Aura as Signature and Signal
your scent, soul and essence wrapped in light
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“The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.”
—Lucian Freud
A few weeks ago in Mallorca, I found a quiet rhythm. Each morning I’d sit in a sun-drenched beach café — one of those relaxed, sandy-floored places that blurs into the shore — sipping an Italian cappuccino while watching the wide-open beach stretch out before me. The kind of place where the air is soft, the light close and everything moves just slow enough to remind you that you're alive, that life is always animated and animating.
Each day a stray black cat would appear like clockwork, weaving through the tables and brushing against my ankles. She’d always find her way to me —sometimes for a stroke, sometimes for five. But what struck me most wasn’t her charm or even her feline confidence. It was her aura. That invisible field around her. It arrived before she did. Calm, curious, quietly magnetic.
I’ve long been fascinated by auras, how they whisper rather than shout, revealing to the attentive far more than words or surface gestures ever could. From the saintly glow depicted in sacred art, to the magnetic presence of rockstars who command entire crowds with a single movement, to the quiet intellectual charge of deep thinkers and the grounded, earthy resonance of farmers rooted in the land— each type of aura carries its own kind of gravity, its own unmistakable truth.
In our age of relentless analysis and shallow feeling, this inner illumination is overlooked, easily mistaken for myth, or lost in the din of algorithmic suggestions and curated identities. Everything, it seems, can be optimised — except being. Yet in this world obsessed with data, it is the unseen, the quietly sovereign glow of aura, that persists as one of the last wild currencies of selfhood and connectivity, a resonance more subtle than a fingerprint, more enduring than a brand.
We’ve been culturally trained to talk about energy, the output, the drive, the momentum of doing; all very early 2020’s. Yet the conversation rarely deepens to the radiant essence that is aura — not what orbits us, but what quietly emanates from within. Not merely how we move through the world, but how our presence, unbidden, imprints upon it.
Aura isn’t “a mood”. It’s not the act of dazzling or performance. It’s the silent signature of being fluent, undeniable and honest. Aura settles with a gravity no logic can imitate.
In contrast, charisma – aura’s more deliberate and ego-centric cousin – crackles, cackles, draws eyes and persuades with ripple, flash and gestures. Ask the average person, and I bet you they mistake aura with charisma. But the two are very separate beings.
Susan Cain claims that charisma influences without logic, but aura affects without effort; it is what remains after the dazzle fades, a resonance lingering in the very air. Hans Belting spoke of aura as “presence in absence.” Charisma can be manufactured, practiced and staged, making it a prime switch to flick in our attention economy era, but the impact feels hollow and draining, like being robbed of your attention in exchange for a puff of magic smoke without the actual magic.
If energy marked the first half of the 2020’s, then auras will mark the second half of this decade.
Aura can only be revealed, not crafted, but cultivated through radical alignment with truth.
I’ve witnessed this in politics. A few years ago I remember standing in the lobby at Westminster and watched people buzz and zigzag in choreographed chaos. Two politicians — one of whom was a quiet anti-poverty MP, the other a highly distinguished Lord, renowned for his kindness, decency and commitment to public life — walked in. They weren’t the loudest. But the light around them felt…holy. Like witnessing an orbit. Their aura wasn’t about optics. It was alignment to what they were doing and how they were within themselves.
I’ve seen it in Hollywood too.
Last year in Ojai, I was having a solitary brunch at a tucked-away hotel — late enough that the meal had long ended. An older man wandered into the room like a cowboy into a saloon, casually commenting on the weather. Bemused and British, I replied. What began as idle conversation about the California sky quickly unfolded into a rich exchange about creativity, place and time.
There was something about him — a spiritual sharpness of sorts. Curious. Open. Fully present. Later, I learned he’d been a songwriter for some of the legendary musical artists of the ’70s and ’80s. Just before leaving, he turned to me and said, “I like you, Joanna” as a statement rather than a suggestion, then disappeared into the hotel lobby, leaving behind the quiet footprints of a life fully lived, his aura intact.
He never named names as he didn’t need to. Without giving anything obvious away, no résumé, no reference points, he revealed himself entirely through his presence.
I often think about auras through a spiritual lens. Why is this person’s aura speaking to me? And what is it trying to teach me?
Aura is more than atmosphere; it is spirit encoded in light. It’s your living signature, felt before it’s ever seen.
Older traditions understood this in ways our culture is only now relearning. The halo in Christian art, the radiant nimbus encircling saints, was never mere ornament, but a visual invocation of the invisible. Buddhist mandorlas, Persian farr and medieval icons all attempted to depict the ineffable, the soul’s energy field, the visible echo of the sacred inside us.
Even the word aura itself is ancient, originating from Greek meaning breeze, the gentle breath between worlds. Aura was what moved between spirit and skin, signaling subtlety and sentience.
What would it feel like to be more curious about aura, not just as individuals, but as communities? Energy is movement; aura is meaning. Energy gets things done; aura teaches others how to read, trust, and meet us before a single word is uttered. Aura is a relational language, an unspoken contract. It teaches us and those we encounter how to treat, trust, and truly see one another.
It’s because of this that seeing people through their aura becomes one of the most intuitive and soul-led ways of understanding who they are beneath the surface. It invites a deeper kind of recognition — not based on roles, status, or identity markers, but on frequency, coherence and truth. Aura doesn’t ask, What do you do? It asks, How do you make others feel? What do you carry into a room? What quiet truths speak through your presence?
Aura is not an acquisition. It cannot be bought, borrowed, or photoshopped. It arises in the quiet perseverance of being — tender, open, attuned.
Many dress wounds with wardrobe, mask insecurity with noise. We layer ourselves in accolades and curated images. But aura is incorrigibly honest; so much so, it’s arguably the last frontier of authenticity, the soul unmasked.
You know it the moment you feel it.
A magnetic stranger enters the room, and the atmosphere shifts: air thickens, time stretches – something ancient recognises itself.
Here’s the subtle distinction between energy, charisma and aura.
Energy is what you possess.
Charisma is what you do with it.
Aura is what you are — when doing ceases, when striving halts, when presence alone radiates out.
Charisma may win a crowd but aura stirs the quiet places, grounding you and those near you in something truer.
Across cultures, such attunement is a soft art. In Japanese, kuuki wo yomu —“reading the air” — describes a sensitivity to the unspoken. In many indigenous cultures children are taught to sense first, speak later; elders coach them to feel beneath the world’s surface. This is the quiet intelligence of aura, seldom taught, but deeply remembered in the body. It’s how true connection is forged, not through spectacle, but through the stillness that resonates.
We are told to guard our energy, to shield, to escape. But what if we nourished our aura instead? An aura that is coherent, clear and spiritually hydrated becomes both shield and guide. It simply is, broadcasting boundaries, inviting resonance, protecting with clarity and calling in what aligns on the deepest level.
Your aura isn’t just your own. It is your soul’s conversation with the collective. Walking into any room, you summon an atmosphere. With a single glance, you carry more than words may ever hold. The aura speaks for you before intention awakens.
In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence — where language can be mimicked, style replicated and knowledge endlessly generated — the one thing that cannot be fabricated is aura. As the attention economy continues to churn, hungry for clicks, impressions and fragments of our energy, I predict that a person’s aura will become the new force of gravity. Not just a spiritual shimmer, but a deeply felt signal, guiding who we trust, what we engage with and where we place our presence.
In the years to come, as noise increases and authenticity becomes rarer, it won’t be charisma or content that captivates — it will be coherence. The essence of a person will be felt before it's understood, and their aura will speak louder than any algorithm ever could.
Until next time...
Joanna
That was a really interesting read. I love the kind of interactions you're describing - people who are open to the world and what it has to offer.