Mandala Designs

An ancient and widespread phenomenon

All mandala designs have in common the circle. The circle has been a powerful symbol since the earliest days of humanity.

The earliest circles I have come into contact with are those carved into the rocks by Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples here in Scotland.

It’s a visual language that we have long since forgotten, but these painstakingly-carved cups, concentric rings, grooves, tails and spirals hold an allure that fascinates artists, archaeologists and even psychologists into the present.

We can only speculate on the meaning behind these indigenous stone carvings, but it seems reasonable to hypothesise that our ancestors were naturally and continuously drawn to the circle as a symbol of their own human experience.

Certainly, the evidence left behind by these peoples – stone rings, wooden henges, circular ditches, roundish burial cairns and circular home foundations – show an obvious tendency towards circles.

Mandala Designs in Nature

When they looked to the outside world, the prehistoric folk would have seen the rising each day of a circular ball of fire (the sun,) orbited by a spherical moon. They would have seen other circular planetary phenomenon and noticed the effect on their home planet, the rhythms and cycles of Earth in the sky, land and sea.

As we do, they would have observed the concentric rings that tell the story of a tree, and those on the loch after a rock has been tossed in, or in a puddle when it’s raining.

Their eyes, faces, breasts and testes – they and we just can’t help being attracted to the circle, it’s in our very nature.

Circle as Spiritual Symbol

Whether there was any spiritual meaning behind this early rock art we’ll never know but since we began recording history, we can see

that each of the great spiritual traditions shares a principle of unity, wholeness, completeness – of the Divine, however that is expressed.

Circle as an Expression of Oneness

The Pythagoreans, who believed in the spiritual significance of geometric patterns and numbers, saw the circle as particularly sacred, and in common with many other traditions recognised it as a representation of both nothing and everything.

This paradoxical quality is perfectly in tune with the ineffable nature of the Self – that which lies at the very centre of the mandala.

How to Distinguish Mandala Designs from Everyday Circles

In my experience, a circle becomes a mandala when it is consciously created as such.

In fact, one of the most common definitions of mandala is sacred circle or magic circle – meaning that the mandala is imbued with a sacred power.

Years ago, I came across an explanation by Giuseppe Tucci that the Sanskrit word mandala can be broken down to the following composites;

manda = ‘essence’ + la = ‘container’

One definition of the word mandala is therefore a container of essence.

A mandala doesn’t have to be a two dimensional drawing and as a container of essence can be expressed in a number of ways, including architecture, sound, dance and community but what all mandalas have in common is their symbolic quality – a coming to consciousness of something profoundly enigmatic.

It is an archetype which appears across many different cultures throughout history and is the language of magic-makers, shamans, medicine-men, mystics, and initiates the world-over. 

The mandala is a living symbol, used as a gateway to enlightenment, individuation, personal healing and cosmic understanding – for the individual, yes – and also for the collective.

Mandala Drawing

My route to Individuation

My creative practice is dedicated to mandala drawing. However, I maintain that I didn’t ever choose this route.

When I started out, I had no idea what the mandala symbol represented, never mind how to draw a mandala – but the same month that my mum passed away, my soul demanded very loudly that I learn more about this ancient archetype. Given the significance of recent events, I paid attention!

Carl Jung and Mandala Drawing

I soon discovered that one of my principle influencers, Dr Carl G Jung, had worked with mandalas for many years and helped establish the practice as a means of self inquiry for those individuals dedicated to individuation – the conscious realisation of one’s unique psychological reality.

“I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, a mandala, which seemed to correspond with my inner situation at the time.” ~ C.G. Jung

Psychological freedom has long been one of my primary drivers and I was encouraged to follow in Dr Jung’s footsteps and begin using the mandala as a means to observe my psychic transformation as I set about my personal individuation – a movement towards wholeness, through the realisation of Self as the regulating centre of the personality (rather than the ego.)

This has formed the basis of a process I call Artful Self Inquiry.

This artful self inquiry was initially a very intense process that became a full-time occupation.

I immediately began to share my process and discoveries in the world through my flagship online program, Mandala Magic.

What learning and teaching how to draw a mandala has taught me

The personal transformation I’ve undergone as a result of this work has been immense. Artful self inquiry has been the portal through which I have come to know the most intimate parts of my psyche, including those aspects hidden deep in the shadow places of my personal unconscious.

Through the sharing of this work, I’ve also come to understand more deeply the archetypal forces moving through each of us as we navigate our bodysoul Beings around the planet we call home.

The mandala principle has provided me with a thorough understanding of how Life and Death, those most dynamic aspects of Existence, work.

I’m now intimately familiar with the interplay of Feminine and Masculine (yin and yang) in my own energy container and the wider cosmos.

Through this practice, I can’t fail to be in touch with the underlying sacred geometry that forms the fabric of our everyday reality and touch the still, silent places out of which all of it is birthed.

As I systematically strip away all the attachments of ego-identification that previously kept me dissatisfied, unfulfilled and seeking, always seeking, I continue to witness the exquisite logic of that transpersonal power called Self.

My eternal thanks to Dr Jung and his dedicated students (particularly the art therapist Joan Kellogg) who chose to share this ancient wisdom with the contemporary world of the Western mind, thereby offering us all a key with which to unlock some of our greatest mysteries.