TarotThe Fool: Tarot Meaning, Reversed and Air
The Fool means beginning, faith, risk. What it means upright and reversed, the four ways readers handle reversals, and the Air attribution the Golden Dawn gave it.
Spiritual Practice
The Heart Chakra: Love
The heart chakra governs love, grief, forgiveness, sits at the chest, heart, lungs, arms, and is coloured green. What it is reached for, the practice attached to it, and an honest account of how old the seven-chakra model actually is.
The short answerThe heart chakra governs love, grief, forgiveness, sits at the chest, heart, lungs, arms, and is associated with the colour green. In the system it is described as blocked when after a loss, or when you have gone numb to protect yourself. The practice usually suggested for it is opening the chest physically, grief that is actually felt, and contact with people who do not want anything.
What the heart chakra is said to cover
Love, grief, forgiveness. In the seven-chakra system this is the 4th of seven centres running from the base of the spine to the top of the head, and each is assigned an area of experience and a colour.
It is located at the chest, heart, lungs, arms, and the colour attached to it is green. The colours run in spectrum order from red at the base to violet at the crown, which is worth knowing because that ordering is a twentieth-century Western addition rather than part of the original system.
When people reach for this one
The circumstances usually described: after a loss, or when you have gone numb to protect yourself. That is the practical version of what a blocked heart chakra is supposed to feel like, stripped of the energetic language.
And the practice: opening the chest physically, grief that is actually felt, and contact with people who do not want anything. Notice that every one of those is a reasonable thing to do in that situation regardless of whether chakras exist, which is close to the whole of the honest case for the system.
| Governs | Love, grief, forgiveness |
| Location | Chest, heart, lungs, arms |
| Colour | Green |
| Reached for when | After a loss, or when you have gone numb to protect yourself |
| Usual practice | Opening the chest physically, grief that is actually felt, and contact with people who do not want anything |
Where chakras actually come from
Worth being accurate about, because the usual account is wrong in a specific and interesting way. Chakras appear in Indian tantric and yogic texts from around the eighth century onward, as part of a system of subtle anatomy used in meditation practice. That much is genuinely old.
The version almost everybody in the West uses, with exactly seven centres in rainbow order, is not. Different texts describe four, five, six, nine, twelve or more, in different places, with different attributes and no colour scheme. The seven-and-rainbow model was assembled in the early twentieth century, largely through a 1919 translation by Arthur Avalon and then through theosophical writing that followed it.
So the practice is old and the diagram on the poster is about a hundred years old. Both of those are worth knowing, and almost no page selling you a chakra course will tell you the second one.
What this is and is notThere is no anatomical structure corresponding to a chakra and no measurement that detects one. The system is a framework for attending to parts of your experience, and it is a reasonably good one: it maps onto real categories of difficulty and the practices attached to it are mostly sensible things to do. It is not medicine. Nothing here treats, diagnoses or prevents anything, and a physical symptom belongs with a doctor rather than with a chakra chart.
How this relates to astrology
It does not, historically. Chakras come out of Indian tantric practice and Western astrology comes out of Hellenistic Greece, and the two were put side by side relatively recently by writers who liked both. Anybody giving you a firm mapping of planets to chakras is presenting a modern invention as a tradition.
Questions people ask
What does the heart chakra do?
In the system it governs love, grief, forgiveness, and it is located at the chest, heart, lungs, arms.
How do I know if my heart chakra is blocked?
The circumstances usually described are after a loss, or when you have gone numb to protect yourself. There is no measurement for it; it is a description you either recognise or do not.
What colour is the heart chakra?
Green, in the modern Western version. The colour scheme is about a century old rather than part of the original system.
Are chakras real?
There is no anatomical structure corresponding to one. The practice is an old framework for attending to different parts of experience, and that is a different claim from a physical one.
RubyAstro writes about astrology for reflection and self-understanding. Nothing here is medical, legal or financial advice, and none of it is a prediction of events. Read our full disclaimer.
Keep reading
Tarot
TarotThe Magician: Tarot Meaning, Reversed and Mercury
The Magician means will, skill, focus. What it means upright and reversed, the four ways readers handle reversals, and the Mercury attribution the Golden Dawn gave it.
TarotThe Sun: Tarot Meaning, Reversed and Sun
The Sun means clarity, success, visibility. What it means upright and reversed, the four ways readers handle reversals, and the Sun attribution the Golden Dawn gave it.
Spiritual PracticeThe Root Chakra: Safety
The root chakra governs safety, money, belonging, sits at the legs, feet, base of the spine, and is coloured red. What it is reached for, the practice attached to it, and an honest account of how old the seven-chakra model actually is.
Spiritual PracticeThe Sacral Chakra: Pleasure
The sacral chakra governs pleasure, creativity, feeling, sits at the hips, lower abdomen, reproductive system, and is coloured orange. What it is reached for, the practice attached to it, and an honest account of how old the seven-chakra model actually is.
Spiritual PracticeThe Third Eye Chakra: Intuition
The third eye chakra governs intuition, clarity, seeing, sits at the eyes, forehead, sleep, and is coloured indigo. What it is reached for, the practice attached to it, and an honest account of how old the seven-chakra model actually is.