Many photographers have tried to capture this supposed halo coming from the reinterpretation of several oriental ideas by a former priest.
If you've lived on planet Earth since you were a child, which is quite likely, you've heard about auras and chakras. If you know anyone a bit esoteric, you may know more about it and have even heard of chakra openings (and not for a small fee) and aura cleansings, with the idea, as is often the case, being to cure various modern ailments ranging from anxiety to depression and to connect with nature and oneself. Allegedly, staying away from negative feelings and practicing some activities such as yoga, tai chi or reiki would help to heal it.
Where does this idea of people's aura and its color come from? As such, it would be a halo or field of luminous energy that surrounds the person and very few people are able to see. The concept was popularized over a century ago by Charles Webster Leadbeater, a former Church of England priest and member of the mystical Theosophical Society (esoteric organization). He had studied theosophy in India and believed he had the capacity for clairvoyance. He claimed such peculiar things as that most men come from Martha or that hydrogen atoms were formed by egg-shaped bodies.
Webster incorporated the Tantric notion of the chakras, reinterpreting Eastern beliefs and blending them with his own ideas.
In 1903 he published ‘Man visible and invisible‘ and illustrated what was the soul of man in various stages according to his moral evolution: from savage to saint. A few years later he introduced the modern conception of the aura as we know it. He incorporated the tantric notion of the chakras, reinterpreting Eastern beliefs and mixing them with his own ideas. He spoke of the chakras as energy vortexes, associating each one with a gland, an organ or other parts of the body.
Years later, these ideas were adopted and reinterpreted by other theosophists, and acquired greater relevance in the 70's when the New Age movements picked them up again. In those years, techniques were developed that are still in use today, related to possible ‘blockages‘ of the chakras. Healing with crystals, energy medicine… then new books appeared proposing links between the aura, chakras and colors, personality traits, etcetera.
With the New Age movement, new books appeared proposing links between the aura, the chakras and the colors, personality traits…
It must also be said that since the end of the 19th century, attempts have been made to capture the energy fields around the human body by means of photography. The first to do so was the French physician Hippolyte Baraduc. Actually, photography of these so-called auras is possible due to the heat emanating from the body of an organism, which is observable in the form of infrared radiation. In 1939, Semyon Kirlian discovered that by placing any object on photographic paper and then passing a high-voltage electric current through it, an image of a glowing outline surrounding the object was obtained.
Science has been responsible for denying the existence of auras on numerous occasions. According to some neurologists, the fact that some people believe they can see auras could be due to diseases such as epilepsy, migraines or the influence of some psychedelic drugs such as LSD. And something even more interesting and that could turn the concept on its head: a 2012 study published in the journal ‘Consciousness and cognition' explained that the phenomenon of seeing auras could be related to synesthesia.
“Not all healers are synaesthetes, but among them there is a higher prevalence of this phenomenon.”
Synaesthesia is a variation of human perception, having nothing pathological, diagnosed by Gustav Fechner the first in 1812. Synaesthetic people automatically and involuntarily experience the activation of an additional sensory or cognitive pathway in response to specific stimuli and “mix senses”. For example, they may see a color when they hear a sound or perceive a touch when they taste a food.
There are many, many types of synesthesia. The pronunciation of a word can produce a taste (for example, ‘cloud‘ tastes like candy), you assign a sign, letter, number or person with a color (grapheme-color, and the number 2 would be blue), or you see a color when you hear a certain musical note (music-color). Some people, even, can experience in their own body what other people are feeling physically (touch-mirror). “Not all healers are synaesthetes, but among them there is a higher prevalence of this phenomenon,” the scientists explained. “The same is true among painters and artists, for example.” It could be a feasible explanation.
If you have lived on planet Earth since you were a child, which is quite likely, you will have heard about auras and chakras. If you know anyone a bit esoteric, you may know more about it and have even heard of chakra openings (and not for a small fee) and aura cleanses, with the idea, as is often the case, being to cure various modern ailments ranging from anxiety to depression and to connect with nature and oneself. Presumably, staying away from negative feelings and practicing some activities such as yoga, tai chi or reiki would help to heal it.
My name is Maggie and I'm a writer for thesilverink.com, a website dedicated to news, culture and lifestyle. I have always been passionate about writing and I decided to make it my profession by becoming a web editor. I work on counterpoint.info and I mainly take care of the lifestyle section. I like to share my discoveries and my favorites with the readers, whether it's about fashion, beauty, decoration or gastronomy.
