This paper examines some of the earliest complex engagement with the South Asian phenomenon of Kuṇḍaliṇi by European and North American authors, specifically the hybrid models of three early twentieth-century Theosophists: James Pryce, Charles Leadbeater, and George Arundale. Though such models have been at times critiqued for their appropriation of Sanskrit terminology to represent what may seem like unrelated concepts, they are best approached not as scholarly attempts to faithfully represent South Asian Kuṇḍalinī traditions and practices, but rather as novel spiritual explorations—ones that occur in and rely on a primarily "Western" conceptual framework, but nevertheless seek to build comparative bridges to South Asian traditions. A contemporary emerging consensus within the anglophone literature depicted Kuṇḍalinī as a "power," articulated in quasi-scientific language as a natural force akin but not exactly identical to electromagnetism. Insofar as it was related to electricity, this force was fiery. Insofar as it moved in a circular or curved path, it was snake-like. This language, which is also found among contemporary Indian popularizers writing for a global audience, both follows and modernizes traditional South Asian imagery. However, looking beyond these broad convergences reveals within the Theosophical accounts deeper and diverging cosmological assumptions that draw primarily on Gnostic and Hermetic rather than Tantric logics. Furthermore, such literature hints at an "on-the-ground" reality that a number of Western occultists are not simply writing about such matters, but are clearly also practicing—and experiencing—something. Theosophical authors are not particularly concerned that their portrayals of Kuṇḍalinī are inconsistent with traditional sources, or even among and within themselves. And yet all three describe a violent force—fiery, flashing, electric—that fundamentally transforms the body as it is normally felt and inhabited.