Śivasaṃhitā 5.82

Kriyāvijñānaśakti—“the power of action and knowledge”—describes Kuṇḍalinī in her dynamic aspect: not only static knowledge (vijñāna) but also the power of action (kriyā) that actualizes it in the manifested world. This kriyā-vijñāna duality is the basis of Kashmir Śaivism’s cosmology: the universe arises from the interplay between consciousness that knows (cit) and energy that acts (śakti). Kuṇḍalinī is precisely the union of these two principles in the yogin’s body.

Śoṇaśikhā—“crimson/scarlet flame”—is the most precise image of Kuṇḍalinī’s visual aspect in its initial activation state: no longer the golden light of her latent state but a deep red flame pointing upward. Crimson (śoṇa) combines the red of rajas (active energy) with the gold of sattva (clarity): it is the color of transformation in progress. This ascending flame (uttiṣṭhan) is the sign that the awakening process has begun.

The return to the description of svayambhūliṅga in the perineum (yoni) in this verse closes a descriptive arc that began in verse 57: the text has traversed the chakra system from mūlādhāra to maṇipūra and returns to the source to recall that all the higher chakras’ energy is rooted in mūlādhāra. The svayambhūliṅga is the contact point between individual consciousness (jīvātman) and cosmic consciousness (paramātman), the place where the macrocosm folds into the microcosm.