Seven chakras, four systems · Handmade crystal in Kreuzwertheim
What Are the 7 Chakra Frequencies?
One chart says the root chakra is 396 Hz. Another says 256. A third 261.6, a fourth 194.18. Here are all four systems, where every number comes from — and what the old tradition sounds like in its own voice.
First things first
The honest answer first
If you've searched for chakra frequencies, you've probably noticed something odd: the charts don't match.
One page says the root chakra is 396 Hz. Another says 256 Hz. A third says 261.6 Hz, a fourth 194.18 Hz. These aren't rounding differences — they're different systems, each with its own idea behind it.
There is no single set of chakra frequencies — there are several.
At least four systems are in use today, and each assigns the seven chakras its own series of tones. Each one is an attempt to give an old and fascinating map of the body a language of numbers.
Below you'll find all four in one chart, the story of where each number comes from, and what the chakra tradition itself — which is far older than any of them — says about sound. By the end, you won't need anyone to tell you which chart is "right". You'll be able to hear the question properly and choose for yourself.
All systems, side by side
All four systems in one chart
| Chakra | Solfeggio1970s | "Scientific pitch" C=2561713 · 1988 | Piano notes, A=4401939 | Planetary tonesCousto, 1978 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Root Muladhara | 396 Hz | C · 256 Hz | C4 · 261.63 Hz | Earth day · 194.18 Hz |
| Sacral Svadhisthana | 417 Hz | D · 288 Hz | D4 · 293.66 Hz | Moon · 210.42 Hz |
| Solar plexus Manipura | 528 Hz | E · 320 Hz | E4 · 329.63 Hz | Sun · 126.22 Hz |
| Heart Anahata | 639 Hz | F · 341.3 Hz | F4 · 349.23 Hz | Earth year · 136.10 Hz |
| Throat Vishuddha | 741 Hz | G · 384 Hz | G4 · 392.00 Hz | Mercury · 141.27 Hz |
| Third eye Ajna | 852 Hz | A · 426.7 Hz | A4 · 440.00 Hz | Venus · 221.23 Hz |
| Crown Sahasrara | 963 Hz | B · 480 Hz | B4 · 493.88 Hz | Platonic year · 172.06 Hz |
On small screens, swipe the chart sideways.
Look closely and you'll notice the four columns don't even share a logic. Three of them climb steadily from root to crown, like a scale. The planetary column moves differently: there, the root (194.18 Hz) rings above the heart (136.10 Hz), because its order follows the sky, not the spine.
Four systems, four logics, four sets of numbers. Each has its own story — and the stories are worth knowing, because they tell you what each chart is actually offering you.
Four stories
Where each column comes from
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1970s · Solfeggio
The Solfeggio tones (396–963 Hz)
This is the chart you'll meet most often: 396, 417, 528, 639, 741, 852, 963 — with 528 Hz, the "love frequency", as its most famous member.
The set was assembled in the 1970s by Joseph Puleo, who derived the numbers through a numerological reading of the biblical Book of Numbers, and it reached the world through Leonard Horowitz's book Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse (1999). From there it grew into the most widely used sound-healing scale of our time — millions of people meditate with these tones every day, and the extended family of "9 sacred frequencies" adds 174 and 285 Hz.
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1713 · 1988
The 256 Hz ladder
This column is a C-major scale built on C = 256 Hz, and its pedigree is the most mathematical of the four. The French physicist Joseph Sauveur proposed it around 1713 as "scientific pitch", for one elegant reason: 256 is 2⁸, so every octave of C lands on a whole power of two — 32, 64, 128, 256, 512. A tuning in which the octaves count themselves.
The idea returned in 1988, when the Schiller Institute campaigned to restore C=256 as "Verdi tuning", and from there it found its way into the meditation world. If numbers carry meaning for you, this is the tidiest column in the chart — a scale where the arithmetic comes out clean.
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1939 · ISO 16
The piano ladder (261.63–493.88 Hz)
The same C-major scale once more, now as a modern piano plays it, with A fixed at 440 Hz — the concert pitch orchestras agreed on in 1939 and later wrote into ISO 16. If a chart tells you the heart chakra is 349.23 Hz, it's telling you the heart chakra is the F above middle C, played in tune with today's orchestras.
Both of these two columns rest on the same quiet idea: seven chakras, seven notes of the Western scale, rising up the spine from C to B. That pairing is younger than the chakras themselves — it took shape in the 20th century, when Eastern energy maps met Western instruments and found they fit. India had already made its own musical pairing long before: in the sargam tradition, the chakras rise with the syllables SA RE GA MA PA DHA NI. Two musical cultures, each finding a scale in the body. (The rainbow colours joined the picture in 1927, through the Theosophist Charles Leadbeater — red at the root, violet at the crown.)
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1978 · Cousto
The planetary tones (126.22–221.23 Hz)
The most surprising column — because these numbers aren't chosen, they're calculated.
In 1978, the Swiss mathematician Hans Cousto had an idea he called the Cosmic Octave: take a real cosmic cycle and raise it, octave by octave, into hearing range. One rotation of the Earth takes 86,400 seconds. Double that frequency 24 times and you land on 194.18 Hz — a G, warm and low. The Earth's year, doubled 32 times, becomes 136.10 Hz. You can check the arithmetic yourself; it works, and there's something genuinely moving about it: a day, a year, a moon — made audible.
The pairing with the chakras came after Cousto's mathematics, as practitioners and tuning-fork makers arranged his tones along the spine — and the pairing has its own poetry: the ground you stand on gives the root its tone. The Moon, mover of tides, sounds the sacral centre. And the heart is given the Earth's year — 136.10 Hz, the tone the world knows as the OM frequency. That tone carries a story rich enough for its own article, and we've told it properly here: What Frequency Is OM?
The older voice
What the old tradition says about chakra sounds
All four charts are modern languages for something much older. So it's worth asking: what did the tradition itself sound like?
The seven-chakra model reached its classical form in the Ṣaṭ-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa, a Sanskrit text of 1577, and came West through Sir John Woodroffe's celebrated translation The Serpent Power (1918). And it does connect each chakra to sound — has done for centuries. Not through hertz, but through the voice.
Each chakra carries a seed syllable — a bija mantra, chanted aloud:
LAM for the root. VAM for the sacral. RAM for the solar plexus. YAM for the heart. HAM for the throat. OM for the third eye. And at the crown — stillness.
These syllables are sung at whatever pitch the practitioner's voice naturally holds. The tradition never fixed a number to them — it didn't need one. Its instrument was the human voice, and every voice carries the mantras in its own register.
Seen from here, the four charts stop being rivals. Each is a bridge, built in our own time, between that old practice and the modern language of frequency — four different ways of giving the same longing a number. Which bridge you walk across is your choice. The tradition underneath carries all of them.
The tones themselves
Hearing the seven tones
In our workshop, the chakra tones have rung for years — as pure crystal glass. Our Chakra Energy Chimes follow the note ladder, C through B, one hand-blown chime per chakra: the root note C for life force and grounding, F for the heart — balance, love and compassion — up to B for the crown. Each is tuned by hand to a reference pitch of A = 432 Hz — and tuned precisely: measure the recordings below, and they sit within a single cent.
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Root chakra · Muladhara
Life force, grounding, assertiveness and physical strength
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Sacral chakra · Svadhisthana
Vitality, life energy, appetite and digestion
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Solar plexus chakra · Manipura
Processing of emotions, feelings and experiences
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Heart chakra · Anahata
Balance, love, compassion and healing
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Throat chakra · Vishuddha
Communication, expression and independence
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Third eye chakra · Ajna
Intuition and mental strength
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Crown chakra · Sahasrara
Spiritual growth and self-realization
One thing you'll notice: our chimes ring in octaves 6 and 7 — far above the middle-octave values printed in the charts. That's no contradiction. A note keeps its name through every octave; a root-chakra C is a C whether it hums at 261 Hz or rings bright and clear at two thousand. What the charts really assign to each chakra is not one number but a tone — and a tone can be sounded wherever an instrument sings best. Pure crystal glass sings high, long and clear.
Press play, listen, and notice what happens to your attention.
From the workshop
Seven chakras, seven tones
Chakra Energy Chimes — C to B
For 46 years, our family has hand-blown pure crystal glass instruments in Germany. The Chakra Energy Chimes are seven of them: one tone per chakra, tuned C to B at a 432 Hz reference, each with its own stand and its own voice.
See the Chakra Energy Chimes →Questions
Chakra frequencies FAQ
What is the frequency of each chakra? +
It depends on the system. The Solfeggio scale runs 396–963 Hz, the "scientific pitch" scale runs 256–480 Hz, the concert-pitch scale runs 261.63–493.88 Hz, and the planetary tones run 126.22–221.23 Hz. Each system has its own origin — from numerology to astronomy — and its own following. The older tantric tradition worked with chanted seed syllables (bija mantras) rather than fixed frequencies.
Which chakra is 432 Hz? +
In the four common systems, none — 432 Hz belongs to a different conversation: it's a proposed alternative to the standard concert pitch of A = 440 Hz, a question of how instruments are tuned rather than a chakra tone. Some modern charts do build a chakra ladder upward from 432 Hz at the root, carrying that tuning idea into the chakra world. Our own chakra chimes are tuned to a 432 Hz reference — not because 432 "is" a chakra, but as the tuning of the whole scale.
What are the 7 chakra sounds? +
The traditional chakra sounds are syllables, chanted aloud: LAM (root), VAM (sacral), RAM (solar plexus), YAM (heart), HAM (throat) and OM (third eye) — with the crown associated with OM or with silence itself. These bija mantras are far older than any frequency chart and are sung at whatever pitch the practitioner's voice holds.
Are chakra frequencies scientifically proven? +
Specific frequency-to-chakra effects haven't been the subject of clinical research — the chakras belong to spiritual tradition, and science hasn't tested these charts as such. What research does show is simpler and solid: sound and music can measurably calm the body — slower breath, lower stress markers. Everything beyond that is a matter of practice and personal experience, and the tradition's own invitation stands: try it with your own ears.
- Ṣaṭ-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa (1577), translated by Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon) in The Serpent Power (1918): the classical seven-chakra model and the bija mantras.
- C.W. Leadbeater — The Chakras (1927): the rainbow colour sequence in the modern Western picture.
- Leonard Horowitz & Joseph Puleo — Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse (1999): the Solfeggio frequencies and their derivation from the Book of Numbers.
- Hans Cousto — Die kosmische Oktave / The Cosmic Octave (1978): the octave law and the planetary tone calculations.
- Joseph Sauveur — "scientific pitch" (C = 2⁸, ca. 1713); ISO 16 — concert pitch A = 440 Hz (1939/1955).
- Planetary tuning-fork chakra sets (Meinl Sonic Energy and others) — the planet-to-chakra assignment as sold and practised today.
- Our own measurement — the chime recordings on this page, analysed July 2026: fundamentals within one cent of an A = 432 Hz reference.