Chakra
Root
moo-lah-DHAR-ah
Also Known As Mooladhara (Sanskrit) The Sanskrit name for this chakra. · Root Chakra (English) The Sanskrit name for this chakra.Original Term Muladhara (Sanskrit) The Sanskrit name for this chakra.
Origin 900 to 1300 CE
Muladhara, the root chakra, from the Sanskrit mula (root) and adhara (support), the foundation on which the whole subtle system stands. It sits at the base of the spine and the perineum, and is depicted as a deep red lotus of four petals enclosing a yellow square, the seat of the Earth element (Prithvi). Its seed sound is LAM, its planetary rulership is traditionally given to Saturn, and its bodily anchor is the adrenal glands, source of the survival and fight-or-flight response. Muladhara governs everything to do with physical existence: survival, security, the body, food, shelter, money, and the primal will to live. It is also the resting place of the coiled serpent power, Kundalini, said to sleep here until awakened. When balanced it brings groundedness, stability, patience, and a settled sense of safety and belonging in the world. When deficient it shows as fear, anxiety, restlessness, feeling uprooted or unsafe, and financial or bodily insecurity; when excessive it shows as rigidity, hoarding, greed, and sluggish heaviness.
Facts
Correspondences
Bija MantraLAM 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra Physical Description
PetalsFour petals 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra Each petal of a chakra carries a letter of the Sanskrit alphabet in the tantric descriptions, and the four here take the four letters beginning the labial series. Disputed
Origin Period1919 4Tradition: 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 4Tradition: 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 4Tradition: 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 4Tradition: 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. Identity
Also Known As ElementEarth 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra The element is prithvi, earth, the densest of the five and the one the lowest centre carries. The square that figures earth in tantric diagram is drawn inside this lotus. Use
Ritual UseWoodroffe's Serpent Power describes Muladhara as the seat where the sadhaka visualizes the coiled and dormant kundalini shakti at the start of Tantric sadhana, and as the point where nyasa, the ritual placement of mantra and touch practiced in ascending sequence up the body, begins. 1Tradition: Tantra Meaning
Symbolic MeaningMuladhara's element is earth, symbolised in the Shatchakranirupana by a yellow square set within its four petalled lotus, and the coiled serpent power is described there as sleeping at this centre, closing the entrance to the central channel with three and a half coils. 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 3 Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 2 Debunked
Origin Period1920 to 1977 4Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Ibis Press, 2016, traces the familiar seven-chakra scheme, fixed rainbow colours paired with endocrine glands and psychological themes, feature by feature through the Western esoteric authors who added them, beginning with Charles Webster Leadbeater's writings in the 1920s and continuing through later twentieth century popularisers. Leland's method is textual historical comparison: reading the Sanskrit tantric sources such as the Sat-Cakra-Nirupana against this sequence of Western authors shows that the rainbow colours and the gland and psychological correspondences appear nowhere in the Sanskrit material, so they were assembled during the tradition's Western reception rather than inherited from it. The tantric subtle body of channels and centres that the chakras describe is genuinely old; the specific colour and gland scheme now attached to the Root chakra is the twentieth century addition Leland's history documents. Origin Period1927 to 1928 4Tradition: Theosophical chakra scheme (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927) Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Ibis Press, 2016, traces the familiar seven-chakra scheme, fixed rainbow colours paired with endocrine glands and psychological themes, feature by feature through the Western esoteric authors who added them, beginning with Charles Webster Leadbeater's writings in the 1920s and continuing through later twentieth century popularisers. Leland's method is textual historical comparison: reading the Sanskrit tantric sources such as the Sat-Cakra-Nirupana against this sequence of Western authors shows that the rainbow colours and the gland and psychological correspondences appear nowhere in the Sanskrit material, so they were assembled during the tradition's Western reception rather than inherited from it. The tantric subtle body of channels and centres that the chakras describe is genuinely old; the specific colour and gland scheme now attached to the Root chakra is the twentieth century addition Leland's history documents. Origins
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. 4Tradition: 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. 4Tradition: Theosophical chakra scheme (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927) Attributed Author / CompilerSir John Woodroffe, writing as Arthur Avalon, for the translation that carried the scheme west. 4Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Origin of the NameMula is root and adhara is support, so Muladhara is the root support 2Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Origin of the NameThe English "Root" renders the name closely 2Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) LanguageSanskrit 2Tradition: 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 BodyAt the base of the spine, below the genitals, at the root of the central channel 1Tradition: Hindu Tantra Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceMuladhara, the root support: a lotus of four petals at the base of the trunk, the seat of the earth element, and the place where kundalini is described as lying coiled and closing the mouth of the central channel. 2Tradition: Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577) Rival Systems
A Rival System's AttributionThe Western chakra system: red. 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. 4Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan A Rival System's AttributionTheosophical chakra scheme: the adrenal. 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. 4Tradition: Theosophical chakra scheme (C. W. Leadbeater, 1927) 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. 4Tradition: The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan Learn More
Muladhara in the Tantric Sources
Muladhara is described in the Sat-Cakra-Nirupana, a Sanskrit text of 1577 by Purnananda which is the single source behind most modern accounts of the chakras, as a lotus of four petals at the base of the trunk, bearing the letters vam, sham, shham and sam. Within it is a yellow square, the symbol of the earth element, with the seed syllable LAM; the presiding deity is a child form of Brahma with the shakti Dakini. Inside the square is a triangle in which the kundalini is said to lie coiled three and a half times around a svayambhu linga, sleeping and closing the mouth of the central channel, the sushumna. The whole apparatus, petals with assigned letters, element, seed syllable, deity and animal vehicle, is a visualisation scheme for a specific meditative practice, not a description of anatomy or of energy in any modern sense.
The three principal nadis named throughout Hatha yoga literature, Ida, Pingala and Sushumna, are given their fullest early account in texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Goraksha Samhita, which describe seventy-two thousand nadis in all, with these three, plus eleven others, as paramount; Sushumna, the central channel, is said to run the same course as the chakra system itself, from Muladhara to Sahasrara, with Ida and Pingala winding around it. The elephant given as Muladhara's animal vehicle, vahana, is named in the tradition as Airavata, the mount of the god Indra, chosen for its association with strength and with the earth the root chakra governs.
Sources The Serpent PowerSir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) with Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.)
How the Seven-Chakra System Reached the West
The route is short and well documented. In 1918 the British judge Sir John Woodroffe, writing as Arthur Avalon, published The Serpent Power, which translated Purnananda's Sat-Cakra-Nirupana and a second short text with a long introduction. That single book is the origin of the seven-chakra system as it is known outside India: almost every subsequent western account descends from it, often at several removes.
Woodroffe was working with a living Bengali tantric tradition and was scrupulous about his sources, but his book presented one text of one lineage, and the impression it created, that there is a single canonical chakra system, is a side effect of its success. Indian tantric literature is far more various than the book suggests, and the atlas records the seven-chakra scheme as what it is, a particular lineage's scheme that became the standard by an accident of transmission.
Connections
Associated With
Source Healing Codes for the Biological ApocalypseLeonard G. Horowitz and Joseph S. Puleo
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Modern Western chakra teaching reads Muladhara as governing the legs down through the ankles, extending the classical text's single point location at the base of the spine.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
The skeletal system is a modern Western chakra attribution to Muladhara, following on from the Theosophical and later crystal healing literature this correspondence set draws from rather than the classical Sanskrit text.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Barbara Brennan's Hands of Light keys this aura layer to this chakra; other aura-layer schemes count and order the layers differently.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Modern Western chakra teaching reads Muladhara as governing the legs and feet, extending the classical text's single point location at the base of the spine.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Source Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to AbstractionJohn Gage
Modern Western chakra teaching reads Muladhara as governing the legs down to the knees, extending the classical text's single point location at the base of the spine.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Kundalini is described as coiled asleep at this centre, and the whole system is an account of what happens when it rises.
Source The Serpent PowerSir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon)
Lam, Mantras Named as the seed syllable of the Root chakra.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Attested In
One of the six centres described in the Shat-chakra-nirupana, the classical source for the system.
Source The Serpent PowerSir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon)
Belongs to Tradition
The centre belongs to the chakra system, which the atlas catalogues as a discipline in its own right.
Source The Serpent PowerSir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon)
Depicted In
Root chakra, one of the seven the deck's own description confirms it is keyed to.
Source Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards (Penguin Random House listing)Tori Hartman
Derived from This
Human Design took the name of this centre from the tantric chakra. 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.
Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular ThoughtWouter J. Hanegraaff
Originates in Language
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.)
Related To
Kundalini is said to lie coiled at the base of the spine within Muladhara, the root chakra, until awakened.
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.)
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.
Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
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.
Source The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth CenturyGeoffrey Samuel
Sources
1. The Serpent Power
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), Ganesh & Co, 1919- on Muladhara as the seat of dormant kundalini and the starting point of nyasa
- Sat-Cakra-Nirupana, verses on Muladhara
View the Source 2. Roots of Yoga
James Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.), Penguin Classics, 2017ch. 5, The Yogic BodyView the Source 3. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century
Geoffrey Samuel, Cambridge University Press, 2008the transmission of tantric material to the west
4. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan
Kurt Leland, Ibis Press, 2016- on Leadbeater
- Associated With: C
- Associated With: Etheric Body
- Associated With: Thighs
Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse
Leonard G. Horowitz and Joseph S. Puleo, Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 1999Associated With: 396 Hz
Essays About This Entity (5 essays)
The Seven Chakras
The Usui Reiki System
One Stone Can Be Attested and Debunked at Once
Carries attested, debated and debunked readings of the same origin claim at once
Read the EssayChakras' Forty Disputed Facts Reduce to Two Findings, Told Seven Times
Carries the type's further, distinct modern-synthesis finding; already anchored elsewhere, no side effect here
Read the EssayWhat the Atlas Argues With Itself About Most
Another of the chakras carrying several open claims at once
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