The famous Triskele. Part of a thesis I wrote was on Chakras but the thrust was that the idea was not from India originally. Instead, it may have actually been originally Celtic thought. Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning wheel and comes from Vedic writings. There are thought to be energy centres in the body and some have described them as spinning energy.
However, the Vedic people were a people that migrated into India from the northwest of the country. This migration occurred just about the same time as the people that would we would call Celts began to migrate across Europe and down at least into Turkey though possibly beyound as well.
The idea of energy centers does survive in bits and pieces in Celtic stories that have been written down. Arianrhod’s name for example means silver wheel, her castle of Caer Arianrhod sometimes is also referred to Caer Sidi or the revolving castle and in the poems of Taliesin he describes the castle as revolving as well. The Aurora Borealis is sometimes referred to as the hem of Arianrhod’s garment. Turning back to Taliesin we have the poem of Preiddue Annwfn or the Spoils of Annwn. In this poem King Arthur must make it past seven towers in order to gain in this case a special cauldron, but does not seven challenges sound very much like the seven chakras and cauldron brings the dead back to life perhaps a reference to karmic rebirth. Speaking of cauldrons, these figure prominently in Celtic myths and lore and tend to represent magical rebirth and enlightenment such as the cauldron of Cerridwen for example. Now we have also surviving the Cauldrons of Poesy which are indicated to exist within each person, those of incubation, motion, and wisdom. Only the base or incubation is upright when a person is born. It must be filled and each of the other cauldrons must be turned and then filled. If you count, filling, turning upside down, to side and then filling, each of the others you have seven things that must be done. Again, like the seven towers in the poem to gain full enlightenment or wisdom and very much like the opening of the seven chakras of Vedic thought.
Turning back to the symbol above, the Triskele is considered to represent the Celtic realms of Earth, Sky and Water, also to represent Life, Death and Rebirth. However, like the Triquetra seen below the also represents the three cauldrons (the intersecting of the rims of the cauldrons).
However, in the Triskele, it is not just the three cauldrons but it is the swirling of energy that is the filling of each of the cauldrons within each person to gain enlightenment. Thus the idea of swirling energy centres within each person really is a Celtic thought that migrated and then was lost along with much Celtic culture only to survive elsewhere and to be reintroduced to Western thought later in time.
