Every yoga student has heard of kuṇḍalinī — the "coiled" energy, pictured as a serpent at the base of the spine, that rises through the cakras to the crown. Almost no one knows where that whole system came from. Nondual Śaiva Tantra points to a specific, half-forgotten sampradāya: the cult of Kubjikā, the "Crooked Goddess" — herself coiled, bent, serpentine — whose scriptures are the main source of the kuṇḍalinī-yoga and six-cakra system that later flowed into haṭha-yoga and then into modern yoga. The coiled serpent at the base of your spine is Kubjikā, the crooked one, before she was abstracted into a generic "energy."1
She's sampradāya eight of the nine — relatively obscure now, but sitting at the headwaters of the single most globally-famous piece of yogic anatomy.2
Wallis presents Kubjikā as sampradāya eight of the nine, the source-lineage of kuṇḍalinī-yoga.3
So the kuṇḍalinī-and-cakras everyone knows traces, historically, to this specific goddess-cult — not to a generic ancient wisdom and not to Patañjali.
The deep point here is what gets lost when a tradition's living deity becomes a generic abstraction — and Kubjikā is the cleanest example. In the source-tradition, the coiled energy at the base of the spine wasn't a neutral "force" or "bio-energy"; it was a goddess — Kubjikā, the Crooked One, a specific divine person with a mythology, a cult, mantras, and a relationship to the practitioner. Raising kuṇḍalinī was relating to a goddess, awakening a divine presence, not operating an energetic mechanism. The coiling, the serpentine form, the dormancy-then-rising — these were features of her, a living power, encountered devotionally and ritually.
As the system flowed downstream — into haṭha-yoga (which stripped out the deity-context) and then into modern yoga (which stripped further) — the goddess dropped away and the mechanism remained. Kuṇḍalinī became a generic energy, the cakras became generic centers, and the whole apparatus got re-described in quasi-physiological or quasi-scientific terms ("energy," "nerve plexuses," "chakra healing"). The serpent was kept; the goddess was forgotten. This is the same stripping-for-transmission move that produced haṭha from Tantra, applied to one specific element: the relational, devotional, goddess dimension was shed, leaving an operational, mechanical, energetic residue. Recovering Kubjikā restores what the abstraction lost — that the coiled energy was, at its source, a divine being you awakened and related to, not a force you manipulated.5
Kubjikā is the headwaters of the vault's whole kuṇḍalinī-and-cakra corpus. She's the source the haṭha-genealogy drew the cakra-system from, connecting the nine sampradāyas to modern yoga's anatomy. She relates to the three nāḍīs / subtle body and to the broader pattern of goddess-cults becoming abstracted energies. To the vault, she supplies the specific origin of a system usually treated as generic — and the cautionary lesson of what abstraction strips out.
Trace one image — the coiled serpent at the spine-base — from Kubjikā to the wellness-store chakra poster, because the descent is a perfect case of deity-to-mechanism abstraction.
At the source: Kubjikā, a goddess, the Crooked One, coiled and serpentine, dwelling (in the system that flowed downstream) at the base of the subtle body, awakened through her mantras and her cult, rising as a divine presence through the centers. To raise her was an act of relationship with a specific deity — devotional, initiatory, mythologically rich.
One step down (haṭha): the goddess-context thins. Kuṇḍalinī becomes "the coiled energy," still serpentine, still rising, but increasingly described as a force to be raised through technique (bandhas, breath, posture) rather than a goddess to be related to. The Nāth haṭhins kept the mechanics and let the cult recede.
Further down (modern): kuṇḍalinī becomes a generic "energy," the cakras become "energy centers" or get mapped onto nerve plexuses and endocrine glands, and the whole thing is re-described in pseudo-physiological or therapeutic terms — "balancing your chakras," "kuṇḍalinī awakening" as a wellness experience. The chakra poster in the yoga studio is the terminal abstraction: a tidy diagram of "energy centers" with no goddess anywhere, the coiled serpent reduced to a decorative motif at the base.
The case shows abstraction as a gradual forgetting: at each step, the living goddess recedes and the operational mechanism advances, until the divine person who was the coiled energy has vanished entirely, leaving a diagram. And it reveals what's at stake in recovering the source — not pedantic genealogy but a different relationship to the practice: kuṇḍalinī as a goddess you awaken and revere versus an energy you manage. The same arousal, two utterly different framings, and the source-framing is the one the abstraction erased.
If you work with kuṇḍalinī or the cakras, the Kubjikā recovery offers a reframe you can test in practice. Notice the inherited framing — usually mechanical: "energy" to be "raised," "centers" to be "balanced," a quasi-physiological system to be operated. Now try the source-framing: relate to the coiled energy as a presence, even a goddess — something to be awakened and revered rather than manipulated and managed. Approach the base of the subtle body not as a switch to flip but as a sleeping divine power to gently, respectfully invite. You'll feel the difference: the mechanical framing makes practice an operation (am I doing the technique right?); the relational framing makes it a communion (am I in right relationship with this power?). The tradition would say the relational framing is not only truer to the source but safer — kuṇḍalinī treated as a mere energy to be forced up can produce difficulty, while approached as a goddess to be invited it unfolds in its own way. You don't need Kubjikā's full cult to recover the essential shift: from operating an energy to relating to a presence.
Pure mechanism (the stripped residue). You treat kuṇḍalinī and the cakras as a purely energetic-physiological system — forces and centers to be operated by technique, with no relational or sacred dimension. The tell: practice is all operation (correct technique, measurable energy, balanced centers) and the system feels like plumbing; you've inherited the terminal abstraction and lost what it abstracted from.
Romanticizing a half-known goddess. The opposite error: you seize on "kuṇḍalinī is really the goddess Kubjikā" and build an elaborate devotional fantasy on a lineage you barely know (Kubjikā's actual cult is obscure and largely reconstructed). The tell: you're projecting a vivid imagined goddess-relationship onto fragments, mistaking enthusiasm for the genuine, mostly-lost transmission.
This is critical-historical (Wallis's Sanderson-grounded Part 2) on a relatively obscure, partly-reconstructed lineage.6 The honest edges: (1) The Kubjikā cult is not well known and is reconstructed from limited sources, so claims about it carry more uncertainty than claims about the better-documented sampradāyas. (2) "Main source of kuṇḍalinī-yoga" is a strong attribution — the kuṇḍalinī-and-cakra system likely had multiple contributing streams, and how much is specifically Kubjikā versus shared Tantric development is a question of degree. (3) The deity-to-energy abstraction story is clear in outline but the details of how Kubjikā specifically fed into haṭha (versus other goddess-cults and Tantric sources) are scholarly terrain, not settled fact. Hold the pattern (a goddess-cult at the source of kuṇḍalinī, abstracted downstream) as well-grounded, and the specific attribution to Kubjikā as the leading but not sole candidate.
Kubjikā connects the vault's haṭha-genealogy cluster to its kuṇḍalinī material, and the interesting tension is between the source (goddess-cult) and the downstream (energy-mechanism) framings the vault holds. Much of the vault's kuṇḍalinī corpus inherits the abstracted framing (energy, cakras, the subtle-body as a quasi-physiological system) — which is the practitioner-transmission and modern register. Wallis (with the critical-historical record) restores the source framing: it was a goddess. They agree on that both describe the same anatomical system (coiled energy, cakras, rising). The tension is the framing the abstraction erased — and it's the same goddess-vs-mechanism, relational-vs-operational fork that runs through the whole left-current material (the interiorization, the Krama's process-worship). Reading them together restores to the vault's kuṇḍalinī pages the divine person that the energy-language quietly dropped.
Kubjikā's fate — a living goddess abstracted into a generic "energy" as her system spread — is a case study in secularization/abstraction, the draining of the sacred-personal from a transmitted technology.
The Sharpest Implication If the coiled serpent at the base of the spine — the single most famous image in global yoga — was originally a goddess, Kubjikā the Crooked One, and got abstracted into a generic "energy" only as her system spread and her cult was forgotten, then the entire modern language of "kuṇḍalinī energy" and "chakra balancing" is the terminal residue of a forgotten goddess-cult, the divine person drained out and a mechanism left behind. The destabilizing turn: the people most into "kuṇḍalinī energy" are relating to the abstracted ghost of a deity they've never heard of, operating as a mechanism what was once revered as a presence. And the recovery isn't just historical correction — it's a different and possibly safer, truer practice: the coiled power at your spine's base has a name and a face, and was meant to be awakened as a goddess, not forced as a force.
Generative Questions