About these Mandalas:

I created these Mandalas using a number of different graphics programs to slice up digital images of my art, which I then reassembled into circular patterns - or mandalas.

The project began, as many of my projects often do, with a simple experiment. The process was so interesting, the results so astonishingly fascinating, that I found it impossible to quit with a "reasonable" amount of images. By the time I had created well over 100 different mandalas, it really did begin to feel as if I was in the grip of "mandala madness".

The images themselves pull me into a meditative and healing space, and I do hope they have a similar effect on you, the viewer.

What is a mandala?

The word “Mandala,” is a Sanskrit word which means "sacred circle." A more literal translation might read "container of essences." As an art form, the mandala provides a concrete symbol of the artist's absorption into a sacred center. It is meant to draw both the artist and the viewer into an encounter with the "center" or as the Navajo call it, "a spiritual place of emergence."

Mandalas are most often circular, though some are square, or a combination of the two. They incorporate the use of colors, shapes, symbols, symmetry and repetition to aid in ordering and focusing one's life, and therefore facilitate healing. By focusing on it, both mandala artist and meditator can open to the divine energy of the Creator, and to the contents of his or her own spiritual and psychological self. They are used as healing and transforming art in Native American sand painting, Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist rituals, and modern psychotherapy.

Mandalas are a particularly effective tool for healing, or for creating positive energy, because not only are they beautiful, they incorporate bright colors, shapes, and rich symbolism. In addition to this already powerful synergy, the repetition of designs, and the symmetry draws the viewer to the centre, which is symbolic of the path of self discovery and the goal of enlightenment.

Some thoughts about Mandala Art

Mandalas speak to the soul. They are art, yet they are more than art, the same way we are each our selves, and yet we are more than our selves. Mandalas invite and entice us to look beyond the surface, to the many layers that combine to form our experience of an image in the moment.

The word "mandala" is from the Sanskit, meaning "circle". Mandalas have traditionally been graphic, mystic symbols of the universe, of creation, and of the drama of a human in the world seeking his or her sense of origin. They have been used by many different cultures to cultivate power or healing energy, to protect, to inspire, and to call upon the divine. Mandalas are deeply a part of our nature. They are found in our cells, in our eyes, in fruit, in flowers, in snowflakes and tree trunks and molecules.

A mandala can be a point of focus. It can be a soothing presence. A mandala can be a porthole to dreams, a prayer for healing, or simply a beautiful decoration.

Artists all around the world are painting mandalas. The possibilities are infinite! Each new mandala is a unique expression of the One pattern that contains all patterns. If you'd like to explore, you can take a fantastic journey through nearly 200 artist's mandalas at Clare Goodwin's Mandala Page

As Without - So Within

The mandala is one of the most potent symbols of humankind. Its circular form and concentric structure reflect the shape of the universe outside and the sense of perfection within. Mandalas are seen as sacred places which, by their very presence in the world, remind a viewer of the immensity and the sanctity of the universe and its potential in oneself.

In the Buddhist tradition, the purpose of a mandala is to put an end to human suffering, to attain enlightenment and to attain a correct view of Reality. It is a means to discover divinity by the realization that it resides within one's own self. Concentration on its form and content is an aid to prayer and meditation, leading eventually to a complete at-oneness with the world. At the center of every mandala is the Bindhu; the point, which is the symbol of emptiness.

Shown below, is an interpretation of The Cosmic Mandala from a mural painting at a wall of the Zong in Paro-Bhutan. It is an abstract form representing the the primary movement of the universe, the cosmic motion of the planets and the elements.

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen was born into a family of free nobles in the service of the counts of Sponheim, close relatives of the Hohenstaufen emperors. She was the tenth child, sickly from birth. From the time she was very young, Hildegard wrote, she experienced visions. In fact, the only surviving tale of Hildegard's childhood involves a conversation that she held with her nurse. Hildegard described an unborn calf as "white... marked with different colored spots on its forehead, feet and back." The nurse, amazed with the detail of the young child's account, told Hildegard's mother, who later rewarded her daughter with the calf, whose appearance Hildegard had accurately predicted.

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as a tithe to the church at the age of eight. Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, the sister of Count Meinhard of Sponheim, just outside the Disibodenberg monastery in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of what is now Germany. Jutta was enormously popular and acquired many followers, such that a small nunnery sprang up around her.

Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra," or leader of her sister community. The election would lead to the significant move, executed in the midst of great opposition, of twenty members of her community to her newly-formed monastery, Saint Rupertsberg at Bingen on the Rhine in 1150, where she became abbess.

Hildegard realized that keeping her visions to herself was a wise choice, and confided them only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, scribe. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions. In 1141, she received a call from God, "Write down that which you see and hear." She was hesitant to record her visions, and soon became physically ill. In her first theological text, 'Scivias, or "Know the Ways," Hildegard describes her struggle within:

"I didn’t immediately follow this command. Self-doubt made me hesitate. I analyzed others’ opinions of my decision and sifted through my own bad opinions of myself. Finally, one day I discovered I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed. Through this illness, God taught me to listen better. Then, when my good friends Richardis and Volmar urged me to write, I did. I started writing this book and received the strength to finish it, somehow, in ten years. These visions weren’t fabricated by my own imagination, nor are they anyone else’s. I saw these when I was in the heavenly places. They are God’s mysteries. These are God’s secrets. I wrote them down because a heavenly voice kept saying to me, 'See and speak! Hear and write!'"

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)

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

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.