Two Pieces of the Same Puzzle

This is the twenty-third part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

Well, here we are again, with what was supposed to be the second half of the last essay… 😉 Have you guessed which Eastern spiritual concept with seven elements we’re going to talk about today?

Right, it’s the chakras!

I strongly suspect all of you have at least a rough idea of what the chakras are, but let me give some basic info in a nutshell, just in case some of you haven’t:

The chakras are a system of energy centers distributed throughout your (and everybody else’s) body.

Usually when people say “chakras”, they are talking about seven very specific of these energy centers, although there a lot more in other locations, and different systems work with different centers (and differing amounts of them).

These seven energy centers commonly called “chakras” are not just important for your energy body and thus for your physical body, too, they are also related to other functions, for example functions of spiritual nature or of self development. They form an important part of some Eastern spiritual traditions, but also of some heatlth and energy systems, and their use dates way back over the centuries.

The locations of these seven chakras in the human body are along a line or column in the upper body, from the base of the upper body all the way up to the top of the head:

The first or “Root Chakra” is located at the bottom of your upper body. The second or “Sacral Chakra” is located in the area of the reproductive organs. The third or “Solarplexus Chakra” is located in the area of the solarplexus. The fourth or “Heart Chakra” is, not surprisingly, located in the heart region, and I’m sure you can guess the location of the fifth or “Throat Chakra”. 😉 The sixth or “Third Eye Chakra” is located roughly at the height between your eyebrows, but further back inside your head. And the seventh or “Crown Chakra” is located at the very top of your head.

(In this list, I’ve been using names which are commonly used for the chakras, but there are other terms for them, too. As we shall see shortly, though, it’s the concepts behind them which matter. Thus please don’t get hung up on the terminology if you happen to know them by different names.)

The chakras can be worked with and manipulated e.g. through body posture or breathing exercises, and there are various ways of making use of them in spiritual or inner work. The material on them is very rich and very varied, and there is no way I could even attempt to cover it here (and that’s assuming I knew all about them, which I don’t!).

Instead, for this essay we’ll focus on their connection to our inner work with the Hermetic planets.

(Besides, this isn’t a course about the chakras or about Eastern spirituality to begin with. So we’d better scramble back towards our planetary ladder, shall we?)

Before we proceed, and this probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you at this point, I’d like to stress that my take on the chakras is somewhat idiosyncratic (meaning that a lot of the material you can easily find e.g. on the internet will stress different aspects or facets of the chakras, and will describe them in somewhat different ways).

For me that’s fine, though – as I said, the chakras are a huge and very varied topic, and we’ll simply focus on one very small corner of their universe…

(Also, to give credit where it’s due, one book which has heavily shaped my understanding of the chakras is Carolyn Myss’ “Anatomy of the Spirit”. Just mentioning this in case you might wanna dive a bit deeper than we do today!)

I also want to stress that I’m in no way implying that the chakras and the planets are the same, or can be pressed into the same system. There are distinct differences, both in the underlying concepts and in their applications.

Instead, I simply want to offer you yet another viewpoint on the planets, and one more way to connect with them!

What follows is fodder for contemplation and meditation, if you are so inclined. If it leads you to new insights, great – and if it isn’t your cuppa tea, you can simply ignore the chakras and get back to your inner work with the planets as laid out in the earlier essays.

But either way, what follows doesn’t equate the planets with the chakras. Instead, we’ll compare them, and draw some thought-provoking and intriguing conclusions…

So what connects the chakras with the Hermetic planets, apart from the somewhat random fact that there are seven of each?

In order to answer this question, let’s have a closer look at the first chakra: Located at the very bottom, the Root Chakra, as the name suggets, is the basis.

On the one hand, this refers to the material basis, e.g. to your body, but also your material needs and to physical life on earth in general: This chakra represents your connection to the material world.

On a more abstract level, the Root Chakra also represents things like material safety, a home, etc – the things which form the basis of your life and survival.

But survival would be harsh to impossible if we were all on our own, and thus the Root Chakra is also the Chakra of Tribal Power.

(I’ve borrowed these terms in italics from Carolyn Myss, as they are fitting descriptors for our purposes here.)

Through this first chakra, we’re linked to our tribe, to the group which ensures our survival – or our almost certain death, if we should be cast out.

As such, the Root Chakra also governs our very primal fears about survival and dying. If we adapt ourselves to a group, sometimes against better knowledge, because of a deep-seated fear of being cast out, it’s the Root Chakra at work. After all, being an outcast condemns us to death, doesn’t it?

Thus this focus of the first chakra on our material needs, on our “basis”, also has very deep implications for our behavior in and towards groups, for our relationship to the “tribe”.

Now let’s take a step back, and look at the planetary ladder in comparison:

Down at the very first rung is the Moon. Of all the planets, the Moon is the closest to material life on earth. She influences the primal earthly rythms, ebb and flood, waxing and waning. With her immense influence on plant life, the Moon directly rules over material survival.

But on another, more abstract level, the Moon is also the planet who goes with the flow. She won’t pick a fight, or do her own thing against the current.

Instead, the Moon’s way is to flow with the predominant current, and to turn this natural flow into her advantage – just like some primal part of you won’t do your own thing against the current of your tribe, but will instead go with the flow for fear of being cast out.

Can you see the similarities between the Root Chakra and the Moon? 🙂

(Mind you, they aren’t the same – by far not! But by looking at the Moon through the lense of the chakras, we can gain some valuable new insights about her.)

Let’s have a look at the second chakra then, the Sacral Chakra, and see if we can take this analogy any further.

The Sacral Chakra is located in the area of your sexual and reproductive organs, and not by chance: It represents your reproductive and creative power – both in a physical sense and figuratively speaking. Fertility and reproduction are located in this chakra, but also creativity and creative expression, money and power.

(If you’re scratching your head about the latter two, they are also expressions of “creative energy”. Power constitutes the drive and the ability to get things out into the world, to shape and create the world according to your wishes. And money is simply a means to an end, a substitue for the power to get things done.)

Comprising these elements, the second chakra is also the Chakra of The Power of Relationships. Fertility and reproduction aren’t possible without relationships. By creating anything, you inevitably affect others – and they affect you in their creation. And power is only ever relevant when there is something (or somebody) to have power over.

Thus close relationships are closely tied to your second chakra, as is your role in relationships. Where the first chakra represented groups and tribal structures, the second one represents relationships between specific people, in whichever form they occur.

On this level, we’re no longer solely dependent on the faceless, nameless tribe, but we can establish personal and meaningful relationships.

Relating this chakra to the planets seems easy on first glance. Sex, creativity, relationships – must be Venus, right? But as so often in life, things aren’t that simple… 😉

You see, creativity and power require a counterpart. How are you going to create if you’re all alone? There is nothing to create on – and nobody to express your creativity to.

The same holds for power: If there is nobody to have power over, it stays an empty concept. And of course, reproduction and relationships aren’t possible in isolation either…

(Unless you’re a snail – some snails can self-fertilize!)

All these things require not just an other, a counterpart – they also require some form of communication. And the planetary master of communication… is Mercury, of course.

Incidentally, personal relationships also require a good deal of flexibility. Where the tribe is an inert mass, relationships are constantly in flux. And, lo and behold, flexibilty is also one of the specific traits of Mercury!

Finally, where Venus might indulge in a relationship just for fun’s sake, Mercury also rules borders – including the borders between you and the other. As such, he is the planet to help you define where “you” ends and the “other” starts, and thus the planet most closely related to this second chakra.

(Mercury is also the master of deception, which would well explain why he caught us by surprise with his appearance here… 😉 And he seems to have so much fun playing tricks on us that he’s going to show up in a deceptive way again in one of the later chakras!)

So just like the first chakra has close relations to the Moon, the second has close relations to Mercury. As attentive reader, I’m sure you can see the beginnings of a pattern here, can’t you? (cough, planetary ladder, cough)

Let’s see if this hunch proves itself with the third chakra then!

The Solarplexus Chakra, as the name implies, is located at your solarplexus area, i.e. a bit above your navel. Where the first chakra set the basis and integrated you into a tribe, and the second chakra helped you to establish personal relationships, on this third level everything, finally, turns around yourself.

In the third chakra, others are irrelevant. It’s all about you: your personality, your ego. In this chakra, we expand beyond the group and beyond others, and focus on ourselves. Self-confidence and self-respect are located here, as are (healthy and unhealthy) navel-gazing.

This is the Chakra of Personal Power.

If you do things from a third chakra point of view, you do them for yourself. Of course, left to your own devices, you’ll probably select the things to do which will reinforce your own ego, personality and worldview – but also the things which bring you the most pleasure, happiness, gratification and fun.

(For example, I don’t think any of us would willingly choose to do a thorough bathroom cleanse if we could also have a fun day with much more enjoyable things instead. Unless you’ve got some very strange ideas of fun, of course – in which case I’d have a bathroom right here for you to clean! 😛 )

While on first glance, terms like “personal power” or “ego” suggest that this chakra might be tied to the Sun, there is some other subtle aspect here. The third chakra isn’t about power for power’s sake. It’s also not deliberately bolstering your ego either.

Remember that at this stage in your way up the chakras, you’ve left behind your focus on the tribe and on survival, and have only just extricated yourself from being defined by relationships. Being your own person, even having your own distinct personality is still new for you, and consequently you revel in it and enjoy it. At the level of the third chakra, you haven’t yet stepped back and had a good, hard look at your ego and your personality from the outside.

Thus the Chakra of Personal Power doesn’t wield said power consciously. Rather, it’s like a child discovering the joys of saying “I”, and “me”, and “mine”. 😉

And who would understand childish joy and the very childish pleasure of simply being here now, and having fun in the process, better than Venus? Comparing and contrasting her to the third chakra, we can see just how much Venus really is about you: your enjoyment, your pleasure, of you immersing yourself into life, and to heck with what other people want!

(Of course, Venus isn’t the same as the third chakra. As you can easily see, there are also some interesting differences between them, which themselves shed a light both on Venus and on this chakra…)

Hm, so it seems we really were onto something when we put up the planetary ladder against the column of the chakras, doesn’t it? Let’s have a look at the fourth one to see if things pan out there, too!

The Heart Chakra is located at (duh!) your heart area. Not surprisingly, it represents love and compassion.

(If you’ve ever heard some woo-woo spiritual talk about opening your heart chakra and loving everybody and all that, that’s why.)

But to reduce the fourth chakra to love and compassion is doing it injustice, as the chakras really are more complex than this. The heart chakra comprises all emotions related to love and compassion – up to and including their opposites.

Consider this: Who are the people you might come to hate the most? Quite certainly not the ones which are irrelevant to you. If somebody was really and truly unimportant to you, you’d be hardpressed to muster any inklings of hate towards them, wouldn’t you?

Instead, love and hate are close companions – the more we’re able to love something or somebody, the more we’re able to hate them, too. Thus feelings like anger, resentment and grief also have a place here in the Heart Chakra, as evidenced by expressions like “having a broken heart”.

In short, this is the Chakra of Emotional Power.

Which planet would correspond well to this chakra?

A good question, with a somewhat surprising answer. To illustrate it, let’s hop back to the most obvious emotions of this chakra, namely love and compassion…

Have you ever met people who downright insisted on doing something good for others, out of pure love or compassion – whether these other people wanted it or not?

This could be parents loving their children, or people working in care or volunteering for social causes – people who are so focused on acting out of love or compassion that they can’t even consider that their actions might be unwelcome?

Now, I’m not saying that their love or compassion isn’t true, or that they only put up a front. Quite the contrary. What I’m getting at is that love and compassion are a form of power.

If you act out of compassion for somebody else, you are acting out of a position of power, and the other person is in a position of weakness.

(If you can’t see my point, give some bucks to a beggar, from heartfelt compassion if you can muster it, and see if I’m right.)

The same is true for hate, anger, resentment and grief, btw – only that in this case, you give somebody else power over you. Carolyn Myss chose a very apt name for this chakra when she called it the Chakra of Emotional Power!

And the planet to represent both power and authority, but also love and warmth is… (drumroll, please!)

… the Sun, of course. What a sweet coincidence that he’s also the next up our planetary ladder, isn’t it? 😉

Let’s hop to the fifth chakra, then. It’s located in your throat area (and is very fittingly called the Throat Chakra):

Through the first three chakras, we established our basic existence, up to and including “us” as a person. The fourth chakra then turned us outward again – we started wielding power over others, or granting power to them, through the force of our emotions.

The fifth chakra in turn represents our self-expression (again not a big surprise, given its location in the throat area!). This chakra defines what we tell others.

Now, it might seem that Mercury would be a natural choice for a chakra which is obviously connected to communication, doesn’t it? But we’ve already employed him further down at the second chakra, so let’s work out the specifics of the Throat Chakra first before we jump to conclusions…

In talking to others, we’re expressing ourselves. What started as pure and childish ego in the Solarplexus Chakra has been refined through the emotional roller coaster of the Heart Chakra, to help us figure out our own worth and our shortcomings. Now, at the Throat Chakra, we are finally aware of who we are – and we want to make sure others know, too.

Thus this chakra is related to self-expression, to asserting ourselves, and to following our own path. Of course, in order to do so, there is a great amount of judgement and decision-making involved (after all, you gotta know what your path is before you can follow it!).

But following your own path, and doing what is right for you, also means you’ll have to communicate your stance to others, and to stand your ground in pursuing it – which will inevitably lead to a certain amount of outside resistance.

Carolyn Myss calls this firth chakra the Chakra of The Power of Will, and I’m sure you can see why this is a very good description: It helps you to use your will to communicate your wishes, your position and your needs to the outside world.

The planet most helpful in this endeavour, then, isn’t Mercury.

Oh, he’d communicate with the world allright – but as soon as there’d be too much resistance to your plans, Mercury would most likely shrug his shoulders, turn around and try to achieve the same things in a sneaky way. After all, why fight when you can also outsmart your opponent?

No, the planet to stick up for your needs, to insist on them no matter what, the planet who has your back in any kind of fight (and will enjoy it!), that’s Mars.

It seems we’re indeed onto something here by moving up the planetary ladder against the chakras, doesn’t it? 🙂

Next up is the sixth chakra, also called the Third Eye Chakra due to its location at the height of what is oftentimes called the “Third Eye”, roughly between your eyebrows.

This chakra is in close proximity to your brain, and thus it’s not surprising to learn that it represents your mind and your intellect:

“Understanding” from within you is part of this chakra – understanding of complex topics, but also a general understanding of the world and its components. It is the Chakra of The Power of the Mind.

Your ability to learn and to change course, your openness to new ideas, and your self-evaluation are all located at the Third Eye Chakra.

Where the Heart Chakra allowed you to express and refine the person you identified as “you” back in your Solarplexus Chakra through emotional connections, and the Throat Chakra gave you the means to assert this person to the world, the sixth chakra is where you go beyond this person – where you get the chance to critically evaluate your personality, to look at your ego from the outside (no matter whether that’ll please you or make you cringe…).

In short, the Third Eye Chakra is where you expand beyond your self (not beyond yourself, that comes one step further up!).

And the planet which represents expansion like no other is, of course, Jupiter. As ruler of the gods, he stands above the others, and examines them with a critical eye. With each of his thunderstorms, he clears away the stagnating air, bringing clarity and freshness.

Among other things, Jupiter also rules over higher education, justice, and organisations and structures, making him the adequate planet to honestly examine your own self and its role within the broader world.

But Jupiter is also the planet of the proverbial “Joviality” – he isn’t a cruel or exacting taskmaster, but is more than willing to grant you some generous leeway, and wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up because you’re not perfect.

This combination of traits makes him a perfect match for your Third Eye Chakra and its qualities of understanding and of self-examination…

Finally, let’s have a look at the seventh and last chakra, the Crown Chakra. Located at the top of your head, it connects you to the higher worlds and to the Divine.

Spirituality and faith are represented by this chakra, as are higher values, ethics and the courage to do what is truly right, no matter your own preferences or those of others.

We started out with an outside connection in the first chakra, a connection to the material world. In the seventh chakra, we’re closing the circle and are once again connecting to the outside, but this time to the higher worlds.

And while a lot of people focus on developing the Heart Chakra, ’cause love and compassion and all that, the Crown Chakra embodies true selflessness where the Heart Chakra acts out of your own power and out of your own needs.

(Note that there is nothing wrong with acting out of your own power and caring for your own needs! Human life on earth is complex and happens on many levels, and each chakra contributes important and valuable aspects to our existence, just like each planet does.)

Thus Carolyn Myss calls the seventh chakra, quite fittingly, Our Spiritual Connector.

Now, we’ve gotten to the top of the chakra column, and almost to the end of our planetary ladder. There is only one planet left to be assigned, namely Saturn (who, very fittingly, sits at the top of the ladder).

But some of you might be scratching your heads now, wondering why it’s Saturn which we’re obviously going to match with the Crown Chakra in this little exercise today, and not Jupiter? Isn’t Jupiter the planet assigned to religion and spirituality?

Well, he is – but to organized religion, and to spiritual structures and teachings. That’s what I meant by “Jupiter rules structures and organisations” above. Jupiter will happily organize a church or your meditation group. But your very personal spiritual experiences aren’t located in his domain.

Ok, so you’ll grant me that Jupiter might not be the best fit to the Crown Chakra. But why Saturn then? Isn’t he the planet of limits and restrictions?

Sure. But higher values, ethics, true selflessness, a personal connection to the Divine… they do impose certain restrictions on us, don’t they?

Besides, and very fittingly, Saturn is also the planet to connect us to the sphere of the fixed stars and beyond. And as it so happens, he is the planet who rules over true knowledge and wisdom, too, another trait fitting in very well with the seventh chakra…

So, there you have it – a thought-provoking and interesting way of connecting the planetary ladder with the seven chakras!

And just to reiterate, the planets certainly aren’t the same as the chakras, and I hope this has become more than clear from the text. But there are some intriguing parallels and connections.

(Ghee, I wonder if both Western occultists like the old Hermeticists, and their counterparts in the East have been working with the same material – with Divinity and with human nature? 😉 )

I hope you enjoyed our little side trip into Eastern spirituality! If you’re so inclined, there is a lot of material for contemplation and for meditation in this approach, more than enough to keep you busy for months or more…

And if by now you should think “well, that’s nice and all that, but it’s not my cuppa tea”, then fair enough – jump back to the earlier essays, and continue to work with what they have to offer!

With this, we’re almost at the end of this essay series (for real this time!). There will be one last essay in two weeks, containing what at school would be called “Conclusions” – but I promise it’ll be more useful and more fun to read than your average school essays. 😉

Afterwards, I’ll take my usual winter break. And after that, well, we’ll start with a new essay series!

(I’m not quite ready yet to tell you what it’s gonna be about, so lemme just say that it’s a fun topic; it connects two completely unrelated things, namely something very practical and hands-on with your inner work; and it will also be of practical use in said inner work. And as icing on the cake, I’m also really excited about it and hope you’ll enjoy it, too!)

As for the topic of “Inner Work with the Hermetic Planets”, things won’t stop with the end of this essay series. For once, the essays will stay up and available, and you can go back to them at any point, and also make copious use of the comment sections.

But I feel that this topic is so useful and so important (and writing about it has been such a pleasure) that I am going to put it to productive use in other formats as well:

I’ve already hinted at the fact that I will turn the essay series into a book, and that I’m working on a series of Hermetic rituals which will tie in very well with this kind of work.

But some of you have also expressed their interest in a related course and in meditation topics, and I’m very much keeping this in mind, too. I might have more to say next time – we’ll see.

Until then, I wish you a wonderful two weeks and lots of fun with your inner work. Feel free to use the comment section below for your questions, remarks, thoughts, etc, as usual. 🙂

We’ll be back for the last essay on Sunday, December 14th, 2025. See you then!

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Image: Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash