Wheels Within Wheels

Wheels Within Wheels:

Chakras and Western Esotericism

Phil Hine
Published in 2024 by Twisted Trunk
BM Twisted Trunk, London WC1N 3XX
https://enfolding.org/books/
phil@twistedtrunkbooks.com

Copyright © 2024 by Phil Hine.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or
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Wheels within Wheels/Phil Hine. First Edition.

ISBN 978-1-9162366-8-4
eISBN 978-1-9162366-9-1
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With thanks to: Keith E. Cantú, Amy Hale, Mike Magee, Jason Miller, David
Southwell, Estelle Seymour, Maria Strutz, and last, but by no means least,
Christina Harrington and the staff of Treadwells Bookshop, London, for hosting
the original lecture series and promoting the booklets on which this book is based.

The cover and section illustrations are by Maria Strutz

Cover and here - Dancing Gaṇeśa
here - Illustration from Om: A Treatise on Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy.
here - Kālī with mitre and judge’s wig
here - Yin-Yang with trees
 Contents

Introduction

Part One: Chakras in the Tantric Traditions

The tantric traditions: an overview

Pre-tantric elements of the body

Tantric bodies

Making the body divine

Chakras in early Tantras

The Śakta Pīṭhas

Kuṇḍalinī

Mantras

Deities in the chakras

Nyāsa

Some closing thoughts

Section Bibliography
 Part Two: Chakras move West

Enter the Theosophists

1880: A year of chakras

White and black tantras

Chakra variations

Some observations

Section Bibliography

Part Three: The Judge and the Bishop

Tools for transformation

Sir John Woodroffe

The Serpent Power

Charles Webster Leadbeater

The Chakras: A Monograph

Observations and Comments

Section Bibliography

Part Four: Symbols of the Psyche

Chakra Psychologies

One: Jung and Chakras

Some comment and critique

Two: The therapeutic turn

Some closing thoughts

Some difficult questions

Section bibliography

Special Sources

About the author

Introduction

Chakras1 are everywhere; they have become a central element in Western

Occultism to the extent that it is rare to open any book on Paganism, Witchcraft
or Magic aimed at a general reader that doesn’t mention chakras in one form or
another. Chakras are a central feature of many New Age books, particularly those
dealing with self-help, healing and spirituality, and of course one may encounter
the chakras through yoga classes.
Chakras are often represented in the form of psychic centres in the body, that
correlate to particular psychological, emotional and spiritual states. They have had
a wide variety of concepts and correspondences mapped onto them, ranging from
the Tree of Life and the Tarot, to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.
In some ways, the term ‘chakra’ has become generic, insofar as many books
have been written arguing that other ancient traditions—Celtic, Old Norse, Native
American etc. had a similar, if not identical concept.
So popular have chakras become, particularly their association with health,
well-being and self-development that we now have chakra teas, chakra cakes, and
an-ever expanding industry of chakra-based therapies and self-help manuals.
The existence of the chakras in the human subtle body has also been the focus
of scientific explanations, such as Kirlian photography, and they are treated as
factual: we all have chakras, as indeed do animals such as dogs and cats.
What are the chakras? Here are some definitions:
 Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater, in his 1910 book The Inner Life says
that the chakras are ‘points of connection at which force flows from one vehicle to
another.’ He gives the location of 7 chakras, and points out that there are others,
but that these ‘are not employed by students of the white magic.’2
According to Anodea Judith, in her 1987 book Wheels of Life chakras are:
‘organizing centers for the reception, assimilation, and transmission of life
energies.’3
Genevieve Lewis Paulson, in her 2008 book Kuṇḍalinī and the Chakras says that
‘Chakras are vortices through which energy flows both in and out the body. When
developed, they rotate like a turning wheel.’4
Common to these statements is the idea that chakras are bodily centres that are
primarily concerned with the flow of energy throughout and beyond the human
organism. I think it is fair to say that this is the dominant discourse about chakras;
that they are largely understood in terms of that rather wide-ranging term ‘energy’.
Related to this energetic concept of chakras is the notion that within the human
body, lying dormant at the base of the spine, is a mysterious Serpentine power
called Kuṇḍalinī which can be awakened, through spiritual exercises or Yoga, or
even spontaneously, and that when this happens, it can lead to the development of
psychic abilities or mystical states of enlightenment.

About this book

What we don’t tend to find in popular books on chakras is much of a sense that
they have developed as historical subjects—either in India or in the West, and this
is something that has fascinated me for a long time, hence this book.
The concept of the chakras started trickling into Western Esotericism in the
latter half of the Nineteenth Century, and their history in the west has been one of
almost constant reformulation, reinterpretation, and re-codification, and it is this
early Western reconfiguration of the chakras that I want to explore.
This book is divided into four sections. The first section: Chakras in the Tantric
Traditions is a brief introduction to how chakras appear in the Tantric traditions in
which they originated.
The second section, Chakras come West, examines some of the earliest English-
language writings about chakras that appeared in Western esoteric journals and
publications.
The third section, The Judge and the Bishop, examines two key texts which have
had a huge influence on Western ideas about chakras—Sir John Woodroffe’s 1918
book, The Serpent Power and Theosophist Charles Leadbeater’s 1927 book, The
Chakras: A Monograph.
The final section: Symbols of the Psyche, examines the influence of Carl Gustav
Jung in providing a psychological understanding of chakras.

My own early experience with Chakras

I became involved in occult practice in the late 1970s, and in that first flush of
enthusiasm, read everything I could get my hands on. A lot of concepts went
straight into my brain with no attempt to interrogate them; I just accepted them as
‘true’. And I don’t think I was unusual in doing so. By the mid-1980s, I’d say I had
absorbed a great of information about chakras and so forth, because virtually all
the books I’d read had something to say about chakras, but not necessarily
thinking it through or questioning what I had learnt.
In September 1984, I underwent a series of intense experiences which were, at
the time, frightening, disorientating, and instructive. This was during a fairly busy
time of my life. I was living in York in a kind of hippie/punk commune; training to
be an Occupational Therapist; having a secret affair with a Yoga teacher, and,
earlier that month, had just undergone my second degree initiation into the
Wiccan coven I was then a member of. A few days later, I experienced the first of a
series of what I described in my diary of the period as ‘fits’. Feeling both hot and
cold at the same time; my skin crawling; teeth chattering; spine arching; seeing
colours; feelings of vertigo and a blurring of my sense of being an individual.
Here’s a brief extract from my magical diary of the time:
 It began as a scream in my head; “Kali’s Scream” I thought. It echoed on and on, for what seemed like
forever, until I felt it like a white light that shot down my spine, coiling around muladhara, which
opened with a blaze. It felt like every nerve was alight as it spread around my body. I began to tremble
and twitch, and experienced a disorientation which worsened into a whirling if I closed my eyes. This
went on for over an hour until I drifted into sleep.

Now I didn’t know what was happening until my Yoga Teacher partner told me
she thought it was ‘the serpent starting to rise’, i.e. the Kuṇḍalinī. That was useful,
in a way, because it gave me a handle—a frame of reference if you like—for
making sense of what was going on. And through yoga and the various magical
exercises I’d been taught, I was able to manage the feelings.
Looking back through my diary for that period, I was doing a lot of haṭha yoga
exercises, as well as Wiccan ritual and meditations on Kali; but also I was having
‘spontaneous’ visions of the chakras—complete with petals—as present in my
astral body. And of course there are seven of them. I’d internalised the dominant
chakra schema that was around at the time, accepted it as ‘real’ and accordingly,
my experience was structured through that schema.
There were two aspects of these experiences that I found particularly puzzling.
Firstly, that I was having this ‘kuṇḍalinī’ experience. I’d formed the impression
that this was something that only happened to advanced magical practitioners.
Well, I did have a fairly high opinion of myself, but in no way considered myself to
be an advanced practitioner. Secondly, I was experiencing intense
sensations—energy if you like—rushing down my body, and spreading outwards,
rather than beginning at the base of the spine. Everything I’d read about Kuṇḍalinī
was that it travels up the spine, and if it comes down the spine, it is dangerous.
What these experiences did then, that for me was actually the most important
part of them, was start me along the trajectory of questioning what I’d read, and
what I’d been told by various authorities. Not just about chakras and kuṇḍalinī,
but all manner of esoteric ideas. It didn’t happen all at once, but it planted a seed,
as it were.
Fast forwards to 1994. I was preparing do a meditation workshop on the
Muladhara Chakra. I don’t recall exactly what I was going to do, but the thing that
does stick in my mind is that I had photocopied and enlarged a drawing of the
muladhara chakra (below). This representation of the Muladhara is by an artist
using the descriptions of the Chakras from Sir John Woodroffe’s book The Serpent
Power – a translation of the Sat-Cakra-nirupana – part of a 16th century treatise
on yoga.

It suddenly struck me that the chakra resembled a Yantra. What are yantras?

Here (above) is a Yantra. The dot at the centre of the Yantra—the bindu—is the
universal power of the goddess, which emerges and becomes a series of
differentiated facets: subsidiary goddesses who embody particular powers
associated with the goddess at the centre. Each of these goddesses could, in turn,
potentially have their own attendants or subsidiary goddesses. So Yantras have a
kind of fractal nature. A Yantra, when it is used in ritual, is simultaneously the
goddess herself in her spatial form, a visual representation of the pulsing of the
cosmos and the powers of the human body.
My teacher told me to think of Yantras as though they were cities full of
goddesses and powers. In ritual, you worship, that is to say, you recognise the
presence of the deities within the yantra as present in your self and so replicate,
through ritual, the expansion and contraction of the universe, of consciousness
moving outwards from the centre, then moving inwards again.
Thinking about chakras as similar to Yantras caused me to reflect that all the
‘symbolism’ in Indian pictorial representations of chakras, which tends not to be
given much attention in contemporary Western representations, such as the
assignments of Sanskrit letters to the petals, the number of petals, the deities
which are associated with them etc., must mean something, and could relate to
particular practices and rituals. As I hope to demonstrate, this is indeed the case.

1 In the interests of consistency, I am using the Westernized ‘chakra’ except when referring to specific terms
and texts.
2 Leadbeater, Charles. W. 1927. The Chakras: A Monograph. Adyar, Madras. Theosophical Publishing House.
p286.
3 Judith, Anodea. 1987. Wheels of Life: A User’s Guide to the Chakra System. St. Paul, Minnesota. Llewellyn
Publications. p38.
4 Paulson, Genevieve Lewis. 2008. Kuṇḍalinī and the Chakras. St. Paul, Minnesota. Llewellyn Publications.
p59.
 One:
Chakras in the Tantric Traditions
The Tantric traditions: an overview

The Sanskrit term tantra derives from the verbal root tan, indicating to spread, to
extend, or to weave. This is a very early meaning of the term, and by the fifth
century of the Common Era, it had come to mean a system, a doctrine, a work, or
a text. According to the fifth-century philosopher Pakṣilasvāmin Vātsyāyana, a
tantra is ‘a collection of facts’. Many Sanskrit works that have the term ‘tantra’ as
part of their title are not Tantric in respect to their subject matter, and many
Tantric works do not feature the term as part of their title. The term Tantrism is a
neologism created by western scholars.
The esoteric religious traditions we now refer to as the Tantras emerged out of
the Śaiva religion between the fifth and sixth centuries of the Common Era. These
esoteric traditions went on to have a huge influence on the other religious systems
of the period, which quickly developed their own forms of Tantric practices.
Originally, these traditions referred to themselves as the mantramārga (‘the path
of mantras’) and there later emerged the adjective tāntrika (‘relating to tantra’ or
‘adherent of tantra’), which was used to do distinguish these traditions and their
followers from those of the Vaidika (Vedic) religion. The important distinction is
between two forms of revealed religion; the śruti (‘revelation’) of the Vedas—the
mainstream of Hinduism, and those forms of religion revealed by deities such as
Śiva or Viṣṇu. A key characteristic of the tantric traditions is that their doctrine
and practices are revealed directly by a deity. These revealed teachings are held by
their followers to be superior to those of the Vedas, although the latter remain
valid for everyday social life.

Pre-tantric Traditions

The roots of the tantric traditions are found in three forms of ascetic Śaivism: The
Pāśupatas, the Kālāmukhas, and the Kāpālikas. These traditions later became
known as the atimārga—the higher, or ultimate path. These traditions emerged
during a period in Indian history when religious practices and beliefs were
changing. The role of sacrifice within the mainstream Vedic religion was lessening,
and monotheism—the belief in a universal, all-powerful deity—Śiva or Viṣṇu for
example, was coming to the fore. Iconic representations of these deities were
increasingly being worshipped in temples. There is epigraphical evidence that
shows that the foundation of a temple, and its upkeep, was believed to bestow
merit on those that provided the financial support. The persons making these
grants included royalty, merchants, guilds, and wealthy individuals. These temples
accrued wealth, and became centres of political and financial power.
We can think of these traditions of ascetic Saivism as transcendent paths in that
their practitioners sought to go beyond normative behaviour and attain a higher
liberation. The Pāśupatas sought a liberative death in the cremation ground, whilst
the Kālāmukhas and Kāpālikas demonstrated their power over death by living in
the cremation ground, and by seeking power through the worship of ferocious
deities. Although these traditions became increasingly transgressive in terms of
dedicated practitioners, it also seems to be the case that there were attempts to
domesticate the traditions, and despite their apparent wildness, they received royal
patronage and established religious institutions across the subcontinent.
The mantramārga drew on many of the doctrines and practices of the ascetic
atimārga which preceded it, but it also differed from it in some radical ways. What
separated the mantramārga from the atimārga was a new emphasis on the equality
of two life-goals: moksa or liberation, and the acquisition of magical powers—
siddhi. Whilst the atimārga path could only be pursued by Brahmin men (at least
according to the prescriptive texts), the mantramārga was (at least theoretically)
open to anyone who sought initiation—both men and women, and those of any
caste, class or life-stage. Moreover, initiates were not required to become ascetics
or renunciates living apart from society, but could remain as householders
pursuing everyday lives in their communities.

Vaiṣṇava, Buddhist, and Jain Tantras

The Vaiṣṇava Tantric tradition, the Pāñcarātra, was developed as the Vaiṣṇavas
sought a new ritual system that would allow them to compete more readily with
the Śaivas, who enjoyed a wider royal support. There was supposedly a canon of
108 Pāñcarātra scriptures, revealed by Viṣṇu in his forms of Vāsudeva or
Nārayaṇa, but these have for the most part been lost. An example of the
Pāñcarātra is the Lakshmi Tantra, translated into English by Sanjukta Gupta.
Similarly, there is also considerable evidence that Buddhism reformulated much
of its doctrines along tantric lines. During the period in which the tantric
traditions emerged (between the fifth and eighth centuries) Buddhism received
widespread royal support. There is epigraphical evidence recording the
endowments of Buddhist monasteries by royal families, as well as stupas and
images of the Buddha. In Nepal there is inscriptional evidence of royal support for
both Buddhist and Śaiva institutions. The development of Buddhist tantras were
influenced not only by the Śaiva mantramārg, but also by a growing body of ritual
and magical practices within Mahāyāna Buddhist circles, some of which are set
down in texts that call themselves the mantranaya (‘the way of mantras’). It is
around the middle of the seventh century that a distinct Tantric Buddhism
emerges, calling itself the Vajrayāna and drawing on the already established
doctrines of the Yogācāra school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. These Buddhist Tantric
traditions spread rapidly to Southeast, Eastern, and Central Asia, and led
eventually to the development of distinct Asian and Tibetan traditions.
 Although the Jains did not develop an exclusive tantric modality in the same
way that the Buddhists did, there is evidence that from at least the eighth century
Jains borrowed tantric meditation and ritual practices from Śaiva sources,
although their strict adherence to nonviolence, celibacy and vegetarianism meant
that they did not, for the most part, incorporate elements from the non-
Saiddhantika tantras such as erotic ritual or animal sacrifice. Jain tantric practices
seem to the most part to have been concerned with siddhi rather than liberation,
and there are references to Jain tantric monks performing rituals to aid kings in
battle and to defeat invading Muslim armies. There is evidence too that the Jains
borrowed various goddesses from the Śaiva traditions, and these became lineage-
goddesses of important Jain families.

The Śaiva Siddhānta

The earliest—and what later became the mainstream of the Tantric Currents
became known as the Śaiva Siddhānta. Siddhānta can be translated as ‘the
orthodox’ or ‘the established doctrine’.
The earliest scripture of the Siddhānta that has so far come to light is the
Niśvāsa-tattva-saṃhitā, parts of which have been dated to the middle of the fifth
century. It may well be that the tradition had been established for some time, but
this is the first textual evidence that has come to light.
The Śaiva Siddhānta originated in North India and quickly spread across the
subcontinent. It seems to have become well-established by the end of the sixth
century. There are seventh-century inscriptions recording the initiation of kings
into the tradition. From the ninth century on, there is a wealth of inscriptions
referring to Śaiva Siddhānta ascetics and priests, indicating the spread of the
tradition across India and into Southeast Asia. During the same period, there was
a proliferation of Śaiva monastic institutions (maṭhas) and temples. An extended
network of Śaiva Siddhānta institutions spread itself over much of India, with its
preceptors acting as rājaguruḥs to kings. Although the tradition seems to have
begun as a system of liberation for individuals, it quickly developed a wide range
of rituals and procedures relating to the construction and consecration of temples,
calendrical festivals, and optional ceremonies. In addition, the tradition developed
Śaiva initiation procedures for kings, and an array of rituals for the benefit of a
ruler and his kingdom, both protective and aggressive. Of all the tantric traditions,
the Siddhānta was by far the most public.

The and Right and Left-Currents

As the Siddhānta developed, there quickly arose around it, a number of traditions
devoted to the propitiation of various forms of Bhairava—a fierce, higher form of
Śiva, and forms of the Goddess, considered to be embodiments of Śiva’s power—
śakti. These are the traditions sometimes referred to as the Śākta Tantras. These
systems were more oriented towards private practices than the Siddhānta, and
they featured various degrees of transgressive practices. The earliest evidence we
have for these non-Saiddhāntika traditions is from the sixth century. These are the
traditions which fall under the banner of the the left-current or vāmāmarg, with
the Śaiva Siddhānta being the right-current; the dakṣiṇāmarg.

The Kulamārga

The term Kula means a clan or family. In the earlier traditions, a practitioner
would, through initiation, become a member of a clan of Yoginīs, the fierce
supernatural women who were the guardians of the tradition. But a new esoteric
concept of Kula emerged to signify both the human body and the cosmos as being
composed of a network of female powers. By envisioning the body in this way,
much of the ritual practice of the mantramārga became internalised. So for
example, instead of going on a lengthy and costly pilgrimage to sacred sites across
the subcontinent, a practitioner could install those sites within his or her own
body and perform the appropriate worship. The human body hence became the
primary seat of worship for all powers and capacities, rather than the cremation
ground or other wild places. At the same time, the goddesses became identified
with the senses and other capacities of the human body. So for example,
everything one hears can be a continual offering to delight the goddess of hearing.
The Kulamārga seems to have emerged from the wilder pre-tantric currents and
the worship of the Yoginīs. These Kaula traditions prioritized the worship of Śākti
(i.e. the goddess) and tended to view Śiva, though present, as subordinate.
Although the Kaulas took up practices such as sexual intercourse with a ritual
consort, the consumption of bodily ‘nectars’, and ritual offerings such as meat and
alcohol, these were eventually not seen as ends in themselves, but rather, they were
means to access an expansive, blissful consciousness. At the same time, many
rituals were simplified, and there was more of an emphasis on ecstatic experience,
and yogas that did not seek to suppress the senses. By moving the focus of practice
away from the cremation ground and other wild places, there emerged eventually
an aestheticized practice which was more acceptable to householders and courtly
elites. There are four transmissions of the Kaula path, symbolically arranged with
the four directions.
The Eastern Transmission (Pūrvāmnāya) is that of the Trika, focused on the
worship of three goddesses, the gentle and sweet-natured Parā, and two fierce,
Kālī-like aspects of Parā: Parāparā & Aparā. These three goddesses were to be
visualized as seated upon lotus-thrones positioned on the tips of a trident (the
primary weapon of Śiva) which was, in turn, coextensive with the adept’s spine. It’s
foundational scripture was the Mālinī-vijaya-uttara-tantra. In the ninth century,
further developments of Trika thought were the Śivasūtra (‘Aphorisms of Śiva’)
and the Spandakārikā (‘Concise Verses on Vibration’) which expounded the
doctrine of spanda as the essential nature of the deity, eventually becoming a
sophisticated nondual tradition.
The Western Transmission (Paścimāmnāya) is that of Kubjika, the ‘hunchback
goddess’. She is visualized as black in colour, large-bellied, six-faced, twelve-
armed, and wearing serpents, gems, human bones and a garland of skulls. She is
the personification of kuṇḍalinī. It’s in this tradition that we first see the system of
the six chakras that later appears in Haṭha Yoga and is familiar to us in the West.
The Northern Transmission (Uttarāmnāya) consisted of three traditions; the
Mata, Krama, and Guhyakālī currents, all of which involved the worship of
esoteric aspects of Kālī.
The Southern Transmission (Dakṣiṇāmnāya) was originally the propitiation of
Kāmeśvari, accompanied by Kāmadeva and a group of 11 goddesses known as the
Nityās. Out of this tradition there developed Srīvidyā, centered around the
propitiation of the goddess Lalitā Tripurasundari. Lalitā means ‘the playful one’
and Tripurasundari, ‘She who is beautiful in the three worlds’. Srīvidyā of course
has survived to the present day, although it does so in a domesticated forms where
the original Kaula elements have been muted.
This quote (one of my favourites) from the Saundaryalahari, an important
Srīvidyā text, expresses sentiments in accord with ideas expressed in other Kaula
texts—that the best way to worship one’s chosen deity is not through formal ritual
but in everyday activities.

Let my idle chatter be the muttering of prayer, my every manual movement the execution of ritual
gesture,
my walking a ceremonial circumambulation, my eating and other acts the rite of sacrifice,
my lying down prostration in worship, my every pleasure enjoyed with dedication of myself,
let whatever activity is mine be some form of worship of you.

The ‘classical’ period of the tantric traditions falls between the sixth and tenth
centuries. These traditions were severely impacted by the advent of Muslim rule in
India from the twelfth century onwards, when the ruling dynasties that had
patronized these traditions were replaced, or reduced to vassal status by Muslim
rulers. Although tantric traditions continued, largely without royal support, they
were supplanted by other religious developments coming to the fore.
Pre-tantric elements of the body

Popular books dealing with the chakras have a tendency to treat all Indian textual
sources as though they are elements of a homogeneous continuum, rather than
acknowledging that texts are produced within particular historical and social
contexts which are, in actuality, very different from each other. It is not unusual to
find authors drawing on a wide range of sources, such as the Upaniṣads, Yoga texts
(both pre- and post-Tantric), and occasionally Tantric texts themselves. But what
rarely emerges from such accounts is the idea that these concepts are rooted in
specific philosophies and have arisen out of particular historical contexts and
processes.
Also, the Western concept of the ‘subtle body’, which has become progressively
universalized, empiricized and reified over the last hundred and fifty years or so
can blind us to the fact that what we might call the ‘Yogic body’ (and ‘Tantric
Body’) in India not only changes over time, but also differs according to particular
lineages and traditions.
Although the chakras as elements of a practice regime make their first
appearance within the early texts of the Śaiva Tantric tradition (circa 5th century
CE), many of the components that we find associated with them are of course,
much older.
Nāḍīs

Nāḍīs are channels through which the vital breath flows throughout the body. The
term Nāḍī tends to be understood nowadays as ‘nerves’ or ‘tubes’ but the root of
the term is ‘that which flows’; channels, streams, rivers; the flow of breath around
the body. Thinking about Nāḍīs as fluid channels as opposed to ‘nerves’ suggests, I
feel, a different way of thinking about what they might be.
The Nāḍīs are a fundamental element of systems of yoga. Some of the early
Upaniṣads give the number of Nāḍīs as 72,000, all of which originate in the heart.
The Kaṭha Upaniṣad refers to 101 channels which spread out in all directions from
the heart, and singles out the channel ascending to the head as the conduit by
which one can reach immortality”. Its this central channel which becomes known
as Suṣumnā. Just as a point of interest, one of the earliest tantras, the
Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, says that there are two channels: Suṣumnā, the Northern
Channel, and Iḍā, the southern channel, and the Yogi’s breath circulates in the
space between the two.1

Vāyus

The notion of Vāyus (‘Winds’) that circulate through the body is also ancient.
Prāṇa is mentioned in the Ṛg Veda (circa 1500 BCE) and there are various
numbers of winds enumerated. Prāṇa is both a generic term for these winds and
the first of a set of 5. In the Tantric traditions, Prāṇa becomes identified with Śakti
(Prāṇa-Śakti).

The Heart

The Heart as the centre of consciousness is again a very ancient concept. A passage
(one of many) in the Ṛg Veda says: ‘It is the heart which enables a human being to
penetrate into deep secrets and mysteries.’ In the Upaniṣads the heart becomes an
unbounded space, associated with immortality, nectar, bliss and consciousness. It
becomes the place in the body where all mental activity (emotions, thought etc.)
takes place. In the Tantric traditions these associations are reworked and
intensified.

What about āyurveda?

Some recent correspondence has suggested to me that the origins of the chakras
may be found within the āyurvedic tradition. Given the strong contemporary
association between chakras and healing, this seems to be a reasonable
supposition. Whilst it is true that there are shared themes between both Tantric
and āyurvedic literatures—possession for example, and there are also āyurvedic
texts dealing with yoga practice—the current scholarly consensus is that there are
no mentions of chakras in classical āyurvedic literature, and āyurvedic
incorporations of the chakras are a recent phenomena.2 If you want to read more
about how chakras were incorporated into āyurveda in the early twentieth
century, I’d recommend Projit Bihari Mukharji’s Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda,
Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences (University of Chicago Press, 2016) A
parallel is occasionally drawn between chakras and marmans. A definition of
marmans is given by the medical author Vāghbhaṭa in around 600 CE as a “point”:

which pulsates irregularly and which hurts when pressed. It is a point at which the flesh, bone, sinews,
pipes, ducts, and junctions all meet, where life is strongly present. … the breath of life is located in
them…

There are 107 marmans on the body in the classical literature, and they are
described as bringing about death if they are damaged. In Indian martial arts they
are treated as points to be attacked in order to cause harm to one’s opponent.3
This, I feel, is the key difference between marmans and chakras. Marmans are
clearly understood to be corporeal insofar as they are capable of being
damaged—which is certainly not the case for Tantric conceptions of chakras.
Again, the identification of marman points for therapeutic attention in a similar
fashion to acupuncture or Tibetan moxibustion points is a modern innovation.
1 Mallinson, James and Singleton, Mark. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London. Penguin Random House UK. Kindle
Edition, Chapter 5: Channels, Winds and the Vital Principle.
2 See Wujastyk, D. 2009. Interpreting the Image of the Human Body in Premodern India Hindu Studies
(2009) 13: 189.
3 See Zarilli, Phillip B. 1998. When the Body Becomes all Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in
Kalaripayattu, a South Indian Martial Art. Delhi. Oxford University Press.
Tantric bodies

Prior to the advent of the Tantric traditions, Indian esoteric thought had a rather
negative view of the body.

The Maitri Upaniṣad asserts:

In this foul-smelling, unsubstantial body, which is an aggregate of bone, skin, muscle, marrow, flesh,
semen, blood, mucus, tears, rheum, faeces, urine, wind, bile, and phlegm, what good is the enjoyment
of desires? In this body, which is afflicted with desire, anger, greed, delusion, fear, despondency, envy,
separation from what is desired, union with what is not desired, hunger, thirst, old age, death, disease,
sorrow, and so on, what good is the enjoyment of desires?1

Unlike the pre-Tantric systems of Yoga, where the body is considered to be a

cause of suffering and therefore has to be disciplined, restrained and transcended,
the Tantric traditions considered the body to be divine; and it is through the body
that liberation and magical powers (siddhis), can be attained.
A central concept that is found in the non-dual Śaiva traditions is that the
cosmos is a manifestation of an absolute, omnipresent and all-embracing
consciousness. Both the world and the individual person are the result of the
progressive contraction of consciousness—they are instances of consciousness
becoming localised and particularised, to the extent that body, person and world
are experienced as distinct and seperate from each other. However, the body and
the cosmos are essentially the same, and the soteriological goal of non-dual
practice is the realization of this non-difference.
As this body is a reflection of the universe, so it contains everything of
significance in the universe, including deities, the seasons, the stars, the planets,
and so forth. A very important point made in several texts is that no worship is
possible without location. Each deity, whether they reside within the body or
outside it, must have a place of their own—a sacred seat where union (melāpa)
takes place. Most tantras agree that external disciplines are not sufficient to bring
about liberation and that external rites must be mirrored by internal discipline:
antaryāga (internal ritual) in order to be effective.

Tattvas
The term Tattva can be translated as ‘that-ness’. It is often understood to refer to a
‘category’, ‘reality-principle’, or ‘essence’. For example, a river, an ice floe, a puddle
all share the same essence of a fundamental element—water: hence water is a
tattva.
Readers may be familiar with the Five Elemental Tattvas that we find in the
texts of the Golden Dawn. But these originate in the ancient Indian Sāṁkhya
philosophy, which has 25 Tattvas. The Tantric traditions borrowed the concept of
Tattvas from Sāṁkhya and added their own ontological categories, giving a total of
36 Tattvas.
The diagram on the page opposite is an attempt to represent the levels of the
Tattvas. The key idea here is that of consciousness descending or becoming
gradually contracted until it takes on the form of an individual—a person who has
a mental apparatus that discriminates between one thing and another and who
perceives themselves to be separate from the world. They have forgotten their
original divine nature. Moving down the diagram shows the contraction of
consciousness. If we reverse the flow and go back upwards, this is the pathway to
universal awakened consciousness or liberation.
 I am not going to cover all the stages in this sequence. For anyone who wants to
understand the different stages in detail, there is a fine explanation of them given
in Christopher Wallis’ book Tantra Illuminated. At the top of the schema there are
Śiva-Śakti. Here, Śiva should be understood not as a deity, but as the ground of
being, or that which brings all the various powers in the cosmos/person together.
Śakti is the dynamic aspect of consciousness which generates self-awareness and
all forms. The two are not really separate, any more than the light and heat of a
flame can be separated. Śakti can be translated as ‘power’, ‘capacity’, ‘energy’.
As consciousness contracts, so the individual soul appears at the stage called
Puruṣa (12), this is the Śiva-spark which exists in all beings, or rather, it is Siva
who has ‘cloaked himself ’ with Maya and her Kancukas (whilst at the same time,
remaining utterly free and transcendent). Prakṛti (13) is often translated as
materiality or nature, and is the manifestation of everything which can become an
object of consciousness. In the non-dual Tantric world-view, nothing exists
outside of consciousness. At the stages 14-16, the faculties associated with mind
appear: buddhi is intelligence or discernment (14). It is the faculty by which we
decide upon a particular course of action. It is the source of discrimination, that
gives us the ability to categorise things as one thing or another (i.e. “that is a tree”,
“that is a Mars bar.”). The ahaṃkāra (“I-maker”) (15) is close to the Western
concept of the ego, giving rise to the “I-identification” with a particular action or
concept such as “I don’t like Mondays”; “I’m taking the rubbish out.” Next is
manas—the attentive function of mind which sorts and categorises sense-data
(16). Manas is sometimes called the “net of thoughts”—it is both the source and
the governor of the Sense-powers and Action-powers. It co-operates with the
sense-powers to build up distinct perceptions, and it also builds images and
concepts.
 Tattvas 17-21 are the five jñānendriyas, or sense-capacities. They are not the
sense-organs in the material sense, but the Śaktis that enable those particularised
perceptions to occur.
Tattvas 22-26 form the five karmendriyas, the organs or capacities for action,
representing five fundamental actions of a human being in respect to her or his
environment. They are the powers that enable the modes of action to function. It
can be tricky to differentiate between the power and the organ that carries out that
power. Let me give an example. ‘Grasping’ is normally associated with the hands.
However, if you’re dexterous, you can also grasp with your toes and there’s also the
mental concept of grasping an idea. So the Action-Power of “grasping” can be
understood as the Śakti primarily concerning with ‘grasping’ things in the world,
however that action is effected.
Tattvas 27-31 are the five tanmātras: they are the subtle properties which
correspond to the five elements. They can be thought of as basic patterns or
impressions which enable us to make sensory distinctions. So the Hearing-
impression allows us to recognise sounds as particular sounds, if that makes sense.
Finally, there are the five mahābhūtas, often understood to be the five elements.
However, the five elements do not correspond to the material elements. Earth
(prthvī) constitutes everything that is solid. Water (āpas) constitutes the essence of
liquidity. Fire (tejas) is the essence of heat; Air (vāyu) is the essence of all that is
gaseous; and Space (ākāṣa) is the matrix in which the entire physical world exists.
The jñānendriyas and the karmendriyas both arise from the activity of
manas—’born’ of the ahaṃkāra’s desire to perceive and act upon the world. By the
same token, the ahaṃkāra “manifests” the tanmātras and the mahābhūtas in order
to have objects to experience and enjoy.
All the levels or stages of the Tattva hierarchy can be thought of as
particularised expressions of the ultimate, singular consciousness. A commonly-
found analogy that illustrates this principle is that just as sweets are produced
from the gradual coagulation of sugarcane juice, so too the Tattvas are
coagulations from the light of Śiva.
This expansion and contraction is expressed in the body as the pulse of your
heart, the currents of your breath, and Tantric ritual, for the most part, reflects this
expansion and contraction too. Many ritual sequences are rooted in the
practitioner’s heart-space, moving both up and down the central axis of the body.
The tantric chakras mirror this process of consciousness-expansion and
consciousness-contraction. In a chakra, the highest principle (or a particular
aspect of it) is located at the centre of the chakra, with subsidiary powers arrayed
around it. The powers that are active at this particular point are sometimes
rendered anthropomorphically as deities, and are simultaneously phonic (that is
to say, they are seed-syllable mantras) and phenomenal: related philosophical
concepts for meditation, reflection and realization.

1 Holdrege, Barbara A. 1998. Body Connections: Hindu Discourses of the Body and the Study of Religion.
International Journal of Hindu Studies 2, no. 3 (1998): 341-86.
Making the body divine

The purification and divinization of the body (bhūtaśuddhiḥ) is a core component

of tantric practice, found across many traditions within the Śaiva canon, and in
Vaiṣṇava scriptures. There are similar practices in the Buddhist tantric traditions.
In bhūtaśuddhiḥ practice, regions of the body are homologized with the five
elements, tattvas and kalās.
What follows is an abbreviated description of bhūtaśuddhiḥ compiled from
Śaiva texts such as the Kāmikāgama, Īśānaśivaguradeva, and Somaśambhu-
paddhati. There are very similar accounts of this rite in both the Jayākha Saṃhitā
and the Laksmī Tantra, two texts of the Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra.

Assuming a straight-backed posture and facing North, and invoking the

presence of Śiva, the practitioner begins with the purification of the hands,
smearing them with sandal-paste. He then performs karanyāsa—the imposition
of mantras onto the fingers and hands. According to the Kāmikāgama,
householders should perform this beginning with the thumb and ending with the
little finger; whereas forest-dwelling ascetics begin with the little finger and end
with the thumb. The former represents the evolution of the tattvas, and the latter,
their dissolution, and is appropriate for those desiring final liberation. This
practice endows the practitioner’s hands with the nature of Śiva, making them
efficacious for all other ritual activities. The hands are ‘rubbed’ with the fiery Astra
(weapon) mantra that destroys all impurities.

The Brahmantras and Aṅgamantras

The five Brahmantras are in actuality the five acts (and faces) of Śiva. These are
Īśāna (grace), Tatpuruṣa (concealing), Aghora (reabsorption), Vāma
(maintenance) and Sadjoyāta (emission).
The Aṅgamantras are the ‘limbs’ of Śiva. They are Netra (eye), Hṛd (heart), Śiras
(head), Śikhā (topknot), Kavaca (armour), and Astra (weapon).

Position Brahmamantra Aṅgamantra

Thumbs Īśāna Astra

Index fingers Tatpuruṣa Kavaca

Middle fingers Aghora Śikhā

Ring fingers Vāma Śiras

Little fingers Sadjoyāta Hṛd

Palms Netra

The practitioner then meditates upon the nature of Śiva present in the heart-
cave, or, alternatively, with Śivasakti, above the brahmarandhra. He then
contemplates his body being incinerated by fire, annihilating any accumulated
karma. This kind of meditation is sometimes referred to as Kālāgnirudra—the
Rudra who is the fire of time. The power of Kālāgni resides in the left big toe, and
is meditated upon spreading throughout the body.
The practitioner then contemplates the tattvas in relation to the body. Each of
these five tattvas are pervaded by a kalā and located in the body. The five elements
are the least subtle of the 36 tattvas that constitute the cosmos. They are related in
the body to the modes of perception. At the same time, the five elements are the
supports for the kalās (see below).
 Firstly, the practitioner contemplates the pruthvi tattva (Earth). It is to be
visualized as having the form of a square; gold-coloured, marked with the vajra.
It’s seed-syllable is Lam. The presiding deity is Brahmā. It is pervaded by nivṛitti
kalā. It is raised with five repetitions of the seed-mantra hlam.
Next, the jala tattva (Water). It has the form of a half-moon, white in colour,
marked with a lotus. The presiding deity is Viṣṇu. The seed-syllable is Vam. It is
pervaded by pratiṣṭhā kalā. It is raised through four repetitions of the mantra
hvim.
Then, the agni tattva (Fire). It has the form of a triangle, red in colour and
marked with a svastika. It’s seed-syllable is Ram. It is associated with vidyā kalā. It
is raised through three repetitions of the mantra hrum.
Now, the vayu tattva (Air). It has the form of a hexagon, black in colour,
marked with six drops (bindu). The presiding deity is Isvara. It is associated with
sāntā kalā. The seed-syllable is Yam. It is raised with two repetitions of the mantra
hyaim.
Finally (in this sequence) the akasa tattva (Space). It has the form of circle, and
is unmarked. It is the colour of smoke. The presiding deity is Sadāśiva. The seed-
syllable is Ham. It is pervaded by sāntyātītā kalā. It is raised through one
intonation of the mantra haum.

The locations of the tattva in the body are as follows.

Tattva Body location Alternative location

Earth Heart From the feet to the knee

Water Neck From the knee to navel

Fire Root of the uvula From navel to the neck

Air Mid-point of the two eyebrows From the neck to top of face

Space brahmarandhra Above the face

In this short sequence, the progression from earth to space up the body folds
each element into it’s preceding aspect and emits the corresponding sense-
capacity. Again, this recapitulates the reversal of the tattva schema; the
practitioner ascending through the elements. Breath, visualization, mantra and
focusing awareness on the senses act in combination.1

The Kalās

Here, kalā indicates limited action. In the Śaiva philosophy, it is kalā tattva that
seperates us from the unlimited potential of our true nature into differentiated
reality. From the earth element to the Śiva tattva, there are five circles or
enclosures that encapsulate the thirty-six tattvas. Nivṛitti kalā corresponds to the
element of Earth.2 Pratiṣṭhā kalā encapsulates the tattvas from water (jala tattva)
to prakṛti. Vidyā kalā encompasses puruṣa and the six kañcukas (‘coats of
armour’) comprising of kalā (limited action), vidyā (limited knowledge, i.e.
discursive thought), rāga (attachment), kāla (time), niyati (necessity), and māyā
(veiling). The kañcukas are so named as they cover the Self. Sāntā kalā
encapsulates suddha vidyā tattva to śakti tattva. Sāntyātītā kalā is the domain of
Śiva in his most subtle (highest) form.
The ritual practice continues with the ‘untying’ of the knots (granthis) of the
central channel. At each cakra where there is a ‘knot’ the practitioner
contemplates that he is freed from the obstruction caused by the knot,
accompanied by pranayama. Raising awareness up the central channel, he
identifies his self with Śiva, located at the crown of the head, twelve fingers’ length
above the meeting of the eyebrows (dvādaśanta). He then meditates upon his
body as though it were an inverted tree, the roots in his head, and branches
reaching down below. He visualizes the tree nourished by water, flowering and
bearing fruit. He then cuts down the tree with the sword of detachment and
contemplates it being burnt to ash in the fire of knowledge, from the big toe to the
head. The ash is scattered to the ten directions, and he meditates upon the
absorption of the body-tree into pure space (akasa).
The subtle body contains three subtle channels (nāḍi) through which the breath
flows: iḍā, piṅgāla, and the central suṣumnā. These channels are joined at five
points: the granthis (‘knot’, ‘joint’). They are visualized as lotus buds, and each has
a presiding deity, known collectively as the Kāraṇeśvaras. They are Brahman (the
heart), Viṣṇu (throat), Rudra (palate), Īśvara (eyebrows), Sadāśiva
(brahmarandhra).
The practitioner then contemplates the body remade as pure Śaktī. It is
drenched in the nectar that pours forth from the thousand-petalled cakra. He
invokes his own self as a body of mantras, with iccha, jnana and kriya saktis as the
three eyes, making the goad gesture (ankusa mudra). He places a sequence of
mantras along the central axis of his body, with appropriate mudras. Īśāna mantra
on the head; Tat-puruṣa mantra on the face; aghora on the chest; vamādeva on the
genitals; Sadjoyāta on the feet. These are the five faces of Śiva.
This is followed by an extensive placement of 38 kalā-mantras upon the body.
These kalās are śaktis, particularizations of Śiva’s divine power. They are grouped
in relation to his five faces. For example, Īśāna has five kalās: Śaśinī; Aṅgadā; Iṣṭā;
Marīci; and Jvālinī.
The practitioner then prepares the invocation of Isvara, meditating upon an
inner shrine within his heart. Visualizing a fire-pit in his navel, he offers oblations
of nectar, kindling the fire with the flow of the breath. Focusing awareness at the
mid-point of the eyebrows, he meditates upon a Śivalinga of pure crystal.
Contemplating union with that linga and the presence of Śiva within it, he
breathes in through the left channel and offers the oblation of consciousness,
through the outbreath (pingala nadi). Raising his self through the body to the
point between the eyebrows, he meditates upon Lord Sadāśiva, his body made of
knowledge, pure as crystal, five-faced, with ten arms.

1 The order of the tattvas indicates a 5-chakra schema here.

2 Nivṛitti also implies cessation or withdrawal of the senses or from worldly activity.
Chakras in early Tantras

Now I will outline some of the features of chakras and kuṇḍalinī that we find in
Tantric texts, particularly the earlier textual sources.
The Sanskrit word Cakra means simply wheel, circle or territory. However,
when we look at Tantric textual sources—and in particular, the early texts—we
generally find that the wheel or circle is occupied by deities of one kind or another
(cakra can also refer to an assembly of persons, such as ritual practitioners). We
can think of chakras then, as visualised locations in the human body (although
sometimes they are located outside of the body), where deities are installed for
worship. These deities are considered to be simultaneously cosmic powers and
human capacities, and are the focus of particular kinds of ritual and yoga practice
which are absent from popular Western accounts of the chakras. The generic term
for this practice is mantra-nyāsa (more of which in a while). The idea that chakras
are more-or-less static psychic locations in the astral body of humans and animals
is totally foreign to the Tantric understandings of chakras. This is a modern
innovation.
It is not surprising that when we try and make sense of these texts we run into
difficulties. They are often cryptic, and use dense metaphorical language, and
generally assume that the person reading the text is familiar with practices and
concepts. In that sense, they are ‘insider’ texts. A problem that frequently occurs is
that metaphors are taken as literal descriptions.

Many chakra schemas

The first thing that bears mentioning is that when we turn to the Tantric, and later,
Yogic traditions of India is that there are many different chakra systems. It is a far
more fluid environment than the popular version of the 7 chakras suggests.
Concepts of the subtle body, chakras, kuṇḍalinī and other related ideas in Indian
thought change considerably over time, and develop in different ways according to
particular religious and philosophical trajectories.
The 7-chakra model we are used to is, for the most part, drawn from a work
known as the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa (‘the system of six chakras’1) which is thought
to have been written in the 16th Century and is just one chapter of a much larger
work, ‘The Jewel Essence of Consciousness’ which remains untranslated. I’ll
examine this work in more depth in sections two and three.
Some authors have suggested that the system of 7 chakras we know today is the
oldest, but in fact the system of chakras which—very indirectly—is the source of
that system, which is found in the texts of the Kubjika tradition, were thought to
have been written around the 10th-11th century. Earlier systems of chakras, such
as those found in the Niśvāsaṃhitā and the Kālottara Tantra (5-6th century) have
5 chakras.
Here are some brief examples of different chakra systems from Tantric
scriptures and texts. Where possible, I’ve given references so that readers can
explore these works in more detail.

Kālottara Tantra

The Kālottara Tantra (5-6th Century) mentions 5 chakras, located at: heart, throat,
the palate, the middle of the brows, and the Crown. This is also the earliest text to
mention Kuṇḍalinī, as a ‘primordial coil’ (ādyā kuṇḍalinī) residing in the heart.
Īśvara Gītā

The Īśvara Gītā (8th Century) describes a form of Pāśupata Yoga in which the
practitioner visualises a white, 8-petalled lotus at the crown of the head, in the
seed-cup of which is a “golden treasure”; and an 8-petalled lotus at the heart, in
the midst of which is a flame.2

Brahmayāmala

The Brahmayāmala (7th-8th Century) mentions nine locations: top of the head,
forehead, mouth, throat, heart, navel, genitals, knees and feet, which are some-
times referred to as lotuses (padmas) and also cakras, where mantra deities are to
be installed.

Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra

The Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra (VBT), a ninth Century Trika scripture, briefly

outlines (verse 30) a twelve-chakra schema, related to the twelve stages of rising
kuṇḍalinī and correlated with twelve vowels. The chakras are not named in the
VBT itself, but can be found in an eighteenth-century commentary on the
scripture by Śivopādhyāya. The chakras are, (from the lowest moving upwards):
Janmāgra (at the generative organ); Mūla (i.e. Mūlādhāra, at the base of the spine);
Kanda (below the navel); Nābhi (navel); Hṛd (heart); Kaṇṭha (base of the throat);
Tālu (palate); Bhrūmadhya (between the eyebrows); Lalāṭa (forehead);
Brahmarandhra (apex of the cranium); Śakti (above the crown); Vyāpinī (above
the Śakti).3 Śakti is the unbounded power of the goddess (Bhairavi) beyond the
limitation of the body. Vyāpinī is, if you like, the end-result of this practice; an ‘all-
pervasive’ state of being identical with Śiva.
Verse 30 of VBT differentiates between three forms of meditation in ascending
the twelve stages: gross (sthūla), subtle (sūkṣma), and supreme (para). These are
not really separate practices, but gradations of awareness. The previous verse (29)
of the VBT states that śakti (i.e. kuṇḍalinī) rises, lightning-like, moving upwards
through the centres, until (at the dvādaśānta) the practitioner experiences the
‘great liberation’ (i.e. union with Bhairava). Here, the gross (sthūla) practice is the
vibration of the mantra-vowels, visualizing each of the centres in turn. This leads
into the subtle (sūkṣma) practice: the affective dimension; the practitioner focuses
on the feeling of the resonance (or vibration) of the vowel mantras in each of the
centres. It can be experienced as a subtle pulsation, a thrilling, surging growing
delight. This is sometimes called Spandamānatā. The supreme (para) practice
occurs when the previous two stages are automatic—it just happens without any
conscious effort.4

Netra Tantra

The Netra Tantra (9th Century) features six chakras. In addition, it features 12
knots (granthis), five voids (vyomans), and 16 ādharās (supports).5 The chakras
are named by Kṣemarāja in his commentary on Netra Tantra as nāḍī
(corresponding to the sexual centre, or place of ‘birth’); māyā (navel); yoga
(heart); bhedana (palate); dīpti (between the eyebrows, or bindu) and nāda
(forehead). The sixteen ādharās begin at the toes, and extend to the dvādaśānta
(‘end of the twelve [fingers]’) beyond the brahmarandhra (the opening atop the
skull). The five voids correspond in location to the chakras of the birth to the
bindu. In tantric yoga practice they are subtle body locations that correspond to
different instances of Śiva’s unbounded nature. The twelve granthi are associated
with blockages or obstructions encountered along the path of yoga.

Kubjikāmatatantra

It is in the texts of the Kubjika tradition, notably the Kubjikāmatatantra that we

first see the system of 6 chakras familiar from many later works, including the Ṣat-
Cakra-Nirūpaṇa. The Kubjika tradition is thought to have flourished from around
the 10th Century6 and is thought to have been highly influential on both later
Tantric traditions such as Śrīvidyā, and the post-Tantric systems of yoga. The
Kubjikāmatatantra describes a series of 6 chakras: ādhāra at the perineum,
Svādhiṣṭhāna at the genitals, Maṇipūra at the navel, Anāhata at the heart, Viśuddhi
in the region of the throat and Ājñā between the eyes.
Also in the Kubjikāmatatantra there is a system of 5 chakras7 which are the
seats of a great number of goddesses. They are named Devīcakra, below the navel;
Dūtīcakra (‘female messenger’) navel Mātṛcakra (‘mother’) heart; Yoginīcakra
(throat) and Khecarīcakra (‘going through the sky’) above the head).

Kaulajñānanirṇaya

The Kaulajñānanirṇaya (13th Century) features an eleven chakra system. There’s

no mention of Kuṇḍalinī-related practices (as far as I can tell), rather, meditation
on the chakras brings about the attainment of magical powers (siddhis). Here are
two quotes from the text:

O goddess, listen with single-minded attention to something else wondrous. (22) A great lotus having
sixteen petals, possessing the radiance of ice, jasmine and the moon—having meditated upon this in
each of the respective places [in the body], from the [world of] Śiva to the Avīci [hell], (23) the body
becomes filled with the descending stream from Bindu, and by drops [of nectar]; and via one’s hair
follicles emerges [a liquid] having the colour of cow’s milk and ice. (24–25ab) He has no old age or
death; there is no disease or illness. Autonomous, and equal to Siva, with activity and movement as he
pleases, he is worshipped by the hosts of gods [and] by divine maidens in various ways. (25cd–27) In
the loins, navel, heart, throat, mouth, head, inside the crest; O goddess, in the triple-staff in the middle
of the back, [extending up to] the juncture of the head [and neck]—O goddess, the cakras are
elevenfold and a thousand [?], having five petals, eight petals, ten and twelve petals, sixteen, a hundred
petals, or else a hundred thousand petals. (28) With these [petal configurations], practised in the
place[s], [they] give manifold results.

[Meditating upon the lotus as] red is always [for] subjugation, O goddess; it bestows great supernal
enjoyments. (29) Yellow is [for] stunning, O mistress. Grey is always [for] driving away. White is
declared for nurturing, especially [for] causing pacification. (30) White like a stream of cow’s milk is
taught [as] good for defeating death. Having the colour of molten gold causes the shaking of cities, etc.
(31—2)8
 If I am interpreting the KJN correctly, this second passage implies that the
chakras have no fixed colours for meditation, but that the colour changes
according to the results the practitioner wishes to achieve. The colours are those
associated with the so-called six rites of magic (abhicāra). Again, this is not
particularly unusual, and several tantric scriptures provide instructions for acts of
sorcery via meditation on the chakras.
The Kaulajñānanirṇaya also features an eight-chakra layout each of which has
eight petals and appears to be concerned with the installation and worship of
Yoginīs within the body.

Yoginīhṛdaya

The Yoginīhṛdaya (‘heart of the yoginī’), a thirteenth-century scripture of the

Śrīvidyā tradition features the following chakra schema. At the base of the
suṣumnä is the akulapadma, an upward-turned one-thousand petalled lotus, red
in colour. Above that is an eight-petalled lotus, supporting a six-petalled lotus.
These three lotuses form a complex referred to as the viṣu (from the Sanskrit root
viś – to enter). Above this complex are the more familiar chakras: mūlādhāra;
svādhisthāna (the place where śakti resides); maṇipūra; anāhata; viṣuddha;
lambika (at the uvula) ājñā (sometimes called bhrūmadhya); and finally, the
sahasrāra. Additionally, there are four interiorized pīṭhas (‘seats’) and four
interiorized liṅgas (icons of Śiva, not necessarily ‘phallic’ in the way the term is
often understood). All of these elements are homologized with the different layers
of the Śrīcakra (i.e. the yantra-form of the Goddess).9

Amṛtaratnāvalī

Finally, I want to mention a Tantric body which doesn’t have chakras at all.
The Amṛitaratnāvalī (‘The Necklace of Immortality’) is a seventeenth-century
text from the Bengali Sahajiyā tradition. This work has an interior landscape
which is an internalisation of the sacred geography of that region which is
associated with the life of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā. Instead of a central channel, the
Suṣumnā, there is a ‘Crooked River’ which flows into a series of locations
throughout the body, such as the ‘Place of the Hidden Moon’, the ‘Village of Bliss’
and ‘The Primordial Place’ which represent different stages in the development of
awakened conscious-ness. Situated in the heart are four Ponds: The Pond of Lust,
the Pond of Arrogance, The Pond of Divine Love and the Pond of Immortality.10

1 ‘the system of six chakras’ - the Sahasrāra isn’t considered a chakra but is the goal of the practice.
2 Nicholson, Andrew J. 2014. Lord Śiva’s Song: The Īśvara Gītā. New York. State University of New York Press.
pp136-137.
3 Singh, Jaidevah. 1979. Vijñānabhairava or Divine Consciousness: A Treasury of 112 Types of Yoga. Motilal
Banarsidass. pp26-28
4 For a more detailed exposition by Dr. Christopher Wallis, see https://hareesh.org/blog/2022/12/3/vijana-
bhairava-tantra-verse-28-the-central-channel-rhcdg
5 Bäumer, Bettina Sharada. 2021. The Yoga of Netra Tantra: Third Eye and Overcoming Death. Indian Institute
of Advanced Study and D.K. Printworld, pp39-50..
6 Mallinson, James and Singleton Mark. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London. Penguin Random House UK. Kindle
Edition, Chapter 5: 5.3.4.
7 Heilijgers-Seelen, Dory. 1994. The System of Five Cakras in Kubjikāmatatantra. Groningen, Netherlands.
Egbert Forsten.
8 Bagchi, P.B., Magee, Mike. 1986. Kaulajnana-Nirnaya of the School of Matsyendranatha. Varanasi. Prachya
Publications. p129.
9 Padoux, André with Jeanty, Roger-Orphé. 2013. The Heart of the Yogini: The Yoginīhṛdaya, a Sanskrit Tantric
Treatise. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
10 Hayes, Glen A. 2000. The Necklace of Immortality: A Seventeenth-Century Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Text. in
White, David Gordon (ed). Tantra in Practice. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
The Śakta Pīṭhas

Another important concept in the tantras (which has obvious associations with
chakras) is the idea that deities, and the sacred places associated with them, can be
located or installed within the body. One of the many stories of Śiva and the
goddess deals with her form as Satī, and her marriage to Śiva. Satī’s father Daksha
invites the company of the gods to a ritual—but doesn’t invite Śiva or Satī as he is
ashamed that his daughter has married the disreputable Śiva. Satī immolates
herself by means of her yogic powers, and her burnt body collapses. Śiva picks up
the body of his beloved, and grief-stricken, dances a great dance of destruction
across the world. In some versions of the tale, he is followed by Viṣṇu, who cuts
the body of Satī up into pieces, and where they fall, these are the Śakta Pīṭhas.
The Śakta Pīṭhas are geographical areas associated with different forms of the
goddess. As with the chakras, the number and location of these sacred sites differs
according to particular lineages and textual sources. The Matysa Purana lists 108
sites, whilst the Yoginīhṛdaya gives 50 places which are ritually installed in the
practitioner’s body. These sites were originally associated with making
pilgrimages, but in the Tantric traditions they became interiorized and over time,
were made homologous with metaphysical principles, making the injunction to
actually visit these sites to be less important.
 One of these sites is known as Jālandhara. There is a site in the Western
Himalayas, in the state of Himachal Pradesh where there is cave from which issues
flames caused by natural gases. This site is associated with the goddess
Jvālamukhī—‘the goddess whose mouth is made of flames’. In the
Ṣaṭsāhasrasaṃhitā (a Kubjika text) Jālandhara, the seat of the goddess Jvālamukhī,
is installed into the body during practice at the practitioner’s mouth, and
identified as the place where the goddess speaks.
In the Kubjika Tantras, there are several very complex practices related to the
placing of these seats of power into the body, and the worship of the deities of
those seats and their attendants.
Kāmarūpa (in Assam) is considered to be the most important of the śaktī
pīṭhas, as the goddess’ yonimaṇḍala fell there, upon Mount Kāmagiri (‘mountain
of desire’). The Kālikāpurāṇa (c.10-11th century) gives a lengthy description of
Kāmarūpa as a kind of divine wonderland, where death cannot enter; where there
are no temples or images, but the deities are present as mountains, ponds, trees,
and streams. The Kāmākhyā temple complex is a centre of Śakta Tantra, and the
goddess Kāmākhyā is worshipped there in the form of a yoni-stone, submerged in
a natural stream, located in an underground chamber beneath the temple.
According to the Kālikāpurāṇa, bathing in the waters of this stream results in
release from rebirth and instant liberation. Minerals present in the stone cause the
stream to run red, and this is considered to be a particularly auspicious occasion;
that the goddess is in her menses.
The Kaulajñānanirṇaya says that all of the women who reside in Kāmarūpa are
Yoginīs who can reveal secrets and grant siddhis.1 The goddess Kāmākhyā is said
to be made ‘haughty by her enjoyment of passion’ (kāmabhogakrṭāṭopā) and her
desire causes the three worlds to melt and flow together.

1 Rosati, Paolo E. 2023. ‘Crossing the boundaries of sex, blood and magic in the Tantric cult of Kāmākhyā’ in
Acri, Andrea and Rosati, Paolo E. (eds) Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia. Routledge.
Kuṇḍalinī

I mentioned earlier a core idea in the Tantric traditions that the Universe
continually pulses in waves of contraction and expansion, both on the scale of
cosmic events and in the human body. This pulsation is Śakti, who is present in
everything. It is Śakti who brings about the state of contracted, limited
individuality which is the cause of bondage—experiencing the world in a limited
way; and Śakti brings about the expansion of consciousness to return to its
liberated state—the blissful consciousness which is Śiva-awareness. A kind of base
state of wonder, or astonishment, at the world around us.
Śakti is often translated to mean ‘energy’ but this is not the kind of energy that
we are used to thinking about in the west as a limited resource, something that we
can run out of, or something that gets depleted or lost. Śakti in the body is not like
the energy of a battery that is stored, and, very importantly, she is not dormant.
She is the power of breath, and that which is carried by breath, speech. The
Śāradā-Tilaka-Tantra (1.14) says:

And this [Śabda-Brahman] enters the physical body of living organisms in the form of the Kuṇḍalinī,
and reveals itself there in the form of letters, which are differentiated in all possible linguistic forms such
as poetry and prose.1
 Śakti, as primal sound-vibration, becomes a drop: a bindu of condensed power,
divides, and births from herself the phonemes of speech (the mātṛkās), and
eventually, brings about ordinary human speech.
This movement—this contraction and expansion—is the activity of Kuṇḍalinī-
Śakti. Kuṇḍalinī-Śakti is the universal power (she is sometimes called ‘The
Universal Mother’) that gives rise to all forms.
From fairly early on in Tantric literature Kuṇḍalinī is identified with sound and
breath. In Tantric literature Kuṇḍalinī is not dormant or “sleeping”. She is
constantly active in the body as the breath. The practices that relate to Kuṇḍalinī
are not concerned with waking up something that is asleep or dormant (because if
Kuṇḍalinī was dormant you’d be dead), but of attending to her movements, and
using mantras to stoke the fire of liberation.
In the early tantras, Kuṇḍalinī is likened to a coiling and uncoiling serpent. She
is also a coil of fire; a bolt of lightning; or flame flickering in the wind of the
breath. She is a jewel; a seed or a sprout; the red Kadamba flower. She is sometimes
given the epithet ‘The Great Nose’, as she is the power of the vital breath, of
inhalation or exhalation.
Contemporary accounts of Kuṇḍalinī tend to situate her in the mūlādhāra
chakra and ascending through the Suṣumnā to the crown. However, in earlier
texts, there is an emphasis on Kuṇḍalinī located in the head, and descending into
the body.
The Kularatnoddyota says:

Residing in the middle of the Wheel of the Command, (you) burn with radiant rays (of energy).
Inflamed, (you) possess garlands of flames and, of the nature of Sound, (you are) without fault
(nirāmayā). Seated within the movement of Haṃsa (the vital breath), (you) possess manifest energies
(sakalā) (while) residing in the unmanifest. (You are) satisfied with the bliss of the Command and have
made the Wheel of the Command (your) seat as (you) fill (everything) all around with the resounding
Sound (nāda) and Resonance (dhvani). (You) fill (the body) from the soles of the feet up to the end of
the head with the powerful sounds (of mantras).2

Here the wheel of the Command is the Ajna Chakra, as Ajna can be translated
as “Command”. Kuṇḍalinī is identified with divine sound and pervades the body
via the currents of the breath. In the early Śaiva literature, Kuṇḍalinī descends
from the liṅga situated at the Brahmarandhra, the ‘door to Brahman’ located at the
top of (or sometimes, above) the head and is homologised with Sadāśiva in the
Tattva schema. She descends, bringing forth the body/universe and is all-
pervasive and non-local, and at the same time, resides in the body as the various
capacities and powers.

1 Quoted from: Wilke, Annette, Moebus, Oliver. 2011. Sound and Communication. An Aesthetic Cultural
History of Sanskrit Hinduism. Berlin. De Grutyer. p750
2 Dyczkowski, Mark S.G 2009. Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts and D.K. Printworld. p161.
Mantras

In popular usage we tend to think of mantras in terms of a word or phrase which

is repeated over and over. But within the Tantric traditions, mantras are not the
same as ordinary speech. They are considered to be instances of the primal word
and, as such, they do not activate the ordinary mental processes which draw the
practitioner into the world of differentiation; rather, they cause the practitioner to
move towards the transcendental source of all speech. Abhinavagupta, the 10th
century Kashmiri sage in his master-work, the Tantraloka says:

The fullness found in these clusters of phonic seeds is due to the fact that they do not convey any
empirical meaning, that they consist of a vibration of consciousness turning away from the external
world, that they are self-luminous and associated with the awakening or the suppression of the breath.1

The Tantric view of language, particularly in the non-dual Śaiva traditions is

that language generates the universe, and as such, language is a goddess. A passage
in the Śāradā-Tilaka-Tantra speaks of the goddess Sarasvatī:

And now we speak of [the goddess] with the body made of the alphabet, who makes intelligence in the
universe possible. If this [alphabet] did not exist in perceivable form, the whole world would be without
life … [When one prays to her, one thinks to oneself:] I turn to the white-shining three-eyed goddess of
language … on whose face, shoulders, breast, belly and feet are distributed the 50 letters [of the
alphabet].2
 A key point I want to stress though is that in the Tantric traditions, mantras are
deities. To utter a mantra is to bring about the immediate presence of the deity. It
is not that mantras belong to deities, they are the deities in sonic form. So when
you utter a mantra-deity, locating it a particular place in your body, you are
literally feeling the resonance of the power of the deity within your own body.
These deities are not, as we might think, merely individual entities, they are
simultaneously cosmic powers, human emotions and bodily capacities, and
conceptualized as stages in the attainment of awakened consciousness.
From the Śrīmatottara:

O fair lady, thus Śrīnātha sports in the Circle of the Void (śūnyamašala) and (so does) Kubjikā, the
mother of Kula who is Kuṇḍalinī by name. She is the will, the goddess who is Mind Beyond Mind
(manonmanī) and her form is the Point (bindurūpā). That energy is called Sahajā (the Innate) and is
(the state of) oneness with Śiva.

Applied on the plane of mantra and visualization (dhyāna), she who is undifferentiated (nikalā) is
differentiated (sakalā). When she abides in the differentiated (aspect), she abides as mantra.3

It is mantras that enable the devotee to merge with the presence of deity; it is
the speech act that unites the two. In daily worship, practitioners re-divinize the
body by infusing it with mantric energies; a body made of mantras; a body
permeated by Śakti. This divinized body is considered to be equal to Śiva,
following the injunction that in order to worship a god one must become a god.
The complex ritual sequences of Bhūtaśuddhi are enactments of this process of
divinization, removing the impurities which have accrued within the body of the
practitioner, collapsing each of the Tattvas of the body (i.e. the five elements) into
their subtle counterparts.

1 Quoted from: Padoux, André. 1990. Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras. New York. State
University of New York Press. p377
2 Quoted from: Wilke, Annette, Moebus, Oliver. 2011. Sound and Communication. An Aesthetic Cultural
History of Sanskrit Hinduism. Berlin. De Grutyer. p279
3 Dyczkowski, Mark S.G 2009. Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts and D.K. Printworld. p182.
Deities in the chakras

Central to Tantric understandings of chakras is the placement and worship of

deities within them. These deities are lineage, and sometimes, text-specific.
Examining all these deities would be a lengthy exercise, so I am going to cover a
few examples of deities which are ‘placed’ within the mūlādhāra.

Gaṇeśa
 You are always situated in the mūlādhāra.(Gaṇeśa Upaniṣad)

Gaṇeśa is traditionally honoured at the beginning of any important venture or

enterprise, be it worldly or spiritual. He presides over all beginnings and is of
course, the remover of obstacles. In this respect, it makes sense that practitioners
would honour Gaṇeśa as the foundation or base of any daily sādhanā, in order to
remove obstacles to practice, particularly one’s own resistance, such as pride,
selfishness, etc. Gaṇeśa is sometimes accompanied by his two consorts, Siddhi and
Vṛddhi (occasionally fused into one goddess) who are goddesses of success and
fulfilment.

The Mātṛkās

A central feature of the tantras is the idea that the phonemes of the Sanskrit
alphabet are themselves deities. The Mātṛkās (‘little mothers’) can be thought of as
the embodiments of mantric seed-syllables which are themselves facets or
instances of the primal sound. In the earliest Tantric sources, Mātṛkā seems to
have been a singular goddess, frequently identified with Kuṇḍalinī, and said to be
the source of all mantras and words. These mantra goddesses are installed in
various places throughout the body of a practitioner, and are worshipped
according to particular sequences in order to dissolve the separation between
practitioner and deity. These mantra-goddesses are also emotional capacities or
potentials, and the four goddesses installed on the petals of the mūlādhāra are
given in several texts (e.g. the thirteenth-century Saṃgītaratnākara; the
nineteenth-century Mahanirvana Tantra) as:

Seed-Syllable Name/Capacity

vaṃ samajānandā Natural bliss

śaṃ yogānandā Bliss of union

ṣaṃ vīrānandā Heroic bliss

saṃ paramānandā Supreme bliss
 Contemporary chakra schemas tend to associate mūlādhāra with more
mundane aspects of personhood: the unconscious mind, survival, the physical
world, and so forth. However, these four Śaktis are forms of bliss, delight, or joy.
These are not the kinds of world-transcending forms of bliss often associated with
“higher states of consciousness” but rather, immanent forms of joy which support
(ādhāra) the practitioner; upon which their world rests. For example, Yogānandā
might encompass any moment of ‘union’ with another object in the world—any
moment in which attention is ‘caught’ by another. A shared glance between
strangers; the ‘union’ of meeting one’s loved ones after absence. The location of
these four Śaktis of delightful experience in the mūlādhāra reflects, I feel,
something quite central about the traditions’ attitudes to the world; that
practitioners are supported by, and should strive to cultivate, a joyful appreciation
of everyday life; not to reject the world and its pleasures, but to celebrate them.
All of the chakras are seats for these Mātṛkās who embody specific capacities,
emotional states or tendencies and they too are installed in practice. If you want to
find out more, I’d recommend visiting Christopher Tompkins’ website and
purchasing the relevant courses (www.yogavidhi.org/).
Nyāsa

Nyāsa is usually translated as imposition, placing, or infusion. The basic idea is

that the practitioner touches various places on her or his body, whilst
simultaneously vibrating a mantra and sometimes, a visualisation of that deity,
and choreographed through Prāṇayama and breath-pause. This infuses the body
at that location with the power of that mantra-deity. This is the essence of Mantra-
Nyāsa.

The Great Sixfold Nyāsa

An example of nyāsa can be found in the Yoginīhṛdaya. It is called the ‘Great

sixfold nyāsa’. The sequence begins with the placement of 51 forms of Gaṇeśa
accompanied by their Tantric consorts, onto various parts of the body. Each of
these couples have their own visualisations and mantras. This is done to remove
any obstacles that might threaten the successful performance of the rite. After that
the nine planets (grahas) are imposed into the body, followed by the 27
constellations. Next are the six Yoginīs who in the text are referred to as ‘the
mistresses of the constituent elements of the body’ and who reside in 6 of the 9
primary chakras given in the text. They are Ḍākinī, Rākinī, Lākinī, Kākinī, Sākinī,
and Hākinī and they are the powers ruling the bodily dhātus—skin, blood, flesh,
bones and so forth. They are accompanied by the 50 Mātṛkās who are the 50
phonemes of the Sanskrit alphabet, and finally the 50 Pīṭhas of the goddess.1

Bowing to the Eight Directions

Another example of Mantra-nyāsa is a practice sometimes called ‘Bowing to the

Eight Directions’ and it is performed whilst turning attention inwards to the heart.
The practitioner visualises an 8-petalled lotus within the space of the heart, and
directs attention to each of the 8 petals in turn.
The stages of this practice are given in this passage from the Kubjikā Upaniṣad:

When the Haṃsa-self (resides) on the eastern petal (of the heart-lotus) he is of good intentions. In the
Southeast, sleep and drowsiness prevail. In the South he is of cruel intentions. When the Haṃsa, the
supreme Self, resides in the Southwest, then he is of evil intentions and commits the five great sins.
When the Haṃsa goes towards the Western direction, then he is of erotic (intention), embracing,
kissing, etc. He also wishes to commit himself to various amusements, such as singing, music or
dancing. In the Northwest, his mind will be set upon movement and so on. In the North, love, and
sympathy (prevail). In the Northeast, he wishes to perform recitation, worship, and liberality. When the
Haṃsa approaches the centre, then total indifference arises (in him). (He considers:) only (the ground
of being) truly exists (just like) clay (as the basic stuff of earthen pots).2
 Here, the Haṃsa-self is the practitioner’s awareness. Haṃsa is the swan,
representing the individual soul who is one with Śiva. Haṃ = inward power of the
breath; sa = outward power of the breath. Haṃsa is also considered to be a mantra,
uttered 21,600 times a day in the form of breath (21,600 is the number of breath-
cycles an individual makes according to the tantras).
The practice consists of meditating on each of the 8 directional deities of the
heart, which are said to be the embodiment of particular human capacities. Just to
give an example, the text says ‘In the Southeast, sleep and drowsiness prevail’
which can be taken as a way of indicating human tendencies to not do very much
or let the attention wander. The presiding deity of the Southeast here is Agni—the
fire of awakening, so the aim here is to counter the tendency to doze off with that
fiery quality of Agni.
Finally, having, if you like, ‘balanced’ the various capacities with the powers of
the deities of the directions, the practitioner achieves a sense of equipoise — ‘total
indifference’ doesn’t really convey the right meaning here.
A similar practice is given in a text called the Dehasthadevatācakrastotra (‘The
Hymn to the Circle of Deities Located in the Body’). This is a text of the Krama
tradition, and it is part of a practitioner’s daily sādhanā for identifying with Śiva.
In this practice, one visualizes in the heart-space an eight-petalled lotus. At the
centre of the lotus are Ānandabhairava and Ānandabhairavī, seated in sexual
union—with whom the practitioner identifies. Surrounding the two central
deities are eight goddesses who are identified as sensory and other bodily
capacities, and these deities continually make offerings to Ānandabhairava and
Ānandabhairavī, for example: ‘I honour Vārāhī, who possesses the sense of touch.
Seated on the Western petal, she satisfies Bhairava with flowers of touch which
captivate the heart.’
This is a ritual enactment of the Tantric doctrine that every moment of
sensation or perception is an invitation to experience awakened consciousness;
that the senses and their offerings are to be honoured as gifts.

1 See Chapter 3. Padoux, André with Jeanty, Roger-Orphé. 2013. The Heart of the Yogini: The Yoginīhṛdaya, a
Sanskrit Tantric Treatise. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
2 Goudriaan, Teun & Schoterman, Jan A. 1994. The Kubjikā Upaniṣad. Groningen, Netherlands. Egbert
Forsten. pp99-100.
Some closing thoughts

Here are some key points arising from the material I’ve been outlining.

Chakras have histories

One of the key points I’ve tried to convey here is that chakras have a history. How
they are conceptualised has evolved over time, reflecting particular doctrinal
concepts and views of the body. Tantric chakra systems borrow earlier ideas and
incorporated them into their systems, but these earlier ideas were often reworked
in the process.

Many different Chakra Systems

Also, there are many different chakra systems and these are specific to particular
Tantric traditions and even particular practice regimes. Some chakra layouts are
oriented to the acquisition of magical abilities, whereas others focus on the
liberation of consciousness. Although there are different chakra systems, we do
find some common ritual elements such as Mantra-Nyāsa and bhūtaśuddhiḥ
across the various traditions.
Kuṇḍalinī Descending

We’re used to the idea of Kuṇḍalinī being (a) dormant and (b) ascending the
central channel, which is associated with spiritual enlightenment and
transcendence of the body. However, Tantric texts state very clearly that Kuṇḍalinī
is continually active in our bodies and in the world, and that she moves both up
and down the central channel.

How “real” are Chakras?

In popular accounts of the chakras we tend to find the view that chakras are
present in the human body (and that of favoured animals), regardless of whether
we know of them or not, and that their activity influences everything from our
emotional well-being, spiritual growth, gender preference, health, the
development of psychic abilities and more.
Tantric chakra systems relate to specific practices, and the chakras that are
installed in the body are brought into being by that practice. The chakras become
real through particular practices, and if the sadhaka (practitioner) engages with a
different practice, she or he will then bring into being a different series of chakras.

Deities are central

The foregoing brief introductions to the Tantric understandings and practices

relating to the chakras shows that mantras/deities are absolutely central to the
Tantric use of chakras. Also, whilst these deities came to represent emotional and
cognitive capacities, these capacities are not organised within the kind of
evolutionary frameworks which correlate emotional capacities to progressively
‘higher’ states of consciousness.
My conclusion is that apart from the use of the term ‘chakra’, the system of seven
chakras that we are used to in contemporary Western occulture bears almost no
resemblance to the way chakras were thought of in premodern India. How we got
to this point is a big question—and I shall be examining some of the history of
this in the next 3 sections of this book.
Section Bibliography

Alper, Harvey P. (ed) 1989. Mantra. New York. State University of New York Press.
Bagchi, P.B., Magee, Michael. 1986. Kaulajnana-Nirnaya of the School of
Matsyendranatha. Varanasi. Prachya Publications.
Bäumer, Bettina Sharada. 2021. The Yoga of Netra Tantra: Third Eye and
Overcoming Death. Indian Institute of Advanced Study and D.K. Printworld
Bühnemann, Gudrun (ed) 2007. Maṇḍalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions.
New Delhi. DK Printworld.
Chapple, Christopher and Yogi Ananda Viraj. 1990. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.
Delhi. Sri Satguru Publications.
Dyczkowski, Mark S.G. 2004. A Journey in the World of the Tantras. Varanasi.
Indica Books.
Dyczkowski, Mark S.G 2009. Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ. New
Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and D.K. Printworld
Flood, Gavin. 2006. The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion.
London. I.B. Tauris.
Goudriaan, Teun & Schoterman, Jan A. 1994. The Kubjikā Upaniṣad. Groningen,
Netherlands. Egbert Forsten.
Gupta, Sanjukta. 2000. Laksmī Tantra: A Pāñcarātra Text. Delhi. Motilal
Banarsidass.
Hayes, Glen A. 2000. ‘The Necklace of Immortality: A Seventeenth-Century
Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā Text’. in White, David Gordon (ed). Tantra in Practice.
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Hayes, Glen A. 2003. ‘Metaphoric Worlds and Yoga in the Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā
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Yoga: The Indian Tradition. London and New York. RoutledgeCurzon.
Heilijgers-Seelen, Dory. 1994. The System of Five Cakras in Kubjikāmatatantra.
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Holdrege, Barbara A. ‘Body Connections: Hindu Discourses of the Body and the
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Judith, Anodea. 2002. Wheels of Life: A User’s Guide to the Chakra System. St. Paul,
Minnesota. Llewellyn Publications.
Leadbeater, Charles W. 1927. The Chakras: A Monograph. Adyar, Madras.
Theosophical Publishing House.
Leland, Kurt. 2016. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from
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Maas, Philipp A. ‘The Concepts of the Human Body and Disease in Classical Yoga
and Āyurveda’. Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Südasiens / Vienna Journal of
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Mallinson, James and Singleton, Mark. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London. Penguin
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of New York Press.
Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2016. Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies,
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 Two:
Chakras move West
Enter the Theosophists

As innumerable books and teachers assert, there are supposedly seven chakras in
the human subtle body. They are psychic centres, uniting the astral body with the
physical, and they are usually arranged into an evolutionary model whereby each
chakra represents different stages of spiritual awakening or personal evolution. All
these features of the chakras were attributed to them fairly early on in their
passage into Western esotericism, and it is the earliest articles discussing the
chakras that appear in English-language esoteric journals that I am going to
explore here.
I’ll begin by looking at some of the features of these articles, and the historical
context in which they emerged. I will then move on to look at some early
formulations of the chakras, in the writings of Madame Blavatsky, James Morgan
Pryse, and Aleister Crowley.
The first articles on the chakras in English appeared in the columns of the
Theosophical Society journal, The Theosophist. These articles were for the most
part, written by Indian members of the Theosophical Society who shared, to
varying degrees a desire, along with European Theosophists, to interpret Yogic
and Tantric texts within terms of esoteric and exoteric science.

The Theosophical Society

The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
(1831—1891) and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907). Although Blavatsky
had originally made Egypt to the preferred site for the roots of ancient wisdom,
she quickly turned her gaze eastwards, and in 1879 Blavatsky and Olcott moved to
India, and established the Theosophical Society’s world headquarters in Adyar,
Madras. They initially made contact with the Arya Samaj, led by Swami
Dayananda Sarasvati.1 So impressed were Blavatsky and Olcott with Sarasvati that
they had titled their nascent movement as ‘The Theosophical Society of the Arya
Samaj of India’. Olcott had declared that Dayananda’s reformist agenda made him
a modern Martin Luther, whilst Blavatsky stated that a member of the Himalayan
brotherhood of adepts occupied Dayananda’s body and that he was, as such, to be
regarded as a teacher guiding their work.2
Incidentally, there is a story regarding Swami Dayananda Sarasvati and chakras.
Mark Singleton, in his book Yoga Body quotes an anecdote (possibly apocryphal)
from K.C. Yadav’s The Autobiography of Dayanand Saraswati that in 1855,
Dayānand dissected a corpse he found floating in the Ganges in order to discover
the truth of the tantric chakras he had been reading of. Finding none, he
concluded that with the exception of the Vedas, Patanjali, and the works of
Sankara, all other texts (such as the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā) were false, and he tore
up the yogic texts he had with him at the time and threw them into the river.3
Blavatsky and Olcott had sold their possessions to come to India, but their first
meeting with the Arya Samaj was not altogether auspicious. When they arrived in
Bombay, the president of the Bombay Arya Samaj, Harishchandra Chintamani,
threw a lavish party in their honour, but afterwards, presented them with a bill for
the costs—including his telegram of welcome.
The Arya Samaj and Blavatsky, at least on the surface, had shared goals and
interests. Blavatsky believed that the roots of the ancient wisdom that she was the
torchbearer for, the ancient wisdom that lay behind all exoteric religion and that
would in time, unite both science and religion, lay in India. Dayananda also
believed in the supremacy of the Vedas, and that all forms of knowledge—both
religious and scientific, could be found in them. However, he was highly critical
not just of Christianity, as were Blavatsky & Olctott, but of those religions deemed
to be heterodox, such as the Jains or Buddhists. Cordial relations between the
Theosophists and the Arya Samaj did not last long, and in 1881, Dayananda
denounced Blavatsky and Olcott in a pamphlet entitled Humbuggery of the
Theosophists. He accused Blavatsky and Olcott of being atheists, and proclaimed
that Blavatsky had no real knowledge of, or interest in, the Vedas. He complained
that she had initially presented herself as a pupil and disciple, but now wanted to
be a guru and preceptor. By that time, however, Blavatsky and Olcott had
established themselves and made other important contacts in Anglo-Indian
society, including members of the colonial administration.
In 1879 Blavatsky and Olcott founded a monthly journal, The Theosophist, with
Blavatsky acting as editor. It was through the pages of The Theosophist that articles
on Kuṇḍalinī and the Chakras first appeared—beginning in 1880. In fact, 1880
can be thought of as the ‘Year of the Chakras’ as many key works were published
in that year.

The Dream of Ravan

In the January 1880 issue of The Theosophist an article appeared entitled ‘Yoga
Philosophy’ written by ‘Truth-Seeker’ which consisted of a number of quotes from
a curious work called The Dream of Ravan. This was an anonymous work which
had first appeared, serialised, in the Dublin University Magazine between 1853-54.
The material from Ravan which excited the attention of ‘Truth-Seeker’ was the
section on Yoga, which translated sections of a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita
written in the 13th Century—the Jñāneśvarī:

The waves of the tubular vessels (nerves) are broken, the nine-fold property of wind (nervous ether)
departs on which account the functions of the body no longer exist.
Then the moon and the sun, or that supposition which is so imagined appears but like the wind upon a
lamp, in such a manner as not to be laid hold of.
The bud of understanding is dissolved, but, together with the Power, retires into the middle chamber.
Then, with a discharge from above, the reservoir of moon fluid of immortality (contained in the brain),
leaning over on one side, communicates into the mouth of the Power.
 What is this ‘Power’ being talked about? In a footnote to this passage, the
unknown author of Ravan comments:

This extraordinary power, who is termed elsewhere the World Mother—the casket of the supreme
spirit, is technically called Kundalini, serpentine or annular. Some things related of it would make one
imagine it to be electricity personified.

There’s more, but this is possibly one of the earliest mentions of Kuṇḍalinī in
the English language.
‘Truth-Seeker’ made an appeal for more information the about the Jnānesvarī,
writing that ‘We Western Theosophists earnestly desire information as to all the
best modes of soul—emancipation and will—culture, and turn to the East for
Light.’
Light was not long in coming.

1 The Arya Samaj, founded in 1875, was a Hindu reform and activist movement. Sarasvati believed that for
India to prosper, it should return to the principles of life as set forth in the Vedas.
2 Altman, Michael J. 2017. Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893. New York.
Oxford University Press. p108.
3 Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice. Oxford University Press, p51.
1880: A year of chakras

The March 1880 edition of The Theosophist carried an article headed ‘The Madras
Yogi Sabhapaty Swami’ by an “Admirer”. This article extolled the many virtues of
the Swami, from his early interest in religion and his precocious intelligence, to his
years spent in an ashram studying under a guru, his studies, and his meetings with
Yogis who were hundreds of years old. A note by the editors announced that a
pamphlet expounding the “Science of Yoga” by the Swami would be forthcoming.
Sabhatapaty is important as his perspectives on chakras and Kuṇḍalinī would, as I
will discuss, influence both Theosophists, and later, Aleister Crowley.

Tantric Philosophy

In the April 1880 edition of The Theosophist, an article appeared by Baradā

Kānta Majumdār, entitled ‘Tantric Philosophy’. This was to be the first of several
articles concerning Tantra. Not much is known about Majumdār; he appears to
have been a social reformer, with a strong interest in education, and later in life,
wrote novels, philosophical works, and founded a Theosophical school.1
At this time, tantra was widely associated with, as Majumdār himself says, ‘all
that is impure, ignoble and immoral’. He argued that ‘The Tantras are an
invaluable treasure, embracing, besides religion and theology, law and medicine,
cosmology. yoga, spiritualism, rules regarding the elementaries and almost all
branches of transcendental philosophy’.
It is in this first essay by Majumdar that we first find passages relating to
Kuṇḍalinī, for example:

Now among the descriptions of Kuṇḍalinī in Tantrasara these three attributes among others are
noticable, viz., that it is subtle, moving in three and a half circles and encircling the esoteric (procreative
will, I believe) of the self-existent Deity. Viewing in this light this Kuṇḍalinī appears to be the grand
pristine force which underlies organic and inorganic matter. Modern science also teaches us that heat,
light, electricity, magnetism etc., are but the modifications of one great force.2

In this early essay, tantric ideas are being interpreted in terms familiar to any
educated reader at the time as being in accordance with modern science. This was
something that interested both Indian and European theosophists, albeit for
slightly different reasons.
It was an article of faith amongst many orientalist scholars and commentators
on India that India lacked any kind of scientific knowledge—or if they had, it had
been lost as India had ‘degenerated’ from its original glorious civilisation into what
the scholar Max Müller (translator of the Sacred Books of the East series) called the
‘grovelling worship of cows and monkeys’. James Mill, in his influential The History
of British India (1817) stated that India, mired in superstition and irrational
beliefs, had no real scientific knowledge, and thus was never ‘truly civilised’. He
did concede that India had some knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, but
that this was wasted in the pursuit of astrology: ‘one of the most irrational of all
imaginable pursuits; one of those which most infallibly denote a nation
barbarous.’3
With views like these circulating, it’s not hard to understand why educated
Indians might want to claim for themselves some scientific legitimacy for their
ancient knowledge.
European Theosophists too, were interested in science. Central to the
Theosophical project was the idea that religion, science and philosophy were all
rooted in, and informed by, a higher source of knowledge. Each of these forms of
knowledge was held to have an exoteric, public face, and an esoteric, hidden face,
which was only available to those who have the esoteric keys to unlocking them;
those who are capable of reading the hidden meanings. Conventional science,
philosophy and religion were held to be incomplete, and in need of
reinterpretation and correction in the light of this esoteric wisdom-tradition.

Enter Sabhapaty Swami

April 1880 also saw the publication of Sabhapaty Swami’s Om: A Treatise on
Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy edited by Shris Chandra Basu. Basu himself was
another Indian reformer who later published translation of Yoga manuals such as
the Śiva Saṃhitā, which also contained more information on chakras.4
Om appears to have had a wide reception. Max Müller cites it in a discussion of
Yogic powers in his book Six Systems of Indian Philosophy and mentions that he
had been in correspondence with the Swami.
Although Olcott and Blavatsky seem to have initially approved of Swami
Sabhapaty’s teachings, he quickly fell from grace after the two senior Theosophists
met him in the flesh. Sabhapaty treated Olcott and Blavatsky to an account of his
experiences as a Yogi—including the claim that he had flown through the air to
mount Kailash, a mountain where Śiva is said to reside, where he had met
Mahadeva (Śiva). Olcott wrote that if Sabhapaty had said this was an astral
journey, he would have accepted it, but could not countenance the idea that the
Swami had actually flown through the air.
Om contains some detailed, if confusing material pertaining to Kuṇḍalinī, or
‘kundlee’ as it was rendered in English. The book also detailed a system of 12
“faculties” or chakras. Here is the divine principle ‘speaking’:

Having told you how I stand in two different aspects viz. (1) creating and &c. (2) Non-creating, I will
now enumerate the twelve faculties which I evolve in my descent. These faculties have their seat in
different parts of your body ranging from the highest part of the brain and ending in the kundlee. As I
pass from one kingdom to another my attributes are changed, and various faculties are created which
have their peculiar responsibilities. These faculties have no independent existence but seem only the
reflections of my spirit.5
 For Sabhapaty, the divine spirit has two principles: the First principle: Śiva,
which is motionless and passive; and the active or Second Principle, which is
Śakti. The faculties, i.e. the chakras, are brought into being as Śakti descends
through different levels of creation. This is reminiscent of the concept of the
Tattvas that is found in the Śaiva Tantras (see p13). The reversal of this
descent—the movement back towards the divine source, is interpreted by
Sabhapaty as a form of conquest, in which the ‘faculties’ (chakras) are also referred
to as Kingdoms, are subjugated.
Sabhapaty advises the practitioner of this Yoga to speak to the different faculties
when concentrating on the respective chakras, convincing them, through
argument, that they are not identical with the first principle of the divine spirit,
but are only reflections of its second principle. This way, the faculties were to be
silenced, for example:

Having conquered the Soul of Nature you must ascend to the Soul of Senses that resides in the navel
(No. 20.) and ask him who he is? It will answer “I am the eleventh manifestation of the Infinite Spirit.
Consequently I am the very Infinite Spirit itself.” You must refute him by the following arguments “You
are wrong in saying so, because you are not he, for the following reasons:—(1) When you are absorbed
in him you no longer exist (2) As you disappear he never disappears (3) You are constantly dreaming of
worldly gain and pleasure but my Guru never does any such thing. (4) You are fated to suffer and enjoy
which he is not (5) You work and move through his spiritual power but he requires the help of none. (6)
You have no knowledge of yourself and him. (7) All your actions are unholy and impure but he is
perfectly pure and holy. For all these reasons it is evident you are not the Infinite Spirit but a distant
reflection of him.” Having refuted him curse and bless him as above.6

After that, one should curse them by telling them not to appear before the
practitioner any longer. They must also be blessed ‘to be absorbed in the Infinite
Spirit’.
This practice, according to Sabhapaty, is followed by that of Bhuta Shuddi, the
purification of ‘the physical organs of your body’ in which each of the faculties is
meditated upon as being absorbed into the one preceding it, accompanied by
mantras. Again this is very reminsicient of bhūtaśuddhiḥ practices found in the
tantras.
 Sabhapaty’s Om had some influence on early Theosophical views on chakras,
and, as I will show later, influenced Aleister Crowley to a degree, but his work has
largely been forgotten, and only recently has there been a revival of interest in him.

Sabhapaty’s Twelve Chakras (in descending order)

1. dvadaśānta (‘the end of the twelve’) and parātpara-pīṭham (‘place of that
which is superior to the best’ or ‘the supreme of the supreme’).
2. parasthāna (‘place of the supreme’) ‘Brain of wit and intelligence’
3. tatparasthāna or tatpara-pīṭham (‘place of the lesser supreme’ or ‘place of
that which follows’) ‘Brain of knowledge.’
4. kalāsthāna or kalādhāra pīṭham (‘place of the digits’) the ‘Brain of
Prudence.’ Equated with the sahasrāra or thousand-petalled lotus.
5. nādasthāna or nādadhāra pīṭham (‘place of the primal sound’) the
‘Forehead of Memory.’
6. bindusthāna or bindodhāra pīṭham (‘place of the primal drop’) the ‘Eye-
brows of Muse’ or ‘the Dual Spirit of Spirit’s Divine and Holy Vision or
Essence-like Infinite Spirit Rays.’
7. ājñā (the ‘nose of ideas,’ ‘Spirit of Ideas and Ambition.’
8. viśuddhi the ‘tongue of conscience’ and ‘Spirit of Conscience.’
9. anāhata (or anāgata) the ‘throat of intellects’ and ‘Spirit of Intellect.’
10. maṇipuraka the ‘heart and passions’ and ‘Spirit of Passions.’
11. svādiṣṭhāna the ‘navel of senses’ and ‘Spirit of Senses.’
12. mūlādhāra the ‘kuṇḍali of elements,’ ‘Spirit of Natures’ and ‘The Triune
Finite Spiritual Undivine and Unholy Sight-like Natures or Emotion-like
I[nfinite]. Spiritual Heat.’7

A Glimpse of Tantric Occultism

In July and October 1880, Baradā Kānta Majumdār followed his first missive on
tantra for The Theosophist with a two-part essay entitled ‘A Glimpse of Tantric
Occultism’. These articles are chiefly concerned with the very first English-
language translations of the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa, some 40 years before it was
translated and published by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe) as The Serpent
Power. (I will be taking a closer look at this work in Part 3.)
Majumdār’s introduction discusses the limitations of scientific investigation and
directs the attention of the reader to the faculty of the mind’s role in the
perception of subtle phenomena. He points out that the ‘clairvoyance of the mind’
was known to Indian ancients thousands of years ago, and that Yogis, through
their inner vision were able to see the ‘mysterious agents of nature’ that underlie
the universe. He then turns the subject to Tantra:

Purnananda Gaswami, an eminent Tantrik Yogi, who lived more than two hundred years ago, has left a
book in Sanskrit, the name of which is Shat Chakra-bhed, in which he treats of the occult nerves and
forces in the human body … credit is due to the Tantrik author for having described them at length. It is
to be regretted that the author has used figurative language throughout the work which renders it
valueless, except to such as have the key to the allegories.

The six revolving wheels of force, mentioned in the sequel, are connected with one another and are
further connected with the grand machinery of Máyá’s pervading the Universe. It is not to be supposed
that there is, in reality, any wheel or lotus in the human body; the author means only to point out the
active centres of certain forces.8

Majumdār then presents some verses from the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa concerning

the Nāḍīs which he translates to mean ‘nerves’ and tries to correlate the esoteric
anatomy with various parts of the body:

There is a very delightful place (the fissure of Sylvius?) where the mouth of the Brahma nerve emits
nectar. This place is the junction of the frontal lobe with the temporal lobe of the cerebral hemispheres
and is the mouth of the Sushumná nerve.9

He then provides the descriptions of the six chakras, beginning with

mūlādhāra:

The first cell, called Adhár Padman.

This cell is situated on the Sushumná nerve below the pudendum virile and above the fundament. It is
bright as gold and has four petals of the color of Bignonia Indica.
Within this cell is the quadrangular mundane discus surrounded by eight spears, soft and yellow as the
lightning. Within this discus is deposited the procreative semen virile.
 This semen virile is decorated with four hands and is mounted on the elephant of India. In its lap is the
creator-boy, having four hands and holding the four Vedas in his mouth.
Within the quadrangular discus above referred to is a goddess (passion, I believe) named Dákini with
swinging four hands and blood-red eyes. She is glorious like twelve suns rising at the same time; but
visible only to the pure-minded yogi.
Within the pericarp of the Bajrá nerve, bright as the lightning is the philoprogenitive triangular discus
of Tripurá Devi. Within this discus is the air of Kandarpa (Cupid) which is capable of passing freely
through all the members of the body. It is the sovereign lord of animals, is blown like the Bánduli flower
and glorious like hundreds of millions of suns.
Within it is the phallus of a Śiva, facing west, his body soft like melted gold, embodiment of wisdom and
communion, red like a new twig, and soft as the beams of the moon. It lives in the sacred city (Kasi), is
full of felicity and is round like a whirlpool.
Fine as the string of the stalk of the lotus plays above this phallus the charmer of the Universe
(Kulakundalini) extending to the nectar-flowing fissure of the Brahma nerve. Like the lightning playing
in new clouds and the spiral turn of a shell, she rests over the phallus in three and a half circles as does
the sleeping serpent over the head of Śiva.
“This Kulakundalini, residing in the Muládhár Padma, hums like the bee inebriated with the nectar of
flowers, and by distributing the inspiration and respiration of animals keeps them alive.
Within this Kulakundalini, subtiler than the subtilest, and resplendent as the lightning is Śri
Parameswari (that is Prakriti or mundane source), whose brightness manifests the Universe like a
caldron.

Here we have, for the first time, a description of the Mūlādhāra chakra in the
English language. Also in his translations, Majumdār does mention the various
deities and Śaktis associated with the chakras, for example, in his translation of the
verses dealing with the Manipur lotus, he writes:

Within this lotus the Yogi must then contemplate the four-armed god of fire, bright as the rising sun,
mounted on a buffalo. On his lap, red like a vermillion, is a Rudra having three eyes. His body is covered
with ashes. This old Rudra is the creator and destroyer of the universe. With one hand he deals out
bounty and with the other intrepidity. Within this lotus is a four-handed black coloured goddess called
Lakshmi who wears a red cloth and many ornaments and is crazy.10

What I think is of equal importance here is a footnote to the article, supplied by

Colonel Olcott:

The significant feature of the present essay is that the Tantrik Yogi from whose work the extracts are
translated, knew the great and mysterious law that there are within the human body a series of centres
of force-evolution, the location of which becomes known to the ascetic in the course of his physical self-
development, as well as the means which must be resorted to, to bring the activities of these centres
 under the control of the will. To employ the Oriental figurative method, these points are so many
outworks to be captured in succession before the very citadel can be taken.11

Olcott’s language about ‘the citadel being taken’ is possibly due to the influence
of Sabhapaty. But there’s more here. Olcott is stating that there is a ‘great and
mysterious law that are within the human body a series of centres of force-
evolution’ and implying that the ‘Oriental figurative method’ is just one approach,
and there may be others. I see this as an initial step in universalising the chakras:
this isn’t knowledge that is particular to Tantrik Yogis or even the ‘Oriental
figurative method’, this is universal law, of which the tantric method is only one
approach.
By the end of 1880 then, Theosophists have been treated to both Sabhapaty’s 12-
chakra system and Majumdār’s six plus one chakra system (so-called because
Sahasrara is not, in this system, considered a chakra). It was Majumdār’s system,
for the most part, that they favoured, possibly because Sabhapaty was not a
Theosophist, but a Yogi, and Blavatsky, like many at the time, did not have a high
opinion of Physical Yoga. Also, the six or rather, the seven chakra system fitted
with Blavatsky’s sevenfold system of cosmic principles. It’s also noteworthy that
the deities and the chakras disappear almost entirely as the chakras become ‘force-
centres’, and Kuṇḍalinī an aspect of universal force, rather than a goddess. This is
possibly due to Blavatsky’s antipathy to anything that smacked of idolatry, to
which she was strongly opposed.

1 For further discussion of Majumdār, see Strube, Julian. 2022. Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and
Nationalism in Colonial Modernity. New York. Oxford University Press.
2 Majumdār, B.K. Tantric Philosophy. The Theosophist. Volume I. No. 7. April 1880. pp173-174. Bombay.
Cooper & Co.
3 Mill, James. 1817. The History of British India. Volume 1. London. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy. p428.
4 See Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. New York. Oxford University
Press. pp45-50 for further discussion of Basu.
5 Sabhapaty Swami. 1880. Om: A Treatise on Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy. Lahore. Civil and Military Gazette
Press. p11.
6 Ibid. p21.
7 Keith E. Cantu, personal correspondence.
8 Majumdār, B.K. 1880. A Glimpse of Tantric Occultism. The Theosophist. Volume I. No. 10 July 1880. pp244-
245. Bombay. Cooper & Co.
9 Ibid.
10 Majumdār, B.K. 1880. A Glimpse of Tantric Occultism. The Theosophist. Volume II. No.1 October 1880.
pp3-4. Bombay. Cooper & Co.
11 Olcott, footnote to Majumdār, July 1880. p244.
White and black tantras

At this point in time, Theosophical Leaders Blavatsky and Olcott seem to have
been fairly tolerant of Tantric material but this did not last long. By 1883 Blavatsky
was beginning to make a distinction between ‘White Tantras’ and ‘Black Tantras’
in the same way that she talked about ‘White Magic’ and ‘Black Magic’:

As there are both magic (pure psychic science) and sorcery (its impure counterpart) so there are what
are known as the “White” and “Black” Tantras. The one is an exposition, very clear and exceedingly
valuable, of occultism in its noblest features, the other a devil’s chap-book of wicked instructions to the
would-be wizard and sorcerer. Some of the prescribed ceremonies … show to what depths of vile
beastiality bad men (and women) are ready to plunge in the hope of feeding lust, hatred, avarice, cruelty
and other vile passions.1

The Tattvas and the Science of Breath

The next major contribution to the elucidation of the chakras is Rama Prasad’s
1884 book Occult Science: The Science of Breath (later republished in 1890 as
Nature’s Finer Forces). Not much seems to be known about Rama Prasad apart
from that he is known to have been active in the Theosophical movement at least
from 1883 and was university educated, with a Master of Arts degree, and worked
as a lawyer. He was for a time, president of a branch of the Theosophical Society in
the northern Indian city of Meerut.
Much of the first three chapters of Nature’s Finer Forces is concerned with an
interpretation of natural and subtle principles; material and non-material, within a
scientific framework. In Chapter 4, Rama Prasad moves into a technical
discussion of ‘The centres of prâna; the nâdis; the Tattvice Centres of life…’

When any one of these centres is in action, the mind is conscious of the same kind of feeling, and
inclines towards it. Mesmeric passes serve only to excite these centres.2

These centres are located in the head as well as in the chest, and also in the
abdominal region and the loins, etc.

The nervous plexuses of the modern anatomists coincide with these centres. From what has been said
above it will appear that the centres are constituted by blood-vessels. But the only difference between
the nerves and the blood—vessels is the difference between the vehicles of the positive and negative
Prânas. The nerves are the positive, the blood-vessels the negative system of the body. Wherever there
are nerves there are corresponding blood-vessels. Both of them are indiscriminately called Nâdis. This
system too, then, has as many centres of energy as the former. They are, in fact, the same—the nervous
plexuses and ganglia of modem anatomy.3

Again, from these passages, we can see already the close identification between
the ‘centres’, that is to say, the chakras and anatomy, their identification with nerve
plexuses and blood vessels: an identification which is further reified in later bio-
medical approaches to the chakras and kuṇḍalinī. This identification of the
padmas (lotuses) or chakras with anatomy reflects a movement to correlate
‘ancient wisdom’ with modern science.

Mesmerism

Rama Prasad also refers to Mesmerism. Mesmerism is named after the eighteenth-
century German Doctor Franz Anton Mesmer, who proposed that all living beings
were connected by an invisible, natural force, which could be used for healing;
particularly via movements of the hands near the body accompanied by strong
intention of the operator. Mesmer considered all human illness a breakdown in
the balance and flow of this magnetic force. Mesmerism was highly popular in the
nineteenth century and was particularly significant within Theosophical
Discourse. Blavatsky, in her Isis Unveiled, stated that:

Mesmerism is the most important branch of magic; and its phenomena are the effects of that
underlying agent which underlies all magic and has produced at all ages the so-called miracles.4

Both Blavatsky and Olcott turned to Mesmerism as a way of understanding

Indian esoteric knowledge—they saw it as a means by which science would
eventually come to accommodate and understand the miracles associated with
yoga practice.
Mesmerism was known in India however, largely thanks to James Esdaile,
Principal of the prestigious Hooghly College in Calcutta (1839-1841) who
pioneered the use of mesmeric principles in surgery and had several students, and
briefly ran an experimental mesmeric hospital in the 1840s. Given the prominence
of Mesmerism in Theosophical literature, and its place in Indian medical practice,
it is no surprise that Rama Prasad pulls it into his discussion of the esoteric centres
of the body.5
Rama Prasad’s book was also the subject of controversy within Theosophical
circles, as Madame Blavatsky used Prasad’s work to make her views on Tantra and
other interpretations of Hindu texts very clear.

The Controversy

Madame Blavatsky’s comments concerning Rama Prasad’s work appear in her

instructions to the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society and published
later in volume 3 of The Secret Doctrine.
Under the heading ‘Is the Practice of Concentration Beneficient?’ she states,
concerning Nature’s Finer Forces:

The value of this work is not so much in its literary merit, though it gained its author the gold medal of
The Theosophist—as in its exposition of tenets hitherto concealed in a rare and ancient Sanskrit work
 on Occultism. But Mr. Rama Prasad is not an Occultist, only an excellent Sanskrit scholar, a university
graduate and a man of remarkable intelligence. His Essays are almost entirely based on Tantra works,
which, if read indiscriminately by a tyro in Occultism, will lead to the practice of most unmitigated
Black Magic.

Now, since the difference of primary importance between Black and White Magic is simply the object
with which it is practiced, and that of secondary importance, the nature of the agents and ingredients
used for the production of phenomenal results, the line of demarcation between the two is very, very
thin. The danger is lessened only by the fact that every occult book, so called, is occult only in a certain
sense; that is, the text is occult merely by reason of its blinds. The symbolism has to be thoroughly
understood before the reader can get at the correct sense of the teaching. Moreover, it is never complete,
its several portions each being under a different title and each containing a portion of some other work;
so that without a key to these no such work divulges the whole truth. Even the famous Saivagama, on
which “Nature’s Finer Forces” is based, “is nowhere to be found in complete form,” as the author tells us.
Thus, like all others, it treats of only five Tattvas instead of the seven in esoteric teachings.6

Blavatsky is making several key statements here. Firstly, there is the matter of
Rama Prasad not being an occultist—meaning, in Blavatsky’s terms, he is not
‘initiated’, that is to say, he cannot appreciate the hidden meanings of the texts he
is dealing with. He lacks the hidden keys with which to make the proper
interpretation.
This is something of a pattern with Blavatsky. She insists that Theosophical
esoteric doctrine is both superior and unquestionable. When Indian authors
quoted from their own learned texts, Blavatsky argued that these texts were either
incomplete or lacked the esoteric keys which had been lost, and were now only
known to the ‘Masters’ and those few that they chose to communicate with. In her
writings, Blavatsky held India to be the cradle of civilization and the wellspring of
esoteric tradition, but she also held firm to the belief that whilst the esoteric
tradition may have come out of India, that contemporary Indians had, as much as
anyone else, lost the true key to that wisdom. Whilst she criticised the activity of
Christian missionaries in India, she was not shy about bringing her truths to
India’s inhabitants and lecturing them on what they had lost, or, in the case of
Rama Prasad it would seem—the limitations of their understanding. It was the
Theosophist’s insistence on the superiority of their own wisdom-tradition which
led many Indian members to lose patience with them and leave the movement.
 Secondly, there is the issue of the Tattvas being ‘seven’ according to her esoteric
teachings; she remarks that this truth has been forgotten by brahmins and is
unknown to science. Although Blavatsky was often critical of materialism and
western perspectives, she seems to have shared the 19th-century view that all
phenomena operated under the same laws; hence her unshakeable belief in the
operation of the seven principles in terms of both the cosmos and the esoteric
constitution of human beings.
Thirdly, Blavatsky is saying that no authentic occult book will ever contain the
whole truth of an esoteric matter. Again, what is important is being initiated, or
having the contacts with the genuine tradition or transmission that allows the
proper interpretation to be made. Later, she asserts that no true guides to Raja
Yoga are ever published, and that those articles dealing with Tantra or haṭha Yoga
which have appeared in Theosophical Journals are dangerous:

The author seems to have been himself deceived. The Tantras read esoterically are as full of wisdom as
the noblest occult works. But let anyone accept their dead-letter rules and practices, let him try with
some selfish motive in view to carry out the rites prescribed therein, and—he is lost. … In the East, in
India and China, soulless men and women are as frequently met with as in the West, though vice is, in
truth, far less developed than it is here. It is Black Magic and oblivion of their ancestral wisdom that
leads them thereunto.7

The Anatomy of the Tantras

The last article I want to discuss appeared in the March 1888 edition of The
Theosophist, entitled ‘The Anatomy of the Tantras’, by one ‘B.B.’, these being the
initials, according to Kurt Leland and Mark Singleton, of Baman Das Basu, later
editor of the Sacred Books of the Hindus series, and an early exponent of the revival
of Yoga along scientific, rational lines. The article leads with an announcement
that ‘one of the most popular and widely known tantras has been translated into
English.’ This is Shirish Chandra Basu’s 1888 translation of the Śiva Saṃhitā. The
Śiva Saṃhitā is one of the most well-known of the Haṭha Yoga texts, and is
thought to have been composed between 1300 and 1500 CE. It is heavily
influenced by the Śrī Vidya tantric tradition. Basu’s essay is intended for readers of
the Śiva Saṃhitā, and sets out to clarify the ‘technical terms’ relating to Tantra.
The author makes the interesting claim that:

The Tantras throw a flood of light upon the anatomical knowledge of the Hindoos—especially they give
a more clear description of the nervous system of man than is to be found in the Hindoo medical
works. Trying to explain the mysteries of man—to understand the relation he bears to God, the
Almighty Creator,—the Yogis and the Tantrists had made a special study of the nervous system. And
undoubtedly this knowledge they had gained by dissection.

Basu then proceeds to correlate various terms and passages from the Śiva
Saṃhitā with physiology. Of the Padmas and Chakras, he says:

What are these structures one is tempted to ask? Are they real or do they only exist in the imagination
of the Tantrists? Though we are unable to satisfactorily identify them, we nevertheless believe that the
Tantrists obtained their knowledge about them by dissection.8

He then goes on to discuss his rationale for identifying chakras with nerve
plexuses or ganglia, identifying the thousand-petalled lotus with the Medulla
Oblongata, the ‘Muladhar Chakra’ with the sacral plexus, the Swadhisthan chakra
with the prostatic plexus, and so on, and that the Sushumna, Ida and Pingala are,
in fact, the spinal cord and the right and left sympathetic nervous cords. The
petals of the chakras, and the letters assigned to them, according Basu, indicate
the nerves make up, or are distributed from a particular ganglion or plexus. He
argues the Yogic contemplation of these chakras gives rise to control over the
sympathetic nervous system, and that the full achievement of this control is what
constitutes ‘Samádhi.’
Whilst Shirish Chandra Basu’s translation of the Śiva Saṃhitā became a popular
source for information regarding the chakras for many esotericists, including
Aleister Crowley, Basu’s ‘The Anatomy of the Tantras’, according to Kurt Leland9,
went on to influence both Madame Blavatsky’s and Charles Webster Leadbeater’s
models of chakras.

Within a fairly short period of time, chakras had been absorbed into
Theosophical formulations of the esoteric body. Right from their first appearance,
they were been interpreted in scientific terms familiar to the milieu of
Theosophists, and their correlation with physiology was well under way. I find this
to be particularly interesting, as when I began this project, I assumed that the
attempts to correlate the chakras with anatomical structures was a European
influence, so it was interesting to discover that the earliest attempts to do so were
all made by Indian authors, and it is an issue which would benefit from further
research. Chakras clearly fitted into developing Theosophical ideas concerning the
gross or anatomical, and the subtle or astral body, and the relationship between
the two. We can also see, in this period, some early attempts to rationalise Yoga
within a scientific framework, although it must be borne in mind that almost all
major Theosophical commentators on Haṭha Yoga held it in very low regard. For
example, Basu, in his introduction to the Śiva Saṃhitā writes:

There is another class of persons who have assumed this honored and sacred title, and who by their
bigotry and ignorance have proved a great stumbling-block to the progress of this science. I mean the
Hatha yogis, those strange ascetics who by inflicting tortures and exquisite pains to their flesh, hope to
liberate their spirits. Through a mistaken idea that mind and matter must necessarily be opposed to
each other, they have evolved a philosophy of torture, whose fundamental doctrine seems to be:—the
greater the power of spirit, the less you are pained by tortures.10

What begins, in 1880, as an attempt to make sense of Tantric and Yogic texts
has, by the mid-1890s, become part of a universal teaching of which the tantric
approach is but one option, and one to be more-or-less discarded by Theosophists
as Tantra is increasingly identified by Blavatsky with Black Magic.
 “The Yogi (showing the Cakkras)” from The Equinox, Volume 1, No.4 (1910)

1 Blavatsky, H.P. Supplement to The Theosophist. July 1883. Madras. Grave, Cookson & Co. p3.
2 Prasad, Rama. 1890. p45.
3 Ibid.
4 Blavatsky, H.P. 1877. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and
Theology. New York. J.W. Bouton. p129.
5 See Ernst, Waltraud. 2004. Colonial Psychiatry, magic and religion. The case of Mesmerism in British India.
History of Psychiatry 15.1, pp57-71 for further discussion.
6 Blavatsky, H.P. 1897. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. Volume III.
London. The Theosophical Publishing House. p491.
7 Ibid.
8 See Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. New York. Oxford University
Press, p51 for a discussion of the implausibility of this assertion.
9 Leland, Kurt. 2016. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan. Lake
Worth, FL. Ibis Press.
10 Basu, S.C. 1888. p3.
Chakra variations

I will now take a closer look at three early presentations of chakras, in the writings
of Madame Blavatsky, James Morgan Pryse, and Aleister Crowley.

Madame Blavatsky’s Chakras

Blavatsky does not have a great deal to say about chakras, but what she does say is
I think, fairly illuminating.
Madame Blavatsky’s teachings concerning chakras were disseminated to
students of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society. These teachings were
secret, until Annie Besant published them as part of Volume Three of The Secret
Doctrine, in 1897. Central to Blavatsky’s presentation of the Subtle Body is the
notion that there are seven principles of consciousness, which are gradations from
the physical to the most spiritual. These are correlated with the Seven Tattvas
which, as I have already mentioned, Blavatsky saw as comprising the true esoteric
teachings on the Tattvas.

The Tantrists do not seem to go higher than the six visible and known plexuses, with each of which they
connect the tattvas; and the great stress they place on the chief of these, the Muladhara Chakra (the
sacral plexus) shows the material and selfish bent of their efforts towards the acquisition of powers.
Their five breaths and five tattvas are chiefly concerned with the prostatic, epigastric and laryngeal
 plexuses. Almost ignoring the agneya (i.e. ajna) they are positively ignorant of the synthesizing
pharyngeal plexus.

But with the followers of the old school it is different. We begin with the mastery of that organ which is
situated at the base of the brain, in the pharynx, and called by the Western anatomists the pituitary
body. … The arousing and awakening of the third eye [pineal gland] must be performed by that
vascular organ, that insignificant little body, of which, once again, physiology knows nothing at all. That
one is the energiser of will [pituitary], the other that of clairvoyant perception [pineal].”1

Here Blavatsky is criticising what she sees as the mistake of Tantra; placing too
much stress on the muladhara chakra, that she associates with worldly activities.
Her method; the true method, needless to say, prioritises the opening of the Third
Eye, which she correlates with the ajna chakra and the pituitary gland. The pineal
gland is correlated with the seventh chakra.

Our seven chakras are all situated in the head, and it is these master chakras which govern and rule the
seven principal plexuses in the body, and the forty-two minor one to which physiology refuses that
name … And if the term plexus , in this application, does not represent to the Western mind the idea
conveyed by the term of the anatomist, then call them chakras or padmas, or the wheels, the lotus
hearts and petals.2

Blavatsky comments that ‘no two authorities up to the present day agree as to
the real location of the chakras and padmas in the body.’ Again, for her, this
disparity is a confirmation, as she frequently points out, that current Indian
authorities have lost their connection with the true wisdom of ‘the old school’.
Although Blavatsky promised, in her instructions to the Esoteric Section, that
‘When the time comes, advanced students will be given the minute details of the
Master Chakras and taught the use of them’ this information did not appear, and it
is later Theosophists such as Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater
(coming up in Section Three) who develop Blavatsky’s ideas about the chakras.
For Blavatsky, any kind of practical occultism was fraught with danger, and she
frequently makes a distinction throughout her writings between ‘true occultism’
and ‘magic’. The latter, which can easily become ‘black magic’ or sorcery; that is to
say, used for selfish ends (such as acquiring money or influence). In an article
titled ‘Practical Occultism’ for example, which appeared in the Theosophical
journal Lucifer in 1888 she asserts:

Occultism is not magic. It is comparatively easy to learn the trick of spells and the methods of using the
subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature; the powers of the animal soul in man are soon
awakened; the forces which his love, his hate, his passion, can call into operation, are readily developed.
But this is Black Magic—Sorcery. For it is the motive, and the motive alone, which makes any exercise
of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual
forces if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator. For, unless the intention is
entirely unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire
results may be produced by it. The powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish
and revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all- forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend themselves
only to the perfectly pure in heart—and this is DIVINE MAGIC.3

Now I will turn to a very different account of chakras, which builds on general
Theosophical understandings, but does so in relation to Christian Mysticism,
specifically The Book of Revelations, as interpreted by James Morgan Pryse.

Apocalyptic chakras: James Morgan Pryse

James Morgan Pryse (1859—1942) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was of
Welsh descent. Pryse played a key role in establishing Theosophical print presses.
He and his brother John founded an American Theosophical publishing house,
‘The Aryan Press’ in 1889. In 1890, at the request of H.P. Blavatsky, Pryse moved
to London, to set up and manage the H.P.B Press (a.k.a the ‘Blavatsky Press’),
producing the fortnightly Theosophical periodical Vahan as well as pamphlets and
books. He became a close friend of Blavatsky and attended her daily in the days
before her death.
Following the death of Mme Blavatsky, Pryse moved to Dublin, where he
managed the printing of the Irish Theosophist magazine and became active in
Irish Theosophy. During this period, he became friendly with the multi-talented
‘AE’ (George William Russell, 1867-1935). Of Pryse, Russell writes:

The grey visitor was James M. Pryse who first instructed me in magic, conjuring up pictures in the
astral light, and holding them before my inner eyes so that I could see initiation scenes, the evolution of
 the astral from the physical, the movement of cells and forces in the body. A good deal of what he wrote
in the interpretation of the Apocalypse he showed me in the “glass”. He was one of the few members of
the T.S. who knew things for himself and had a good deal of occult power. He was really rather a
mysterious person whose talk and writing had personal knowledge behind it.4

Pryse’s interpretation of the chakras can be found in his 1910 book, The
Apocalypse Unsealed. The main premise of this work is that The Revelation of St.
John is not a historical or prophetic text, but rather, that it is a manual of spiritual
development; an exposition of the secret doctrine which is alluded to in ancient
writings such as the New Testament and the Upanishads. The book comprises of
two sections. Four preparatory chapters, followed by Pryse’s esoteric translation
and commentaries on The Book of Revelations.
Pryse introduces the chakras in relation to the sympathetic nervous system,
relating the seven principal chakras to the seven ganglia; mūlādhāra to the sacral
ganglion; adhisthāna to the prostatic; and so forth. Pryse writes:

When through the action of man’s spiritual will, whether by his conscious effort or unconsciously so, as
far as his phrenic mind is concerned, the latent kundalinī (speirêma), which in the Upanishads is
poetically said to lie coiled up like a slumbering serpent, is aroused to activity, it displaces the
slow—moving nervous force or neuricity, and becomes the agent of the telestic or perfecting work. As
it passes from one ganglion to another its voltage is raised, the ganglia being like so many electric cells
coupled for intensity; and moreover, in each ganglion or chakra, it liberates and partakes of the quality
peculiar to that centre, and it is then said to “conquer” the chakra.5

In chapter 4, titled ‘The Drama of Self-Conquest’, Pryse relates the chakras to

the ‘seven churches’ or cities given in Revelations 1.11 (KJV), saying that the order
in which these cities are named is the same order as that of the Chakras in the
Upanishads. So for example, Ephesos ‘a city celebrated for its great temple of
Diana’, the ‘many-breasted mother’.. ‘the Woman clothed with the Sun, the moon
beneath her feet,’ is equated with mūlādhāra chakra. The city of Thyateira, Pryse
equates to the anāhata chakra, as Thyateira is a city noted for the manufacture of
scarlet dyes, ‘the name being thus a covert reference to the blood and circulatory
system.’ The seven chakras are also the seven seals of Revelations. Pryse writes:

The sacrificial Lamb, the neophyte who has attained to the intuitive, noetic consciousness—which is
symbolised by his having seven horns and seven eyes, that is, mental powers of action and
 perception—opens the seals (arouses the chakras successively. As they are opened, however, they
change to zodiacal signs6.

In a similar fashion, Prsyse equates the seven trumpets with the activity of the
chakras, and also the seven mountains; whilst the ‘river of life’ and the two ‘trees of
life’ are equated to the three nādīs. Following general Theosophical doctrine
concerning the absolute necessity of celibacy for spiritual development, Pryse
writes:

…in the solar body the “accursed” function, sex, does not exist, and the forces come from above, from
the brain—region. … The generative function is strictly nothing but an animal one, and can never be
anything else. True spirituality demands its utter extirpation; and whilst its proper exercise for the
continuation for the human race, in the semi-animal stage of its evolution, may not be considered
sinful, its misuse, in any way, is fraught with the most terrible consequences physically, psychically, and
spiritually; and the forces connected with it are used for abnormal purposes only in the foulest practices
of sorcery…7

Considering ‘the foulest practices of sorcery’ I will now turn to Aleister

Crowley.

Aleister Crowley: Chakras and Practical Magic

At a time when many western occultists considered Haṭha Yoga to be, at best,
incompatible with the western mindset, or at worst, a form of black magic,
Crowley is notable for having not only incorporated many techniques of physical
yoga into his magical praxis, but also for correlating them with elements of the
western esoteric tradition. He is known to have first practiced Yoga in 1901, whilst
visiting Allan Bennett in Ceylon, and also seems to have become familiar with
some Buddhist techniques of meditation in the same period, writing an essay
entitled ‘Buddhism and Science’ whilst he was in India. It was also during this
period that Crowley encountered the work of Sabhapaty Swami.
There are several references to Sabhapaty throughout Crowley’s works. In his
commentary on Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence, for example, he lists Sabhapaty
as one of the teachers ‘who know their subject from experience’. An entry in
Crowley’s magical diary for March-April 1905, (published as a footnote in the
second revised edition to his Magick: Book Four) summarizes a passage from
Sabhapaty’s Om:

Draw the light of your two eyes internally to kuṇḍali by iḍā and piṅgalā respectively. Imagine the mind
as a straight pole brahmarandhra—kuṇḍali and the consciousness at the bottom of this pole. Take hold
of the consciousness by the two keennesses of your eyes and pull it slowly up…Keep consciousness in
brahmarandhra for 20 min. more. Then drop and lift it through suṣumnā so fast that it takes less than 1
sec.

There are many references to both chakras and kuṇḍalinī throughout Crowley’s
writings. One of the earliest can be seen in Liber 777 (first published in 1909)
where Crowley correlates the seven ‘chakkras’ (sic) with Hindu principles of the
Soul and the Sephiroth. Crowley was, as far as I’m aware, the first occultist to ‘map’
the chakras onto the Tree of Life.
In Book 4, Part II, first published in 1913, ‘Chapter VII: The Cup’ Crowley
describes the ‘lotuses’ which are situated in the spinal column. He gives seven
chakras, beginning with ‘the lotus of three petals in the Sacrum, in which the
Kuṇḍalinī lies asleep’ and moving up to ‘above the junction of the cranial sutures’
where resides ‘that sublime lotus, of a thousand and one petals, which receives the
influence from on high; and in which, in the Adept, the awakened Kundalini takes
her pleasure with the Lord of All.’ He correlates the six-petalled heart lotus with
Tiphareth saying that it receives those vital forces which are connected to the
blood.
A major source for information regarding the chakras was the Śiva Saṃhitā,
which had been translated into English by Sirish Chandra Basu in 1888, and
contained a section describing the six chakras. It is listed as one of the titles which
potential probationers to the A.A. had to possess, and on which they would be
examined.
The descriptions of the ‘chakkras’ (sic) which appear in the fourth instalment of
‘The Temple of Solomon the King’, co-written by Crowley and JFC Fuller and
published in The Equinox in 1910 (at which time Crowley and Fuller were co-
editors) borrow heavily from the Śiva Saṃhitā. Some of the asides and footnotes
are of particular interest. For example ‘the following Mystical physiology is but a
symbolic method of expressing what is nigh inexpressible, and in phraseology is
akin to Western Alchemy, the physiological terms taking the place of mystical
ones.’ Other notes compare the Svadhisthana chakra to Yesod (due to the power of
scrying associated with it) and the Manipura with Tiphareth. There is also a proof
given, using gematria, that the true number of petals in the Sahasrara chakra is
1000,1 as opposed to the 1,000 given in ‘Hindu works’.8
In addition to his attempts to incorporate chakras into Western Esotericism,
Crowley also devised practical instruction; a major departure from the approaches
of Blavatsky or Pryse. In Liber Yod, first published in 1912 for example, Crowley
says:

4. Let then the Hermit, seated in his Asana, meditate upon the Muladhara Cakkra and its
correspondence as a power of the mind, and destroy it in the same manner as aforesaid. Also by
reasoning: “This emotion (memory, imagination, intellect, will, as it may be) is not I. This emotion is
transient: I am immovable. This emotion is passion. I am peace”, and so on.
Let the other Cakkras in their turn be thus destroyed, each one with its mental or moral attribute.
5. In this let him be aided by his own psychological analysis, so that no part of his conscious being be
thus left undestroyed. And on his thoroughness in this matter may turn his success.
6. Lastly, having drawn all his being into the highest Sahasrara Cakkra, let him remain eternally fixed in
meditation thereupon.

This exercise of ‘destroying the chakras’ is highly suggestive of Sabhapaty

Swami’s work in relation to his idea of ‘silencing the faculties’.
Crowley seems to have generally accepted the belief that there were six or seven
chakras, although in a letter from 1916 he writes:

It appears that a special set of nadis [nerves] fed the Muladhara lotus as if it had three roots. The source
of these roots is in the three centres. But they are not lotuses of the same order as the sacred Seven. The
anal lotus is of eight petals, deep crimson, glowing to rich poppy color when excited. The prostatic lotus
is like a peridot, extremely translucent and limpid. … The petals are numerous, I think thirty-two. The
third lotus is in the glans penis, close to the base…. It is of a startlingly rich purple. The centre is gold
like the sun. … In the female … these three lotuses also exist, but in a very different form. … [T]he
second of the chakras is situated between the urethra and the cervix uteri … [I]ts color is neutral grey
but in pregnancy it becomes a brilliant orange and flowerlike. … The third lotus is at the base of the
clitoris. The petals are forty-nine in number The basic color is a rich olive green, sometimes kindling to
emerald.9
 Not only is this typically Crowley—but it also indicates that at times, he was
ready to allow for additional chakras when it suited him.

1 Blavatsky, H.P. 1897. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. Volume III.
London. The Theosophical Publishing House. pp503-504.
2 Ibid. pp492-493.
3 Blavatsky, H.P. 1888. Practical Occultism. Lucifer. Volume II, No. 8. April 1888. London. Theosophical
Publishing Society. p151.
4 quoted from https://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/ae.html
5 Pryse, J.M. 1910. The Apocalypse Unsealed: being an esoteric interpretation of the initiation of Iôannês
(Apokalypsis Ioannou) commonly called the Revelation of (St.) John: with a new translation. New York. p15
6 Ibid. p40.
7 Ibid. p216.
8 Crowley, Aleister & Fuller, JFC. 1910. The Temple of Solomon the King. The Equinox. Volume 1. No. 4.
pp86-92.
9 Quoted from Urban, Hugh. 2006. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western
Esotericism. Berkeley. University of California Press. p126.
Some observations

In this section I have covered the period 1880-1910, examining some of the
earliest English-language material on the chakras and related subjects, beginning
with the first articles written by Indian members of the Theosophical Society.
These articles were written in a time when many Indian intellectuals were creating
a new vision of Indian religious and culturals traditions, both in response and as a
counter to the widespread condemnation and ridicule of Indian traditions by the
British. Journals such as The Theosophist provided a valuable space for Indian
authors to discuss their ideas with their Western counterparts, and it is
noteworthy that many Indian intellectuals and social reformers were initially
attracted to the Theosophical Society, perhaps due in part to Blavatsky and Olcott’s
open criticism not only of Christianity, but also of Western materialism, and their
initial celebration of India’s glorious past and spiritual wisdom.
Whilst Theosophy countered some orientalist constructions of India, it also
upheld other facets of orientalist discourse—such as the idea that India had lost
contact with its original esoteric knowledge due to cultural degeneration.
Blavatsky’s claim that the ‘true’ teachings on chakras which she apparently had
access to, and which were superior to that material contained in Tantric and Yogic
texts, can be seen, I feel, as an early step in detaching the chakras from their
Indian context, as the chakras were very speedily appropriated and absorbed into
Theosophical teachings, whilst at the same time, the systems from which
knowledge of the chakras was derived, namely Tantric and Haṭha Yogic texts,
came to be disparaged.
This process of universalisation was also influenced by those Indian authors
who tried to interpret tantric and yogic material in scientific or medical
terms—which also paved the way for the popular view of chakras as having an
objective, scientific existence, and of them being independent of any particular
culture or religious origin.
Why were chakras so attractive? I think the answer, to a degree, lies in the link
that chakras provided between the physical body and the understanding of the
astral, or subtle body, and how both were related to notions of spiritual
development. Throughout Theosophical writings, there is a strong theme of
escaping from materiality and the demands of the physical body, particularly in
relation to sexuality. In Blavatsky’s evolutionary schema, human spiritual
evolution is related to a movement upwards towards the planes of spirit and away
from the body and its ‘lower appetites’ and worldly commitments. For Blavatsky
and other Theosophists, the idea that the chakras were a series of stages linked to
the ascent of spiritual evolution was very attractive, together with the way that
they linked gross anatomy with subtle levels of existence.
We can see similar themes in the work of James Morgan Pryse. However, Pryse
was not one of those Theosophists who was entirely comfortable with the
movement’s general eastward turn. Whilst he brings chakras into his book The
Apocalypse Unsealed, Pryse is working within the framework of esoteric or
mystical Christianity.
Finally, I think we can see a similar pattern in Crowley’s incorporation of the
chakras, albeit for entirely different reasons. For Crowley, the chakras link the
physical to the astral, and to the development of magical abilities. Unlike the
Theosophists however, Crowley does not reject the physical and the sensual,
rather, he positively revels in them.
Over this period, there have been various attempts to ground chakras within
the language of science and anatomy, a trend that continues over the next hundred
years or so, but at the same time, increasingly reifies them into the system of seven
chakras that we know today, so that alternative systems, such as the 12-chakra
scheme given by Swami Sabhapaty, are forgotten.
By the early twentieth century, chakras have been correlated with both Alchemy
and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and although there have been tentative moves
towards correlating them with clairvoyant vision and psychic abilities, the notion
that the chakras are ‘visible’ to the spiritual vision of adept practitioners, and later,
ordinary mortals, has yet to be fully explored. I will be taking a closer look at the
notion that the chakras can be seen psychically in the work of the Theosophist
Charles Webster Leadbeater, as well as Sir John Woodroffe’s influential book The
Serpent Power in the next section.
Section Bibliography

Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the
Logics of Bricolage. New York. Oxford University Press.
Altman, Michael J. 2017. Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of
India, 1721-1893. New York. Oxford University Press.
Anonymous. 1895. The Dream of Ravan: A Mystery. Bombay. Theosophy
Company (India).
Arnold, David. 2004. Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India.
Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Baier, Karl. 2012. ‘Mesmeric Yoga and the Development of Meditation within the
Theosophical Society’. Theosophical History, Vol. XVI, No. 3-4, July-Oct. 2012.
Baier, Karl. 2016. ‘Theosophical Orientalism and the Structure of Intercultural
Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy.’ in
Chajes, Julie and Huss, Boaz (eds) Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism,
Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions. Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev Press.
B.B. 1888. Anatomy of the Tantras. The Theosophist. Volume IX. No. 102. March
1888. pp370-373. Madras. Grave, Cookson & Co.
Blavatsky, H.P. 1877. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and
Modern Science and Theology. New York. J.W. Bouton.
Blavatsky, H.P. 1883. Supplement to The Theosophist. July 1883. Madras. Grave,
Cookson & Co.
Blavatsky, H.P. 1888. Practical Occultism. Lucifer. Volume II, No. 8. April 1888.
London. Theosophical Publishing Society.
Blavatsky, H.P. 1897. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and
Philosophy. Volume III. London. The Theosophical Publishing House.
Cantú, Keith E. 2016. ‘Śrī Sabhāpati Swāmī: Forgotten Yogī of Western
Esotericism’. Paper delivered at the American Academy of Religion annual
meeting in San Antonio, Texas, November 2016. (see
https://ucsb.academia.edu/KeithCantú)
Clarke, Bruce. 2001. Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical
Thermodynamics. University of Michigan Press.
Crow, John L. 2012. ‘Taming the Astral Body: The Theosophical Society’s Ongoing
Problem of Emotion and Control.’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
September 2012, Vol. 80, No. 3, pp. 691–717.
Crowley, Aleister & Fuller, JFC 1910. The Temple of Solomon the King. The
Equinox. Volume 1. No.4. Self-published.
De Michelis, Elizabeth. 2004. A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western
Esotericism. London. Continuum.
Dixon, Joy. 2001. Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England.
Baltimore. The John Hopkins University Press.
Djurdjevic, Gordan. 2014. India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian
Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism. New York. Palgrave Macmillan.
Ernst, Waltraud. 2004. Colonial Psychiatry, magic and religion. The case of
Mesmerism in British India. History of Psychiatry 15.1, pp57-71.
Hammer, Olaf and Rothstein, Mikael (eds.). 2013. Handbook of the Theosophical
Current. Leiden. Brill.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J 2012. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in
Western Culture. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Jain, Andrea R. 2015. Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture. New York.
Oxford University Press.
Leland, Kurt. 2016. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from
Blavatsky to Brennan. Lake Worth, FL. Ibis Press.
Mallinson, James. 2007. The Śiva Saṃhitā: A Critical Edition and an English
Translation. Woodstock, NY. VogaVidya.com.
Mallinson, James and Singleton, Mark. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London. Penguin
Random House UK.
Majumdār, B.K. 1880. Tantric Philosophy. The Theosophist. Volume I. No. 7. April
1880. pp173-174. Bombay. Cooper & Co.
Majumdār, B.K. 1880. A Glimpse of Tantric Occultism. The Theosophist. Volume I.
No. 10 July 1880. pp244-245. Bombay. Cooper & Co.
Majumdār, B.K. 1880. A Glimpse of Tantric Occultism. The Theosophist. Volume
II. No.1 October 1880. pp3-4. Bombay. Cooper & Co.
Mill, James. 1817. The History of British India. Volume 1. London. Baldwin,
Cradock and Joy.
Müller, Max. 1919. The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. London. Longmans,
Green & Co.
Newcombe, Suzanne. 2013. ‘Magic and Yoga: The Role of Subcultures in
Transcultural Exchange’ in Hauser, Beatrix (ed.). Yoga Traveling: Body Practice in
Transcultural Perspective. Switzerland. Springer International Publishing.
Pryse, J.M. 1910. The Apocalypse Unsealed: being an esoteric interpretation of the
initiation of Iôannês (Apokalypsis Ioannou) commonly called the Revelation of (St.)
John: with a new translation. New York.
Sabhapaty Swami. 1880. Om: A Treatise on Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy. Lahore.
Civil and Military Gazette Press.
Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. New
York. Oxford University Press.
Strube, Julian. 2022. Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial
Modernity. New York. Oxford University Press.
“Truth-Seeker”. 1880. Yoga Philosophy. The Theosophist. Volume I. No.4. January
1880. pp86-87. Bombay. Cooper & Co.
Urban, Hugh B. 2006. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern
Western Esotericism. Berkeley. University of California Press.
 Three:
The Judge and the Bishop
Tools for transformation

A key question for me is why are chakras so popular? Why have they become a
central feature of accounts of the operations of the body in such a wide range of
‘alternative’ bodily disciplines—occultism, the New Age, holistic medicine,
therapies?
A simple answer is that they are ‘tools for self-transformation’; they enable us to
reshape our experience of our bodies according to particular trajectories, in
accordance with particular expectations about what constitutes a ‘proper’ or a
‘healthy’ or a ‘spiritual’ body.
This question of what constitutes a ‘proper’ body was a huge issue in the period
during which chakras first emerged into popular consciousness. In the previous
section, I examined some of the earliest English-language writings on chakras at
the turn of the twentieth century, and pointed to how they emerged and were
framed within a discourse which was concerned with the unification of science,
religion and philosophy. Also at this time, the body was coming under increasing
scrutiny and regulation. The scientific investigation of Yoga begins at around the
same time. There is the birth of Sexology, Psychoanalysis, and other body
disciplines. There is also an increased emphasis on self-cultivation and self-
regulation and a link made between moral character, bodily health and national
progress.
 These are issues that I feel are worth bearing in mind when approaching the
popularity of the chakras.
In this section I am going to take a look at the works of two very different
authors: Sir John Woodroffe’s book The Serpent Power, first published in 1918, and
Charles Webster Leadbeater’s The Chakras: A Monograph, first published in 1927.
Both books have been, for the most part, continually in print since their first
publication. This September (2018) will be the hundredth anniversary of
Woodroffe’s book first being published.
I think it is fair to say that without these books, chakras would probably not be
around today—at least, not in the way we have come to know them. For decades
they were virtually the only readily-available works on the subject of chakras, and
their ideas have been cited time and time again (often without direct
acknowledgement) in many popular books on chakras, as well as more scholarly
works on them. Woodroffe’s book, for example, was a huge influence on Carl
Gustav Jung’s interpretations of the chakras, on which many contemporary
psychological models of chakras are based. Similarly, many of the psychic
elements now popular in interpreting chakras originated in the writings of Charles
Webster Leadbeater.
Why ‘The Judge and the Bishop?’ Sir John Woodroffe was a High Court Judge,
and Theosophist Charles Leadbeater was very fond of dressing in the vestments of
a Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, which earned him the moniker of
‘Bishop’ Leadbeater. Although these two books approach their shared subject from
very different perspectives, I do feel that there are some shared commonalities
between them. I’m going to look at Woodroffe first, then Leadbeater. I’ll start of by
giving some biographical information about each of them, which I do feel sheds
some light on how and why they approached the chakras and then take a look at
their writings.
Sir John Woodroffe

How did a British High Court Judge—a pillar of the Colonial

Establishment—become known as the ‘Father’ of modern Tantric studies? For this
is how Sir John Woodroffe is largely thought of today. Woodroffe is credited with
single-handedly establishing Tantra as a subject worthy of serious study.
Beginning in 1913, he published a range of Tantric texts—some in Sanskrit with
English introductions and summaries, and some works fully translated into
English. Some of these works were published under his own name, whilst others
appeared under the pseudonym ‘Arthur Avalon’, which Woodroffe later explained
as indicating that they were collaborative efforts with other authors.
Woodroffe is a complex figure who has many facets. The High Court Judge, the
secret Tantric initiate, the supporter of Indian Nationalism, the occult
sympathiser. In order to understand Woodroffe and his writings, I think we have
to try and come to grips with some of the different aspects of his life.

The Judge

John Woodroffe was born in Calcutta in December 1865. His father was a highly
successful High Court barrister. He studied Law at Oxford and joined his father at
the Calcutta Bar in 1890. He became a member of the judiciary at the age of 39
and served at the Calcutta High Court from 1904, retiring in 1922 to teach Indian
Law at Oxford. He received his knighthood in 1915. He died in 1936. By all
accounts, Woodroffe seems to have been a fairly popular and well-liked judge,
which, as his biographer, Kathleen Taylor points out, is remarkable, given the
turbulent political situation of the period.1

The Tantric

There are a number of stories about how Woodroffe first became interested in
Tantra. One is that he was trying a court case one day and began to suffer terrible
migranes. One of the court clerks told him that the defendant had hired a tantric
sorcerer, who was sitting outside on the steps of the court reciting mantras.
Woodroffe’s first thought was to have the tantric sent away, and then he changed
his mind and went to talk with him instead. This story is probably apocryphal, but
Kathleen Taylor says that there is evidence that he had, at some point in his life,
taken some form of initiation and practiced under a guru. Woodroffe himself
seems to have kept this an entirely private matter. The figure who is frequently
pointed to as being Woodroffe’s guru is one Sivacandra, a well-known Tantric
teacher who helped found the Sarvamangalā Sabhā, an organisation for Śatkā
Tantrics in Bengal and beyond. Woodroffe published an English translation of
Sivacandra’s work Tantratattva, as the two-volume Principles of Tantra in 1914.

The Western Occultist

How far was Woodroffe an Occultist in the Western sense? Kathleen Taylor is
somewhat ambivalent about this, but what is certain is that his wife was a
Theosophist, and that the Woodroffes were friendly with Annie Besant, Alexandra
David-Neel and other prominent Theosophists. So we can say at the very least,
that his social circle included many occultists. Although Woodroffe was often
rather critical of Theosophical interpretations of Indian concepts, he does seem to
be fairly sympathetic to occult ideas in general. Fairly early on in The Serpent
Power, Woodroffe says:

The creative power of thought is now receiving increased acceptance in the West. Thought-reading,
thought-transference, hypnotic suggestion, magical projections … are becoming known and practiced,
not always with good result.

He goes on to say that the doctrine that underlies these practices is ancient in
India, and underlies the practices found in the Tantras. He continues:

Those familiar with Western presentment of similar subjects will more readily understand when I say
that, according to the Indian doctrine … thought is a Power or Sakti.

And here he adds a footnote, stating: ‘It is because the Orientalist (by which he
means scholars) and missionaries know nothing of occultism, and regard it as
superstition, that their presentment of Indian teaching is so often ignorant and
absurd.’ What he is effectively saying here is that occultists are more likely to
understand what he is writing about than either scholars or missionaries.2

The Scholar

Throughout his books, Woodroffe presents himself as an impartial scholar whose

only concern is to present Tantra from a position of objectivity:

… though I have furnished argument in favour of this much-abused faith and practice, I am not here
concerned to establish the truth and rightness of either. My attitude is an objective one.3

Yet he clearly has an agenda. Woodroffe strove to rescue Tantra from the scorn
which has been heaped upon it by other scholars, missionaries, colonial
administrators, and some Indian commentators. As I discussed in the previous
section, this negative view of Tantra was shared by Madame Blavatsky and other
senior Theosophists. For example, the scholar Monier Monier-Williams dismisses
Tantric texts in the following way:
 As a whole, they may be summarized as mere witchcraft, which to Europeans appears so ineffably
absurd that the possibility of any person believing in it seems itself incredible.4

Colonial authorities too tended to associate Tantra with political extremism and
violence. One journalist described Tantra as an ‘erotomania which is certainly
more common among Hindu political fanatics than among Hindus in general’.5
Woodroffe wanted to show, that the Tantras are noble and philosophical, that
they are rational and scientific, and that they do not contain teachings which are
contrary to the Vedas or to Advaita Vedanta—and he frequently uses Vedantic
philosophy to explain Tantric ideas. At this time in India, Advaita Vedanta was
being promoted as the essential ‘core’ of Hinduism by reformists such as
Radhakrishnan and Vivekānanda.6 Woodroffe was President of the Calcutta
Vivekānanda Society and gave lectures there. Woodroffe took the view that all of
Indian religion was a seamless whole, and he wanted to bring Tantra back into the
centre of Hindu Life, rather than keeping it at the margins. In doing so however,
he went to great lengths to rationalise, excuse, or at times exclude aspects of
Tantric thought and practice that might be judged ‘offensive’. For example, he
interpreted instructions to drink wine (madya) as symbolising the ‘intoxicating
knowledge acquired by yoga’ and references to sexual intercourse (maithuna) as
symbolising the union of Kuṇḍalinī with Śiva in the body of the worshipper. There
are hints in Woodroffe’s work that suggest that he believed that Indians should
embrace Tantric ideas in order to resist Western dominance and become a
powerful force for the future. In Bharata Shakti (a collection of Woodroffe’s
speeches to various Indian societies) he writes:

We are each centres of Power, and if we would achieve success must, according to this Shastra, realise
ourselves as such, knowing that it is Devata which thinks and acts in, and as, us, and that we are the
Devata. Our world-enjoyment is His, and liberation is His peaceful nature. The Agamas deal with the
development of this Power which is not to be thought of as something without, but within our grasp as
various forms of Shakti-Sadhana. Being in the world and working through the world, the world itself, in
the words of the Kularnava Tantra, becomes the seat of liberation … The Vira or Heroic Sadhaka does
not shun the world from fear of it, but holds it in his grasp and wrests from it its secret. … He is the
illumined master of himself, whether developing all his powers, or seeking liberation at his will.7
 Vivekānanda made similar statements when speaking to an Indian audience on
his return from America:

Heroic workers are wanted to go abroad and help to disseminate the great truth of Vedanta. The world
wants it; without it the world is destroyed. We must go out; we must conquer the world with our
spirituality and philosophy. There is no alternative, we must do it or die. The only condition of national
life, of awakened and vigorous national life, is the conquest of the world by Indian thought.8

The Supporter of Indian Nationalism

In addition to his Tantric works, Woodroffe was also a passionate defender of

Indian culture against the criticisms and misinterpretations of many Europeans.
For example, a book published in 1917 by William Archer, entitled India and the
Future which dismissed Indian religion as ‘the lowest professed and practiced by
any people that purports to have risen above savagery’ prompted Woodroffe to
write a rebuttal—Is India Civilized? in which he praised India’s spiritual heritage
and argued that this gave India a special role in the world—an argument very
similar to that made by Vivekānanda at the World’s Parliament of Religions in
1893.
Is India Civilized? was very popular with the Indian public but less so with the
colonial establishment, and several reviewers expressed their doubts about
Woodroffe’s support for religious and political extremists. It is possible, says
Kathleen Taylor, that the controversy may have influenced Woodroffe’s decision to
retire early from the Judiciary.9
There is a famous photograph of Woodroffe which is reproduced in many of his
books. It shows him wearing a white dhoti—a traditional men’s garment in South
Asia, and he’s standing outside the wall of a temple—the Konarak Temple, which
is a Sun temple, also famous for its erotic statuary.
This was apparently one of Woodroffe’s favourite places to visit. But what about
him adopting native dress? Well nowadays we might think of this in terms of
cultural appropriation, that he was being disrespectful, but another way to read it
is that Woodroffe, in adopting a traditional men’s garment is signalling his
affiliation and sympathy with India at a time of great political agitation and
violence against the colonial authorities. We tend to associate the Indian struggle
for independence with Gandhi’s non-violent tactics, but this period was far more
turbulent; there are incidents of bombings, shootings, and attempts on the lives of
prominent colonial authorities; and the authorities responded with hangings,
transportation, and sedition trials.
Here’s a quote that I feel neatly encapsulates Woodroffe’s attitude towards the
people and the traditions he was studying:

In giving an account of Indian beliefs and practices, we, who are foreigners, must place ourselves in the
skin of the Hindu, and must look at their doctrine and ritual through their eyes and not our
own. … Many do not even make the attempt. They look at the matter from the point of view of their
own creed, or, (what is much worse), racial prejudice…10

It is perhaps sentiments such as these which prompted the Tantric scholar M.P.
Pandit to describe Woodroffe as ‘truly an Indian Soul in a European Body’.11
Woodroffe’s books were published over a ten-year period (1913-1923). In 1913
alone four books were issued. An English translation of The Mahanirvana Tantra
(‘The Tantra of the Great Liberation’); an anthology named Hymns to the Goddess;
and the first two volumes of his Tantric Texts series—works in Sanskrit with
English introductions, edited by named Indian scholars, with ‘Arthur Avalon’
named as the general editor. One of these Tantric Texts volumes was a Sanskrit
edition of the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa. In 1914 Woodroffe published Sivacandra’s
Principles of Tantra, and in 1917 came Shakti and Shakta—the first book to be
published by Woodroffe under his own name. It was followed by The Serpent
Power.

1 See Taylor, K. 2001. Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: ‘An Indian Soul in a European Body’? London.
RoutledgeCurzon. Chapter Three.
2 Woodroffe, Sir John. 1972. The Serpent Power. Madras. Ganesh & Co. p98.
3 Taylor, K. 2001. p143.
4 Urban, Hugh. ‘The Extreme Orient: The Construction of ‘Tantrism’ as a Category in the Orientalist
Imagination.’ Religion. 1999. 29. 123-146. p129.
5 Taylor, K. 2001. p46.
6 See King, R. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic East’. London.
Routledge. Chapter Six.
7 Woodroffe, Sir John. 1921. Bharata Shakti: Collection of Addresses on Indian Culture. Madras. Ganesh & Co.
pp124-125.
8 quoted from Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: religious exoticism and the logics of bricolage.
New York. Oxford University Press. pp33-34.
9 Taylor, K. 2001. p48.
10 Ibid. pp142-143
11 Ibid. p113.
The Serpent Power

The Serpent Power was first published in 1918, under the name Sir John
Woodroffe. It consists of three sections: a very long introductory section, which
accounts for just over half the book. There is the text, translation and commentary
of the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa, and the text and translation of a second, much shorter
work, the Paduka-Pancaka (‘the five-fold footstool of the Guru’).
Woodroffe had produced a Sanskrit edition of the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa in 1913.
In the previous section I discussed the first English translation of this particular
text in 1880, and it is known that there had been translations of this text in Bengali
prior to that. So it was already, to some extent, a popular work and there had been
several works based on it attempting to explain the chakras in terms of anatomy
and science. So chakras were already something of a hot topic. Perhaps, with this
complete English translation and commentary, Woodroffe simply wanted to set
the record straight as he saw it.
The Serpent Power is a difficult book to read—even if you are familiar with
tantric and yoga terminology. The text is liberally sprinkled with Sanskrit terms,
very few of which are clearly explained. He cites numerous sources (over 200); so
much so in fact that it is often difficult to make out where one quote ends and
Woodroffe’s own narrative continues. So dense is Woodroffe’s prose at times, that I
am surprised no one has attempted an ‘Idiot’s Guide’ to The Serpent Power.
 I first read The Serpent Power in my early 20’s (in the early 1980s). I was just
becoming interested in Tantra and was desperate for some hint of
practice—magic, ritual—that sort of thing. There wasn’t much around at the time.
It was pretty much Woodroffe, the Tantra-as-sacred-sex (what is now generally
referred to as Neotantra) which was just becoming popular, and a few books on
Western Tantra which were basically Kabbalah with a light dusting of something
vaguely Tantric or Indian. Woodroffe’s works seemed to me to be the only widely-
available books which actually drew directly on Tantric source texts. However,
most of what Woodroffe was saying went right over my head.

Anatomising the Chakras

I think if you bear in mind that this is a High Court judge writing, then that
explains much about how the book is written. For example, after several
introductory chapters preparing the ground he starts discussing the chakras in
detail here, and the first thing he wants to deal with is this matter of the
correlation that is being made between the chakras and the nerve ganglia or
plexuses. By the time of The Serpent Power, there seems to have been many more
works produced arguing that chakras are actually nerve plexuses (and no more
than that), and this is one issue that Woodroffe is clearly concerned about.
He begins with an account of the human central nervous system, and follows
through with a lengthy discussion of the various arguments that have been made
in correlating the chakras with the nervous system. It is not until 66 pages later
that we actually get Woodroffe’s opinion on the matter, which is that ‘it is a
mistake to identify the chakras with the physical plexuses.’
Woodroffe wants the chakras to be taken seriously by scientists, but at the same
time, he is wary of the scientific investigation of them resulting in a purely
physiological interpretation of them—and this tension recurs throughout The
Serpent Power. Furthermore, a book which appeared in 1929 called The Mysterious
Kundalini: The Physical Basis of the “Kundali (Hatha) Yoga” in terms of Western
Anatomy and Physiology by a Doctor Vasant G. Rele, has a foreword by Woodroffe.
This work is almost entirely devoted to interpreting chakras and Kuṇḍalinī in
terms of physical anatomy, and in particular, proposes that Kuṇḍalinī is the ‘Right
Vagus Nerve’. Woodroffe, in his foreword, states that he disagrees with the author’s
premise, yet at the same time, he is pleased that the subject is receiving the
scientific attention he feels it deserves.

Learning from a guru

From the outset, Woodroffe indicates that The Serpent Power is not intended to be
a practice-oriented work. After stating that he assumes that his readers either have
a general knowledge of Indian philosophy, religious doctrine and ritual, or at the
very least, they wish to acquire such knowledge, he writes:

For the practical side I can merely reproduce the directions given in the books together with such
explanations of them as I have received orally. Those who wish to go farther, and to put into actual
process this Yoga, must first satisfy themselves of the value and suitability of this Yoga and then learn
directly of a Guru who has himself been through it (Siddha). His experience alone will say whether the
aspirant is capable of success. It is said that of those who attempt it, one out of a thousand may have
success.1

These remarks are interesting with respect to Sivacandra’s brief discussion of

chakra practice in Principles of Tantra Volume II (remember that many people
considered Sivacandra to be Woodroffe’s Tantric Guru). In a chapter explaining
the ‘Principles of Worship’; following a brief discussion of Bhūtaśuddhi,
Sivacandra refuses to go into any detail concerning the practices relating to the
chakras, saying:

…it is impossible to make the public understand the meaning of the six Cakras, since it is not possible
for anyone who is not a practising Sādhaka to understand them with the help of any amount of
interpretation, however great his intellect and learning be.

Sivacandra goes on to state that not only is this knowledge something which
can only be obtained from a Guru, and certainly not from any written teaching,
but that he believes that making it public ‘will not only in no way render any help
to the community of Sādhakas, but will also be likely to greatly injure them both
here and hereafter.’2 Here at least, is some indication that the practices associated
with chakras were considered to be secret, in early twentieth-century Tantric
communities.

Letters and Petals

In the first section (see here) I briefly discussed the Mātṛkās or ‘mantra goddesses’
who are installed on the petals in Tantric practice and who embody particular
qualities and affects. These practices have more or less disappeared from
contemporary approaches to chakras, although they are being revived, thanks to
the ground-breaking research of Christopher Tompkins. Is Woodroffe aware at all
of these practices? To some extent, he does appear to be. In his discussion of the
chakras in chapter five, he cites various texts and lists the various mantra-devatas
given for each chakra, although he refers to them as Vṛttis; or ‘moral qualities’
rather than goddesses, giving appropriate English translations to the names.3 He
also discusses, in this chapter, that the deities seated (i.e to be visualised) in each
chakra differ according to various texts, as indeed do the numbers and locations of
chakras.

Chakra correspondences from The Serpent Power

Chakra Petals Colour of Tattva Deity and Vehicle Shakti

Mūlādhāra 4 Yellow Brahmā/Haṁsa Dākini

Svadhiṣṭhāna 6 White Viṣṇu/Garuda Rākinī

Maṇipūra 10 Red Rudra/Bull Lākinī

Anāhata 12 Smoky Īśā Kākinī

Viśuddha 16 White Sadāśiva Sākinī

Ājñā 2 … Śaṁbhu Hākinī

The System of the Six Chakras

What of this text Woodroffe translated and which is the focus of The Serpent
Power: the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa (‘the System of the Six Chakras’)?
The text consists of 55 verses, and is part of the sixth chapter of a much longer
text, Purananda’s Śrī-tattva-cintāmaṇī (‘Jewel-Essence of Consciousness’) written
in the sixteenth century. This was the text first translated into English by B.K.
Majumdar in 1880, which appeared in The Theosophist magazine which I
discussed in the previous section. Given that B.K. Majumdar was one of
Woodroffe’s collaborators—he wrote a lengthy introduction to the second volume
of Principles of Tantra, it is highly likely that Majumdar supported Woodroffe in
the production of The Serpent Power and the translation of the text. There are
certainly some similarities between the two translations. Something that strikes
me as odd is that Woodroffe never draws on the other chapters of Purnananda’s
work. This is a puzzle, because surely it would make sense to look at the main text
of something you’ve taken a chunk from in order to make sense of it. He does not
do that. Perhaps he simply did not have the entire text.
So what does the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa actually tell us about the chakras? There
are a few verses covering what each chakra looks like or, how it is to be visualized;
the various colours and so forth, the deities to be installed within it, and the
benefits to be gained from meditating upon it. After describing the six chakras and
the Sahasrara—which isn’t considered a chakra due to it being the source of the
other six, the last few verses cover Kuṇḍalinī-śakti. In his translation, Woodroffe
gives the Romanised Sanskrit, the translation, then his commentary on each verse.
At the end of each set of verses he gives a summary of the properties of each
chakra. I often wonder if it is these summaries which are being themselves further
condensed by later authors, given that the rest of the text is so impenetrable. Here,
for example, is Woodroffe’s summary of the verses (4-13) expounding on the
Mūlādhāra chakra:

The Mūlādhāra is a Lotus of four petals. The petals are red, and have the letters Va, Śa (palatal), Ṣa
(Cerebral), Sa, in colours of gold. In the pericarp is the square Dharā-maṇḍala surrounded by eight
spears, and within it and in the lower part is the Dharā-Bīja who has four arms and is seated on the
elephant, Airāvata. He is of yellow colour, and holds the thunderbolt in his hands. Inside the Bindu of
the Dharā-Bīja is the Child Brahmā, who is red in colour, and has four hands with which he holds the
 staff, the gourd, the Rudrākṣa rosary, and makes the gesture which dispells fear. He has four faces. In the
pericarp there is a red lotus on which is the presiding deity of the Cakra (Cakrādhiṣṭhātrī), the Śakti
Dākinī. She is red and has four arms, and in her hands are Śūla (spear), Khatvānga (Skull-topped staff),
Khaḍga (sword), and Caṣaka (drinking cup). In the pericarp there is also the lightning-like triangle,
inside which are Kāma-Vāyu and Kāmā-Bīja, both of which are red. Above this is the Svayaṁbhu-Liṅga
which is Śyāma-varṇa, and above and round this Liṅga is Kuṇḍalinī coiled three and a half times, and
above this last upstands, on the top of the Liṅga, Cit-kalā.4

Such a summary, even with Woodroffe’s copious footnotes, would be difficult

for a casual reader to unpack. What’s immediately obvious here is the various
deities which reside within the chakra, some of which I discussed earlier. Dākinī,
for example, is one of the goddesses (sometimes called Yoginīs) of the six or seven
bodily constituents (dhātus) given in texts such as the Kubjikāmata and
Yoginīhṛdaya. Although not mentioned in this summary, the extensive
commentary on the verses of Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa make it clear that the
practitioner is to meditate upon the various deities within each of the chakras.
Again, something covered in the verse-by-verse commentaries but not mentioned
in the summaries, are the ‘benefits’ or siddhis which are gained by meditating
upon each of the chakras. For example, verse 13 of Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa states that
‘By meditating thus on Her who shines within the Mūla-Cakra, with the lustre of
ten million Suns, a man becomes Lord of Speech and King among men, and an
Adept in all kinds of learning.’5 Similarly, Verse 26 tells us that ‘He who meditates
on this Heart Lotus becomes (like) the Lord of Speech, and (like) Iśvara he is able
to protect and destroy the worlds.’6 Verse 27 adds that ‘…he is able at will to enter
another’s body.’ Somewhat different to how the Heart Chakra tends to be viewed
nowadays!

On Practice

There is nothing very much about practice in the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa itself. It

gives the visual forms, the associations with the Tattvas, the deities within them,
and as I have just discussed, the benefits of the meditation on them. It is rather
similar to a modern condensed study guide. It leaves a lot of things unexplained,
assuming the reader already knows it.
Woodroffe devotes two chapters to the theoretical basis of the yoga practice he
associates with the chakras and Kuṇḍalinī, and, lacking the textual sources for
these practices, his exposition of this yoga largely draws on reformed Vedantic
philosophy and a number of late Haṭha Yoga texts, where there is an emphasis on
self-control, mastering the passions and so forth. As Woodroffe considers all
Indian esoteric knowledge to be a single, homogenous mass, he does not make
much of a distinction between the Tantric sources and the Haṭha Yoga literature.
Although Haṭha Yoga texts such as the Haṭha-yoga-pradīpikā do, to some extent,
draw from the Tantric traditions which precede them historically, they have a
rather different concept of the body. Whereas Tantric literature is body-affirming,
the post-tantric Yoga material tends to view the body as an obstacle to liberation,
not as the vehicle for liberation.
This is possibly another reason that The Serpent Power has such an impact—it
presents a view of the chakras which is very much in line with how people came to
view Hinduism as something essentially mystical and other-worldly, and Yoga as a
means of self-regulation and liberation away from the world; a movement towards
‘higher consciousness’. This fitted very well with popular stereotypes about India at
the time and those that still circulate today.
Contemporary Indological scholars are often critical of Woodroffe’s translations
and interpretations of Tantric literature. When approaching his work, I think we
have to bear in mind that he didn’t have access to many of the earlier Tantric
works which we have today, and that we owe him a debt of gratitude for making
Tantra fashionable, to a degree, and for presenting what he saw as valuable
material, which let us not forget, most of his European contemporaries held in
contempt. This pillar of the establishment emerges as quite a radical figure.

Now I want to move on to Charles Webster Leadbeater—who also made some

appearances in court during his life, but in the witness box.
1 Woodroffe, Sir John. 1972. pp29-30.
2 Woodroffe, Sir John (ed). 1952. Principles of Tantra: The Tantratattva of Sriyukta Siva Candra Vidyanarva
Bhattacarya Mahodaya. Madras. Ganesh & Co. pp479-480.
3 Woodroffe, Sir John. 1972. p158-164.
4 Woodroffe, Sir John. 1972. p400.
5 Ibid. p399.
6 Ibid. p425.
Charles Webster Leadbeater

Charles Webster Leadbeater was one of the most prolific occult authors of the
Twentieth Century, and his writings have been highly influential across a wide
range of subjects. Many esoteric ideas now in common circulation sprang from, or
were refined by, Leadbeater’s pen.
During his life Leadbeater wrote over 40 books, many pamphlets, and five or six
journal articles a week. He also gave numerous lectures and carried out an
extensive correspondence concerning those issues which required his psychic
investigation. The first of his books, The Astral Plane, written in 1894 was so
definitive a study of the astral plane that, according to Leadbeater, the Master Koot
Hoomi had asked him for the manuscript, so that it could be placed in the
Museum of Records of the Great White Brotherhood.1
Leadbeater is known for making the most extraordinary claims about himself.
He discovered the ultimate unit of physical matter whilst sitting in a park in
London. He astrally explored all the planets in the solar system, describing their
climates and inhabitants in detail whilst his body remained on Earth. He was in
daily communication with the Hidden Masters that govern the Earth on the inner
planes, and had frequent visits from them; he had encountered the Solar
Logos—God, as far as mortals are concerned, and spoken with him; a fact which
he mentioned to a startled judge in the Madras High Court. He knew the hidden
doctrines of occultism, Freemasonry and Christianity, and sometimes consulted
with Christ to resolve any thorny issues.
Leadbeater was hailed by his disciples as the world’s greatest occultist and seer;
he was also called a ‘light-bringer to mankind’ and Annie Besant said of him that
he was ‘a man on the threshold of divinity’. Yet at the same time there were those
who dismissed him as a ‘sex-pervert’; who accused him of perverting the original
doctrines of Theosophy and of being Mrs Besant’s ‘astral Svengali’. John Bull
magazine stated that he ‘ought to be horse-whipped’ and the spiritual teacher
Krishnamurti, whom Leadbeater had discovered in 1909 declared, later in his life,
that Leadbeater was ‘Evil’.
So, not quite the pillar of the establishment that Woodroffe was.

In most Theosophical biographical sketches of Charles Webster Leadbeater, it is

stated that he was born on 17 February 1847, and that in 1858, went with his
family, (including his younger brother Gerald) to Brazil where his father was the
director of a railway company. In Brazil Leadbeater had many thrilling adventures,
including driving a train and fighting armed rebels, during which time his
younger brother was butchered by ‘armed insurgents’. The family returned to
London 1861 and Leadbeater entered Queen’s College, Oxford in 1865, but had to
abandon his studies due to the loss of the family fortune.
But Gregory Tillett, whose biography of Leadbeater The Elder Brother was
published in 1982 disputes these facts. He says that Leadbeater was born in 1854,
that his father did work for a railway company, albeit as an accountant, and that
the whole story of Leadbeater’s adventures in Brazil is ‘highly improbable’. Queen’s
College Oxford has no record of Leadbeater either as a candidate or a student, and
nor, says Tillett, is there any record of the existence of Leadbeater’s younger
brother, Gerald. These are just some of the many puzzling mysteries of
Leadbeater’s extraordinary career.
What is certain is that Leadbeater was ordained to the priesthood in 1879 and
served as a curate in Bramshott, Hampshire. He became increasingly interested in
Spiritualism and psychic phenomena, and became a member of the Theosophical
Society in 1883. He met Madame Blavatsky in 1884 and first visited India that
December. He spent three years in Sri Lanka, working on behalf of the Society,
lecturing and organising schools and returned to England in 1889. He met Annie
Besant in 1890, and from that point on his star began to rise. He began to
contribute to a variety of Theosophical journals, and by 1905 had undertaken
successful lecture tours of America and Australia.
In 1906 however, Leadbeater became embroiled in the first of a series of
scandals involving accusations of immoral behaviour with boys that were to follow
him for much of his life. He resigned from the Theosophical Society, but, thanks to
Annie Besant’s support, was reinstated and continued his career as an Occult
Adept, although he left England, and spent the rest of his life living in India and
later, Australia. He was frequently attacked in the press, and his role in the
Theosophical Society caused much dissention and bitter argument. Further
charges of sexual immorality with boys followed Leadbeater throughout his later
career. The charges were brought up again in 1913 in a court case over the custody
of Krishnamurti, and in Australia, allegations against Leadbeater in the press led
to two police investigations.2
What do we know of his politics? According to Gregory Tillett, one of
Leadbeater’s pupils described him as a ‘crusty old Tory’, believing in King, Empire
and loyalty and the status quo. What of his attitude to India? We get a glimpse of
this in a letter which Leadbeater received, allegedly from the Master Koot Hoomi
concerning the education of the young Krishnamurti:

They have lived long in hell; try to show them something of paradise. I want them to have everything
the opposite of those previous conditions. Instead of hostility, distrust, misery, squalor, irregularity,
carelessness and foulness, I want them to be surrounded by an atmosphere of love and happiness.

I want you to civilise them; to teach them to use spoons and forks, nail brushes and tooth brushes, to sit
at ease upon chairs instead of crouching on the ground, to sleep rationally on a bed, not in a corner like
a dog.3

Pupul Jayakar, in her biography of Krishnamurti points out that this letter is
loaded with the ‘contempt with which the British in India regarded Indian culture
and living habits’ and comments that she found it inconceivable that a Tibetan
Master of wisdom (which Koot Hoomi was claimed to be) could have written such
a letter.4

1 Tillett, Gregory. 1982. The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater. London. Routledge &
Kegan Paul. p52
2 For an in-depth examination of the Leadbeater Scandals, visit my blog: https://enfolding.org/tag/leadbeater/
3 Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. New Delhi, Penguin Books. p26.
4 Ibid.
The Chakras: A Monograph

I do have a soft spot for Leadbeater’s The Chakras: A Monograph. It is a kind of

Grey’s Anatomy of the subtle body, and the paintings of the chakras by Reverend
Edward Warner are quite beautiful. It is also without doubt Leadbeater’s most
popular book, having been in continual print since it was first released in 1927. In
1987 according to one Theosophical source, it had sold over 300, 000 copies.1
In his preface Leadbeater states that there has been a great deal written about
chakras, but that it is only recently that accounts of them have appeared in
English:

I mentioned them myself in The Inner Life about 1910, and since then Sir John Woodroff ’s [sic]
magnificent work The Serpent Power has been issued, and some of the other Indian books have been
translated. The symbolical drawings of them which are used by the Indian yogis were reproduced in The
Serpent Power, but so far as I am aware the illustrations which I give in this book are the first attempt to
represent them as they actually appear to those who can see them. (my italics).2

Leadbeater’s assertion that he has ‘seen’ the chakras is something new.

Previously, if an author wanted to place themselves as an authority on the chakras,
they would have had to do so by invoking the force of tradition—either the
wisdom-tradition of Theosophy, or by knowledge of the Indian traditions. Here
Leadbeater is staking his claim to authority to speak on the chakras because he can
‘see’ them. He’s not just read books about them, he’s experienced them directly.
Nowadays we are rather more democratic in our ideas about psychic sensitivity
and vision. Anyone has the capacity to have psychic experience, naturally, or via a
workbook or a course of training. But at the time when Leadbeater was writing, it
was not so common—and was restricted to ‘Occult Adepts’. Madame Blavatsky
was such an adept, as was, according to his followers, Leadbeater, but there were
few others. Ordinary people, it was asserted, lacked both the training and degree
of spiritual evolution to understand or question the authority of adepts and their
contacts—and this spiritual evolution was considered to take many lifetimes to
achieve. Knowledge acquired from these sources was absolute and objective—a
higher truth which was not open to cross-examination or critique.
As Gregory Tillett points out in The Elder Brother, Leadbeater at no time
received information from the inner planes which conflicted with his own beliefs
and desires: ‘his visions always confirmed his opinions.’ And once he had given his
view on the matter, that was, as far as he was concerned, the end of it. Any further
discussion or argument was a waste of time. His visions were factual and
completely objective.
Leadbeater did not stop at merely helping others ‘recall’ their own astral
experiences—he quite often told people what they had experienced and went on
to ‘correctly’ interpret these for them.

Leadbeater on the Chakras

Unlike Woodroffe, Leadbeater gets straight down to business right at the

beginning of his book. He writes that ‘The chakras or force-centres are points of
connection at which energy flows from one vehicle or body of a man to another.’
These vehicles are the astral and the etheric bodies. These are described as follows:

Anyone who possesses a slight degree of clairvoyance may easily see them in the etheric double, where
they show themselves as saucer-like depressions or vortices in its surface.
When quite undeveloped they appear as small circles about two inches in diameter, glowing dully in the
ordinary man; but when awakened and vivified they are seen as blazing, coruscating whirlpools, much
 increased in size, and resembling miniature suns.3

Here we have a very clear statement linking chakras to spiritual development,

with the idea that they have to be awakened and vivified. Later on, Leadbeater
comments that the chakras will vary in size and brightness in different people, and
even within individuals if one chakra is more developed that the others. He says
that the chakras are continually rotating, that in the ‘undeveloped person’ they are
in sluggish motion, whereas in an ‘evolved man they may be glowing and
pulsating with living light’.

Chakra associations given by Leadbeater

English Name Sanskrit Name Location
Root or Basic Chakra Mûladhâra base of the spine

Spleen or Splenic Chakra Over the spleen

Navel or Umbilical Chakra Manipûra At navel, over the solar plexus

Heart or Cardiac Chakra Anâhata Over the heart

Throat or Laryngeal Chakra Vishuddha At the front of the Throat

Brow or frontal Chakra Âjnâ in the space between the eyebrows

Crown or Coronal Chakra Sahasrâra On the top of the head

Ideas such as these are now of course commonplace in contemporary chakra

teachings.
In Leadbeater’s system there are seven chakras. As can been seen in the table
above, he’s introduced a Spleen chakra. In a footnote, he says that the Spleen
chakra is not given in Indian books (true) and that instead, there is the
Svâdhisthâna ‘in the neighbourhood of the generative organs’. He says: ‘From our
point of view the arousing of such a centre would be regarded as a misfortune, as
there are serious dangers associated with it.’4
Leadbeater does not expand on what those ‘serious dangers’ are. Perhaps it is
the Theosophical aversion to anything sexual coming out here. He divides the
chakras into three groups: the physiological, the personal and the spiritual and he
connects Ajna Chakra with the pituitary body and Sahasrara with the Pineal
gland. These are correlations first made by Madame Blavatsky.
There are no deities in Leadbeater’s system. He doesn’t mention deities at all
until the fifth chapter, when he looks at the similarities of the Indian system to that
presented in his book which of course agree in every major way with what he says.
There’s no question, here, that Leadbeater is only presenting his personal opinions.
He’s giving the facts as they are, but in his typical very matter-of-fact, down-to-
earth way. He does mention the petals of the chakras and their supposed ‘moral
qualities’ but is rather dismissive of the notion, saying:

I have not yet met with any facts which definitely confirm this, and it is not easy to see exactly how it
can be, because the appearance [of the force-centre] is produced by certain readily recognizable forces,
and the petals in any particular centre are either active or not active according as these forces have or
have not been aroused, and their unfoldment seems to have no more direct connection with morality
than has the enlargement of the biceps.5

The Nervous System

For Leadbeater, the chakras are definitely correlated with the nervous system as he
shows using quasi-anatomical diagrams. This is what gives his work medical
authority—he has none of the reservations which Woodroffe displays concerning
the correlation of chakras with anatomical features. This also makes a good deal of
sense in terms of his system because he is dealing with the entirety of the human
body—not only its subtle components but also the physical framework. It is a
holistic approach which I think is another reason why it has been so influential.

Colours & Forces

Leadbeater takes the reader through the colours of each chakra, and how these
indicate the various forces for each centre. So we learn for example that the root
chakra is fiery-orange and is sometimes symbolised by the cross. The spleen
chakra has six divisions, showing the colours of the vital force: red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, violet. The navel chakra has divisions which are predominantly red
and green. The crown chakra of course is the most resplendent of all and whilst it
seems to contain many prismatic hues, its colour is predominantly violet.
Leadbeater writes: ‘It is described in Indian books as thousand-petalled, and really,
this is not very far from the truth, the number of radiations of its primary force in
the outer circle being nine hundred and sixty.’ Leadbeater is not the first western
esotericist to correct the number of petals in the Crown chakra; Aleister Crowley
also made such an assertion, using Gematria to arrive at the conclusion that there
are 1,001 petals (see here).

Gichtel’s Chakras

Leadbeater then states that ‘certain European mystics’ were acquainted with the
chakras and points to the German mystic Johann Georg Gichtel, and his book
Theosophia Practica, from which Leadbeater reproduces an image and asserts that
it shows the chakras and Kuṇḍalinī.
Leadbeater is rather disparaging of Gichtel, saying that although he was
obviously clairvoyant enough to see the chakras, he was unaware of their true
meaning, and instead attached to them the symbolism of the mystic school to
which he belonged. So having roped in Gichtel to demonstrate that Chakras were
known to European mystery schools, he immediately dismisses him (he has also
asserted by this time that the Egyptians had something similar to chakras, as do
the Freemasons). Is there anything to this? Gichtel was a student of Jakob Boehme,
and followed his heliocentric theories and the image, if anything, is more likely to
show the location of the seven planets and four elements.
This assertion did, I believe, help to enlarge the space for successive waves of
authors making the claim that the chakras are universal, and that other cultures
(including premodern Europe) have their own versions or knowledge of chakras.
Much of The Chakras: A Monograph is given over to a presentation of the forces
flowing through the chakras and their relation to vitality, magnetism, health and
so forth. Leadbeater also discusses the relationship between the awakening of the
chakras and the astral senses, and of course Kuṇḍalinī.
 Leadbeater asserts that for the ordinary person, Kuṇḍalinī lies at the base of the
spine, asleep. But, he says:

No one should experiment with it without definite instruction from a teacher who thoroughly
understands the subject, for the dangers connected with it are very real and terribly serious.6

He says that some of these dangers are physical—that the ‘uncontrolled

movement’ often produces intense physical pain and that it can ‘tear tissues and
even destroy physical life’. However, there is worse to come:

…it rushes downwards in the body instead of upwards, and thus excites the most undesirable
passions—excites them and intensifies their effects to such a degree that it becomes impossible for the
man to resist them, because a force has been brought into play in whose presence he is as helpless as a
swimmer before the jaws of a shark. Such men become satyrs, monsters of depravity … They may
probably gain certain supernatural powers … as will bring them into touch with a lower order of
evolution … and to escape from its awful thraldom may take them more than one incarnation.7

This idea of the dangers of ‘downward Kuṇḍalinī’ crops up in later books on the
chakras. It is sometimes referred to as ‘Reverse Kuṇḍalinī’ and is frequently used
to bolster arguments about the causes of sexual deviation. Nik Douglas and Penny
Slinger, for example, in their best-selling 1979 book, Sexual Secrets, describe
‘Reverse Kuṇḍalinī’ in the following terms:

The natural ascent of the Kundalini, awakened by sexual excitement, becomes blocked; the pressure
created then causes the Kundalini-energy to turn back on itself and move in a downward direction. The
only subtle nerves that the sexual energy can enter are those leading to the lower part of the body. The
long-term effect of Reverse Kundalini is a devitalizing of the upper part of the body, a morbidity and
heaviness in the lower body and limbs, and psycho-spiritual lethargy throughout the whole organism.8

According to Douglas and Slinger, ‘reverse kundalini’ can be caused by physical

shock, fear, or neurotic obsession, but top of their list is anal sex between men
which they say, was unknown in India until the Moslems arrived, and was not a
traditional practice in China or Japan.

Leadbeater issues warnings regarding the arousing of Kuṇḍalinī and argues

against anyone experimenting for themselves. The thing to do, he says, is to
wait—to apply oneself instead to the improvement of character, and to work
selflessly for the Society (presumably the Theosophical Society) until a Master
‘announces he is ready for them’. Likewise, the awakening of the chakras, he says,
is impossible for most people in this present incarnation. He briefly discusses his
own personal experience, which naturally was under the careful supervision of a
Master.

Health Issues

Another innovation which Leadbeater brings to his presentation of the chakras is

health. Both alcohol and tobacco have to be studiously avoided by anyone who
hopes to open their chakras. Tobacco, he says, causes a kind of paralysis of the
astral body, and cuts a person off from higher influences.
Again, we can find these kinds of admonitions in contemporary writings about
the chakras. This admonition about tobacco was somewhat controversial in
Theosophical circles at the time, because Madame Blavatsky was a heavy smoker,
(as indeed was Colonel Olcott and several other prominent Theosophists) and
some members of the Society didn’t take kindly to this implied criticism.9

Woodroffe’s Critique of Leadbeater

I mentioned at the beginning of this section that Leadbeater referred to

Woodroffe’s The Serpent Power as ‘magnificent’. But if he expected that Woodroffe
would find The Chakras equally magnificent he was going to be disappointed. In
successive editions of The Serpent Power, Woodroffe adds Leadbeater’s work to the
list of those works he feels are incorrect (including other Theosophical authors
such as James M. Pryse). Woodroffe takes Leadbeater to task for his statement in
The Inner Life that ‘There are other force-centres in the body besides these, but
they are not employed by students of the white magic.’10 Woodroffe says that he is
not aware of any centre lower than the muladhara. He particularly disagrees with
Leadbeater’s assertion that the number of petals in the Sahasrara chakra is ‘exactly
960’ and comments that the ‘thousand’ is symbolic of magnitude and not a literal
number. Although he does concede that there is ‘some resemblance between this
account and the teaching of Yoga-shastra’ he goes to some length to stress that the
Theosophical interpretations of Indian ideas and terms diverges somewhat from
what they actually mean.

1 Jaqua, M. 1988, archived at: http://blavatskyarchives.com/thomas/jaqua.htm

2 Leadbeater, C. W. 1927. p6
3 Ibid. p13.
4 Ibid. pp13-14.
5 Ibid. p17.
6 Ibid. p65
7 Ibid.
8 Douglas, Nik & Slinger, Penny. 2000. Sexual Secrets: The alchemy of ecstasy. Rochester. Destiny Books. p273.
9 See Jaqua, M. 1988, archived at: http://blavatskyarchives.com/thomas/jaqua.htm
10 Leadbeater, Charles Webster. 1910. The Inner Life. Madras. Theosophical Publishing House. p236
Observations and Comments

Both The Serpent Power and The Chakras: A Monograph have been very influential
books in terms of how we generally think about chakras today. Woodroffe’s book
The Serpent Power was influential because it was the first scholarly translation of a
tantric/yoga text dealing with the chakras. It was hugely influential for Jung and
was much quoted by later generations of scholars such as Mircea Eliade, Joseph
Campbell, and Heinrich Zimmer.
I would suggest that The Serpent Power has acquired, to some extent, the status
of an originary text, in the sense that it is often treated as the single most
authoritative source for Indian concepts of the chakras. This is hardly surprising,
as it remains the most popular, widely-available ‘scholarly’ text on the subject of
chakras. Although there are contemporary academic works dealing with chakras
within Indian traditions, such as Dory Heilijgers-Seelen’s 1994 work, The System of
Five Cakras in Kubjikāmatatantra—texts such as these are much less well-known
except to specialists. There’s more work that needs to be done on how Woodroffe’s
book has influenced contemporary ideas of chakras, but it does seem to have
suffered from having been progressively summarized. The Serpent Power has
helped reify the reality of the seven chakras and similar stereotypes, despite the
fact that Woodroffe attempts to discuss other approaches to the chakras. Perhaps
the difficulties for a nonspecialist reader in following his arguments, combined
with the increasing ubiquity of seven-chakra models have led to those parts of The
Serpent Power, which do not support these stereotypes, to be ignored. Woodroffe’s
presentation of the chakras has also been an influence on some contemporary
Indian perspectives on chakras—an example of the well-known ‘Pizza Effect’, or as
Agehananda Bharati termed it, the ‘Curry Effect’.

Commonalities between the two texts

Are there commonalities between the two texts? I think there are, despite their
very different treatments of the subject. Both Woodroffe and Leadbeater write
from a position of tremendous authority. Woodroffe, due to his knowledge and
exposure to Indian ideas, (and the fact that he is a barrister) and Leadbeater due to
the absolute certainty of his psychic vision.
Neither Woodroffe nor Leadbeater view their work as practice-based. As far as
Woodroffe is concerned, if you want to do the practice, you need to find a guru,
and Leadbeater’s advice; to avoid any kind of direct experimentation and basically
wait until one of the inner-plane Masters says you are ready is really not that
dissimilar.
Both men have, I think, an interest in seeing the chakras as being validated by
science—although Woodroffe is perhaps more cautious, given that he is wary of
the kind of reductionist presentation of the chakras purely in anatomical terms.
Leadbeater, of course, is confident that science and esoteric knowledge will come
together and eventually catch up with him. Leadbeater also asserts that chakras
were known in other esoteric traditions, and follows the Theosophical assertion
that the Indian accounts represent just one aspect of a kind of esoteric knowledge
that was known to ancient masters and adepts. Both the appeal to to direct psychic
experience that Leadbeater makes, and the extensive discussions of scientific
interpretations of chakras and Kuṇḍalinī which Woodroffe gives over a good deal
of space to in The Serpent Power are both important for later representations of
chakras that assert that despite their Indian origin, they are universal in scope and
transcend any local culture or history.1
 Woodroffe wants to demonstrate how chakras and Kuṇḍalinī support a Yoga
which is concerned with self-mastery and self-discipline rather than ‘black magic’
and Bacchanalian orgies—which is the popular image of tantra at the time, and
practitioners of Yoga were, for the most part, not highly regarded either.
Leadbeater too has concerns about health and well-being—as we can see in his
admonitions against the use of tobacco and alcohol, and his warnings that
Kuṇḍalinī can potentially stir ‘undesirable passions’ and the advice to develop
one’s character. It is these concerns with health that particularly interest me, given
that so much of contemporary chakra material is given over to health, wellness,
spiritual progress and personal development. The next, and final section of this
book will examine the work of Carl Gustav Jung and later psychological
approaches to the chakras.

Chakras and Visual Culture

A key element in the popularity of both of these books is the power of their visual
elements Nowadays it is rare for a book on chakras not to have illustrations, and
both Woodroffe and Leadbeater are the first authors to really develop the visual
element of the chakras. Jung’s writings on the chakras were strongly shaped by the
chakra images in The Serpent Power, as he believed that such visual symbols were
superior to the written word when it came to conveying information about the
psyche.
Leadbeater’s striking psychic paintings of the chakras, together with his quasi-
medical illustrations do much to reinforce the authority of his pronouncements on
chakras—and have been influential in the re-interpretation of chakras as ‘psychic’
entities. Although there are a number of Indian chakra scrolls showing the
placement of chakras within the Yogic body; these images did not begin to
circulate in popular works on Tantra and Yoga until the 1970s.
If the two books were in a fight about which was the most influential, then I
think Leadbeater’s The Chakras: A Monograph would probably win in the long
run. Here for the first time we have a cogent explanation of how the chakras work
in terms of subtle forces. Here they are ‘psychic centres’ which can be seen by
anyone who has developed their psychic abilities. Here for the first time we have a
clear exposition of the requirement that chakras be ‘opened’ for human spiritual
evolution to take place, plus the idea that chakras are absolutely factual—we all
have them, and although there may be racial differences in their operation, the
seven chakras are universal—albeit according to the default western experience.
These are all elements which still circulate in contemporary accounts of the
chakras, to varying degrees, although their Theosophical origin is often muted.

1 See Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: religious exoticism and the logics of bricolage. New
York. Oxford University Press. Chapter 3
Section Bibliography

Alter, Joseph S. 2004. Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and
Philosophy. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: religious exoticism and the logics
of bricolage. New York. Oxford University Press.
Baier, Karl. 2016. Theosophical Orientalism and the Structure of Intercultural
Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy. in
Chajes, Julie and Huss, Boaz (eds) Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism,
Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions. Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev Press.
Brekke, Torkel. 2002. Makers of Modern Indian Religion in the Late Nineteenth
Century. New York. Oxford University Press.
De Michelis, Elizabeth. 2004. A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western
Esotericism. London. Continuum.
Dixon, Joy. 2001. Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England.
Baltimore. The John Hopkins University Press.
Djurdjevic, Gordan. 2014. India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian
Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism. New York. Palgrave Macmillan.
Douglas, Nik & Slinger, Penny. 2000. Sexual Secrets: The alchemy of ecstasy.
Rochester. Destiny Books.
Hammer, Olaf. 2004. Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from
Theosophy to the New Age. Leiden. Brill.
Hammer, Olaf and Rothstein, Mikael (eds.). 2013. Handbook of the Theosophical
Current. Leiden. Brill.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J 2012. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in
Western Culture. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Hatcher, Brian A. 2008. Bourgeois Hinduism, or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists:
Rare Discourses from Early Colonial Bengal. New York. Oxford University Press.
Jaqua, M.R. 1988. A Comparison of C.W. Leadbeater’s The Chakras with the
writings of H.P. Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, and G. de Purucker. Napoleon, OH.
Protogonos, No.4. Fall, 1988.
Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. New Delhi, Penguin Books.
King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The
Mystic East’. London. Routledge.
Leadbeater, Charles Webster. 1917. The Inner Life. Madras. Theosophical
Publishing House.
Leadbeater, Charles Webster. 1927. The Chakras: A Monograph. Madras.
Theosophical Publishing House.
Leadbeater, Charles Webster. 2000. Man Visible & Invisible. Wheaton, IL.
Theosophical Publishing House.
Leland, Kurt. 2016. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from
Blavatsky to Brennan. Lake Worth, FL. Ibis Press.
Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2016. Doctoring traditions: ayurveda, small technologies,
and braided sciences. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.
Newcombe, Suzanne. 2013. Magic and Yoga: The Role of Subcultures in
Transcultural Exchange in Hauser, Beatrix (ed.). Yoga Traveling: Body Practice in
Transcultural Perspective. Switzerland. Springer International Publishing.
Owen, Alex. 2004. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of
the Modern. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.
Pandit, M.P. 1959. Kuṇḍalinī Yoga: A Brief Study of Sir John Woodroffe’s “The
Serpent Power”. Madras. Ganesh & Co.
Rele, Vasant G. 1931. The Mysterious Kundalini: The Physical Basis of the “Kundali
(Hatha) Yoga” in terms of Western Anatomy and Physiology. Bombay. D.B.
Taraporevala Sons & Co.
Sugirtharajah, Sharada. 2003. Imagining Hinduism: A postcolonial perspective.
London. Routledge.
Taylor, Kathleen. 2001. Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: ‘An Indian Soul in a
European Body’?. London. RoutledgeCurzon.
Tillett, Gregory. 1982. The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster
Leadbeater. London. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Urban, Hugh B. 1999. The Extreme Orient: The Construction of ‘Tantrism’ as a
Category in the Orientalist Imagination. Religion. 1999. 29. 123-146.
Urban, Hugh B. 2003. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of
Religion. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Woodroffe, Sir John. 1921. Bharata Shakti: Collection of Addresses on Indian
Culture. Madras. Ganesh & Co.
Woodroffe, Sir John. 1922. Is India Civilised?: Essays on Indian Culture. Madras.
Ganesh & Co.
Woodroffe, Sir John (ed.). 1952. Principles of Tantra: The Tantratattva of Sriyukta
Siva Candra Vidyanarva Bhattacarya Mahodaya. Madras. Ganesh & Co.
Woodroffe, Sir John. 1972. The Serpent Power. Madras. Ganesh & Co.
 Four:
Symbols of the Psyche
Chakra psychologies

Throughout this book I have examined some of the early transfers and
transformations that have taken place as knowledge of chakras has come into
public consciousness. Something that’s emerged for me is that chakras, once they
come into public discussion in the late nineteenth century were quickly reframed
in a variety of ways. For some Indian intellectuals they become evidence for India
having an ancient tradition of scientific anatomical knowledge. For early
Theosophists such as Madame Blavatsky, they became a means for representing
humanity’s movement from the worldly life towards the spiritual. For Aleister
Crowley, a means of linking the astral and the sensual; and for Charles Webster
Leadbeater, chakras became nodal points which mediate the flow of the body’s
subtle forces.
At the same time, chakras have become unmoored from their roots in Indian
esoteric traditions. Initially disseminated through esoteric subcultures (for
example, The Theosophical Society and the works of Aleister Crowley), they have
quickly become universal, belonging to no one and, it would seem, everyone. In
contemporary culture, as I pointed out in the general introduction, chakras are
everywhere, endlessly iterated into a bewildering array of products and
commodities, circulating through a transnational global consumer wellness
culture which is, in North America alone, a multi-billion dollar industry.
 I chose Jung’s work on chakras for this final section because he was the first to
bring chakras together with concepts of psychological self-development, and this I
feel, provides a stepping stone to reflecting on how chakras are understood today,
and on the increasing imperative to seek self-realisation and personal autonomy
via consumer choice and to interpret all life issues and problems, and their
solutions, in psychological terms. I’m going to begin with an examination of some
of Jung’s psychological interpretations of chakras and how these are indicative of
his general theories of self-development, and then move on to a consideration of
chakras within contemporary ‘therapy culture’.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th
century, second only to Freud as a pioneer of psychology. Many of his concepts,
such as introversion and extroversion, the idea of the ‘complex’ (combinations or
clusters of emotional issues and dynamics, drawn from past, present and even the
future), his positive view of the psyche, the unconscious, and the importance of
dreams and symbolism have been taken up across a wide set of life domains, not
only in terms of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, but also in the workplace,
advertising, the analysis of literature, the study of mythology, art and creativity,
and of course his work has been enthusiastically embraced by the New Age
movement and Occultists. I first read Jung in my teens, and I think it is fair to say
that if I hadn’t done so, I wouldn’t be writing this now, as it was through reading
Jung’s work that I first became interested in the occult.
Jung was himself deeply interested in some aspects of the occult, and some of
his key ideas were shaped by his study of Alchemy, Gnosticism and Hermeticism.
He is often quoted approvingly (if rather selectively) in many contemporary texts
which incorporate his ideas with occult systems such as Kabbalah or Tarot. He is
well-known for presenting esoteric worldviews in psychological terms, and thus
providing both scientific legitimisation of esoteric ideas, and for sacralising
psychology by incorporating religious and esoteric content. But as I will discuss,
there were limits to Jung’s encounters with esoteric knowledge, particularly when
that knowledge was, in his opinion, ‘foreign’ to the West.
Jung is often portrayed as a thinker who bridges different worlds; he’s both
psychologist and psychonaut; scholar and mystic; a mediator between West and
East through his work on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the I-Ching and mandalas.
Yet he is also a controversial figure, often criticised for his sometime support of
Hitler and Nazi ideology, his reliance on cultural stereotypes, his racial theories
and his alleged anti-Semitism.
Jungian analyst Andrew Samuels, writing in The Guardian a few years ago,
suggested that if the Twentieth Century has been called ‘The Freudian Century’
then there are good reasons to think of this Century as ‘The Jungian Century’, as
several issues which Jung concerned himself with—excessive rationalism, the
West’s loss of purpose and meaning, and the relationship between the individual
and society are returning again to the forefront of public discourse.
One: Jung and Chakras

Jung had a life-long interest in Indian religion, and throughout his work, he often
expresses admiration for Indian religious ideas. As early as 1912, he had given
psychological interpretations of passages from various Upaniṣads and the Rg Veda.
Many of Jung’s core ideas, such as his concept of the Self, Memory, Libido, and the
Collective Unconscious were influenced by his reading of Indian texts.
So what does Jung have to say about chakras? I’m going to focus on a series of
Kuṇḍalinī Seminars given by Jung in 1932 in collaboration with the Indologist
J.W. Hauer.1 Hauer provided the historical and scholarly account of Kuṇḍalinī
Yoga in support of Jung’s psychological interpretations. They were published2 as
dialogues which give, I think, some insight into how Jung expresses his ideas in
exchanges with his attending students.
Jung was intrigued by the possibilities that chakras and Kuṇḍalinī afforded
because he saw them as indicating a holistic, world-affirming outlook, one in
which psyche and somatic are not separate from each other. He was also attracted
by the imagery of the chakras. Jung owned a copy of Sir John Woodroffe’s The
Serpent Power and much of his interpretation of chakras seems to come from the
illustrations, rather than the text itself.
For Jung, the chakras are symbols. They are representations of complex psychic
facts (he’s using the term ‘psychic’ in the psychological sense here) which are only
possible to express using images, given the complexity of the psyche. This, he
asserts, is the real value of the chakras, as ‘they represent a real effort to give a
symbolic theory of the psyche’.3 Each chakra is a ‘whole world’—they are
‘intuitions about the psyche as a whole’.
This is, I feel, a key point. Jung is not interested in the ontological status of the
chakras, or any other features of the subtle body. He is not concerned with the
question of how real they might be or their relationship with physical anatomy.
Nor is he interested in the philosophy in which they are embedded. All that
matters, as far as he is concerned, is how far Westerners can make sense and make
use of these concepts, and very much in Western terms. And to be fair he does
point this out—that he is giving a psychological perspective on Kuṇḍalinī and
chakras, and in particular, one that highlights his concept of Individuation.
Individuation is a lifelong personal process which leads to a development of
individual values and meanings. It requires the confrontation of, and integration
of the Shadow (everything that we ignore or repress); the encounter with the
Anima/Animus—the interior companion or inspirer of life; and the encounter
with the archetype of the self: the wise old man or woman.
Jung says that his method of interpreting the chakras is similar to his method of
dream analysis—to examine all the symbols and to construct the meaning which
seems to be indicated by the totality of the attributes.4
I’m going to take you on a brief tour of the seven chakras as Jung interprets
them in the Kuṇḍalinī Seminars. The images of the chakras are those used in early
editions of Sir John Woodroffe’s The Serpent Power.
Mūlādhāra

Mūlādhāra represents Earth—that is the elemental attribution given in The

Serpent Power, reinforced by the square figure. Jung interprets the English
translation of Mūlādhāra as ‘root support’, and indicates that for him, this centre is
concerned with the roots of everyday experience.
For Jung, Mūlādhāra represents a stage of consciousness where we are,
effectively, asleep, mired in the world of unconscious routine, hapless victims of
circumstance and dominated by impulses and instincts. According to Jung we
need to awake from this state if we are to progress, and he draws an analogy with
the Christian philosophical idea that personal existence is transitory, and that the
individual is on the earth in order to progress. He states that the elephant in the
chakra is the Hindu equivalent of the horse, representing the domesticated Libido
or the power of the will—it has a ‘carrying power’.5 He says that it is possible to
have an ‘inkling of the next chakra’ —an urge to go to church or into nature,
which is the first stirrings of ‘sleeping beauty’, that is Kuṇḍalinī.
He also says that in this state, ‘the gods are asleep.’ After making this rather
startling statement he goes on to question whether that kind of interpretation is
justifiable, and by way of explanation he makes some interesting comments. He
begins by saying that in dealing with these matters—the chakras and so forth, one
requires a good deal of psychology in order to make them ‘palatable to the
Western Mind’.

For these symbols have a terribly clinging tendency. They catch the unconscious somehow and cling to
us. But they are a foreign body in our system—corpus alienum—and they inhibit the natural growth
and development of our own psychology. It is like a secondary growth or a poison.6

Now that’s a rather odd statement to make, and I’ll come back to it later.

Svadhiṣṭhāna

The element associated with the second chakra is Water, and present in the chakra
is a water monster. This, according to Jung, is the equivalent of the Biblical
Leviathan, and so the second centre is the place where the confrontation with the
Unconscious takes place: The Dark Night of the Soul. The elephant of the Libido,
which has, in the previous centre, nourished and supported the individual, now
becomes the devouring mother or monster.
During the seminar, when Jung interprets the half-moon symbol in the chakra
(highlighted above) as female, one of the attendees questions this, saying that J.W.
Hauer, in his lecture, described the half-moon as belonging to Śiva. Jung responds
by saying:

You see a Hindu is normal when he is not in this world. Therefore if you assimilate these symbols, if you
get into the Hindu mentality, you are just upside-down, you are all wrong. They have the unconscious
above, we have it below. Everything is just the opposite.7

So having decided firstly, that the Svadhiṣṭhāna chakra represents the

Unconscious, Jung asserts that Indians obviously have a different mentality to
Westerners because they have the “unconscious above” Mūlādhāra whereas ‘we’ in
the West always think of a descent into the unconscious.
There’s a lengthy discussion between Jung and one of the attendees—a Mrs.
Crowley (no relation) about the differences between the Western and the Indian
ideas of the Unconscious, and Jung reiterates his point that because the Indian
ideas are so different from ours, the only way we can approach them is to do so in
our own terms.

I am sorry to have bewildered you, but you will be more bewildered if you take these things literally.
(You had better not.) If you think in those terms, you build up an apparent Hindu system with the
psychology of the Western mind, and you cannot do that—you simply poison yourself.8

Again, I’ll come on to this later.

Jung discusses Svadhiṣṭhāna in terms of mystery cults requiring that initiates be

symbolically drowned—a symbolic death out of which new life comes. Jung
asserts that Svadhiṣṭhāna, despite the Hindu interpretation, is ‘intensely female’
and it is during his discussion of this chakra that he states that the Kuṇḍalinī is the
Anima. Sonu Shamdasani notes that Jung’s interpretation of Kuṇḍalinī may have
been influenced by a passage in Woodroffe’s The Serpent Power which is heavily
marked in Jung’s copy:
‘She who ‘shines like a chain of lights’—a lightning flash—in the centre of his
body is the ‘Inner Woman’ to whom reference was made when it was said, ‘What
need have I of any outer woman? I have an Inner Woman within myself.’9
Maṇipūra

The Element associated with Maṇipūra is Fire. Jung interprets Maṇipūra to mean
‘the fullness of Jewels’. According to Jung, this centre represents intensity, activity
and new beginnings, the individual having passed through the devouring dangers
of the Unconscious. It is the place where the Sun appears. Citing both the
initiation rites of the Mysteries of Isis, and the Catholic Rite of baptism, he states
that Maṇipūra is the centre of identification with god. The passions are present,
but the danger of being overwhelmed by them has passed. This chakra is also
important for Jung because it represents a ‘psychic localisation’ of somatic feelings.
Whereas the West tends to separate thinking and emotions, he points out that
some primitive peoples located the psyche in the abdomen.
Jung also sees Maṇipūra relating to digestion, cooking and alchemical
processes. In support of this argument he interprets the 3 gates on the triangle
(highlighted, above) as handles for a cooking pot and disagrees with J.W. Hauer’s
interpretation that they represent a swastika.
The Animal in this chakra is the Ram. Again, Jung argues that this is once again
the elephant of the Mūlādhāra in a new form; no longer an insurmountable power,
it represents the sacrifice of the passions; but this is not a major sacrifice; the Ram
doesn’t have the strength of the elephant or the Leviathan of Svadhiṣṭhāna—once
one is aware of one’s fundamental desires and passions they are less dangerous.

Anāhata

It is in the Anāhata Chakra that Individuation truly begins. Given its elemental
association with Air, Jung interprets the state of consciousness associated with this
centre in terms of a withdrawal from being dominated by one’s emotions, and the
beginnings of self-reflexivity; paying attention to one’s own feelings and
behaviour.
Although this centre is associated with love and service to others, it also carries
the possibility of self-inflation; of the person failing to achieve individuation and
remaining an ‘individualist’.
The Animal here is the Gazelle. An animal of earth yet it is light on its feet; it
hardly touches the ground; it has a bird-like quality. ‘It denotes that in Anāhata the
psychical thing is an elusive factor, hardly to be caught.’ He remarks, in response to
a question from an attendee at the seminar, that a close analogy of this animal
would be the Western Unicorn. The movement from Maṇipūra to Anāhata is
difficult, as it requires the recognition that the Psyche is a self-moving thing.
For Jung, the heart is a centre of conscious psychic localisation—it is the centre
of feelings, and although we might think we learn via the head, it is only when we
take things into our heart that we truly know them—knowing needs to be sunk
into the body.
Jung also points out that the first four chakras and their associated elements:
Mūlādhāra (Earth); Svadhiṣṭhāna (Water); Maṇipūra (Fire) and Anāhata (Air)
represent a series of transformations with a progressive increase in volatility.

Viśuddha

Viśuddha, located at the Throat and associated with the element of Space (Akasha
or Ether) represents, for Jung, the world of abstract thought and mental concepts.
Jung regards this chakra as a progression; a leaving behind of the state of
consciousness represented by anāhata. It is a recognition of the essential unity of
the external with the psyche. In the Viśuddha chakra the elephant figure returns,
but here it is not supporting Mūlādhāra, i.e. earth (and the associated state of
awareness), but human thoughts. He says ‘It is as if the elephant were now making
realities out of concepts. We admit that our concepts are nothing but our
imagination, products of our feeling or of our intellect—abstractions or analogies,
sustained by no physical phenomena.’10

Ājñā

Jung has relatively little to say about the Ājñā and Sahasrara Chakras. Ājñā is the
centre where ‘the psyche has wings’. He compares it to a winged seed or a winged
egg. As there is no animal in this chakra, Jung sees this as the disappearance of
animal consciousness; that the strength of the elephant has been fully integrated
into the psyche.

Sahasrara

Of the seventh chakra, Jung suggests that it is useless to speculate—it is ‘merely a

philosophical concept with no substance to us whatever; it is beyond any possible
experience.’11 This statement could be interpreted in different ways. Jung could be
saying that this is an ineffable experience beyond description, or that this is an
entirely philosophical concept without any practical value. I tend towards the
latter position. The goal of Yoga is interpreted by Jung as dissolving the ego,
something that he regarded as both a philosophical and psychological
impossibility. He does state, in a later discussion of yoga that he believes that
‘Eastern intuition has overreached itself ’ and that some aspects of Yoga
philosophy are erroneous.12

Kuṇḍalinī

Finally, how does Jung see Kuṇḍalinī? In Jung’s view, it is Kuṇḍalinī which impels
the individual to make the journey towards wholeness. It is that which is beyond
the personal ego: ‘You will turn back when you meet the first obstacle; as soon as
you see the leviathan you will run away. But if that living spark, that urge, that
need, gets you by the neck, then you cannot turn back; you have to face the music.’
He also equates Kuṇḍalinī with the Sun-Serpent which is later identified with
Christ.

Jung’s ambivalence towards India

So what about this idea that for a Westerner, to go too deeply into Indian ideas
results in a poison of the psyche? Jung is generally opposed to the idea that
Westerners should adopt Indian ideas and practices. He issues frequent warnings
against Europeans practicing Yoga. In Modern Psychology, for example, he states:

The European who practices yoga does not know what he is doing. It has a bad effect upon him, sooner
or later he gets afraid and sometimes it even leads him over the edge of madness.13

Jung was convinced that the West needed a psychic discipline or method of
psychic hygiene similar to Yoga, but insisted that it be done entirely in Western
terms. In Yoga and the West (1936) Jung states that eventually, the West will
produce its own Yoga, and that it will be rooted in Christianity.
Although he seems to be aware of the Theosophical movement and its
influence, Jung was largely dismissive of what he saw as an attempt to create a
syncretistic union of Western and Eastern thought. In Jung’s view, taking on ideas
from another, alien culture implied both a rejection of personal heritage and an
avoidance of the painful necessity for people to look into the darkness of their own
psyches. He believed that his method of Active Imagination—in which
individuals are attentive to and engaged with unconscious content—was a
superior method to Yoga. Jung characterises Yoga as being focused on
concentration and the will—and letting unconscious imagery flow unimpeded but
unheeded. For Jung, Yoga was valuable if studied, but he was dead against
Westerners taking it up as a practice, or indeed, taking Eastern metaphysical
speculation as anything other than psychological statements. He simply did not
believe that it was possible—or beneficial—to transplant ideas and practices from
one culture to another.

Anyone who believes that he can simply take over Eastern forms of thought is uprooting himself, for
they do not express our Western past, but remain bloodless intellectual concepts that strike no chord in
our inmost being. We are rooted in Christian soil.14

I think that’s quite a startling statement to make, and rather undermines his
contention that Eastern ideas can be used to revitalise the West.

Chakras and Culture

Jung views the chakras very much as symbols for human levels of consciousness.
The first two chakras—Mūlādhāra and Svadhiṣṭhāna—represent, largely, the
psychology of primitives; the instinctual life without much sense of an ego. In
Maṇipūra there is the emotional human being, constantly swayed by emotions,
and the first notion of the Self appears only in the Anāhata or Heart centre.
He says that we should differentiate between an individual’s development in
terms of chakras and that of their culture. ‘We can indeed develop our
consciousness until it reaches the ājñā center, but our ajña is a personal ājñā, and
therefore it is in muladhara.’
What does he mean? He uses the metaphor of a skyscraper You can imagine the
cosmic chakra system as an immense skyscraper whose foundations go deep
down in the earth and contain six cellars, one above the other. One could then go
from the first up to the sixth cellar, but one would still find oneself in the depths of
the earth.
He also makes another distinction between India and the West. He says that
Hindus don’t begin their accounts of the world in terms of things like the
evolution of mankind or the progression of the individual from ‘deep unconscious
to the highest consciousness’ but they begin in Sahasrara: ‘they speak the language
of the gods and think of man from above down’.
He draws a distinction between the Western worldview which privileges
scientific and material achievement versus the Indian view, which is spiritually
aware but pre-rational and, thereby, primitive—or that the West is extraverted
whilst India is introverted:

In comparison with our conscious anahata culture, we can truthfully say that the collective culture of
India is in muladhara. For proof of this we need only think of the actual conditions of life in India, its
poverty, its dirt, its lack of hygiene, its ignorance of scientific and technical achievements.15

Again, I think that’s rather a startling statement from Jung, who at other times
praised Indian ideas. This comment reflects the general disdain and contempt that
many Europeans held for India at the time.
For Jung, the chakras represent psychic totalities and stages of consciousness in
the developmental journey towards wholeness. They provide a map, or way-points
in this journey, and that alone, I think, is a major influence Jung has had on
contemporary presentations of chakras—that they are very much seen as steps or
stages in an evolutionary life journey which enable us to structure our experience
of the world in particular ways.
Also, by treating chakras as symbolic, he opens the way for their interpretation
using cross-cultural comparison and myths. This was not altogether new. Charles
Webster Leadbeater, in his 1927 book The Chakras: A Monograph, did briefly make
assertions that other esoteric traditions had their own knowledge of chakras, but
Jung’s cross-cultural analysis really opens up chakras (as it were) for being
correlated with a wide range of myths and concepts from different (often Western)
cultures. These interpretations allow the chakras to be approached via familiar
Western concepts and ideas, but of course at the same time reduces any
requirement to try and get to grips with them in their own cultural and historical
contexts.

1 The National Socialist Indologist Jakob Wilheln Hauer (1881-1962) is now mostly remembered for the
foundation of the German Faith Movement (Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung) which he saw as the “essence”
of National Socialism, and advocated that it should be adopted as the state religion of the Third Reich.
2 Shamdasani, Sonu (ed). 1999. The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes on the Seminar given in 1932 by C.G.
Jung. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
3 Shamdasani, Sonu (ed). 1999. p61.
4 Ibid. p23.
5 Ibid. p103.
6 Ibid. p14.
7 Ibid. p16.
8 Ibid. p20.
9 Ibid. p22, Note 41.
10 Ibid. p55.
11 Ibid. p57.
12 Jung, Carl Gustav. 2014. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 2): Aion: Researches into the
Phenomenology of the Self. Princeton. Princeton University Press. p505.
13 quoted from Shamdasani, Sonu (ed). 1999. xxx
14 Jung, C.G. 2014. Collected Works Vol.9ii, p273.
15 Shamdasani, Sonu (ed). 1999. p65.
Some comment and critique

I will now examine some of the problems I find regarding Jung’s approach to
chakras. Firstly, he has a tendency to reduce cultural practices and circumstances
to expressions of psychological structures—that’s very obvious in his comments
on India for example: that the root cause of its ‘poverty and ignorance’ is
essentially psychological, and not perhaps the effects of invasion and domination
by a colonial power. Also, I think this illustrates a problem with this kind of
vertical model of psychological development in that it invites judgements and
comparisons—both favourable and unfavourable, about individuals, cultures and
indeed entire races being at particular stages of development. How often do we
hear a person criticised for their lack of spiritual growth in hierarchical terms?
As a more extreme case, just out of curiosity, I took a look on the internet this
morning (17 June 2018) to see if there were any signs of people constructing
theories which link chakras to race and anti-semitism, and sure enough I found
some websites discussing ‘racial chakras’ and the idea that some races express the
archetype of transcendental beauty—Celts and the Germanic peoples, whilst
others, who have either lost that connection or never had it in the first place, such
as Mexicans and Jews are mired in ugliness, and that interbreeding with ‘lesser
races’ damages the chakras. We can’t really blame Jung for people twisting his
ideas in this way, but at the same time, we can’t in all honesty duck challenging
him when he says things such as ‘The Jew who is something of a nomad has never
yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all
his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for
their development.’ (The State of Psychotherapy Today, 1934).
Secondly, Jung instrumentalises the chakras in support of his own theories, and
simply ignores anything that doesn’t fit with his model. Related to this are Jung’s
‘symbolic’ interpretations of the chakras which to my mind are very reductive. I
can best illustrate this with an example. Throughout his discussions of the chakras,
Jung places a heavy emphasis on the animal imagery in five of the seven chakras. I
do think it is interesting how he presents the psychological process of
Individuation by talking about the elephant in Mūlādhāra becoming the
Unconscious monster in Svadhiṣṭhāna, then the ram, the gazelle, and back to the
elephant again. It seems as though it is the animal images in the chakras that have
particularly caught his attention, and it is no accident that of the chakra images
that do not have animal vehicles within them, he has relatively little to say.
Jung’s symbolic interpretation of the elephant in Mūlādhāra focuses on its
‘carrying power’. Is he thinking of elephants as beasts of burden, war elephants or
their association with royalty? But there’s something else here. The elephant in
Mūlādhāra isn’t just any old elephant, as Sir John Woodroffe makes clear in his
commentary on the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa. This is the King of Elephants, or Indra’s
Elephant, Airavata. What can we say of Airavata? For a start, he’s descended from
Viṣṇu and has his own genealogy. He’s also one of the group of eight elephants
who guard the directions of the Universe in some of the early Puranas, he being
the guardian of the East. In the Skanda Purāṇa he loses his tusks saving the son of
Indra in battle, and regains them after praying to Lord Śiva. He’s white, again
according to the Purāṇas, because he arose from the Ocean of Milk from which
the gods gained immortality. In association with Indra, he causes rain.
There’s much more I could say about Airavata and Indra, and elephants in India
in general. But to do so requires an engagement not only with Indian myths, but
also history and culture. And this is something Jung does not do, and I think those
who have followed in his wake tend to take his interpretations as deep truths, but
at the same time, are potentially missing out on a great deal.
 Thirdly, Jung also follows a well-recognised orientalist strategy in claiming to
possess an authoritative perspective on Indian religion whilst effectively rendering
the traditions themselves absent or silent. His frequent assertions that the spiritual
East could revitalise the materialistic West is a form of romantic orientalism
which, whilst a reversal of earlier colonial narratives that valorise the West over
the East; still relies on the ‘othering’ of the East in regard to the West. The East is
only useful insofar as what it can ‘offer’ the West. His pronouncements on the
unsuitability of Yoga, his views on India and even his romantic ideas of drawing
on the ‘Mystic East’ to revitalise and heal the Rational West are not unique to
him—these views emerge from the colonial encounter between Europe and India
and should, I think, be read in that context. A general antipathy to Yoga practice
was not uncommon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Also, his
valorisation of the East in order to critique the West had been a tactic used by
Theosophists in the nineteenth century.

Jung and Theosophy

I mentioned earlier Jung’s antipathy to Theosophy, due to his firm belief that any
attempt to create a syncretic fusion of Eastern and Western thought was
impossible. However, Jung’s relationship with the Theosophical Society and its
diverse strands was more complex than this rejection of Theosophical orientalism
implies.
Firstly, Jung had no problem with Theosophical ideas when it came to Western
esoteric subjects. He possessed a large collection of books by George Robert Stowe
Mead, a prominent member of the Theosophical Society between 1884-1909.1
Mead wrote several books dealing with Gnosticism, Hermeticism and early
Christianity and it is quite likely that it was Mead’s work that sparked Jung’s
interest in these subjects.2
According to esoteric scholars Clare and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, ‘Jung was
in fact greatly indebted to Mead’s copious and fluent editions of Gnostic writings’
and that he regarded the Gnostics not as syncretists, but as seers who brought
forth genuine visions from the collective unconscious. It is known that Jung
visited Mead in London, and apparently the two men corresponded.3
Secondly, there is the ‘hidden’ Theosophical influence in Jung’s encounter with
The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (hereafter TBOD) is
widely known and recognised as a spiritual classic, and Jung’s Psychological
Commentary on the text (which first appeared in 1957) has exerted considerable
influence on Western interpretations of Tibetan Buddhism. What is less well-
known however, is that the book’s compiler and editor, Walter Y. Evans-Wentz
(1878-1965), was a Theosophist, and, although he claimed to be an objective
scholar, he made several interpretations of the text’s subjects, which, as
Tibetanologist Donald Lopez points out, owed more to Theosophical doctrine
than Tibetan Buddhism.4 Jung seems to have been unaware of Evans-Wentz’s
theosophical interpretations, and to have taken the text at face value as a literal
translation of an authentic Tibetan work. Jung’s approach to the TBOD (which he
refers to in his commentary as the Bardo Thödol) is strikingly similar to the way
he approaches chakras and Kuṇḍalinī insofar as his primary interest is how far the
concepts dealt with in the text can be meshed with his analytical psychology. Early
in his Commentary, for example, he points to the potential of TBOD as
representing the analytic journey:

Thus far the Bardo Thödol is, as Dr. Evans-Wentz also feels, an initiation process whose purpose it is to
restore to the soul the divinity it lost at birth” and then goes on to assert that “The only ‘initiation
process’ that is still alive and practised today in the West is the analysis of the unconscious as used by
doctors for therapeutic purposes.5

Later, he reinforces the link:

The book describes a way of initiation in reverse, which, unlike the eschatological expectations of
Christianity, prepares the soul for a descent into physical being. The thoroughly intellectualistic and
rationalistic worldly-mindedness of the European makes it advisable for us to reverse the sequence of
the Bardo Thödol and to regard it as an account of Eastern initiation experiences, though one is
perfectly free, if one chooses, to substitute Christian symbols for the gods of the Chönyid Bardo. At any
rate, the sequence of events as I have described it offers a close parallel to the phenomenology of the
European unconscious when it is undergoing an’initiation process’, that is to say, when it is being
analyzed.6
 Jung praises the TBOD for being ‘in the highest degree psychological in its
outlook’7 and asserts that ‘it is an undeniable fact that the whole book is created
out of the archetypal contents of the unconscious. Behind these there lie—and in
this our Western reason is quite right—no physical or metaphysical realities, but
‘merely’ the reality of psychic facts, the data of psychic experience.’8
This is a similar approach to how Jung handles chakras—they are ‘psychic facts’
rather than products of a particular culture or religious system, and any
metaphysics or theology present is just psychology in disguise, so that the ‘world
of gods and spirits’ is nothing but the contents of the Collective Unconscious. For
example, Jung interprets the horrific visions of the Chönyid Bardo stage to
indicate the surrender to fantasy and imagination which is ‘equivalent to a
deliberately induced psychosis’ in a way that is not dissimilar to his
characterisation of Svadhiṣṭhāna chakra as representing the encounter with the
unconscious. Ultimately, the TBOD becomes, for Jung, another way of
demonstrating the supremacy of his analytical method over other approaches (he
takes a few potshots at Freud throughout his Commentary) and its universal
application.
Although Jungian interpretations of chakras are very popular nowadays, its
difficult to say how much of an immediate effect they had in shaping the
development of Western ideas. Jung’s lectures were privately published in German
in 1933. An abridged English version was published in the mid-seventies in the
Journal Spring: Journal of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought. The entire
series of lectures did not appear in print until 1996. This has led some
commentators to the view that Jung’s ideas about chakras did not percolate into
popular culture until fairly recently. I disagree. Firstly, there’s a kind of English-
centric assumption inherent in this view, and secondly, Jung’s interpretations of
chakras were taken up by various other scholars and some of his students, such as
Joseph Campbell, whose own interpretations of chakras are given in his 1974 book
The Mythic Image. Although Campbell’s views on chakras depart somewhat from
Jung, I think there are still strong influences from Jung in them.
James Hillman, another of Jung’s students also drew on Jung’s Kuṇḍalinī
seminars when he provided a psychological commentary on the experiences of
Gopi Krishna in 1970.9
Moreover, in popular books on chakras from the early 1980s onwards, we find
frequent mentions of Jung (and indeed Freud) as a supporting authority for the
scientific legitimation of chakra narratives as these begin to incorporate
psychological and therapeutic elements.

1 Mead resigned in protest when Annie Besant reinstated Charles Webster Leadbeater as a member of the
Society in 1909.
2 Hanegraaf, Wouter J. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular
Thought. Leiden. Brill. p510
3 Goodrick-Clarke, C. & Goodrick-Clarke, N. (eds). 2005. G.R.S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest. Berkeley,
California. North Atlantic Books. p29.
4 see Lopez, Donald S. 2011. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography. Princeton and Oxford. Princeton
University Press. Chapter 4.
5 Evans-Wentz, W.Y. 2000. The Tibetan Book of The Dead: or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane,
according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering. New York. Oxford University Press. xli.
6 Ibid. xlix
7 Ibid. xxxvii.
8 Ibid. Li.
9 See Krishna, Gopi. 1971. Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Books.
Two: The therapeutic turn

As I noted in the introduction, ‘chakras are everywhere’; they are a familiar

component in a wide range of texts and practices, ranging from popular occultism
and witchcraft to a vast range of self-help and self-development practices and
products from therapies to healing products. They have become incorporated into
cultural discourses of bodily health, self-management and self-improvement. I
think a useful way to approach our contemporary cultural enthusiasm for chakras
is in terms of what sociologists refer to as the ‘psychologization of social life’—the
growing tendency to interpret all life issues and problems, and their solutions, in
psychological terms. This psychologization is evident across many different
cultural domains—education, work efficiency, intimacy, family life, education,
and of course the esoteric and the spiritual. A key element of this process is that all
life issues can be transformed or managed through work on the self. As Nikolas
Rose puts it:

The conduct of persons becomes remarkable and intelligible when, as it were, displayed upon a
psychological screen, reality becomes ordered according to a psychological taxonomy, abilities,
personalities, attitudes and the like become central to the deliberations and calculations of social
authorities and psychological theorists alike.1

This process of psychologization is also sometimes referred to as ‘Therapy

Culture’ and its effects have been a matter of some debate since the 1960s. Several
commentators have cast the cultural turn towards a broad therapeutic ethos in
highly negative terms; often related to the collapse of traditional authorities (such
as religion) or economic certainties. Other critics have pointed out that the
tendency to encourage people to view social and political issues and conflicts
purely in terms of personal failures has led to the obfuscation of structural
inequalities and collective action.
One arena which has produced particularly vociferous critiques is the effects
that the therapeutic turn has had on religious and spiritual life. Wade Clarke Roof
for example, in his 1999 book Spiritual Marketplace, claims that:

…when spirituality is recast in strictly psychological terms, it is often loosened from its traditional
moorings—from historic creeds and doctrines, from broad symbolic universes, from religious
community. There is narrative enmeshment, but in its specificity and inward focus the communal
dimension so important historically to cultivating spirituality is weakened.2

Similarly, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, in Selling Spirituality (2005), state
that:

One of the problems of private, psychologised spirituality is the way in which it reinforces the idea that
the individual is solely responsible for his or her own suffering. It supports a world where meaning is a
private reality and where individuals make sense of their lives in isolation—a self-styled and custom-
built spirituality purchased in the marketplace—rather than one generated through the social and
historical lines of transmission within communities.3

However, the psychologization of religious life has also had positive effects.
Some commentators have highlighted how therapeutic culture, with its emphasis
on the importance of self-disclosure (confession) has brought what was,
previously, deemed to be private, into the public sphere, and served to legitimate
emotions. Indeed, Kate Wright, in her 2015 book, The Rise of the Therapeutic
Society, argues that the therapeutic turn has been instrumental in giving
‘legitimacy to experiences of suffering that were previously denied, ignored, or
covered up’.
It is not difficult to find examples of how religious and spiritual resources have
been transformed by the interrelationship between the therapeutic ethos and
commodification (Carrette and King refer to this as ‘capitalist spirituality’). Some
examples might be the transfer of shamanism from religion to therapeutic
‘technique’; from the way that many modern teachers of Tantra have degrees not
in Sanskrit or Indology, but in sexology, and the increasing blurring of boundaries
between the psychological and the spiritual. As I noted earlier, many
contemporary occult authors have incorporated Jung’s concept of Individuation
into schemas such as the Kabbalah or Tarot, and increasingly, there is a tendency
to read spiritual and occult trajectories as equivalent to the life goals of
developmental psychology. We can perhaps see these trends most visibly in
esoteric and spiritual cultures, but the psychological turn has affected mainstream
religions too. Mara Einstein’s Brands of Faith (2008) explores how religions are
increasingly turning into what she terms ‘Faith Brands’—that ‘exist to aid
consumers in making and maintaining a personal connection to a commodity
product. Introducing, sustaining, and perpetuating the brand across product lines
allow these faith brands to be “top of mind” in an overcrowded commercial
environment.’4
Contemporary therapies and spiritualities share a common ethos insofar as
individuals are held to be responsible for their own destinies. There is an emphasis
on self-reliance and self-discipline. The transformation of the self is the key to
everything.
A major influence here was the work of Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), now
most remembered for the ‘hierarchy of human needs’ that he developed in the
1940s. Maslow’s usage of terms such as ‘peak experience’ and ‘self-actualization’
helped bring about an attitude towards spirituality that was entirely divorced from
religion as a communal or social experience. For Maslow, transcendental ‘peak
experiences’ were essentially personal and private. In his 1964 book Religions,
Values, and Peak Experiences, Maslow asserts that all the features of
religion—such as ritual, ceremonial, beliefs, etc., are, for those who have ‘peak’
experiences, of secondary and only peripheral value—and indeed, may in some
ways be harmful.5 For Maslow, organized religion, in fact, any institution, whilst it
might provide safety and comfort, also fosters an attitude of ‘familiarization’ that
‘makes it unnecessary to attend, to think, to feel, to live fully, to experience richly.’6
According to Kurt Leland, Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs was first correlated
with the seven chakras in 1979, in an article in American Theosophist by two
psychotherapists, Thomas B. Roberts and Robert H. Hannon.7

The Seven Chakras correlated with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs

Strategies of Psychologization

Véronique Altglas, in her 2014 book, From Yoga to Kabbalah provides a thorough
analysis of how former religious resources have been retooled into therapeutic
techniques. She describes a complex set of inter-related processes by which exotic
religious resources become free-floating techniques. Firstly, exotic resources from
other cultures and periods are fetishized as promising or offering something that
contemporary culture lacks. At the same time though, these exotic resources have
to be domesticated—made comprehensible and familiar. This often involves that
they be decontextualised and made universal, and at the same time, easy to access
and user-friendly. Religious and therapeutic resources—or as they are often
reframed, techniques; stress cultural values such as self-reliance, autonomy, and an
entrepreneurial ethos of striving to achieve. Any evaluation is on a pragmatic
basis—stressing effectiveness and workability. Finally, there is an emphasis on
homogenisation. Despite a plethora of techniques and choices available, they tend
to be taken as essentially similar and interchangeable.
Let’s look at these processes in a bit more depth, and how they might be applied
to the chakras.

Fetishization

Fetishization is the process whereby exotic religious resources are presented as

signifying something which contemporary culture lacks. Chakra narratives often
perpetuate a romantic orientalism which connects them to the ‘mystic East’; a
nostalgia for a sacralised world; spiritual and timeless. Chakras, like other ‘Eastern
techniques’ offer a way of reconnecting to this lost wholeness, although to bring
about this reconnection they have to be modernized or made accessible to the
‘Western mind’.

Universalization

Universalization is the term for describing how religious (and other) resources are
removed from their originating cultural context, and hence decontextualized, so
that, in effect, they belong to everyone and transcend religious and cultural
boundaries. In the case of chakras, this process began almost as soon as ideas
about chakras appeared in English-language writings; firstly due to them being
interpreted in terms of physiological processes (initially nerve plexuses, and later
the endocrine system); and later into esoteric structures which were deemed to be
universal—where the Indian schemas were just one example (and sometimes, an
example in need of correcting) of a Western-defined universal astral or etheric
body. The influence of Jung and later psychological interpretations of chakras
greatly intensified this process.
Domestication

Domestication is the process whereby exotic religious resources are made familiar,
intelligible and safe. The progressive interpretation of chakras in terms of Western
ideologies and psychologies has rendered them familiar and intelligible, so that
virtually any event or process which can be divided into (at least) seven stages can
be explained and interpreted in terms of chakras. A popular example of this is the
correlation of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs with the seven
chakras. At the same time, explanations of how chakras work stress their
simplicity and accessibility.

Pragmatism

The pragmatic orientation is often expressed as going with what works. Practices
are reframed as ‘technologies’ with an underlying scientific and rational ethos.
This pragmatic orientation is highly visible in Jung’s approach to the chakras,
which focuses on what they can offer to the West whilst at the same time
disparaging Indian religious and philosophical ideas. Additionally, these
techniques are framed within a narrative of ‘direct experience’ in which they are
reified as being entirely real.

Homogenization

Homogenization indicates the process whereby exotic religious resources lose

their particularity, which allows users to experiment and combine a wide variety
of religious and therapeutic techniques without being concerned with
contradictions. Chakras have become a key element in a global conception of
‘energy’ where a welter of terms from different cultures are all held to refer to the
same thing. At the same time, the 7-chakra schema made popular via
Theosophical and later presentations of the chakras has come to dominate
representations of chakras. The fluidity and variety of Tantric chakra systems
which I briefly examined in section one has for the most part been lost.
Chakras, in a way, have come to function as a brand (and ironically, there is an
increasing literature of how chakras can be deployed in marketing and brand-
making), signifying well-being, health, self-management and aspirational
development. A chakra image, be it a tattoo or part of a product logo, functions as
a shorthand for spiritual consumers, reflecting and shaping identity. As Mara
Einstein reminds us:

Religion is personal and religion is packaged and sold the same way as other marketed goods and
services. The interdependence of religion and marketing in our culture seems almost inevitable, and
there are striking similarities between these cultural forms. These institutions both rely on storytelling,
meaning making, and a willingness of people to believe in what is intellectually unbelievable. Religions
create meaning through myths, rituals, and practices; marketing creates meaning through advertising
and shopping. Religion is the acceptance of a belief system; marketing is the acceptance of beliefs about
a product. Religions have faith communities; marketing has brand communities. Religion has become a
product; products have become religions.8

By being presented as a bridge between the boundaries of the spiritual, physical,

and psychological, chakras have become an organising framework for self-
management, personal aspirations, and the ability to both diagnose and correct
life’s problems. Of course the flip side of the quest for growth and self-realisation is
the implicit recognition that we are not as healthy, fulfilled, or evolved as we
perhaps should be. Chakra narratives hook very well into this, as the reader often
is informed in great detail how to interpret anxieties, fears and personal issues in
terms of the operations of the various centres, and how to ‘balance’ the centres in
order to achieve a healthy condition. The values promoted in chakra narratives
often correspond to neoliberal values of self-improvement, resilience, adaptivity to
change and an entrepreneurial ethos of success.

Psychology dominant

As a specific example of how the psychological turn has shaped chakra narratives,
I want to take a brief look at a contemporary use of chakras by Anodea Judith in
her book Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path
to the Self (1996). Anodea Judith is a therapist and healer who has authored
several books on chakras. According to the website sacredcenters.com ‘She is
considered one of the country’s (presumably the USA’s) foremost experts on the
combination of chakras and therapeutic issues and on the interpretation of the
chakra system for the Western lifestyle.’

Chakra associations from “Eastern Body, Western Mind”

Chakra State Archetypal Elements

Muladhara Survival Earth

Svadhisthana Sexuality Water

Manipura Power Fire

Anahata Love Air

Vishuddha Communication Sound

Ajna Intuition Light

Sahasrara Divine Consciousness Thought

In introducing the book, Judith states that this is a western approach to the
chakras—placing modern psychosocial issues into a spiritual context. She writes:
‘Rather than presenting an otherworldly discipline borrowed from the cultures of
the East, I have created a down-to-earth, practical application for contemporary
members of Western civilization.’ Right at the outset then, is an echo of the
stereotype that the East is spiritual but unworldly, whilst the West is practical. This
necessity that ‘Eastern’ ideas have to be re-interpreted and made practical is a
common trope in works that attempt to bring east and west together, and echoes
Jung’s comment that he had to do a good deal of work to make chakras ‘palatable
to the Western Mind’. She goes on to say that chakras ‘are evident in the shape of
our physical bodies, the patterns manifested in our lives, and the way we think,
feel, and handle situations that life presents us.’
Each of the 7 chakras represents an area of human psychological health.
Overall, her approach to the chakras is predominantly psychological. There is very
little discussion of cross-cultural mythology for example or of chakra visual
imagery. Instead, she draws into her presentation concepts from a wide variety of
psychological theorists, including: Jung, Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen,
Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget. There’s no in-depth discussion of
any of these approaches, their methodologies, problems with them, or divergences
between them. They are, by implication, complementary to each other and
interchangeable.
Each chakra has a particular identity, for example Muladhara is associated with
physical identity, Svadhisthana with emotional identity and so on. Each chakra
also has its own counterforce or ‘demon’ which serves to fixate energy at one
chakra level. Hence the demon of the Muladhara is Fear, that arises when anything
threatens our survival. Also, each chakra represents a particular stage in human
development, from birth to adulthood. They also represent the process of
Individuation. In addition, each chakra has associated with it particular kinds of
traumas, physical disorders, excesses, character structures and developmental
tasks. And for each chakra are prescribed corrective exercises, largely from a
therapeutic perspective.
Taken in total, Eastern Body Western Mind is a book which allows the reader to
understand and interpret their lives in terms of the activity, blockages, or
deficiencies of particular chakras, and to know what steps to take in order to
address those issues. It is as much a diagnostic tool as a manual of self-
management and development.

1 Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London. Free Association Books.
2 Roof, Wade Clarke. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace. Princeton University Press. p109.
3 Carrette, Jeremy and King, Richard. 2005. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. London.
Routledge. p80.
4 Einstein, Mara. 2008. Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age. Abingdon, Oxon. Routledge.
pxi.
5 Maslow, 1964, pp26-28.
6 Ibid. p34.
7 Leland, 2016, p333.
8 Einstein, 2008. p78.
Some closing thoughts

To close, I thought it might be useful to examine how the representation of

chakras has changed in terms of the material I’ve been examining. I shall take the
Mūlādhāra chakra as an example of how ideas about chakras have changed.
From a tantric perspective, Mūlādhāra is simply the lowest chakra in any one
system of chakras. For example, the Kālottara Tantra, dating from the 5th-6th
century, locates the ādhāra (i.e. Mūlādhāra) chakra in the region of the heart. The
chakra is to be visualised as a lotus, and seated on the petals are four goddesses
who embody different forms of joy or bliss. Within the lotus are installed various
deities, such as Gaṇeśa, who rules beginnings, or a fierce Yoginī named Dakini,
who in early tantric literature is said to consume offerings of human skin. There
are various siddhis or magical powers associated with meditation on the deities
inhabiting the chakra, such as eloquent speech and the mastery of learning. The
chakra has no existence prior to regimes of practice.
In the late nineteenth century, when chakras first emerged into public discourse
via Theosophical Journals, there was a tendency to correlate them first with nerve
plexuses, and later with the endocrine system, largely by Indian doctors and
intellectuals who saw in the chakras, evidence that India had its own system of
physiological anatomy. In some of these accounts, the Mūlādhāra is the pelvic
plexus or the sacro-coccygeal plexus of the autonomic nervous system and its
petals represent clusters of nerves around this region. This early physiological
association of the chakras played a large part in fixing them into set positions.
In early Theosophical literature, Mūlādhāra comes to signify involvement in the
material world and being bound up in the passions—things which need to be left
behind in order to make spiritual progress. In Charles Webster Leadbeater’s 1927
work, The Chakras: A Monograph, the ‘Root Centre’ is principally concerned with
bringing forces—such as the vitality of the Sun into the body. Even at this early
stage, the chakras are being placed within a hierarchy which opposes spiritual
aspirations with material desires.
For Jung, the Mūlādhāra is indicative of the world of unconscious routine and
psychic sleep, as well as the psychic condition of primitive peoples.
In contemporary books on chakras Mūlādhāra is frequently associated with
what are termed Safety and Survival Needs, as well as boundaries between yourself
and the world. According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chakras: ‘People with
constant financial worries and irresponsible financial behavior often have blocked
first chakras, whereas people who hoard money or are obsessed with material gain
tend to have overloaded first chakras.’ According to this same book, constipation
is a 1st chakra issue, particularly if you experience it when travelling away from
home, as it is the chakra trying to be protective by literally ‘closing you up.’
Psychologization, with its attendant processes of compression of meaning,
simplification, and domestication have made chakra concepts easily applicable to a
wide variety of life domains and products. But, I have to admit, I feel that in many
ways, the magic has been lost. This morning (14 June 2018) I was looking for
some images of chakras to use for this final essay, and I couldn’t help noticing that
in image after image, not only was there no sign of the mantra-goddesses and wild
Yoginīs which populated the chakras in tantric texts and images, but even the
animals which so caught Jung’s attention have disappeared. The universalization of
chakras has led not only to their original meanings being erased, it is almost as if
they have become abstract symbols, devoid of the rich layers of signification
which can be found in Indian representations of a body full of deities and events.
Chakras originated as features of a tantric ethos which did not see the body as
in need of fixing or being disciplined, which viewed the body as the vehicle for
liberation, a liberation which accepted the validity of all emotional states and did
not attempt to regulate the body’s capacity for joyful experience.
It seems ironic, that in being transmitted to the West over the last 150 years or
so chakras have seemingly become inextricably bound up with notions of health,
self-management, healing, and a tendency to compartmentalize everyday
experience into a hierarchy of levels or issues. As more original tantric texts are
translated and made generally available, it remains to be seen how this source
material will impact on contemporary Western views of the chakras.
Some difficult questions

I guess the big question is ‘Are the chakras real?’ This question regularly crops up
whenever I do lectures or am interviewed about my research into the history of
chakras. If anything, it highlights the big difference between how chakras are
described in tantric texts and modern literature. In early Śaiva tantric
scriptures—composed between the fifth and tenth centuries of the common era,
chakras are visualised and sometimes populated with deities and other divine
beings. They differ in number, colour, etc. and we don’t see the schema that we’re
familiar with; 6+1 chakras, until around the 11th century. But chakras are just an
aid to meditational practices, they have no realness beyond that. They are tied to
specific practices—and different traditions have different chakra arrangements,
depending on the goal of the practice.
When the chakras were ‘rediscovered’ in the 19th century they quickly came to
be assumed to be ‘real’ because they were linked to parts of the nervous system,
then glands. And the idea that there are 7 chakras was fairly stable by the
beginning of the 20th century. And so they became ‘real’ and now its assumed that
everyone (plus some animals like cats and dogs) have chakras—and that they do
things, or need to be worked on, or aligned or balanced etc., but again, that is a
modern western concept.
 Questioning the ‘realness’ of chakras tends to upset people who have
experienced sensations or feelings when they’ve meditated on their chakras. Or
spent money going to therapists having their chakras balanced. The way I see it is
that the different chakra systems: 3 chakras, 7 chakras, 12 chakras etc. can be very
helpful in getting us to pay attention to our bodies perhaps in ways we don’t
normally do. Simon Cox, in his recent book, The Subtle Body: A Genealogy refers
to this capacity for organizing bodily and affective experience as ‘radical somatic
mutability.
This also gets rid of the issue about what is the ‘original’ system. I know that’s
something that people get worried about. But all of these different chakra systems
evolved over time. So there isn’t one which is inherently more correct than others.
I think it is actually more useful to know that there are multiple chakra systems
because it helps you see that when someone relates chakras to crystals, for
example, they are not stating an unassailable fact, because that’s a very recent
pairing.
As to all the injunctions about chakras needing to be aligned, balanced,
dormant and need ‘waking up’ these are all modern ideas that you don’t find in the
tantric texts, as is the idea that you can ‘harm’ your chakras by doing things
wrong.

What about Cultural Appropriation?

I’m often asked if western interpretations of chakras constitute an example of

cultural appropriation. Again, there is no easy answer here. It is by no means as
simple as the notion that Europeans ‘stole’ the concept of chakras from India.
Whilst it is certainly the case that members of the Theosophical Society re-
interpreted and explained chakras to fit with their own beliefs and
understandings, as I hope I have shown, many of those who did so, were Indian
themselves. Indian Theosophists such as Shris Chandra Basu, Baradā Kānta
Majumdār and Rama Prasad, plus Sabhapaty Swami all played important roles in
disseminating information about chakras to a western readership, although until
fairly recently, their contributions have tended to be overshadowed by their
western counterparts, for example, Madame Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, or Sir
John Woodroffe. If anything, the occlusion of Indian agents in the story of how
chakras were transmitted to the West reveals the underlying eurocentrism of
contemporary esotericism.
The Theosophical Society had, at its height, thousands of Indian members; it
was the first truly global esoteric movement, and became an important player in
Indian culture and politics. By 1884 it had established over a hundred branches
across India. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime
minister, both acknowledged that the Theosophical Society had influenced them.
Theosophical Society president Annie Besant founded the Indian Home Rule
League and was elected president of the first Indian National Congress in 1917.
Her agitation for Indian independence from British rule caused her brief
internment by the colonial authorities.
The Theosophical Society arrived in India during a period when intense debates
were occurring as to the nature of Indian religion and culture and the future of the
subcontinent. These were not, as some scholars have argued, simply passive
responses to colonialism and the spread of ‘western education’ amongst elites.
Indian activists were actively engaged in shaping global debates about religion,
social reform, and ‘universal brotherhood. These issues were not only important to
India: they were the “big questions” of the day across Europe and North America
too. At the same time, the boundaries of what constituted ‘valid’ Hindu religion
were also being vigorously tested from within, by reform movements such as the
Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj. In 1862 for example, a libel case before the High
Court of Bombay saw British judges being asked to determine what constituted
religious orthodoxy. The libel case was brought in response to an article by
Karsandas Mulji, the editor of the Bombay-based Gujurati newspaper Satya
Prakash (“Light of Truth”). Titled ‘The Primitive Religion of the Hindus and the
Present Heterodox Opinions’, the article made a forceful case against the sect
known as the Vallabhacharya Sampradaya (or Pushti Marg), devoted to Krishna
was a new and “heretical” religion; particularly as it had arisen within the period
of the Kaliyug. Mulji argued that Hinduism must be singular, and that the idea of
multiple religions branching off from that originary source was “a deceitful
proposition”. A leader of the Vallabhacharyas, Jadunathji Maharaj filed suit,
claiming that Mulji’s article was libellous. The court ruled in favour of the
defendant (Mulji) and awarded him all costs. The complexity of issues such as
these highlights one of the main problems with the notion of cultural
appropriation—it often fails to consider indigenous populations as agents,
reducing them to the role of passive ‘victims’.
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Special Sources

Accessing current scholarly literature can often be difficult for non-specialists or

those without access to academic repositories and similar institutions. Here’s some
tips on how to access some of the material I’ve listed in the Bibliography of this
book.
Firstly, several scholars referred to in this book have made their work freely
available from Academia.Edu
https://www.academia.edu/
Dissertations can sometimes be purchased from services such as Proquest:
http://www.proquest.com/products-services/dissertations/
You can typically expect to pay $38/£27.50 for a dissertation in PDF format.
Kurt Leland’s Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from
Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) is an excellent historical account of how
Western authors have come to understand the chakras. If you’re looking for a
historical overview of how Western ideas of chakras have been shaped over the
last 150 years or so, I’d recommend it, although his approach differs from mine.
Mike Magee’s Shiva Shakti Mandalam is still one of the best resources for those
wanting to engage with Tantric Traditions:
http://www.shivashakti.com/
Christopher Tompkins is a scholar-practitioner who is doing fantastic research on
how chakra-oriented practices appear in the Tantric traditions. He is translating
early textual sources, and has produced a series of video courses which take you
through the practices. He does a ‘History of the Chakras’ course, which he begins
with Sir John Woodroffe’s 1918 translation of the Ṣat-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa, published
as The Serpent Power. If you want to know all the details of chakra-based practices
in the Tantric Traditions, he is without doubt, the most accessible source. He can
be contacted at www.yogavidhi.org/
My own musings relating to tantra can be found at http://enfolding.org
Since this book was written, Keith E. Cantú has recently completed a study of Sri
Sabhapati Swami and his importance in the transmission of yoga and chakras into
western esotericism. Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and
Śivarājayoga. Oxford University Press. 2023.
Finally, as I’m frequently asked about what I consider to be a good introductory
book on the Tantric Traditions, I will recommend Christopher Wallis’ excellent
Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition.
(San Rafael, CA: Mattamayūra Press, 2012). This is not a book of ritual, nor is it
jammed full of practices. Nor is it an attempt to syncretise Tantric teachings with
Western magical methods and ideas. What Tantra Illuminated is though, is a clear
and thorough introduction to the philosophy and history of non-dual Śaiva Tantra
from a scholar-practitioner who has brought together his own tantra practice with
a rigorous approach to the very latest scholarly work on the subject.
Christopher Wallis has also done an excellent four-part course on the chakras:
Chakras Illuminated: The Modern & Ancient Function of the Chakras.
It can be purchased at
https://school.embodiedphilosophy.com/programs/collection-chakras-
illuminated
About the Author

Phil Hine has been a practising Occultist for over forty-five years, with a career
spanning Wicca, Ritual Magic, Chaos Magic and nondual Tantra. Together with
Rodney Orpheus he co-created and edited the UK’s first monthly Pagan magazine,
Pagan News (1988-92).
His books include: Condensed Chaos, Prime Chaos, The Pseudonomicon, Hine’s
Varieties: Chaos & Beyond, Acts of Magical Resistance and Queerying Occultures. In
2019 he founded Twisted Trunk, a small press specializing in publishing
translations of rare Tantric texts.
 Twisted Trunk titles

Available direct from Amazon in both paperback and digital editions

Yakṣiṇī Magic, by Mike Magee

Yakṣiṇī Magic is the first extensive treatment of Tantric texts dealing with
practices that relate to the Yakṣiṇīs, an ancient class of female spirit beings often
described as “fertility deities” and said to inhabit wild places, plants, and trees.
Drawing on a wide range of tantric textual sources, many of which are presented
here for the first time summarised into English, Mike Magee examines the
various practices through which a tantric practitioner could propitiate these
powerful, fierce, and sometimes jealous female spirits.

Kālī Magic, by Mike Magee

Kālī Magic brings together Mike Magee’s decades of experience in translating

and elucidating tantrik texts. The first section—Sadhana—explores the ritual
worship of Kālī through mantra, her various aspects, and her yantras. The
second section—Tantras—includes new English translations of the
Mātṛkābheda, Toḍala, and Yoni tantras, plus two Kālī Upaniṣads and abstracts of
ten tantras related to the worship of the goddess. With a comprehensive
bibliography and glossary of key terms, Kālī Magic will be of great value to
devotees and scholars of the goddess alike.