I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky…Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once,
the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.
Shannon Hale
Here in twenty-first-century Western culture the term chakra appears on makeup labels, in brochures for corporate wellness programs, and in cookbooks and self-help manuals. The word comes up in focused discussions of spirituality and in mundane comparisons of healthcare plans. Today chakra knowledge appears everywhere, like the Eternal Blue Sky above us—an accepted part of our daily existence.
We owe much of our present-day integration of this ancient knowledge to several great minds of the West who have investigated two forks in the road. First, they resurrected the traces of chakras that were already present in the West, from pre-Columbian North and South American philosophies to mystical Christianity to the roots of Hermeticism. Chakra wisdom had already been planted in the minds of Westerners before the actors in this section of the book took stage; it had merely lain fallow for some time.
The other path these actors traveled led deep into the newly introduced Eastern thought they embraced. This knowledge took hold and began to grow, leading to an array of integrated East-West philosophical systems.
Developing these schools of thought took some courage. Consider the devotion of the first Western practitioners of yoga, who were ridiculed by those with more traditional beliefs and who lacked the support of the group classes, cushy mats, and audio and video recordings that are so commonplace today. Think about the early adherents of spiritual development or transcendent psychology whose explorations might have fallen outside their own comfort zones, much less the comfort zones of others. What about the founders of movements that broke new ground, meeting with their new members in basements and other out-of-the-way places? These are the people who have truly linked the past to the present, and we have them to thank as we reap the rewards of working with our own stairway to the heavens, the chakras.
In part 8 I will give testimony to a few of the people who were prominent in modern Western chakra knowledge and to organizations that created an explosion of modern chakra systems. I will also offer a historical review over time, starting with some of the esoteric groups that first blended ancient Eastern and Western concepts and continuing into the modern day. From the Middle Ages onward, chakra-related ideas have been shaped and reshaped, leading to several of the major approaches that are featured in this part.
Chapter 30 begins with an impressive lineup of individuals, including Paracelsus, Christian Rosencreutz, and Franz Mesmer, among others, whose intelligent philosophies birthed “isms” and orders. From this group, which roughly spans the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries, we gather perspectives that have added mathematic, spiritual, and even healing knowledge to our chakra medicine kit.
Chapter 31 is something of a “time out.” We temporarily cease our dot-to-dot chronological discussion so we can focus on a singular movement: the Theosophical Society. This influential Western movement with origins in the late 1800s is a compendium of philosophies from East and West, but it also forms a unified whole, a system considered “God’s wisdom.” Chakra investigators will recognize many of the contributors, including Madame Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, and Charles Leadbeater.
In chapter 32 we pick up our pace once more and focus on several individuals who lived between the late nineteenth century and the present. We now find chakras coming of age, maturing into the West in such a way that nearly everyone who seeks knowledge of chakra medicine can find it. We visit with Sir Arthur Avalon, discover the ways Carl Jung initiated chakras into contemporary psychology, and move into the New Age, where we find many other chakra inventors and catalogers, including Anodea Judith and Carolyn Myss.
I will explore as many prominent movements and characters as possible, knowing that I am only revealing the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Literally millions of people throughout the West have received, worked with, and handed forward knowledge of the chakras, bringing us to our present-day fascination with these embodied stars.
As you study the work of these masters, whose chakra knowledge is presented in the context of their spiritual views as well as the subtle energy systems they outlined in their work, challenge yourself to watch the progression of ideas. Know, too, that under this wild blue sky of ours there are further insights to come.
We will begin our journey by describing key individuals and esoteric orders, following as chronological a path as possible. These figures were prominent in Western chakraology, while the orders tie together the mysteries of Persia, India, and Egypt, as well as other Hermetic influences that were described in earlier chapters. You can review that material to understand the basis of these mystical and magical orders, which, though seeded in the past, still exist today.