Chakra

chakras

The chakra system enters the depth-psychology corpus along two distinct but frequently intersecting trajectories. The first, embodied above all in Jung’s seminars on Kundalini yoga and subsequently elaborated by J. J. Clarke, treats the seven spinal centres as psychological symbols par excellence — intuitions about the whole range of psychic possibility, mapping states of consciousness that Western psychology had left unnamed. Jung’s approach is frankly interpretive: the chakras become a diagnostic grammar for locating where libido is arrested or ascending, and their symbolism is read against the broader architecture of analytical psychology rather than accepted on strictly Tantric terms. The second trajectory, represented most fully in Joseph Campbell, follows Tantric theory more literally, identifying the lotus centres as a ‘pictographic lexicon’ of transformational stages through which vital energy — kundalini — ascends the sushumna from the root muladhara to the thousand-petalled sahasrara. Campbell explicitly distances his reading from Jung’s psychological reframing. A third, more applied register appears in Mary Greer’s tarot work, where the seven centres supply an organisational schema for divination spreads, and in Marion Woodman’s clinical writing, where somatic symptoms are mapped directly onto specific chakras. Evans-Wentz’s editorial commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead adds a Tantric-Buddhist dimension, foregrounding the heart, throat, and brain centres as the operative poles of the bardic journey. The term thus marks a productive fault-line between symbolic-psychological and cosmological-physiological interpretations of inner transformation.

In the library 15 passages

The symbols of the chakras, then, afford us a standpoint that extends beyond the conscious. They are intuitions about the psyche as a whole, about its various conditions and possibilities. They symbolize the psyche from a cosmic standpoint.

Clarke cites Jung’s own formulation to argue that the chakras function in analytical psychology as symbolic extensions of consciousness, mapping the total range of psychic states rather than denoting physiological realities.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Kundalini is encouraged to rise through a series of centres in the body, known as chakras, the aim being to activate its energy by various yoga techniques, and to raise it from the lowest to the highest chakra, there to be united with Shiva

Clarke maps the technical Tantric structure of the chakra system — kundalini’s ascent from perineal root to crown union with Shiva — as the operative framework Jung encountered and selectively reinterpreted through his own psychology.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

These various stages are represented as being controlled from spinal centers known as chakras. The chakras are pictured as a system of seven psychological centers up the spine… Campbell follows Tantric theory in his understanding of these centers. In this he differs from Carl Jung

Noel establishes that Campbell reads the chakras strictly within Tantric theory as a graduated map of consciousness-transformation, explicitly contrasting this with Jung’s psychologising reinterpretation.

thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

These various stages are represented as being controlled from spinal centers known as chakras. The chakras are pictured as a system of seven psychological centers up the spine. They are arranged in ascending order along an invisible nerve or spinal channel.

This passage, drawn from Campbell’s recorded lectures, presents the chakras as the structural backbone of Kundalini Yoga’s transformational lexicon, treating them as literal spinal centres rather than purely symbolic constructs.

Campbell, Joseph, The Power of Myth, 1988thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The only way you can civilize little human animals is by civilizing them. That is to say, by opening their heart chakra… The human animal is found in the pelvic system, with those three first chakras. But the heart is the beginning of humanity.

Campbell deploys the chakra hierarchy as an ethical and anthropological argument, locating the transition from animal to human consciousness precisely at the heart centre and grounding compassion in the physiology of ascent.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

So Cakra 3 is a primarily power-dominated cakra, and the Sanskrit here is very important. This is the one from which most of the energies have to be generated… The petals are described as having the color of lightning-laden thunderclouds.

Campbell provides a close symbolic reading of the third chakra, correlating its iconography of fire, the ram, and the swastika with the drives of aggression and will-to-power as understood by Freud and Adler.

Campbell, Joseph, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Of the Psychic-Centres, or Chakra, the Bardo Thödol is concerned chiefly with three: (1) the Heart-centre (Anāhata-chakra); (2) the Throat-centre (Vishuddha-chakra) and (3) the Brain-centre (Sahasrāra Padma).

Evans-Wentz identifies the specific subset of chakras operative in the Tibetan Book of the Dead’s bardic pathology, positioning the heart and brain centres as the primary poles of the human organism in both life and the after-death state.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The Kundalini serpent was arrested at the swadhistana chakra (the kidney chakra), her feelings were blocked, and the physical symptom was kidney failure.

Woodman applies the chakra model clinically, mapping a patient’s somatic illness onto an arrested kundalini at the second chakra and interpreting bodily symptoms as expressions of psycho-spiritual blockage.

Woodman, Marion, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The lotus at the base of the sushumna, called the ‘Root Support’ (Muladhara), is described as crimson in hue and having four petals, on each of which a Sanskrit syllable is inscribed… In the white center is a yellow square symbolic of the element earth, wherein a white elephant stands

Campbell furnishes a detailed iconographic account of the muladhara chakra, establishing the correspondence between lotus petals, Sanskrit sound-counterparts, elemental symbolism, and the mythic animal vehicle.

Campbell, Joseph, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

1—ROOT CHAKRA. What is at the root of, or the basis for, your problem? How vital and energetic are you? What habits are you tied into? 2—SPLEEN CHAKRA. How are you using your sexual energy?

Greer transposes the seven-chakra schema into a structured tarot divination spread, treating each centre as an interrogative lens for diagnosing psychological blockage and energetic imbalance.

Greer, Mary K., Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

knowledge of what is known today in India as the kundalini was not in ancient times confined to the Indus Valley Civilization… two cherubim… entwined about an axial rod in such a way as to suggest both the caduceus of classical Hermes and the seven spinal centers of the sushumna

Campbell argues for the cross-cultural antiquity of the chakra-sushumna complex by identifying the caduceus and Sumerian serpent imagery as parallel encodings of the same axial spinal symbolism.

Campbell, Joseph, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The other nerve is called pingala and represents solar consciousness… when you think of your spiritual life as relieving you of the physical, you are going up this track… This is known as manic-depressive experience.

Campbell elaborates the subsidiary nerve channels of kundalini anatomy — ida and pingala — using them to diagnose a psycho-spiritual pathology of spiritual inflation detached from embodied life.

Campbell, Joseph, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Listen to any sound or silence at all without interpreting it, and the Anahata will be heard of the Void that is the ground of being, and the world that is the body of being

Campbell invokes the Anahata chakra (heart centre) as the site of the unstruck sound — the cosmic syllable underlying all phenomenal experience — linking yogic anatomy to the metaphysics of AUM.

Campbell, Joseph, Myths to Live By, 1972aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

chahra system, 280

An index entry in Psychology and Alchemy records Jung’s engagement with the chakra system, indicating its integration into his wider symbolic comparative project even if not elaborated in the surrounding text.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Related terms