Phil Hine: Wheels within wheels. Chakras and Western Esotericism

Phil Hine: "Wheels within Wheels. Chakras and Western Esotericism"

People don't have Chakras. You don't have chakras. Your pets don't have chakras.

Well, probably not.

Surprised?

The idea that there are 7 (or better: 6 + 1) Chakras in the human body, as well as their placement, is relatively recent (19th century) and only developed because Colonialists (especiall Theosophists) and Indians eager to prove that their culture and tradition had a long history of "medicinal relevance" took those hidden, tantric concepts (the earlist mention of something like "Chakras" goes back to the 5th/6th century) and transformed thim into something.... else.

Renowned occultist and magician Phil Hine, known for fundamental works about Chaos Magick (especially 'Condensed Chaos' springs to mind) has taken the plunge into those tantric texts mentioning different chakra models. In the early texts, number and placement of those "wheels" differed from what later became he conveniently aligned 7 chakra model everyone uses (and assumes to be stone age old) today.

In his book he examines the "history" of Chakras in ancient Indian tantric texts, their role within that context and how "the West" made first contact with the concept of Chakras and how the shape and shadow of the religious and spiritual traditions of those Westerners warped the original concepts out of their cultural context until they became what they are today: ever present concepts used for self-development and even part of Jungian inspired corporate leadership coaching programs used in big companies.

Chapter by chapter, we travel from the first encounter with Chakras by Westerners in the 19th century and then finish kind of 1950ish, when Jung and others had adopted the current model and re-formulated the meaning and nature of what chakras actually "are" into what we think about them today.

The fun part? It's all made up!

Besides the fact that science said so all the time, it's all made up for the more spiritually inclined folks out there. It literally is made up... and the Indians went along, as they were struggling to re-disocer, define and defend their own cultural and religious identity during the times of becomind independent from the British.

It is more than likely that in what we have left from the "real" ancient teachings, the concept of chakras was something that those who got initiated into the tantric side of Hinduism used during meditations - and that those "energy wheels" were not a starting point, but either support for better concentration and focus exercise work or actually the result of secret tantric work on the energy body: only those initiated ones who successfully accomplished certain secret practices were actually developing chakra centers in their energy bodies. The rest of us was blissfully unaware of them and didn't have them to begin with!

Either way - all things are concepts anyways - but before you splash out thousands of money for your next "chakra energy healing course", you migh wanna give this book a read and make a more informed decision! 

Just saying! ;-)