What is an Aura?

Understanding energy work is a lot easier than you might think. It just takes a little bit of an open mind to explore the possibilities of something that might not be seen, but felt; might not be heard, but known. Spirituality is a unique lens for anyone that exists for everyone. It typically helps to have some form of a spiritual formation, and by that we mean some understanding of your own faith and belief system(s). For our blog, we want to focus on some practical knowledge, philology, and then spiritual discourse to help inspire your own understanding.

This idea of “an aura” roots itself in Greek mythology where offspring of the four cardinal directions were nymphs referred to as Aurae. These creatures were later depicted as having a velifactio, which was essentially an egg-shaped energy that surrounded their bodies in art and story. ^[1] Not surprisingly, “rainbow energy” and “light bodies” have been popping up in various native cultures for centuries! Cave drawings have depicted ritual scenes involving spirits and super powers, ancient hieroglyphs depict metaphysical energies, and wise, old shamans discuss things like “the rainbow bridge.” Even though the word ties in through latin, an aura is something that has been a part of the hidden culture since the dawn of humanity.

Stated simply and directly for our purposes: an aura is an energy, frequency, and or vibration that exists both in and around all living things. It comes in the form of a color, feeling, association, and/or experience that exists beyond the five physical senses. Plants have an aura, human beings have an aura, and even the Earth, itself, has an aura. (You did know the earth as a floating rock in the middle of infinite space has an energy, right?) Within a human body, and according to ancient vedic (Hindu) philosophy, this energy flows through a system of metaphysical channels commonly referred to as “chakras”.

You have a pathway of energy that goes up and down your body, primarily located in your spinal column, and through both the crown of the head, where we connect to God, and out the bottoms of the feet, where you connect to the earth as both an energy and physical anchor. There is a line between the celestial and heavenly energies above and the physical, grounding energies below. This line and its interaction creates this aura which you could best liken to a ball of energy that surrounds the entire human body, permeates within it, and interacts with the environment out there everyday, all the time. Oh, and this line? It’s filled both with upward sending and downward receiving energy, thus completing a full circuit of connection to both the earth and the universe as a whole.

Most any internet search will turn up the seven major chakras, aligned mostly through the spine, from base of the body to crown of the head, and this is a primary component to our understanding of how the aura works. These different metaphysical centers are best to be considered as disks, portals, circles, or cosmic vortexes where that cosmic upward seeking and downward receiving energy flows through. This is where we find a very interesting parallel with our love with Feng Shui products, too! Taoist philosophy helps to identify meridian points and lines of energy that run through the human body and create this field. Though, we want to stay more focused on the seven chakras.

The chakra system helps to spin and creates a field of non-physical, sometimes completely invisible sphere of energy that surrounds us at all times. This “aura” is not too far off from the anime depictions that you might see out there. However, we are sorry to our weeb-friends: we are not promoting that you can go Super Saiyan just by believing in the power of loss, a tingle on the back of your neck, nor does it work that simply! There are ways to charge and heal the chakras to better align and power-up the aura to be more healthy functioning.These healings are things you can find with us here at Generous Kingdom.

[1] Auryn, M. (2018, July 11). The Etymology of Auras [web blog]. Retrieved April 30, 2022, from https://www.patheos.com/blogs/matauryn/2018/07/11/auras/.


Want to learn more? Check out how a well known spiritual leader, Sadhguru, explains an aura.
We found this great, simple explanation about the aura with some ancient wisdom.
We were not kidding when we said that anime isn’t too far off about auras and chakras. Check out Avatar: The Last Airbender as it explains the chakras all too well.