Śivasaṃhitā 5.77

Suptā nāgopamā—“sleeping like a serpent”—describes Kuṇḍalinī’s latent state in mūlādhāra with precision beyond poetic image. The serpent in repose is pure potential: it has not lost its capacity for movement or its transforming venom, it simply has not yet activated them. Sphurantī svayaprabhā—“shining with its own light”—adds the luminous dimension: even asleep, Kuṇḍalinī is not dead but simply still, shining with a light that needs no external source.

Sandhisandhau—“between the joints/unions”—describes the serpent’s location within the spine: not in an empty space but in the randhra (gaps) between vertebrae. This subtle anatomical description indicates that Kuṇḍalinī is not a diffuse energy but a localized presence that filters through the junctions between vertebral bodies, animating the spine from base to skull. Its ascent is literally a passage through these articulations.

Identifying Kuṇḍalinī as vākdevatā—“goddess of speech”—and as the original bīja integrates mūlādhāra’s energy with the doctrine of speech levels (vāk) in Kashmir Śaivism. Speech has four levels: parā (beyond sound), paśyantī (mental vision of sound), madhyamā (inner speech), and vaikharī (manifest speech). Kuṇḍalinī is the source of all four: as she ascends through the chakras, each level of speech is activated up to the highest expression, the eloquent silence of parāvāk.