Chakra

A chakra (/ˈtʃʌkrəˌˈtʃæk-ˌˈtʃɑːk-/; Sanskrit: चक्र, romanized: cakra, lit. 'wheel, circle'; Pali: cakka) is a meditation-aid in the form of a psychic or psychospiritual energy-center in the subtle body, as visualized in a variety of Hindu and Buddhist tantric yoga and meditation practices.

Medieval Buddhist texts from 8th century CE mention four or five chakras, while Hindu sources have various numbers. The best-known variant has seven chakras, as described in Sir John Woodroffe's 1919 book The Serpent Power, a rough translation of Pūrṇānanda Yati's Ṣaṭ-chakra-nirūpaṇa ("Explanation of the Six Chakras," 1577).

Modern Western Occultism views chakras as actual though esoteric energy-centers. This view arose in the 1880s with H. P. Blavatsky and other Theosophists, and was subsequently shaped by Woodroffe's The Serpent Power, and Charles W. Leadbeater's 1927 book The Chakras. Psychological and other attributes, rainbow colours, and a wide range of correspondences with other systems such as alchemy, astrology, gemstones, homeopathy, Kabbalah and Tarot were added later.

Lexically, chakra is the Indic reflex of an ancestral Indo-European form *kʷékʷlos, whence also "wheel" and "cycle" (Ancient Greek: κύκλος, romanized: kýklos). It has both literal and metaphorical uses, as in the "wheel of time" or "wheel of dharma", such as in Rigveda hymn verse 1.164.11, pervasive in the earliest Vedic texts.

In Buddhism, especially in Theravada, the Pali noun cakka connotes "wheel". Within the Buddhist scriptures referred to as the Tripitaka, Shakyamuni Buddha variously refers the "dhammacakka", or "wheel of dharma", connoting that this dharma, universal in its advocacy, should bear the marks characteristic of any temporal dispensation. Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of freedom from cycles in and of themselves, whether karmic, reincarnative, liberative, cognitive or emotional.

In Jainism, the term chakra also means "wheel" and appears in various contexts in its ancient literature. As in other Indian religions, chakra in esoteric theories in Jainism such as those by Buddhisagarsuri means a yogic energy center.

The word chakra appears to first emerge within the Vedas, though not in the sense of psychic energy centers, rather as chakravartin or the king who "turns the wheel of his empire" in all directions from a center, representing his influence and power. The iconography popular in representing the Chakras, states the scholar David Gordon White, traces back to the five symbols of yajna, the Vedic fire altar: "square, circle, triangle, half moon and dumpling".

The hymn 10.136 of the Rigveda mentions a renunciate yogi with a female named kunannamā. Literally, it means "she who is bent, coiled", representing both a minor goddess and one of many embedded enigmas and esoteric riddles within the Rigveda. Some scholars, such as D.G. White and Georg Feuerstein, have suggested that she may be a reference to kundalini shakti and a precursor to the terminology associated with the chakras in later tantric traditions.