Aura Reading

Theosophical accounts of the aura

In Theosophical writing of the early twentieth century, the aura was described as the visible emanation of subtle bodies said to interpenetrate the physical body. Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater's Thought-Forms, first printed by the Theosophical Publishing House in London in 1901, says that the mental body and the desire (astral) body together make up what Theosophists call the aura. It assigns qualities to colours, for example black to hatred and malice, rose to affection, blue to religious devotion and yellow to intellect. The authors state that the forms were drawn from life, observed by clairvoyance and then rendered by artists.

Leadbeater's Man Visible and Invisible, cited here in its 1920 second revised edition from the Theosophical Publishing House, presents the astral body as changing in appearance as a person's emotions change and the mental body as expressing intellectual activity. The book rests its descriptions on what it calls trained clairvoyance and dismisses sceptics. It also has a chapter on what it calls the health-aura, which it connects with physical well-being. These are claims made within a belief system and not measured findings.

Kilner and the screen method

Walter J. Kilner, whose title page lists the qualifications B.A., M.B. Cantab. and M.R.C.P., published The Human Atmosphere (New York: Rebman Company, 1911). He described viewing people through glass cells of dicyanin dissolved in alcohol and reported three components: a dark band beside the skin that he named the etheric double, a striated inner aura and an outer aura of variable extent. He presented the work as a physical investigation separate from occultism and wrote that changes in the aura would have diagnostic value.

Kilner also wrote that his conclusions came from a small number of cases and offered them as working hypotheses, and he acknowledged that observers vary in what they see. His method, a chemical screen aimed at a physical and diagnostic reading, differs from the clairvoyance and colour symbolism of the Theosophical texts. The sources reviewed here do not trace how far the two lines influenced one another or present-day aura readers.

Kirlian photography and later claims

A critical reference entry by Robert Todd Carroll says that Semyon Kirlian found in 1939 that placing objects in a high-voltage electric field on photographic plates produced halo-like images. It adds that the parapsychologist Thelma Moss promoted the technique as a diagnostic tool and as a record of bioenergy, and that proponents read the images as auras. The entry is sceptical commentary and not a historical monograph, so its dates and attributions need checking against primary sources. No source reviewed here traces the older history of aura-like ideas, such as halos in religious art, so this page makes no claim about their age or about equivalence with Theosophical teaching.

Aura reading and aura photography

In current use, aura reading covers sessions in which a reader says they see or sense colours or other qualities around a person, and sessions built on photographs from aura cameras. A 2026 consumer article quoting four experts describes no single standard method: some readers emphasise seeing colours around the head, others describe feeling warmth or tingling. Its colour meanings overlap but vary, with red linked to passion, vitality or anger, blue to communication or calm, and violet to intuition.

Aura photography is a separate technique. Carroll's entry describes gas discharge visualisation (GDV), promoted by Konstantin Korotkov, as a camera system that uses glass electrodes and pulsed high-intensity electric fields to produce fluorescent images that are then used in speculation about auras and biofields. On this page aura reading means the interpretive activity and aura photography the imaging step that some readers add.

Related and overlapping terms

Kilner's period vocabulary included the human atmosphere and the etheric double, while Theosophical writers spoke of astral and mental bodies. The phrase human energy field appears in work on Therapeutic Touch, which Rosa and colleagues describe as a nursing practice whose practitioners claim to manipulate a field perceptible above the patient's skin. The term overlaps with aura but belongs to a different practice, and findings about one should not be transferred automatically to the other.

In Theosophical writing the aura is an emanation of subtle bodies, whereas chakras are described as centres of force. A catalogue record for Leadbeater's monograph The Chakras, first published in 1927, says it treats them as centres of force and distinguishes them from the aura, although the passages making that distinction were not read in full for this draft. One 2026 consumer article places aura reading and chakra interpretation under a single disclaimer, which shows that practice and public usage overlap even where the concepts differ.

Aura as a medical term

In medicine, aura has an unrelated meaning. The NHS describes migraine aura as warning symptoms such as zigzag lines or flashing lights that should resolve within an hour. Visual or sensory changes of that kind have medical explanations and are not what aura readers describe, although the shared word can cause confusion when people search for the topic.

Formats described in consumer sources

The 2026 consumer article describes readings as varied. A reader may report seeing colours around a person, often the head, or may describe sensing energy as warmth or tingling, and photographic imaging may be added. The article suggests a home exercise of standing before a white background while observing peripheral vision, and another that uses sensations between the hands. It gives no price or session length, and no verified source on typical fees, duration or training routes was found for this draft.

The same article quotes experts as advising that a reading should not be treated as a permanent verdict, and as warning against practitioners who claim to remove curses. A person considering a session can ask how the reader reaches an interpretation, whether it comes from sight, sensation or a photograph, and whether any health claim is being made.

Reports of how aura perception is experienced

A 2003 master's thesis at Massey University used interpretative phenomenological analysis with twelve people who reported perceiving auras. It identified four main themes: the phenomenon itself, the act of perceiving, sharing the experience and making sense of it. The thesis describes accounts as reported by claimants and was a small qualitative study, so it describes how people talk about the experience and does not show what they perceive. Only the abstract could be read for this draft.

Spiritual and psychological claims

Within Theosophical teaching, colours in the aura are said to indicate emotional states and qualities of character, so that a reader can describe a person's feelings or temperament. Present-day readers quoted in the 2026 consumer article attach similar meanings, such as yellow with optimism or personal power and green with growth or compassion. These are interpretations offered by practitioners and tradition, and the article itself states that aura reading is not a scientifically established method for determining personality or predicting events.

Health and diagnostic claims

Kilner proposed that changes in the aura would have diagnostic value, Leadbeater's book gives the health-aura its own chapter, and Moss is said to have promoted Kirlian images as a diagnostic tool. The same 2026 consumer article states that such practices are not scientifically established methods for diagnosing physical or mental health conditions. No source reviewed here validates aura reading or aura imaging as a diagnostic method, so these remain historical and practitioner claims.

What has and has not been tested

Searches of PubMed and of a multi-database academic index for this draft found no randomised trial of aura reading as an intervention for any outcome, and no blinded test of whether aura readers can describe a person's aura accurately. The word aura also retrieves large epilepsy and migraine literatures, which concern a different meaning of the term. The closest blinded test found concerned a related claim.

In a 1998 JAMA study, 21 experienced Therapeutic Touch practitioners were asked to say which of their hands the investigator's unseen hand was hovering over. They were correct in 123 of 280 trials (44%), which is close to chance. The study tested detection of a human energy field by touch-based practitioners, not colour perception by aura readers, and it was written by authors from a task force on questionable nursing practices. Its result should not be transferred automatically to aura reading.

Kirlian and gas discharge imaging

A 1976 paper in Science examined what shapes Kirlian images. It reported that most variation in the corona images of a living subject in contact with the film could be accounted for by moisture on or within the subject's surface, and that the radial extent of the corona depended on the resistance in the high-voltage circuit. Carroll's entry likewise attributes the effects to moisture, barometric pressure and voltage and says the images vanish in a vacuum. Neither tested aura readers.

Synaesthesia and individual differences

A 2011 study in Consciousness and Cognition compared the subjective reports of four synaesthetes who see colour when they look at faces or figures with descriptions of alleged auric phenomena in the literature and with claims by practitioners. It noted similarities in some descriptions but concluded that the two phenomena were phenomenologically and behaviourally dissimilar, so synaesthesia does not offer a simple explanation of aura perception.

A 2015 survey of 212 adults recruited through an email list of people interested in paranormal topics compared 97 who said they had seen the aura with 115 who had not. Aura perceivers scored higher on anomalous cognitive experiences, transliminality and thin psychological boundaries, and transliminality was the best predictor. The sample was self-selected and the design correlational, so it describes who reports the experience and does not show what causes it. Cooper's 2003 thesis reviewed explanations under psychical, scientific, clinical and aura-imagery models and recommended research modelled on synaesthesia studies.

Training studies

A 2018 research note in the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies reported a quasi-experimental study of 47 participants, mean age 19, who tried to view an aura-like phenomenon around the hand after a short training session. Only the abstract page was open, so comparison groups, controls and effect sizes were not verified. Self-described visual experiences after training do not show that a field outside the viewer exists.

Evidence on harms

No source reviewed for this draft reports adverse-event data for aura reading, and the absence of such reports does not show that harms never occur. The experts quoted in the 2026 consumer article raise care concerns: they advise that readings should not replace professional medical or mental health advice and warn against practitioners who claim to remove curses. Costs and any pressure to buy further services were not covered by a verified source.

Care boundaries and regulation

The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health advises against using a product or practice that has not been shown to be effective to postpone seeing a health care provider, and advises telling every provider about complementary approaches in use. A reading is not a diagnosis, and new or worsening symptoms, including sudden changes in vision, call for assessment by a clinician. No verified source on licensing, regulation or required training for aura readers in any jurisdiction was located, so requirements are not described here.

Anyone attending a session can ask the practitioner how they were trained, say they wish to pause or stop, and decline photography or any health-related interpretation. These points follow from general consent principles and are not drawn from a source on aura reading.