Mandala Meditations 4

Here's a mandala that started out as a pencil drawing, and which I reconstructed later on the computer. The Adobe Illustrator program allowed me to achieve interesting effects with the gradient tool.

My mandalas often start out as no more than doodles, a solitary pastime as I wait for restaurant dinners to be served.

I've given a couple of workshops on mandalas and noticed that many people look at a seemingly elaborate design (like today's header) and say, "I don't know where to begin!" That's because they're seeing the whole and finished image, and not the symmetrical, repeating parts.

The making of a mandala is a process, and it's not unlike constructing a snowflake from folded paper. If you make a paper snowflake, you concentrate on a sub-unit that will be repeated, and the final result will reveal itself later (and be a surprise). Mandalas can also reveal themselves, and of course you can edit and refine your design.

One fun approach to making a mandala is to create a simple black and white line mandala and then to use it as a template for a variety of interior designs and colorations. They can all have very different personalities.

I do this often, and as you can see, the template is just a starting point for which there are countless possibilities. It can be very meditative, and it's a lot of fun!

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Mandala Meditations 3

Back when I was in college, I often doodled as I listened to lectures. (Incidentally, studies have shown that doodling while listening makes the mind more retentive.) One of my recurring doodles was the image seen above, a very basic mandala. I was intrigued that a design so simple could be such a successful 3-dimensional illusion. Can you see the areas that are concave and convex? If not, just back away from your screen several feet.

time.com

Later, as I was reading the work of the psychologist Carl Yung, I discovered that he interpreted my doodle-mandala as representing separation from parents. That got my attention because I was, in fact, producing the mandala while I was away from home for the first extended period. I started to read more about Jung and his own interest in mandalas.

jungcurrents.com

Jung himself saw the mandala as a healing tool (or an expression of healing), and he created mandalas — circular meditations — on a regular basis. His mandalas were often dream interpretations. Above is Carl Jung's first mandala.

Here are some wonderful 19th-century type ornaments. Jung believed that circles and squares, and certainly circles within squares, were symbolic of wholeness. I'm always collecting images that could be mandalas or elements within mandalas, which is why I put these handsome ornaments aside in a file.

Or how about this 1827 utopian town plan by J. B. Papworth? The town center is a classic mandala, what's called "the circle squared." Perhaps Mr. Papworth was a student of Tibetan mandalas . . .

click to enlarge 

The Mandala of Yamantaka, above, comes from the fascinating book,

Mandala, by José and Miriam Argüelles, 1972.

Here's one of my own mandalas — I call it The Blue Light Special. If you focus on it long enough, those blue dots will become quite hypnotic!

You can read more about my mandalas and how I create them here and here. In my next posting, I'll talk about a couple of mandala exercises. Stay tuned!
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Before the Spirograph

© Mark D. Ruffner, 2011

I was noticing that my readers seem to enjoy looking at my posting on guilloche, and that got me thinking about our fascination with spirals, and a favorite American toy — the Spirograph!

designobserver.com and vintagetoysillustrated.com

If you were of a certain age in 1967, the biggest Christmas present of the year was Kenner's Spirograph. By fitting together a variety of plastic pieces, one could make an endless combination of guilloche patterns, or spirals. Kenner also sold a deluxe model, with many more pieces and the possibility of even more fun creations.

I missed out on the Spirograph because I was well beyond the age of those kids on the box cover; actually I was already away from home.

But in the 1950s, I played with the precursor of the Spirograph — the Magic Designer!

I still have it, box and all.

No plastic here — this was a designing machine! All the parts were metal, and the Magic Designer had the look of an engineering instrument. It came with its own neato paper die cuts for drawing. I still have a supply of those, too.

Below is information on the disc envelope for reordering. Note that the 6¢ postage would have been extra, for special handling!

The Magic Designer was a hugely popular Christmas present in its own time, and I should know. The Christmas morning I received mine, I didn't get much time to play with it because my father and grandfather were having all the fun!

Today I enjoy creating mandalas, which occasionally appear spiral-like. I created the header of this posting on the computer. It's a better tool for such designs, but I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate Spirograph is yet to come.

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Mandala Meditations 2

This  past weekend I gave my second talk in a year on mandalas. I talked about creating mandalas as a form of meditation in an earlier posting, which can be found here.

Saturday's talk was part of a day-long seminar on Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), who was a Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, and a writer of texts on philosophy, botany and medicine. She was also a composer, a founder of two monasteries and an advisor to popes. Hildegard had an encyclopedic mind, and as a 12th-century woman, held a unique status in the Catholic church.

Hildegard of Bingen also created mandala illuminations as a way of interpreting and explaining her visions. I was therefore asked to talk about mandalas, which I consider tools for centering and balancing, or as graphic meditations.

Mark D. Ruffner

At an initial stage, I approach mandalas loosely — without compasses, protractors or rulers — because I want to stay in a flow. I often use the backs of inexpensive paper plates since they're embossed with a circle, and therefore make great templates. I work relatively quickly with magic markers, and I might create six such mandalas in about an hour. If I don't like the direction of the mandala, or if I intuitively feel that it's finished, I simply pick up another paper plate.

I always start the mandala process in a meditative state, and as is often true with the creative process, I find myself going into another level of consciousness. The primary value of creating a mandala (for me) is that the process allows one to tap into a deeper self; that one can end up with an interesting or beautiful finished image is an extra reward. I liken mandala-making to the adage that the journey can be more important than the destination.

Often a mandala reveals itself to me in the process, and I discover a theme that can be powerful or seemingly mundane, but in any case a reflection of some level of my consciousness. When I completed the above mandala, I interpreted it as an immense space station, perhaps several miles wide. I enjoyed the image, it fired my imagination, and so I decided to refine it by redrawing it and then coloring it by computer.

Mark D. Ruffner

Now my mandala is pure fantasy, but it's still a tool of balancing, centering and symbolism. The center (which for me is always the most important part of the mandala) becomes an energy source. The number three is repeated many times, and for those interested in numerology, the blue pyramids encircled by orange (their complementary color) add up to 12 sides. As I recognize the symbolism that I've created subconsciously, I want to continue to reinterpret at a conscious level.

Mark D. Ruffner

So I begin, on the computer, to create the next level of mandala. What you see above is just one layer of a mandala that will have several layers, each a mandala unto itself. But I offer this early stage as an interesting viewing exercise. Stare at it over time and it will vibrate, become 3-dimensional and draw you in.
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Mandala Meditations

This past Monday I conducted a mandala workshop for the Regional Expressive Arts Practitioners (REAP). I think it went well and that everyone had fun. Thanks to Kathy Luethje for organizing the evening, and thanks to everyone who attended!

 

 

I believe, as Carl Jung did, that the mandala is a healing tool, and that to create a mandala is a form of healing meditation. So when I create mandalas, I'm conscious of centering and going inward. My mandalas tend to incorporate the color spectrum associated with the body's chakras, or energy points. Therefore the outer rings will be red, denoting centering of the physical body, and move inward through the spectrum to violet, giving energy to the cerebrum. In the case of the mandala above, painted in acrylics, my theme is gold, so the center focal point is also gold. (The design of white dots is actually the atomic symbol for gold.)

I prefer to make mandalas loosely and with magic markers, like the one above. At this stage, I'm not concerned with making everything perfectly symmetrical. Instead, I'm in a creative zone and working fast. With the mandalas drawn by hand, the process is my focus, not the finished product. Such mandalas can be refined later (because I believe looking at a beautiful, pristine mandala is a meditation in itself), but the designs at this loose stage often have more energy and power.

I also create mandalas on the computer, usually after having worked out the design in pencil, or with magic markers. My computer mandalas can often be other-worldly.

Here are nine mandalas that serve as corporate logos. Left to right and top to bottom: Pilkington Glass, Mercedes-Benz, Target, Accelrys, Google Browser, Yamaha, CBS, Tupperware and Korean Air.