THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL THROUGH THE SEVEN MAJOR CHAKRAS

The path to enlightenment lies in the soul’s rise over many lifetimes through way stations in the body, according to this debut theosophical treatise.

Ferro, who conducts workshops on healing, draws on the teachings of Madame Blavatsky, the 19th-century founder of theosophy, an esoteric philosophy encompassing Hindu and Buddhist traditions, Judeo-Christian themes, and much else. The book’s core is an exposition of the seven major chakras, which are complexes of bodily locations, associated glands, and psychic faculties. In ascending order, they are the Root chakra at the base of the spine (associated with the adrenal glands and basic trust); the Sacral chakra (gonads and sexuality/creativity); the Solar Plexus chakra (pancreas and emotions); the Heart chakra (thymus and love); the Throat chakra (thyroid and communication); the Brow or Third Eye chakra (pituitary and awareness); and atop the head the Crown chakra (pineal and spirituality). Each chakra is further differentiated into seven levels and has other aesthetic, astrological, and philosophical links. Thus, the Sacral chakra associates with the color orange, the “element” of water, and Mars, and imparts the “soul lesson” of learning “to balance our desires and sensations.” The gist of this labyrinthine scheme is that the soul, repeatedly reincarnating, learns the lessons of the chakras and thus attains a sublime understanding that lets it become pure spirit. (There are medical and psychiatric implications, too—the Sacral chakra influences impotence, appendicitis, and “drama queen” behavior, for example—but the book’s only useful therapeutic material is a brief primer on meditative communion with the “Ancestral Group Soul.”) The author throws in much intriguing theosophical history and cosmology on everything from “Root-races” to the transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age, the spirits of planets and solar systems, and mysterious entities such as Rays, Chains, and Globes. Some will like Ferro’s passionate hymns to love, peace, truth, and the oneness of all beings. But the theosophical doctrine here is often so jumbled and impenetrable—“The Ancestral Group Soul is made up of facets or aspects and develops along the planetary life, the ray on which it was created, the life-stream, the root-race, the initiation it is experiencing, the soul lessons and the spiritual qualities it is unfolding”—that many readers will be left scratching their heads.

A bewildering volume of occult lore.