The chakra colors and their meanings

The goal of this post is to inform about the relations of colors and frequencies to the chakra system. It aims to show what colors are, what psychological effects they have on us and how they relate to the chakras.

Chakras are energy centers in the human body that regulate our physical and emotional health. The existence of these energy centers, that are aligned with the spinal column, has been known for thousands of years in many ancient civilizations. The most well known and usually referred to chakra system in the western world has its origin in the Hindu tradition. The Sanskrit word “chakra” literally translates into wheel. When open and active, all chakras vibrate on their own specific frequency and resonate with the different colors of light.

Light itself is a vibration, a wave that is characterized by a wavelength and a frequency. As all light waves move at the same speed, the number of wave crests passing by a given point in a given time period depends on the wavelength.The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency. Light as we know it seems to be of white color, although it actually contains all colors of the rainbow. When white light gets in touch with objects we see those in colors, depending on which of the light frequencies are absorbed, reflected or transmitted (ie. in glass).

The colors of the visible light have wavelengths ranging from 700nm for (infra) red to 480nm (ultra) violet light. The chakra colors correspondent with those frequencies ranging from 400 to 700 Thz.

Chakra colors and chakra frequencies

Red resembles the longest wavelength with the lowest frequency. It is the color of our first primary chakra, the root chakra. The root chakra comprises the energetically densest of all chakras as it vibrates on the lowest frequency and grounds our physical bodies into matter. On the other end of the color spectrum we find violet which has a much shorter wavelength and therefore higher frequency. This is the color resonating with the crown chakra, the chakra that connects us with the Divine. (The crown chakra further resonates with white, which is not a color itself but the sum of all colors). In other words, they higher the chakra the higher its inherent frequency. The more we develop all our chakras the higher we will ultimately rise our overall frequency.

By looking at the chakra colors one gets a very good indication for their main aspects and issues. Although the color interpretations may vary a bit from culture to culture lets have a look at their most common meanings. The positive attributes of the colors are states of mind that correlate with balanced respective chakras, whereas the negative attributes correlate with a respective chakra difficiency/overactivity.