Petal (chakra)

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[edit] Introduction

In chakrology (see also esotericism and Tantra) the number of petals in a chakra identifies a characteristic of an individual chakra. The significance for each chakra to have a specific number of petals is not generally known. The purpose of this article is to describe the reasons why each chakra holds in it the specific number of petals which they are traditionally reported to contain.

Traditionally the names used to identify chakras come from Sanskrit but there is a New Age consensus in the use of English names for the chakras. In this article the English nomenclature will predominate.

In current literature on the human aura and chakras, the expression "subtle energy centres" is often used in conjunction with or instead of the Sanskrit term chakras.

[edit] Number of Chakras

Based on Sanskrit literature from India, it is generally considered that there are seven major chakras within the subtle human energy body or - to say it differently - seven subtle energy centres within the human energy field.

However, the earliest Sanskrit sources (Upanishads) list either only four or five chakras. The Yogatattva Upanishad (sloka 83-101) lists five and describes these chakras as being interrelated with the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, space. Over time, less ancient sources have added two or three major chakras to the original list while contemporary New Age writings have added a plethora of minor ones.

Recent chakra literature has also expanded the original list of five elements with many different and sometimes rather arbitrary elemental notions such as time or light for the brow chakra, and consciousness or pure energy for the crown chakra.

This article specifically focuses on the number of petals for each of the seven major chakras. However, in order to help with the understanding of the mathematics behind the various and sometimes varying chakra petal counts, one additional but lesser known chakra will be brought in.

In addition to the more abstract characteristics that are traditionally discussed in relation to the chakras e.g. Chakra Sanskrit Characters, Chakra Sounds and the elements or Skandhas there are also more concrete characteristics (albeit still rather non-human) e.g. Chakra Animals, Chakra Geometric Shapes and, as discussed here, the number of chakra petals that are traditionally used in the description of the chakras.

This article aims to explain that the relationship between the number of chakra petals and the human body is much more fundamental and concrete than it is generally assumed to be. Often only a symbolic value is given to the petal counts, especially when discussed in relation to the Sanskrit characters that are assigned to chakras and petals.

It will become evident that the petal count for each chakra is related to certain specific groupings of vertebrae and certain specific groupings of nerve pairs in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) that emanate from the spinal column through the vertebrae. This may be an indication of the fact that the early yogic investigators of the chakras (who either depicted or enumerated the chakra petals) were not only intuitive or clairvoyant[citation needed] but also used anatomical practices to find a correlation between what they saw intuitively and found through physical anatomical research. Terms like sushumna, ida and pingala that often appear in texts dealing with yoga, chakras or kundalini are not only dealing with esoteric subtle energy notions but also point concretely at physical structures found in the human body - structures that may produce energetic field characteristics that are not accepted or easily understood in current scientific investigations of the human being as a whole, in a spectrum ranging from the more physical or gross to the more spiritual or subtle.

The main purpose of this article then is to show how the number of chakra petals is not just 'some number' but rather specifically related to and depending on a series of physical internal components within the human body such as its skeletal and peripheral nervous system parts as well as some specific physical structures within the brain.

[edit] Considerations affecting number of petals

Thus the following considerations affect the number of petals for each chakra:

Each chakra can be envisaged as an energy field that resembles a rotating color wheel, somewhat funnel or vortex-like, that can be seen as divided into a number of segments or divided up by a number of spokes.

The Chakras by C.W. Leadbeater (1927) is considered to be a classic book on this topic. In it the chakras are depicted as segmented or striated color wheels, the segments of which according to tradition are called petals. Leadbeater proposes another additional term for these petals: undulations.

Appellations such as colored undulations and terms like striated rotating energy disks or circular concentric interference wave patterns describe the way these segmented chakras are seen by clairvoyants much more accurately than the word petals.

Except for the crown chakra, literature in general agrees on the number of petals or segments for each chakra.

In addition to explaining the reason for the specific number of petals that each chakra can be observed to contain, this article also explains the reason for the discrepancy between the number of petals for the crown chakra as reported in various differing older and newer writings e.g. 960, 972 or 1,000.[citation needed]

As mentioned above, in order to understand this discrepancy it will prove to be worthwhile to recognize an additional but not very well known chakra that is situated underneath the root chakra, just below the base of the coccyx: the perineum chakra. This chakra (just like the crown chakra) is situated outside the physical body but still within the subtle human energy field.

When this additional chakra is taken into account, the reason for the difference between the crown chakra petal counts of 960 vs 1,000 will become more understandable.

Chakra Petals Color Glands Element Phase State
Crown (Sahasrara) 960, 972 (960 +12) or 1000 Violet Pineal
Brow or 3rd Eye (Ajna) 96 (2 main lobes of 48 each) Indigo Pituitary
Throat (Vishuddha) 16 Cyan Thyroid Space
Heart (Anahata) 12 Green Thymus Air Gaseous
Solar Plexus or Navel (Manipura) 10 Yellow Digestive system glands Fire Plasmic
Sacral (Svadhistana) 6 Orange Ovaries or Testes Water Liquid
Root or Base (Muladhara) 4 Red Adrenals Earth Solid
Perineum ° 2 Magenta Pheromone glands at the bottom of the coccyx

° a minor chakra

Note: Unfortunately, in contemporary literature on the chakras the pineal and pituitary glands are sometimes exchanged in their relationship to the crown and brow chakras. This mix-up originates from a confused understanding of a difficult paragraph in Sir John Woodroffe's (pseudonym Arthur Avalon) book Serpent Power.

In his book The Chakras Leadbeater shows an illustration in which the five lower chakras are related to various nervous plexi that are part of the central nervous system. Keeping that in mind, we can - for the five lower chakras - come to an understanding of the relationship between:

  • the number of petals, segments or undulations of those chakras,
  • the number of vertebrae that each particular chakra appears to be linked to,
  • the number of nerves (nerve pairs) emanating from the particular groupings of vertebrae.

In a brochure The Chakras, a clearer view (2000), the reader is reminded that human body's spine consists of 24 vertebrae and that according to older anatomical studies[citation needed] 24 nerve pairs (48 nerves) emanate from those 24 vertebrae. In modern anatomy though, it is noted that 25 nerve pairs are observed instead of 24 pairs. The brochure contends that the difference between the older count (24 nerve pairs) and the current count (25 nerve pairs) might very well explain the discrepancy in the crown chakra's numbers of petals that are either reported as being 960, 972 or 1,000. This will be explained in more detail later on in this article.

When the number of petals of the five commonly accepted lower chakras (not including the extra perineum chakra) are added up, one comes to a total of 48 petals (4+6+10+12+16=48). It is interesting that this number corresponds to the 48 nerves as they are identified in older anatomy sources[citation needed]. When the perineum chakra (consisting of two petals) is included, one counts 50 petals. This quantity corresponds to the current count of 50 nerves - the 25 nerve pairs that emanate from the spinal vertebrae.

The lower chakras thus appear to be directly related to the nerve pairs that emanate from the spinal column; their petal count corresponds - although not exactly - to the current convention of anatomical identification and numbering of the vertebrae and nerve pairs (28):

Conventional vertebrae grouping Conventional vertebrae numbering
Cervical C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7
Thoracic T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T11, T12
Lumbar L1, L2, L3, L4, L5
Sacral (sacrum and coccyx) S1, S2, S3, S4, S5

The arrangement for the chakras (including the additional perineum chakra) that are directly related to the spinal column and CNS nerve pairs emanating from it, is as follows:

Chakra Nr. of Petals Nr. of Nerve pairs Revised vertebrae grouping
Throat 16 8 C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, T1
Heart 12 6 T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7
Solar Plexus 10 5 T8, T9, T10, T11, T12
Sacral 6 3 L1, L2, L3
Root 4 2 L4, L5
Perineum 2 1 S5
Total 50 25

When we look at an anatomy chart (generally to be found in a doctor's or chiropractor's office) depicting the vertebrae and their nerve pairs, it can be demonstrated that the division as described in the list above makes as much sense (or more?) as the current convention of vertebrae number designation.

The lower chakras are directly related to the spine, but the brow and crown chakras do not have a direct spinal column connection. Instead, according to most sources[citation needed], they are directly linked to two glands embedded in the human brain: the pituitary gland (hypophysis) and the pineal gland (epiphysis).

The brow chakra is linked to the pituitary gland which consists of two parts, the anterior and the posterior lobes. This two lobed feature of the pituitary gland - or alternatively - the two hemispheres of the brain (which this chakra is also reported[citation needed] to be influenced by) may account for the fact that in many[citation needed] illustrations the brow chakra shows two large lobes.

According to above mentioned brochure it is this twofold nature of the pituitary gland or the brain that accounts for the doubling of the total number of petals of the traditional five lower chakras (48x2=96) as their accumulated energy reaches the brow chakra, thus producing the 96 petals of the brow chakra. The writer of the brochure, favoring the two brain-hemisphere view, suggests the following,

"The 48 nerves (older anatomical count) are intricately connected to the brain's two hemispheres. This might be what results in the doubling of the total of 48 petals for the five lower chakras thus resulting in - as depicted in Leadbeater's book The Chakras - the two vertical semi-circles containing 48 striations or undulations each, adding up to 96 petals altogether."

In most chakra literature, chakras are described as subtle energy centres processing and transmitting subtle vibrational energies. The chakra pictures found in Leadbeater's The Chakras show this vibrational energy as concentric undulations or interwoven energy waves. Keeping that in the mind's eye, one can envisage that the energetic wave packets, as they acquire and build up more energy while moving up from the lower chakras up the spinal chord to the highest chakra, that they affect the total energy of the crown chakra around or, according to most writings, above the head - but still within the subtle energy field that surrounds the human body.

According to The Chakras, a clearer view, to understand the differing counts in petals e.g. 960, 972 (960+12) or 1,000 for the crown chakra, it may be helpful to know that the brain contains within it a number of interconnected liquid containing cavities, the five paired ventricles of the ventricular system, that are filled with cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF). This is the same fluid that circulates through:

  • the central spinal canal,
  • an outer layer of the spinal chord,
  • the meninges that surround the brain,
  • and - according to current histology texts[citation needed] - leaks out from the ventricles and the spinal chord either to be absorbed by the blood or to 'bathe' the nerves by a process that is currently not well understood.

How the combined vibrational energy from the six or seven chakras (48 or 50 petals) below the crown chakra may gets its vibrational strength multiplied tenfold, thus producing either the 960 (2x48x10) or the 1000 (2x50x10) petals as they can be observed in the crown chakra and as they are depicted in Leadbeater's The Chakras is as yet not understood.

The crown chakra is often depicted with an additional twelve lobed flower-like formation in its centre. This may account for the additional 12 petals that, when added to the 960, make up the 972 petals that the crown chakra is reported to contain according to some writings[citation needed]. In turn this 12 lobed centre contains another striated circular formation. It may be possible to interpret these lobed and striated formations as representing the 12 major cranial nerve pairs that are found to exist within the brain.

[edit] Additional notes

Literature dealing with chakra petals often associates each petal with one of the characters of the Sanskrit Devanagari alphabet.

Each chakra as a whole is usually also associated with a single Sanskrit Devanagari character, an element, a color, a geometric shape, an animal, a sense, one organ or a pair of organs, a gland and a mantric sound.

For more information regarding this, a classic source is Chakras, Energy Centers of Transformation by Harish Johari (1987). Other good sources are Kundalini Yoga by Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh (free www edition 1999 - see external links to download) and Kundalini Tantra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati (1984).

[edit] External links