Aura

Origin

The word aura in Greek meant simply a breath or current of air. In medieval Latin it acquired a wider sense of radiance or atmosphere. The technical use of aura for a subtle field around the body emerges in the nineteenth century, building on three streams: the Indian doctrine of the five sheaths (panchakosha) and the subtle body (sukshma sharira); the medieval European notion of the halo or nimbus surrounding saints in iconography; and Franz Anton Mesmer's late-eighteenth-century theory of animal magnetism, which posited an invisible fluid pervading living bodies.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine (1888), introduced the term aura to Theosophy as a name for the human energy field. Charles Webster Leadbeater's Man Visible and Invisible (1902) gave the doctrine its modern form, with detailed illustrations of seven aura layers, each associated with a level of consciousness. Rudolf Steiner developed parallel teachings in Anthroposophy. The Russian engineer Semyon Kirlian's photographic technique (from 1939) produced images of corona discharge around objects, which were widely interpreted in the 1970s as photographs of the aura. The 1960s and 1970s New Age movement absorbed the concept into mainstream popular spirituality, and it remains foundational to energy healing modalities such as Reiki and Therapeutic Touch.

The seven layers

Theosophical and post-Theosophical teachings standardly describe seven aura layers, each corresponding to a chakra and a level of consciousness. The etheric body, closest to the physical, regulates vital functions and is what acupuncture works with. The emotional body, often clairvoyantly seen as cloudy and shifting in colour with mood, carries feelings. The mental body carries thought-forms. The astral body connects to the lower personality and can travel during dreams or out-of-body experiences. Beyond these are the causal body, the buddhic body, and the atmic body, each progressively more subtle and tied to the higher self and the divine.

The colours of the aura are said to indicate the state of consciousness and health of the person. Red signals vitality but also anger; orange creativity; yellow intellect and joy; green healing and balance; blue communication and intuition; indigo wisdom; violet spirituality. Dark or muddy colours are read as signs of disturbance, while clear bright colours indicate well-being. These correspondences are not uniform across all systems—Barbara Brennan's Hands of Light (1987) gives one influential mapping, Dora Kunz and Dolores Krieger another. Empirical studies have not confirmed the visibility of auras under controlled conditions, but the concept remains operative in many therapeutic traditions as a perceptual framework.

In practice

You can begin aura work without claiming clairvoyance. The simplest exercise is to rub the palms briskly together for thirty seconds and then slowly separate them: most people feel a tingling or magnetic resistance between the hands, which is conventionally interpreted as the etheric layer. From there, scan slowly around your own body or another's, attending to subtle sensations of warmth, coolness, density, or movement. With practice, the field becomes more articulate. Some practitioners develop the ability to see soft colours around people, especially in peripheral vision against a plain background.

Aura hygiene is the practical heart of the discipline. Daily energetic cleansing—standing in running water, visualisation of light passing through the field, conscious release of absorbed material—is recommended after stressful encounters. Strong fields are said to develop through meditation, time in nature, breathwork, and consistent ethical conduct. Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, and Brennan Healing Science are formal modalities for working with another's aura. Combine aura study with chakra work, since the layers and the centres are paired, and with akasha as the substrate of all subtle phenomena.

Symbolic depth

The aura's most enduring symbol in Western art is the halo, the disc of golden light around the head of saints and divinities in Byzantine icons and medieval altarpieces. The halo is no mere decoration but a representation of the spiritual radiance of the awakened being, perceptible to those with eyes to see. In Buddhist and Hindu iconography, the prabhamandala and aureole serve the same function. The Egyptian sun-disc behind divine figures, the rays of the Statue of Liberty's crown, the corona of the eclipsed sun—all are variants of the visible aura.

In Kabbalah, the doctrine of the four worlds (Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiah) provides a near-perfect parallel to the layered aura: each world is a progressively denser garment of the divine light, and the human being incarnates all four levels simultaneously. The tselem (image) and the nefesh, ruach, neshamah doctrine of the Jewish mystics map onto Theosophical layers. In the tarot, the rays around the figure in the Sun card depict an aura, as does the mandorla around the dancer of the World. Continue with chakra, akasha, and reincarnation. The full glossary awaits.

Also known as

• energy field
• subtle body
• biofield
• halo
• nimbus