I assume this is the first time you have heard of this, those who have been studying it for numerous years are fully aware of the origins of the term. Many people will believe that the indigo label comes from the color of their aura, but it does not, an indigo or purple auric field is indicative of their own thing, I personally can not see auroras but it is not my concern.
Ugh, don't assume. And you assumed wrong. The way that these types of beliefs start and spread fascinates me, so I've read a good deal. And you're also presupposing I believe that people have auras, which barring any synesthesic effects, I am hard-pressed to believe due to the pretty much zero evidence. Oh, and before I begin arguing way too much and lose everyone,
here's a list of 23 indigo children traits - take the quiz! And see how terribly generic these traits are. I scored 17/23, so apparently I'm an indigo child too. (
There's this as well.)
Here's a great piece of off BeliefNet, which is also really gentle and doesn't disparage these parents. The author seems mostly concerned with what the belief says about their parents, who are mostly baby-boomers. Although some of the language coming from the adult indigo children worries me in its self-satisfaction:
"I always knew I belonged here on Earth, and I always had a deep-seated universal knowledge of how things really work and who I really was. Yet, with grand humor, I chose to grow up with people in situations and places that reflected absolutely none of my sense of self. Can you begin to see the infinite possibilities for fun in this play I chose to come into? . I felt like a king working for a peasant, viewed as a slave."
I don't even have a comment. I'm just blown away. (If they do manage to "use their warrior spirits...to banish our existing educational, government, legal, and health-care systems, which do not work" with their third-eye chakras, I'll be way too happy even care about the science here)
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Here is Jenny McCarthy, notable for convincing parents that the whole vaccine thing should be thrown out the window (because apparently we're in a rush to have a good old-fashioned plague), on how she learned about indigo children:
The day I found out I was an adult Indigo will stay with me forever. I was walking hand in hand with my son down a Los Angeles street when this women approached me and said, “You’re an Indigo and your son is a Crystal.” I immediately replied, “Yes!” and the woman smiled at me and walked away...After doing some of my own research on the word Indigo, I realized not only was I an early Indigo but my son was in fact a Crystal child. From that point on things in my life started to make sense. I always wondered why I was a ball-buster and rule breaker on TV, and at that moment I knew exactly why. I was born to not only think outside the box, but to break that box up into a million pieces. I called this day my “awakening” but really it was the day I remembered.
Read: some lady told Jenna something and she decided to immediately adopt an extraordinary theory she had never heard of because it sounded nice.
And
here's a painfully unskeptical article from the NYT that has me gritting my teeth so hard I can't even comment. I agree with the people complaining that school's are not right for everyone and that kids are overmedicated - school should not be homogenous, and ADD/ADHD is being overdiagnosed - but that's as far as I'm agreeing with them.
Finally,
this is where I first heard about this, and the beginning refers to Jenny McCarthy's now inexistant website for parents of indigo children, which the author supposes was taken down because she didn't want press to be weird in light of her book release. Great article, it's a good read, and very informative.
It's a very silly New Age belief which peaked in popularity in the late 90s, and now no one seems to talk about it anymore. Because people are fickle, and there will always be some new supernatural bullshit for the general public to buy into. And I don't mean to sound insensitive to the average believer - I'm mostly just angry at the proponents of this shit that make money off of selling books, speaking at conventions or on TV, etc., all at the expense of the people they lure in.