Just because something seems the same and serves the same purpose doesn’t mean it is.

But then another thought came through. Why does melon scented conditioner make me gag? And, why did that come to mind? Since it did I ran with it because I figured my intuition was trying to tell me something. Here’s what came out. I’m starting to realise that I have inhabited this body for over half a century and there is still so much I am totally oblivious to. Sometimes I wonder, maybe even that very morning, how little my husband and partner of the past 39 years seems to know about me. Now I realise how unfair that may be. Wow. I never thought a blue comb could be a therapy session. How wrong I was.

Imagine then teaming expanded awareness with an actual tarot card.

Back to Richard

Richard Power spoke about how before he opened his mind to what was around him his morning walks sounded like “tree, tree, tree.” As he started writing his book, Overstory, this progressed to “red oak, maple …” and so on.  Then, as he got deeper into the story it became, “Oh this guy, you know it’s not a red oak it’s this guy and he’s doing something I’ve not seen in the other red oaks in the neighbourhood.” Inspiration comes from so many places. I was only watching that You Tube clip to temporarily escape my reality but an hour later it was helping me to engage with it.

More things blue

Since I’m now sitting at my desk surrounded by even more blue, you can draw your own stories from the blue face washer and the shaving cream if you wish. 

The first thing I noticed when I sat down was the blue on The Sign of the Times Oracle box. Then it was the blue agate coaster; my blue-framed glasses; the blue on The Unveiled Tarot box; the blue post it notes with my doctor’s name and my appointment time scrawled on it; and my husband’s blue underpants that for some reason are sitting on the chest of drawers, rather than in them.

As I look to my left there’s also a blue camera case that my grandson brought in to me this morning. His smile and his urging for me to get the actual camera working has encouraged me to buy him one for his birthday. Then, as I intervened in one of my grandkids random arguments, I noticed a blue sock lying on the floor. Blue is all around me. Maybe blue is telling me to straighten up a bit.

The only direction I don’t see blue now is the very place I would often otherwise equate it with – the sky. Outside it is grey and raining making all that is green look bright and alive. I love rainy days.

It’s not lost on me that the premise of The Sign of the Times Oracle is that signs, and thus messages, are all around us. I’ll leave discussions on the actual oracle to the review post though, and I’ll move on to the next item.  

Blue agate

The blue agate sits on my desk because in the rearranging of my house to accommodate my daughter and her four kids my pink agate coasters have disappeared. I’m imagining they are in a box somewhere, possibly in the storage unit that holds the things I used to be able to put my hand straight on, but I don’t actually think so. I vaguely remember tucking them away “safely” to ensure they didn’t get lost or broken.

That could well be the underlying, and possibly the overlying, message of the colour blue and why it popped into my head as the example. How often do I play it safe in what I let myself think and say, and how much do I lose myself along the way? Hmmm.

When I wrote about The Unveiled Tarot it spoke about looking at what lies beneath the way I think, act, and react. It’s why I can’t see it moving off my desk for a long time. What writing this has shown me is that these messages have been surrounding me this whole time.

Blue notes

Then the nerd in me took over and I thought about some of the idiomatic uses of the word blue. For example, “feeling blue”, “once in a blue moon”, “blue movies”, “the blues”, “blue collar”, “out of the blue”, “until you’re blue in the face”, and “true blue”. As a language lover these expressions opened up a whole new world to explore, and to be honest I spent a lot of time exploring the origins of blue-based phrases.

I also thought about them in regards to all that I have already written and they expanded my interpretations in surprising ways. Imagine viewing what I’ve disclosed already through the various lenses those “blue” sayings create, (depression, rarity, taboos, storytelling, class, repetition and loyalty), and it becomes hard to ignore how much the colour blue can tell us.

Then I nerded out even further and went down a science tack. I now know that the HEX code for blue is #0000FF and the RGB is 0,0,255 and I learned the difference between the two notations. I won’t go into them because that’s not the point, but if now you’re curious you can find a brief explanation by clicking here.

What I found relevant is that previously I have used these codes to choose colours for things such as this website, but I didn’t actually know what they meant. I just jotted them down so I could type them in where necessary. I was reminded of how easy it is to dismiss things. Maybe looking up the explanations was relevant after all.

In the end

This little foray into the colour blue also had me delving into Picasso’s blue period, Chaucer’s poetry, blue flags, blue moons, and the wavelengths of blue, all of which could have taken me down many, many, many more rabbit holes. But ultimately,  I realised this exercise wasn’t about acquiring more knowledge. Nor was that aspect wasted as it has definitely given my intuition more resources to work with. However, overall, I’d say it has reminded me not to short-hand a tarot card reading just because I know what an individual card means. Next time blue jumps out at me, or any other colour for that matter, I hope I remember this essay and I look up and take note of the environment around me because stories abound.

When I started this essay, blue referred to combs, and deck boxes, and socks, and phrases and so on. Yet as I end this my Mum’s light blue Cortina just popped into my head. This took me off on yet another tangent and confirmed for me the importance of opening my mind to where my cards wish to take me. So, as inspired by Richard Powers, it’s not card, card, card. Nor is it just Ace of Cups, High Priestess and King of Wands. It’s this story, and that story, and their story, and my story, and how together they shape how we see ourselves and the world around us.

What stories are your cards unfolding for you?

Pictured decks

• Curious Travels Tarot Deck
  • Created by Amelia Rozear and published by US Games Systems Inc in 2024
• Sign of the Times Oracle
  • Created by Krystal Banner and published by Hay House in 2022
• The Unveiled Tarot
  • Created by Jesse Lonergan and published by Sterling Ethos in January 2025