Resources / Subtle body
The Chakra Observatory
The seven centres most people know come from one Sanskrit text of 1577, the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa. Each is drawn here as that text describes it: a lotus of so many petals, holding the yantra of its element and a seed syllable.
The rainbow colours and psychological themes most charts now show are twentieth-century Western additions. They are kept, and labelled as such, beside the older scheme.
As the text describes it
Seven lotuses on the Suṣumnā
Colours
Iḍā, Piṅgalā
The figure faces you: Iḍā, pale and lunar, runs on its left, which is your right; Piṅgalā, red and solar, on its right. Drawn here as two bows crossing at each centre, the picture most modern charts draw.
Trace the ascent
Select a centre in the drawing or the table, or trace the ascent from the root.
Centre 4 of 7, from the root
Anāhata
“unstruck” · Heart in the modern English naming
At the heart.
As the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa gives it
Confidence: medium- Petals
- 12, the red of the bandhūka flower
- Letters on the petals
- kaṃ, khaṃ, gaṃ, ghaṃ, ṅaṃ, caṃ, chaṃ, jaṃ, jhaṃ, ñaṃ, ṭaṃ, ṭhaṃ
- Yantra
- A smoke-coloured six-pointed figure of two interlaced triangles, the region of air
- Element
- Air (vāyu)
- Seed syllable
- yaṃ, borne by a black antelope
- Deity and Śakti
- Īśa · Kākinī
- Also
- Within it is the Bāṇa-liṅga, in a triangle.
The modern Western reading
- Name
- Heart chakra
- Colour
- green, in the rainbow scheme
- Themes
- love, compassion, grief, breath
Twentieth-century additions: the rainbow sequence and the psychological themes are not in the Sanskrit sources.
Set beside other systems
- Middle Pillar (Golden Dawn)Tiphareth, set at the heart.Open
- Neidan (Taoist inner alchemy)The middle dantian, in the chest.Open
By position in the body, not a claim that the systems are the same.
From the root to the crown
The seven centres side by side
The classical scheme of the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa. The petals of the six lotuses carry the 50 letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, 4 + 6 + 10 + 12 + 16 + 2; the crown repeats them twenty times.
| Centre | Petals | Element | Seed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | earth | laṃ | |
| 6 | water | vaṃ | |
| 10 | fire | raṃ | |
| 12 | air | yaṃ | |
| 16 | ether | haṃ | |
| 2 | mind | oṃ | |
| 1000 | above the elements | none |
The tradition
Cakra means wheel. Tantric texts describe the subtle body as a network of channels (nāḍī) with centres along the central channel, the Suṣumnā, which runs within the spine. They do not agree on how many centres there are: five, six, nine, twelve and more appear in different schools.
The seven most people know come from one text. Pūrṇānanda's Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa of 1577 describes six lotuses, from the root of the spine to between the eyebrows, and the thousand-petalled lotus above the head. Arthur Avalon's English translation of 1919, The Serpent Power, made that scheme the standard one. The rainbow colours, the English names and the psychological themes are later, Western additions of the twentieth century.
Reading the instrument
- Each lotus is drawn with its petals as the text counts them, four to sixteen, two for Ājñā and a dense ring standing for the thousand of the crown, and holds the yantra of its element: the square of earth, the crescent of water, the triangle of fire, the six-pointed figure of air, the circle of ether.
- The petals of the six lotuses carry the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, 4 + 6 + 10 + 12 + 16 + 2. The crown repeats all fifty twenty times.
- Colours: “The text” paints the petals as the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa describes them; “Rainbow” paints the modern scheme, red at the root to violet at the crown. The difference is the point of the switch.
- The Golden Dawn's tattva cards, drawn in the Tattvic Tides instrument, give air a blue circle and ether an indigo egg. The yantras here are the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa's, where air is the six-pointed figure and ether the circle.
- Channels: Iḍā, pale and lunar, runs on the body's left and Piṅgalā, red and solar, on its right. The figure faces you, so its left is on your right. The text's first verse places them simply left and right, outside the spine; most modern charts draw them as two bows crossing at each centre, and accounts of the subtle body differ on their course. “Crossing” and “Either side” draw each.
- Trace the ascent steps from the root to the crown as the text describes Kuṇḍalinī's rising, each element drawn into the next subtler one. It is a description of what the text says, not an instruction.
Where it descends from
- Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa (Description of the Six Centres)
- Pūrṇānanda's verses of 1577, the sixth chapter of his Śrītattvacintāmaṇi. The source of the classical layer: petals and their letters, the yantras, seed syllables, vehicles, deities and Śaktis.
- The Serpent Power (Arthur Avalon, 1919)
- Sir John Woodroffe's translation of the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa and the Pādukā-pañcaka, with commentary. The colours and wording on this page follow it; it made this six-and-one scheme the standard one in English.
- The Chakras (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927)
- The Theosophical account that brought chakras to Western readers, with its own colours and placements, including a centre at the spleen in place of Svādhiṣṭhāna.
- Wheels of Life (Anodea Judith, 1987)
- The best known of the modern psychological readings, in which each centre carries a theme of personal development. The themes on this page are of that kind.
- Rainbow Body (Kurt Leland, 2016)
- A history of the Western chakra system from Blavatsky onwards: how the rainbow colours, the glands and the psychological themes came to be attached to the Sanskrit names.
What this does not claim
This is a study diagram of a symbolic anatomy, not a map of the physical body and not instruction in practice. Modern writers have tried to identify the centres with nerve plexuses and endocrine glands; Avalon reports such identifications with reservations, and they are not in the Sanskrit sources. The comparisons with the Golden Dawn's Middle Pillar and the Taoist dantian set different systems side by side by position; they are not claims that the systems are the same. Do not force breath, pressure or sensation on the strength of any diagram.