Make your game more fun by embracing the color magic of flowers. The possibilities are endless and in line with the occult lore!
On the New Year, Botanist Cool on YT has released a video talking about color magic in Herbalist’s Primer, introducing a bunch of cool ideas on how to use it in your ritual casting in D&D 5e. Before we proceed to what this video inspired me to do, give it a look!
Herbal Magic in Herbalist’s Primer
The book, indeed, comes with a chapter on basics of herbal magic – I’m a fan of the occult, and nothing brings me as much joy as fiddling with magic systems in games and real life. I’ve studied this topic since childhood, and the current uptick in witchy and occult publishing makes me very happy.
In my book, I’ve included basics of using herbs for magic in RPGs: their magical properties, magical ethics, the theory of elements and their balance across multiple traditions, methods of increasing the magical potency, descriptions of magic tools, common magical symbols, and popular magical rituals, mostly corresponding to the Wheel of the Year.
I’ve also written about the color magic and how to apply it to your games. Read an excerpt below!
Basics of Color Magic
Their innate magical properties aside, herbs (and most often flowers) are commonly used because of their colors, to amplify the spell crafted by a practitioner. Just like colored gems, candles, ribbons, and powders, plants are included in the rituals for their visual element. For a quick selection of plants in the desired color, consult Plant Visual Guide.
Below are listed the common colors and their significance in magical practice. As with all spellcasting, the details will vary between practitioners, depending on their culture, tradition, or even personal choices, preferences, and experiences.
Pink and Peach
Soft and gentle colors of love, pink and peach are great for self-care, friendship, kindness, and strengthening connections. It helps communication, empathy, and mutual understanding.
Red
Often connected with passion and desire, red is employed in love and sex magic, seduction, and all matters of heart and blood. It invokes the element of fire and can fight back inflammations.
Orange
Orange stimulates personal power, brings mental and creative energy. It helps to break through a writer’s block, bestows confidence and energy to follow the dreams, inspiration, and passions.
Yellow
Like a burst of sunlight, yellow brings energy, joy, and abundance. It balances emotions, stimulates the mind and the nervous system. Use it to celebrate the Sun and the element of air.
Green
Green is the color of nature, of plants, of fertile earth. It calms and heals, brings freshness and youthful energy, encourages growth, and brings luck.
Blue
Blue is the color of calm, trust, and protection. It brings peace and clarity, invokes stability, longevity, and forgiveness. Like water, it purifies and nourishes.
Indigo
Indigo brings mystical qualities and visions, strengthens divination, and affects mental healing. Use it to aid meditation, astral projecting, and exploring psychic and cognitive potential.
Violet and Purple
The color of intuition, purple sharpens the senses, heightens awareness, increases the cognitive potential, and regenerates the body. Use it to add power to creative projects, rituals of immortality or when dealing with royalty.
Brown
The color of earth, brown means stability, fertility, nourishment, and protection. Like green, it invokes the element of earth. It is the color of home and hearth.
Black
Often considered unlucky, black is the color of protection, curse-breaking, and warding. It creates boundaries, grounds energy, hides, obfuscates, and detoxifies. Use it in banishing and to bring safety.
White
The color of purity, white is often treated as a blank slate, a stand-in for any other color. On its own, it brings freshness, new ideas, happiness, and cleansing, but it may also mean starkness, coldness, and death.
Gray and Silver
Shades of gray and silver are connected with dreams, meditation, and lunar magic. They quiet the mind and calm emotions.
How to Use Color Magic in Your TTRPG Game?
Botanist Cool had a bunch of great ideas on enhancing ritual magic with plant, and ever since watching that video, I couldn’t stop myself from coming up with new ideas.
So, how can you use color magic in your games?
- Adjust colors of the ongoing or instantaneous magical effect: a blue or black protection shield, green glow of a healing spell, silvery aura of moon-connected spells, and indigo haze in divination spells.
- Colors subtly informing about the effects of magical potions.
- Spell components of specific color weakening or strengthening the effect.
- Secret messages sent through floral arrangements – maybe even spells cast through them?
- Use colors to flesh out the clothing or uniforms – add a purple sash to your royals or their guards, put your BBEG in white, and have your druids rock their earthy tones.
Now, how you’d use it? Let us know in the comments!
Put More Plants in Your Games!
While Herbalist’s Primer is currently only available to Kickstarter Backers, our Patrons, and reviewers (send us a message if you’d like to become one!), we have already released several plant-filled biome guides, complete with sensory descriptions, plot hooks, ‘perception-test descriptions’, and secrets only know to those with a high enough roll on Nature or Survival skill check.
You can read about them here – or browse the collection on Itch and DriveThruRPG!
