The Fifth Chakra and Our Prophetic Calling

The fifth chakra is the throat chakra. This chakra represents the throat by which we express our truth and wisdom. The throat lies between the heart and the mind chakras and that is what wisdom is about, the union of heart and mind. Truth comes from both heart and mind. I see the throat as a birth canal—we are invited to give our wisdom, our truth, to others by way of our voice. 

The fifth or Vishudda chakra. Image by Atarax42. Wikimedia Commons.

This chakra is the prophetic chakra: The throat is the trumpet that speaks our truth, as the prophets also spoke out–the meaning of prophet in Greek–their truth. A “loss of voice” accompanies many who are oppressed and corresponds to many peoples’ experience and very often with that of women in a patriarchal system or people of color in a racist system or gay and lesbian people in a homophobic system. 

 It is my experience, in listening to stories of people over the past three decades, that many people are having dreams about their throats. This is especially true of women and of gay people, and I think the meaning is that these people are finding their voice after having had it taken away for many centuries. They are on a search for their true voice.

A few years ago a diminutive Catholic sister in our spirituality program embarked on a vision quest between semesters. During the vision quest an eagle kept appearing to her and pointing at her throat. After graduating from our program she went to work in a large hospital that her religious community managed. A few months later I got a call from her superior that went something like this: “What happened to this tiny sister we sent to Oakland?” she asked me. “She came back and is practically running the hospital. And doing a fine job of it too.” What happened was that she found her voice.

Maryland Delegate Heather Mizeur (D) speaks at the 2011 “Surround the White House” Rally. Defeated in her 2015 re-election bid, she has made her Eastern Shore farm a retreat center for fostering and empowering spiritually-grounded activists for social justice. Photo by James Jalandoni on Wikimedia Commons.

The prophetic call is to speak out to interfere with what we see is obstructing what we deeply believe in. Speak out for justice in the midst of injustice. We talk about “speaking truth to power.”  That is what prophets do.  Prophets awaken people to the truth of their own oppression but also to the truth we carry to become empowered enough to stand up to lies or to oppression whether of self or others.  We all hold this power within ourselves.  We all have a voice. This chakra recovers the sense of the “holy word” that we are called to speak regularly in our lives.


Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. 120f.

Banner Image: Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MN), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have brought the voices and presence of fearless women to the U.S. House of Representatives. Photos: Congressional portraits. U.S. House Office of Photography, public domain.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you see your throat as a birth canal by which to bring your wisdom into the world? 

Have you “found your voice”?  Are you working on it?  How do we best assist others to “find their voice?”

Recommended Reading

Fox makes the point that religion has so often oversold the concept of “sin” that it has left us without language or power to combat evil. Through comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.

Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.

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