Chakras
Third Eye
AHG-nyah
Also Known As Third Eye Chakra (English) The Sanskrit name for this chakra. · Brow Chakra (English) The Sanskrit name for this chakra. · AgyaOriginal Term Ajna (Sanskrit) The Sanskrit name for this chakra.
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Origin 1920 to 1977
Ajna, the third eye chakra, whose Sanskrit name means command or to perceive, the center of inner seeing and intuitive knowing. It lies between and slightly above the eyebrows and is pictured as an indigo lotus of two petals flanking a downward triangle, marking the meeting of the two great subtle channels, Ida and Pingala, with the central Sushumna. It is associated with light and the mind rather than one of the gross elements, its seed sound is OM, the primal vibration, its traditional planet is the Moon, and its glandular seat is the pituitary, the master gland. Ajna governs intuition, insight, imagination, perception beyond the senses, wisdom, and the capacity to see clearly, both outwardly and inwardly. It is the seat of the witness, the perspective from which one observes one's own mind. Balanced, it brings clear intuition, vivid imagination, insight, and discernment. Deficient, it shows as confusion, poor memory, denial, and a lack of vision or direction; excessive, as delusion, obsessive fantasy, nightmares, and being lost in the head and cut off from the body.
Facts
Disputed
Origin Period1919 2Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body (Ibis Press, 2016) dates the London publisher Luzac and Co.'s first printing of Arthur Avalon's (John Woodroffe's) The Serpent Power, the work that fixed the seven-chakra scheme for Western readers, to 1919, based on the publisher's own catalogue record; some other library catalogues, and the Chakra 1 article elsewhere in this collection, instead give 1918. Leland does not adjudicate the one-year gap, which most likely reflects the ordinary difference between a book's printing date and its public release date, a common source of catalogue disagreement for this period. The atlas records 1919 as the publisher-attributed year and flags the alternative rather than asserting either flatly. Attributed Author / CompilerIts date is given as 1526 in some reckonings and 1577 in others 2Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) traces the composition date of Purnananda Yati's Sri-tattva-cintamani, the Sanskrit source text behind the seven-chakra system as it reached the West, and finds two dates still in circulation among catalogers and translators, converted from the Hindu Saka calendar: Saka 1448 (1526 CE) and Saka 1499 (1577 CE). Leland compares the manuscript colophons and the catalogue entries recording each date and reports neither has driven out the other in the secondary literature, which is why this atlas's own separate article on the text gives 1577 as a working date while this property records the dispute rather than silently picking one figure. Attributed Author / CompilerPurnananda, a sixteenth-century Bengali tantric author 2Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) traces the composition date of Purnananda Yati's Sri-tattva-cintamani, the Sanskrit source text behind the seven-chakra system as it reached the West, and finds two dates still in circulation among catalogers and translators, converted from the Hindu Saka calendar: Saka 1448 (1526 CE) and Saka 1499 (1577 CE). Leland compares the manuscript colophons and the catalogue entries recording each date and reports neither has driven out the other in the secondary literature, which is why this atlas's own separate article on the text gives 1577 as a working date while this property records the dispute rather than silently picking one figure. Attributed Author / CompilerThe Sat-Cakra-Nirupana is the sixth chapter of his Sri-tattva-cintamani 2Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) traces the composition date of Purnananda Yati's Sri-tattva-cintamani, the Sanskrit source text behind the seven-chakra system as it reached the West, and finds two dates still in circulation among catalogers and translators, converted from the Hindu Saka calendar: Saka 1448 (1526 CE) and Saka 1499 (1577 CE). Leland compares the manuscript colophons and the catalogue entries recording each date and reports neither has driven out the other in the secondary literature, which is why this atlas's own separate article on the text gives 1577 as a working date while this property records the dispute rather than silently picking one figure. Origins
Origin Period1920 to 1977 2Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Origin Period1927 to 1928 2Tradition: Theosophical chakra scheme (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927) Origin Period900 to 1300 CE 3Tradition: Tantra Origin PeriodNamed within Tantric literature between the ninth and thirteenth centuries CE, and given its widely known Western sequence through Theosophical writing running from Blavatsky to Leadbeater's 1927 chakra scheme and Barbara Brennan's 1987 book. 3 Place of OriginBritain, India and the United States: the scheme was assembled in English, through the Theosophical Society and its successors, over about a century. 2Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Place of OriginThe Sat-Cakra-Nirupana itself is a Bengali work 3Tradition: Tantra Place of OriginThe tantric traditions of the Indian subcontinent 3Tradition: Tantra Attributed Author / CompilerCharles Webster Leadbeater, for the clairvoyant description, the colour plates and the endocrine correspondences that nearly every modern chakra illustration descends from. 2Tradition: Theosophical chakra scheme (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927) Attributed Author / CompilerSir John Woodroffe, writing as Arthur Avalon, for the translation that carried the scheme west. 2Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Origin of the NameAjna means command, and the centre is named for the guru's command received there; the eye is a Western addition 4Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Origin of the NameThe English "Third Eye" is not a translation of anything 4Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) LanguageSanskrit 4Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Attributions
Associated NoteAttested as a fact about the modern chakra-tone correspondence system, not as an ancient teaching: the pairing dates to twentieth century Western esoteric writing rather than to classical Sanskrit chakra texts. Practice
Seat in the BodyBetween the eyebrows 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra Use
Ritual UseMallinson and Singleton's anthology documents shambhavi mudra, in which the gaze is turned inward and upward toward this center while the eyes remain open, among the hatha techniques aimed specifically at Ajna. 4Tradition: Hatha yoga Meaning
Symbolic MeaningAjna's two petalled lotus lies beyond the five gross elements and is symbolised in the Shatchakranirupana by a white circle enclosing a downward pointing triangle in which a linga is placed, standing for the union the text says the centre makes possible between the individual soul and the absolute. 1 Identity
Also Known As ElementNone. The classical descriptions assign this centre no gross element and place the mind here instead 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra The five elements are exhausted at the throat. Ajna is given manas, mind, and is where the texts place the command that the name ajna itself means. Modern correspondence tables that hand it light or a sixth element are supplying something the classical source does not. Correspondences
Bija MantraOM 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceA lotus of two petals between the eyebrows, the seat of manas, the mind 4Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Meaning in the Attesting SourceAjna, command 4Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Meaning in the Attesting SourceIt is not assigned one of the gross elements, standing above them, and it is here that the guru's command is received, which is the sense of the name 4Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Rival Systems
A Rival System's AttributionThe Western chakra system: indigo. The colour this atlas records is a band of the ROYGBIV spectrum, an arrangement assembled in the twentieth century and standard by 1977. The Sanskrit sources give the centres colours, but not a spectrum, and Leadbeater in 1927 gave a third set again. 2Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan A Rival System's AttributionTheosophical chakra scheme: the pituitary. The chakra-to-gland equation was made in Theosophical writing of the 1920s and has no counterpart in the Sanskrit texts, which place the centres in a subtle body explicitly distinguished from the physical one. 2Tradition: Theosophical chakra scheme (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927) Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 3 Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 4 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseChakra diagnosis and chakra healing are marketed as ancient Indian medicine. They are not: the gland equation dates from the 1920s and the colour scale from the 1970s, and no anatomical structure or measurable phenomenon corresponds to a chakra. The Sanskrit sources describe a discipline of attention inside a lineage, not a therapy. No diagnostic claim made here should displace medical care. 2Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Physical Description
PetalsTwo petals 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra Two only, against the sixteen of the throat below it. The count falls rather than rises as the centres ascend, which is the opposite of what a reader expecting a hierarchy of elaboration would guess. Learn More
Ajna in the Tantric Sources
Ajna, meaning command, is described in the Sat-Cakra-Nirupana as a lotus of two petals between the eyebrows, bearing the letters ham and ksham. It is the seat of manas, the mind, and of the shakti Hakini, and within it is the itara linga and the syllable OM; unlike the lower five it is not assigned one of the gross elements, standing above them. The text says that the yogi who concentrates here becomes able to enter another body at will and becomes the knower of all, and that it is here that the guru's command is received, which is the sense of the name. Its position in the scheme, above the elemental centres and below the thousand-petalled lotus, makes it the last of the six centres proper.
Ajna carries a specific name in Hatha yoga literature for the point where the three principal nadis are said to meet: muktatriveni, the liberated triple confluence, comparing the meeting of Ida, Pingala and Sushumna at the brow to the geographic confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the legendary underground Saraswati at Prayag, a site of pilgrimage now within the modern city of Prayagraj. From this meeting point the texts describe Ida and Pingala as ending at the two nostrils while Sushumna alone continues upward, unaccompanied, through Ajna to Sahasrara, part of why Ajna is treated as the last of the six elemental centres rather than as a seventh alongside them.
Sources The Serpent PowerSir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) with Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.)
The Pineal Gland and the Third Eye
The popular identification of this centre with the pineal gland, and the associated claims that the gland is a vestigial third eye which can be activated, decalcified or opened, is a chain of modern accretions and deserves separating out. Descartes proposed in the seventeenth century that the pineal is the seat of the soul, on the anatomical ground that it appeared to be unpaired.
The pineal is in fact a small endocrine gland that secretes melatonin and regulates circadian rhythm, and it does derive embryologically from photoreceptive tissue, which is why some reptiles have a genuine parietal eye; that is the grain of fact behind the story. It does calcify with age, which is normal and has no known relation to consciousness. The tantric texts say nothing about it. Claims about activating the pineal are contemporary folklore, not Indian tradition, and some of the substances promoted for it are harmful.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
A centre kundalini is described as passing through and piercing as it rises through the central channel.
Om, Mantras Named as the seed syllable of the Third Eye chakra.
Attested In
One of the six centres described in the Shat-chakra-nirupana, the classical source for the system.
Belongs to Tradition
The centre belongs to the chakra system, which the atlas catalogues as a discipline in its own right.
Depicted In
Third Eye chakra, one of the seven the deck's own description confirms it is keyed to.
Derived from This
Human Design took the Sanskrit name ajna for this centre directly. The name is borrowed; the function assigned to it is the modern system's own.
Disciplines That Use This
The centres stones are most often placed against in this practice.
Originates in Language
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.) Related To
The seven chakras are the centers kundalini is said to rise through and activate. Chakra cosmology is shared across Hindu tantra and hatha-derived Kundalini Yoga.
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.) The description of this centre that reached the West comes from his Shat-chakra-nirupana of 1577, translated by Woodroffe in 1919. He did not originate the scheme, which is older and was never single. The version the modern world uses is his.
The chakra system is a tantric cosmological scheme central to tantric ritual and visualization. Chakra cosmology developed within, and remains central to, Hindu and Buddhist tantric traditions.
Sources
1. The Serpent Power
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), Ganesh & Co, 1919Sat-Cakra-Nirupana, verses on AjnaView the Source 2. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan
Kurt Leland, Ibis Press, 2016on Leadbeater
3. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century
Geoffrey Samuel, Cambridge University Press, 2008the subtle body and its relation to physical anatomy
4. Roots of Yoga
James Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.), Penguin Classics, 2017on Ajna and shambhavi mudra, the inward and upward gazeView the Source 4. Roots of Yoga
James Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.), Penguin Classics, 2017ch. 5, The Yogic BodyView the Source Essays About This Entity (3 essays)
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