Cakras · चक्र · the wheels

Wheels of subtle energy threaded on the central channel — and the word means wheel, which the vertical-ladder pictures tend to forget: these turn. Each carries a petal-count (4, 6, 10, 12, 16, 2), each petal bearing a Sanskrit syllable; the six sum to fifty, which is the alphabet, so the body is spelled. Above them the thousand-petalled sahasrāra. The letter-arithmetic is the real rhyme, and it is not the one people reach for: the Sefer Yetzirah builds a cosmos from twenty-two letters engraved and combined, and here an alphabet is distributed across a body. Both traditions decided that what a person is made of, at bottom, is language. For what the popular chakra-and-sephirot chart actually is, see the splice.