various numbers. The best-known variant has seven chakras, as described in Sir John Woodroffe's 1919 book The Serpent Power, a rough translation of Purnananda Yati's Sat-chakra-nirupana ("Explanation of the Six Chakras," 1577).

Modern Western Occultism views chakras as actual though esoteric energy-centers. This view arose in the 1880s with H. P. Blavatsky and other Theosophists, and