Circle Paintings

James Mellick calls these beautiful mandalas "Circle Paintings for Barns". While these paintings borrow from the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, the imagery, designs and sophisticated colors go beyond the tradition as a contemporary folk art form.

You can visit his website JamesMellick.com to find more "circle paintings" and other beautiful art.

Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs

Traditional Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs are commonly found at the peaks of barns in Pennsylvania and the surrounding area. These circular hex signs have much mystery, myth and confusion surrounding them.

Some traditions teach that "painted prayers," invocations and petitions made visible, asking God for the blessing of protection for home and farm, good fortune, abundance and prosperity or inviting guests to be welcome.

Traditional hexen are painted directly on the barn surface, and use a minimal number of primary colors, black and white. The painted used a compass made from a nail, string and pencil to inscribe large circles and arcs. Modern hexen are painted on plywood circles that are painted in the same color as the barn and mounted with screws. They can also be painted on smaller circles for display in the house, and sometimes are used to adorn hope chests, baby cradles or decorative (or functional) boxes.

Ritual

When you sit down to pray
And then you kneel and then lie flat on your face
When you draw a blank and in disgust you say to the floor
I’m stumped – I’m all out of knowing what to pray for!

Oh! My heart skips a beat!

You let out an exasperated sigh and beat your fists on your head
You say – I give up! Use me for your purpose then!
Make me babble in a crowd – throw me in front of a bus!
I’m done caring about what you do or why you do it!

You think you are punishing me
I think I have never been more in love!

~by Grace Gibson

Ritual Mandala

Ritual

art by Shirley Gibson

Truth

Truth is within ourselves.

There is an inmost center in us all,

Where the truth abides in fullness; and to know

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape

Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without.

~Robert Browning

Toward the One

"Toward the One."

A beautiful mandala to enhance your desktop.

Meditate on the message, allow the image to pull you in.

To download, click the image to enlarge it. Then right click the image, select "save picture". Save the picture to your "My Pictures" folder. To set it as wallpaper, open your "My Pictures" folder, right click on the mandala image and choose "set as background". Enjoy!

This desktop wallpaper uses

mandala art by Shirley Gibson

In oneness I walk.

With oneness before me I walk.
With oneness behind me I walk.
With oneness above me I walk.
With oneness below me I walk.
With oneness all around me I walk.
With oneness within me I walk.

It is finished with oneness restored.
It is finished with oneness restored.
It is finished with oneness restored.
It is finished with oneness restored.

~Navaho healing song

Navaho Sand Paintings

Coyote Stealing Fire


Big Home of the Bear and Snake


Big Storm Patterns


Big Whirling Log


Big Whirling Yei

These, and other beautiful things can be found and purchased at the Southwest Furniture Store.

Healing mandalas of the Navaho

The Navajo art of Sandpainting began as a spiritual healing system rather than art for art's sake. Traditional Diné healing incorporates ritualism, prayer, ceremonies, and herbology to increase wellness and promote harmony with the universe. Sandpaintings are part of religious chants in which "Earth People and Holy People come into harmony, giving healing and protection."

Many Sandpaintings include yéi figures (see below), which are Navajo spiritual beings. The healing ceremonies involve medicine men chanting particular songs and simultaneously creating a Sandpainting on the ground. The medicine man asks for the yéis to come into the painting and help to heal the patient by restoring balance and harmony.

Once a healing ceremony is complete, the Sandpainting is destroyed. The Sandpaintings one sees in shops and on the Internet are commercially produced and contain important errors. As the real Sandpaintings are considered sacred, should one come into possession of a correctly completed Sandpainting, the Navajos fear that evil would befall the person in possession of what "amounted to a never-ending cry beseeching the Holy People's appearance."

(commercial sand painting depicting the 5 yéis)

Discovery

Have you seen a rabbit when the lynx is hunting?
Dodging and dashing this way and that
Feinting and veering all over the place!

I made rabbit so you could see yourself!
All panic and fur, warm and wild beating heart
Stand your ground and let me snag you with my claws

Oh! You will say, laughing –
I’m not a rabbit after all!

~Grace Gibson

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Discovery Mandala

Discovery

art by Shirley Gibson

Sometime in your life

Sometime in your life you will go on a journey.
It will be the longest journey you have ever taken.
It is the journey to find yourself.

~Katherine Sharp

Dare to be

"What you must dare to be is yourself."

A beautiful mandala to encourage you as you work.

Meditate on the message, allow the image to pull you in.

To download, click the image to enlarge it. Then right click the image, select "save picture". Save the picture to your "My Pictures" folder. To set it as wallpaper, open your "My Pictures" folder, right click on the mandala image and choose "set as background". Enjoy!

This desktop wallpaper uses

mandala art by Shirley Gibson

Elephant Wondering

A seed
Has sprouted beneath a golden leaf
In a dark forest.
This seed is seriously contemplating
Seriously wondering about
The moseying habits
Of the Elephant.

Why?

Because
In this lucid, wine-drenched tale
The Elephant is really --

God,

Who has
His big foot upon us,
Upon the golden leaf under which lies
This sprouting
Universe
Wherein
We are all a little concerned

And
Nervous.

-Hafiz

Ennis Court Mandalas

An amazing experiment is taking place at Ennis Court (A senior Living Community) located in Lakewood, Ohio. Residents are being taught to make Mandalas with fantastic results. All the artists represented here are suffering with various levels of cognitive degeneration, some severe.






Charles Gilchrist: "I believe our Ennis Court Mandala Experiment has proven to be very valuable and even important. I would like to teach my techniques to as many health care leaders as possible. I envision this process being successfully practiced all over the world. Sacred Geometry transcends any mundane language and I believe will help almost anyone suffering with various levels of cognitive degeneration. I have the developed working formulas held in my mind and I would love to share them with as many teachers as possible."



Authors note: If you are interested in taking advantage of Charles’ willingness to share, you can visit his website at CharlesGilchrist.com

Why create a mandala?

Here are a number of really good reasons to begin to create your own personal mandala art as a journal or as a meditative practice.

• Because it has the regenerative and curative power to activate the latent powers of the mind. The meditative process helps to focus and open the heart to the healing power of unconditional love.



• Because it has a calming and relaxing effect on the mind and body, thus focusing and strengthening the will to heal.



• Because it can bring joy as it facilitates the healing of a sense of psychological fragmentation.



• Because it can make the invisible visible - expressing paradoxical situations or patterns of ultimate reality that can be expressed in no other way.



• Because it can reveal unity between human existence and the structure of the cosmos - opening up a perspective in which things can be understood as a whole.



• Because it can give form and expression to an intuitive insight into spiritual truth by releasing the inner light of the soul.

from Mandala by Judith Cornell
personal mandala by Michelle Church

Communion

Stop using words around me
I can’t hear you when you are always talking
Be still and listen with your skin,
like when there is a monster under your bed
I love it when we talk like this…

~Grace Gibson

Communion Mandala

Communion by Shirley Gibson

When our eyes see

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts,
the circle of Creation is completed inside us,
the doors of our souls fly open
and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.

~ Michael Bridge ~

It is...

It is the artist's mission to penetrate...in the womb of nature, in the primal ground of creation where the secret key to all things lies hidden.

~Paul Klee

... More inspirational quotes can be found at my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com

Madhubani Mandala Art

The wall paintings of Madhubani are a queer mixture of aestheticism, ecstasy and sex. Put here on paper are some of the same representations.

The major part of the painting has a circle of yantras representing different gods and goddesses. It is the influence of Tantra on the religious scene. The Kali Yantra, Sri Yantra etc. form the conglomeration of yantras, akin to mandalas, a symbol in Tantrik art....

... I am so sorry to do this to you, but this post has been moved to my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com, and can be found in its entirety here: About Madhubani Marriage Mandala Art, and a nice gallery of the Madalas can be found here: Madhubani Marriage Mandalas.

Sri Yantra Temple

This is a temple on the Narmada River in Gujarat, India. It's a three dimensional Shri Yantra. Underneath that square base is an enormous public hall....

This post has been moved to my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com, and can be found in its entirety here: The Sri Yantra Temple

Flame

A Bedouin sits by his fire
Who am I? he asks the embers
Touch me and find out, comes the answer

The man turns around and says to his camel
I have been out here too long –
I am having a conversation with a pile of burning dung…

The camel blinks stupidly;
no one can tell what a camel is thinking
The Bedouin shrugs and turns back to his fire
Truly, If I touch you, I will know who I am?

No, cracks the fire. But you will know two things…
Curious, the man asks – what two things?
You will know pain and you will know you are not pain

How stupid, grumbles the man
Indeed, says the fire
You have been confused for a long time.

~Grace Gibson

Flame Mandala

Flame

~by Shirley Gibson

More mandalas can be found on my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com.

Sri Yantra Mandala Meditation

The secret key to using Yantras in meditation is Resonance. The process of Resonance is established by mental focus on the image of the Yantra. As long as the mind is tuned into the specific mood associated to that Yantra, the energy flows, but when the Resonance is stopped, the energy disappears.

Instructions for Shri Yantra Mandala meditation:

1. Hang the Shri Yantra mandala on a wall facing North or East, placing the center of the Yantra at the level of your eyes...

I am so sorry to do this to you, but this post has been moved to my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com, and can be found in its entirety here: Sri Yantra Mandala Meditation

A mandala represents...

"A mandala represents simultaneously what we are on the inside - our soul, and what we are on the outside - our universe, and how the two relate with balance and beauty."

~Janine Logue Wooten,
Mandala Artist

More mandala quotes and cool mandala stuff can be found at my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com.

Hypnotic Healing Mandala

This hypnotic healing mandala has been specifically designed as desktop wallpaper. The purpose of this mandala is for grounding. So often, when we are working at our computers for long periods of time, we loose our "groundedness" and become "spaced out". The colors and the words on this mandala image bring a feeling of stability and connectedness....

... I am so sorry, but the full size image of this mandala, and the rest of this post has been moved to my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com, and can be found here: Hypnotic Healing Mandala.

Abundance

Stop huddling around your TV
Squinting, fiddling with the knobs

It’s midnight now...

So sorry to do this, but this post has been moved to my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com. It can be found in its entirety here: Night Sky Mandala

Abundance Mandala

Abundance

~by Shirley Gibson

Miracle Mandala

Miracle

~by
Shirley Gibson

Note: This and many other mandalas can be found at my new website, Mandala Madness, hosted at shirleytwofeathers.com.