Barbara Brennan's explanation of the chakras

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Barbara Brennan's explanation of the chakras

The chakras according to Barbara Brennan (diagnostic view)

diagram from Hands of Light, Bantam New Age books, 1988, p.46.

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The contemporay holistic healer Barbara Brennan goes into some detail regarding the chakras. In this she is following the Theosophists like Leadbeater, Alice Bailey, David Tansley and many others. Like them, she adopts the Tantric model of seven chakras but modifies it quite drastically, the chakras being no longer organs of yogic consciousness but rather etheric (and astral, and mental...) vortexes (see above illustration), which serve as transformers that receive and process cosmic energy, as well as enabling expression and healthy functioning of the individual's own consciousness and psycho-physical make-up.BarbaraBrennan'sunique contribution is to have not one but two rows of chakras, arranged in pairs located at the front and rear. These are given specific psychological characteristics, the front ones being associated with Feeling, the rear with Will, and the upper three with the Intellect.OneisremindedhereofthepsychologicaltriadsofSteiner and Gurdjieff, and even more of the Kabbalistic idea of left and right columns of Mercy and Severity - here transposed front and rear, and the supernal triad of "intellectual" sefirot (as explained by the occultist McGregor Mathers and others). The following table lists the psychological associations of each of these chakras in more detail (as well as links to respective pages):
Table by

BearCY (slightly modified)

MAJOR CHAKRAS AND ASSOCIATED PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTION click on swirl (left side of table) to go to page for that chakra
(includes material from many sources as well as Barbara Brennan)

MENTAL CENTERS: 7 Crown Center 6A Forehead Center 6B Mental Executive WILL CENTERS: 5B Base of Neck 4B Between Shoulder Blades 3B Diaphragmatic Center 2B Sacral Center

ASSOCIATED WITH: Integration of total personality with life, and spiritual aspects of mankind Capacity to visualize and understand mental concepts. Ability to carry out ideas in a practical way.

Sense of self, within society and one's profession. Ego will, or will towards the outer world.

Healing, intentionality towards one's health. Quantity of sexual energy.

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1 Coccygeal Center FEELING CENTERS: 5A Throat Center 4A Heart Center 3A Solar Plexus

Quantity of physical energy, will to live.

Taking in and assimilating. Heart feelings of love for other human beings, openness to life. Great pleasure and expansiveness, spiritual wisdom, and consciousness of universality of life. Who you are within the Universe. Quality of love for sexual partner giving and receiving physical, mental and spiritual pleasure.

2A Pubic Center

The parallel with Kabbalah mentioned above appears to be not very significant and purely coincidental - in as much as anything in esotericism can be "coincidence" perhaps "archetypal convergence" (a term coined by the Neo-Sabbatean teacher Yakov Leib) is a better definition. Of greater relevance is the connection with the centers of concentration used in the Microcosmic orbit, as defined by the modernday Taoist master Mantak Chia (below, left).

Here once again we have pairs of chakras at the front and rear of the body, as well as one at the top and one at the bottom (giving the symbolic four elements and associated cardinal points, as well as any number of associated correspondences one may choose to add). It does not take much imagination to realise there is some connection here, a rather more significant example of archetypal convergence. Certainly there are differences Mantak Chia specifically states that these are centers of concentration, not chakras, although they do correspond to specific acupuncture points (which writers like David Tansley

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and others in turn associate with minor chakras).Thereareno etheric vortexes in the Taoist version, little or no psychological associations, and there are more centers.Moreover,the microcosmic orbit, as it's name indicates, is a a dynamic conception involving the circulation of Ch'i energy.

The microcosmic orbit diagram from Mantak and Maneewan Chia Awaken Healing Light of the Tao (Healing Tao Books, 1993), p.170.

In the formulation of Barbara Brennan, although front and rear chakras are paired, there is no conception of a circulation of energy in a microcosm orbit that Mantak Chia speaks of, nor is reference made to the Inner line of chakras as represented in tantric yogic iconography. However, the distinction between Will, Feeling, and Mental Centers is significant, and would seem to correspond pretty much to Mantak Chia's distinction between the rear ascending yang governor channel (= will) and the descending front yin channel (= feeling). I would suggets here that both are describing the same realities, with the centers often in exactly the same locations, albeit from different points of view. The circulation of ch'i is a higher movement over the vortex in- and out-take of cosmic energy. One could even bring in Kabbalah here as the macrocosmic equivalent. My understanding is what are described here are what I have termed the "Secondary chakras" - i.e. the energic (whether vortex or circulating) activity of the organs of the etheric bodies. By studying phenomena like chakras, auras, nadis, etc, we understand more of the nature of the subtle body indicated in the illustration below.

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The chakras and the human aura according to

Barbara Brennan - from page

The Human Energy Field

diagram from Hands of Light, Bantam New Age books, 1988, plate 22-20

Links
PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF THE SEVEN MAJOR CHAKRAS - from Barbara Brennan's book Hands of Light(note - this is BearCY's page where I got the excellent coloured table from)

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page by M.Alan Kazlev page uploaded 2 March 1999, last modified 28 July 2004

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