Crimson & Cobalt & Violet

Cobalt (medium, vivid — the mineral lapis pigment of Tibetan thangka painting) and Violet (deep, vivid, electric — the most specifically tantric and most energetically charged cool in Tibetan Buddhist iconography) create the most dramatically charged and most spiritually intense cool pair in religious art. Against Crimson's passionate tantric-deity warm, this creates the most specifically Tibetan Buddhist thangka and most meditatively powerful palette.

The palette is the visual world of Tibetan thangka painting — the most elaborate and most iconographically complex religious painting tradition in the world (thangka — Tibetan: ཐང་ཀ — tangka — a Tibetan Buddhist painting on cotton or silk, used as an object of meditation, ritual instruction, and devotional practice — the most important portable art form in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition). The thangka palette: the deep vivid crimson of the Mahakala deity (the most important and most frequently depicted wrathful protector deity in Tibetan Buddhism — Maha-kala — 'Great Black One' — despite the name, Mahakala is depicted in many traditions in deep vivid crimson rather than black — particularly the White Mahakala and the Six-Armed Mahakala of the Karma Kagyu tradition, whose characteristic deep red-to-crimson form represents the most passionately wrathful protective energy); the medium vivid cobalt of the Tibetan mineral pigment (the most characteristic and most precious blue pigment used in Tibetan thangka painting — produced from azurite — copper carbonate — Cu₃(CO₃)₂(OH)₂ — or from imported lapis lazuli — both producing the most specifically deep, vivid, saturated blue of the Tibetan Buddhist color tradition); and the deep vivid electric violet of the tantric aura and energy field (the specific deep, vivid violet used in the most elaborate Tibetan thangka paintings to depict the energy fields — auras — of the most powerful tantric deities and of the most advanced meditators).