Your aura, in plain terms
An aura, in the sense this test uses, is the feeling you give off before you've said anything useful. It's why some people get asked for directions three times a week and others never do, and why one friend gets trusted with secrets on the first night while another gets put in charge of the group trip. The aura color test turns that first impression into a color. You answer twelve questions, mostly about how other people react to you, and get one of six aura colors: pink, gold, turquoise, indigo, magenta, or silver.
Where the colors come from
The idea that people give off a colored glow is old, but the color chart most quizzes use took shape in the early 1900s. Theosophist writers Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater published illustrated books, including Thought-Forms (1901) and Leadbeater's Man Visible and Invisible (1902), that matched moods and qualities to particular colors. The aura photo booths you see at fairs work differently: a sensor under your hand takes a reading, and software picks colors to lay over your picture. None of it has scientific backing. More recently, "aura" has also become slang for presence, as in someone who simply has a lot of it. This test borrows from both, the old color chart and the new meaning.
Why most questions are about other people
You're a poor judge of your own aura, the same way you can't hear your own accent. So the questions ask about evidence you've been collecting for years: what strangers tend to want from you, the word your friends use when they introduce you, what a candid photo of you usually looks like, how the staff at your regular coffee shop treat you. None of the answers names a color.
The six colors
Pink puts people at ease; they tell you things and hug you goodbye. Gold gets treated as the one in charge, often before you've offered. Turquoise is the easy talker that strangers pick out of a crowd. Indigo is quiet and reads people closely, which is why they end up telling you the truth. Magenta is the one nobody forgets, for reasons that range from your laugh to your shoes. Silver is calm and a little distant, like moonlight, slow to warm up and steady once you do.
Each result page explains what your color says about you, what it's good for, where it gets you in trouble, and which other color it pairs with. Send it to someone who knows you well and see whether they'd have guessed the same one.