---
type: Reference
bundle: shakta-darshana
bundle_version: "0.8.1"
id: shatchakranirupana
title: "Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa — षट्चक्रनिरूपण"
iast: "Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa"
devanagari: "षट्चक्रनिरूपण"
description: "'The Examination of the Six Cakras' (Pūrṇānanda, 16th c.): the text that became the world's chakra doctrine: the six-plus-crown scheme with petals, phonemes, bījas, tattvas, and deities; included in this bundle BOTH as the primary Ṣaṭcakra source AND as the error-genealogy exhibit: Arthur Avalon's 1919 'The Serpent Power' translated this text, and its flawed rendering seeded the Western kundalini-chakra construct."
text_type: "Tāntric treatise (55 verses; part of Pūrṇānanda's Śrītattvacintāmaṇi)"
period: "Pūrṇānanda Giri, 16th century CE (Bengal)"
tags: [shatchakranirupana, chakra, kundalini, serpent-power, avalon, reference, error-genealogy]
related:
  - /concepts/chakra-tantra.md
  - /concepts/kundalini.md
  - /concepts/matrika.md
  - /concepts/bindu.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa -- षट्चक्रनिरूपण

## Why This Text Is in the Bundle (double duty)

**As doctrine:** the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa is the primary source of the six-cakra scheme documented in [chakra-tantra.md](../concepts/chakra-tantra.md): each cakra with its lotus-petal count carrying mātṛkā phonemes ([matrika.md](../concepts/matrika.md)), its bīja, its tattva, and its deities, within the kuṇḍalinī-ascent frame ([kundalini.md](../concepts/kundalini.md)).

**As error-genealogy exhibit:** this is the text Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe) translated in The Serpent Power (1919), the single most consequential event in the Western reception of chakra and kuṇḍalinī doctrine. The translation's flaws, its enormous influence (Jung's 1932 seminars, Campbell, and downstream popular literature), and the subsequent Theosophical overlay (Leadbeater's colors and psychology) produced the modern "chakra system" documented as distortion in this bundle's Tier 1. Citing the actual text is the strongest possible correction: the error genealogy points back to its own primary source, and the difference between the text and its popular descendant is visible on inspection (the text has phonemes and deities where the poster has colors and emotions).

## Use in This Bundle

- [chakra-tantra.md](../concepts/chakra-tantra.md), [kundalini.md](../concepts/kundalini.md): primary source AND genealogy anchor
- [bindu.md](../concepts/bindu.md), [matrika.md](../concepts/matrika.md), [mantra-shastra.md](../concepts/mantra-shastra.md): bīja and phoneme placements

## Editions

Sanskrit in the Avalon series (with the 1919 translation as historical artifact); modern scholarly discussions of the text and its translation history are the corrective layer. This bundle's rule: cite the text's content from the Sanskrit tradition's own commentarial line, cite The Serpent Power as reception history.

## Error Genealogy

This reference is the primary source through which a documented mistranslation chain runs: Pūrṇānanda's Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa (16th c.) entered English through Arthur Avalon's *The Serpent Power* (1919), whose flawed rendering seeded the modern "kundalini energy" vocabulary (→ Jung 1932 → human-potential movement → New Age). See [G1 — Kuṇḍalinī and the Serpent Power lineage](../../../GENEALOGIES.md) in the repository root for the full chain and sources.
