The Colonization of the Chakra System
Art by Sara Abrahamsson
Chances are that at some point these past few years, you’ve heard someone talk about chakras or may have even experimented with incorporating them into your own practice… but what are they really, and where did they come from?
A chakra system, or energy center map, has been utilized by many different religions, magickal practices, and spiritual views throughout history. According to Sanskrit texts, a single chakra is a central point in your body where some form of energy resides. It is believed that chakras are meant to be opened, aligned, or dissipated in order to benefit one’s well-being. By doing so, one can begin to pursue complete wellness of their physical, emotional and spiritual self.
The chakra system that is primarily recognized in the United States, and more generally the global west, is the classic seven chakra system, where each chakra represents a primary energy center in the body and where each one correlates to a color in the rainbow. In the West, people use these color coordinations to align their different chakras, usually with certain colored foods, crystals, or sound bowls. Yet, believe it or not, this color-based system is just an interpretation of the many different chakra systems invented and practiced throughout the centuries. This specific interpretation has been spread throughout the United States, especially through social media and “spirituality” rising in trendiness, and treated as if it was a uniquely Western idea. But like many other New Age spiritual ideas, the concept is only derived from Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism.
When studying the earliest texts that recorded the concept of chakras, one of the main ideas is that there are six, fifteen, even hundreds of chakras located within one person’s body, depending on which text you look into. Each energy center is meant to have an association with one of the elements, a diety, and a Sanskrit sound to be used during meditation in order to access the chakra.
So how did things get so misinterpreted throughout time? The seven chakras were believed by some to just be the “main” or most prominent chakras, with the implication that many more were still in each body. This belief was first recorded in India around the year 500-1500 BC, and was only meant to be the core of one’s chakra system. According to scholar Anodea Judith, knowledge of the chakra system was passed down through an oral tradition by the Indo-European (or Aryan) people. This soon spread to the West and led to the reinvention and simplification of chakras by Western authors and thinkers, giving little credit to it’s actual founders. Yet in an era of endless information at our fingertips , European philosophers that paraphrased these large ideas are still credited with being the innovators of such a complex and historic system.
As a generation, we should all take the first step into decolonizing our spiritual practices. Things like energy work, crystal magick, candle magick, smudging, yoga, herbalism, and much more are treated with little respect for its cultural depth. A majority of these points of eclectic spirituality have been stolen from Native American tribes, Judaism, Islam, Wicca, Paganism, Brujeria, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Although appreciation of these different religions and practices are understandable, taking the time to research and respect where these “spiritual” ideas derive from is essential to decolonize one’s practice, and eventually one self.
