The Indigo child, oh my

Now this is one of the cards in the Sirian Starseed that may do your head in. It's the Magician card, but instead of a magician doing the Saturday Night Fever 'as above so below' pose with a table full of elemental symbols, we have an 'Indigo child' holding a crystal. A creepy smirking child...with creepy Midwich cuckoo eyes...

So what the hell is an 'Indigo' anyway? I'm glad you asked.

Once upon a time in the 1960s, there was a psychic called Nancy Ann Tappe, a synesthete with a gift for seeing 'auras' (though many proponents of the Indigo child idea deny it was 'auras' she saw). As you probably know, an aura is a kind of emanation that surrounds living things and is considered to be its essence. Some people with special sensibilities  claim to be able to sense them, even see them. Nancy Ann Tappe could see them and see their colours. She called these 'life colours'. (She also claimed to be able to taste shapes.)

Nancy saw so many colours around people. She saw magenta, red, blue, orange, pink, lavender, yellow, tan and green. She went around seeing colours and tasting shapes. But in the 1960s, she started seeing a new colour infants, indigo. She hadn't seen this colour before. So she called these 'indigo children.' A few were born in the 60s, with the numbers increasing until today, she says (or would say, if she hadn't died in 2012), most people under the age of 30 are indigos. Her website says that in the 60s, about one in 5000 births were indigos. Now, '95% of the population are indigos'. I guess it means 95% of the population born after the 60s are indigos, or else lots of others will have changed colour, not something that appears to be possible.

How can you tell if you're an indigo? Here are some traits of the indigo:

• Feeling like an alien -- like you don't belong here, that you are different from most people
• Anger -- which some might call righteous indignation and others might call an overblown sense of entitlement
• Tenacity -- you won't be beaten down, also called willfulness 
• Resistance of authority, structure and hierarchy -- Dislike/distrust of teachers, doctors and authority figures of all types
• Seeing through lies -- always asking why, always seeing through those in power trying to pull the wool over your eyes, but you are not having it!
• Defiance -- (which more forgiving New Age types call 'breaking down structures') -- basically, trouble makers, but always felt to be justified trouble
• Radical authenticity -- the indigo must 'be himself', refuse to 'wear a social mask', no matter the consequences
• Love -- very powerfully throw themselves into emotions
• Depression -- see above
• Sense of mission -- indigos feel they are here for a reason, and they search diligently to try to figure out what it is
• Power, creativity, energy -- multi-talented, creative, with lots of energy toward things they want to do, and a big 'F you' to the things they don't want to do
• Intuition -- make decisions based on gut feeling; just 'kind of know' things
• Loners -- enjoy company of other indigos, otherwise don't mind being alone
• Sensitivity -- sensitive to textures, colours, etc, sensitive to situations, for example big parties can overwhelm; it varies with the indigo, but they are all 'sensitive'
• Other traits -- attracted to animals or children, tendency to be vegetarian, defy age classification (hard to tell age), do not respond to 'guilt' discipline 

A lot of people see the whole 'indigo child' thing as an excuse for problem children or poor parenting. I shall withhold comment other than to say that as a former teacher, I can certainly imagine a parent/teacher conference during which a parent might say, 'Well, he's his own person you know--he's an indigo.' I never had anyone call their child an indigo, but I certainly had parents say they couldn't exert any type of meaningful influence over their children's disruptive behaviour. Heck, my own kid was a little hellion in school, but that wasn't because he was an 'indigo' -- though he fits most of the 'traits' listed above. Shrug. Who knows -- maybe his aura is indigo, I certainly have never seen an aura around a person, so what do I know. I've taken online quizzes and according them I'm indigo.

Are you an adult indigo?  

I'm skeptical of all this 'Indigo' business, so I'm not thrilled to see 'Indigo' as a major card, but I will get over it! If I leave aside all that I personally see as nonsense in it, I can still see in the card the representation of a kind of pure potential, and the art shows me powers of the universe converging and taking shape in human hands -- as above, so below. So I can live with it. :)