Chakras

The chakra system reads the body as carrying seven energy centers running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head, each paired with an element, a color, a musical note, a seed sound and an endocrine gland. A reading maps a chart's planetary placements onto those seven centers and describes where the tradition would read energy as gathered, blocked or overflowing.

History

Textual references to centers of subtle energy in the body appear in the Upanishads and are developed at much greater length in later Hindu Tantric literature. The specific seven chakra picture familiar in the West today, arranged from the base of the spine to the crown of the head, owes its now standard form substantially to one text and one translator: the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana, a sixteenth century Sanskrit Tantric work, reached English speaking readers through the British Orientalist Sir John Woodroffe, writing under the pen name Arthur Avalon, whose 1919 translation and study, published as "The Serpent Power", is the direct source most twentieth century and later Western chakra writing draws on, directly or at several removes.

It is worth naming plainly that the wider Tantric textual tradition did not hold to one fixed number of centers before that translation fixed the picture for Western readers: various texts describe five, six, nine or other counts and arrangements rather than uniformly agreeing on seven, so the standard seven chakra scheme is a real but historically particular selection rather than the whole tradition's single settled scheme. Several further layers commonly attached to the system today, correspondences to colors, musical notes and specific endocrine glands, are clearly modern additions, popularized especially from the 1970s New Age movement onward, without deep textual precedent in the Sanskrit sources themselves.

The Seven Centers

• Root, at the base of the spine, grounding and survival.
• Sacral, below the navel, creativity and desire.
• Solar Plexus, personal power and will.
• Heart, love and connection, the system's midpoint.
• Throat, communication and truth.
• Third Eye, between the brows, intuition and insight.
• Crown, at the top of the head, transcendence and unity.

How A Reading Is Constructed

A reading maps a chart's planetary placements onto the seven centers using the correspondences the modern Western system has settled on, then describes where the tradition would read energy as gathered, blocked or overflowing, alongside the body zones each zodiac sign is traditionally held to govern. As with the other body based report items, this reading describes a widely taught modern framework built on an older textual core rather than presenting the seven chakra scheme as the Tantric tradition's one unchanging picture.

Where To Read More

• RootRoot, at the base of the spine: grounding and survival.
• SacralSacral, below the navel: creativity and desire.
• Solar PlexusSolar Plexus: personal power and will.
• HeartHeart: love and connection, the system's midpoint.
• ThroatThroat: communication and truth.
• Third EyeThird Eye, between the brows: intuition and insight.
• CrownCrown, at the top of the head: transcendence and unity.