Article 2585 of alt.meditation:
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From: Tyagi@cup.portal.com (Tyagi Mordred Nagasiva)
Newsgroups: alt.meditation,alt.magick,talk.religion.misc
Subject: On Making Mandalas (LONG)
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Date: Sun, 15 May 94 09:12:55 PDT
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From: ceci@lysator.liu.se
Date: Thu Jan  6 00:46:49 1994
Subject: Mandalas -- how to make them.

Introduction
============
The purpose of this article is to help you make a visual focus for
meditation. The article starts out with giving a rough sketch of how
mandalas can be defined, then suggest some patterns, talks about how
mandalas can be used, and then goes into some detail about how to
actually make mandalas. A bibliography appears at the end of this
article. As always, comments are welcome at: ceci@lysator.liu.se. The
article will be saved in /pub/magick/Consciousness/mandala at the
anonymous ftp-site ftp.lysator.liu.se.

This article assumes that you already know the basics of
meditation. If you don't, it's easy to learn. Contrary to
popular knowledge, you don't need a teacher to get started. Just
get a good book, and do it.

Definition
==========
Depending on whom you ask for a definition of mandalas, you get
different answers. Some definitions are wide, others broad, and
sometimes the intersection between these definitions is empty. For
some people mandalas, and the making of them, is a highly formalised
art, for others they are a means of self-expression. In eastern
traditions mandalas are round or sometimes square and two-
dimensional. Jungians usually see mandalas as round and two-
dimensional. Visual objects to look at while meditating or praying
have been used in other traditions too.

In this article I will use a functional definition of mandalas. In my
opinion there are two basic uses for mandalas: they can be used as a
focus for meditation or they can be used as a way of getting to know
yourself better. In the first case the stress is on the use of the
finished mandala, in the second the making of the mandala is the most
important. Of course there's nothing to say against using a mandala
made for self-exploration as an object for meditation, and vice verca,
a mandala meditation can be a kind of self-exploration. This
definition is a very broad one, it even includes some things which are
generally not considered to be mandalas, which in this article
doesn't really make any difference.

How to meditate with a mandala
==============================
There are two basic approaches to meditating with a visual object. One
is to try and recreate the image in your "inner sight". This
means that you look at the picture for a few moments, then you close
your eyes and try to visualise it. When you loose the visualisation,
you open your eyes again, and look at the picture, and so on. The
other is to simply stare at the picture, without really noticing
it. Some Zen students use one of the ten Ox Herding pictures in this
way. 

A third way to use a mandala is to look at it and let your thoughts
wander around the subject of the mandala. This is a method popular in
Western tradition. The Iron pentagram exercise in Starhawk's Spiral
Dance is one example of this.

Mandala magick
==============
If you stare at a picture for, say 15 minutes a day, the picture is
obviously going to affect you in some way. You can consciously use
that effect through carefully choosing your mandala. If you are
involved in some project that you want to make absolutely sure that
you "win" or you have a hard task ahead of you (final exams for
instance) or simply a personal problem you want to alleviate, you can
paint a mandala that will help you with that. To take some examples: A
person involved in martial arts can use the symbol of her style as a
mandala a few weeks before gradation. A person with a personal problem
can paint a mandala that abstractly portrays herself without this
problem or a mandala that represents the problem to allow her to focus
on it.

Be sure not to choose a mandala that makes you feel guilty when
looking at it, because it is likely to be counter-productive. If you
feel guilty when looking at a mandala, switch to another, preferrably
one that has nothing at all to do with what you want to accomplish. 

The mandala you use usually has a special significance for you. This
makes it a potent tool. In times of stress, you can2Ucfour+
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Whichever definition of mandalas you subscribe to, they're supposed
to be good for you. Many people say that they feel better whether they
use it for self-exploration or as an object for meditation. Many of
these people imply that a circular design is particularly beneficial.

There is great variety of patterns to explore. For someone new to
mandalas, it is probably best to choose something simple, and increase
the complexity later on. Start out with a pattern that appeals to
you. If you are new to mandala meditation, pick one picture, and stick
with it for at least a week, or preferrably a month before giving
up. It may take some time before you find a mandala that gives the
effect you desire, but constantly switching won't speed up the
process.

Of course, there are probably people for whom mandala meditation just
isn't the right thing.

Suggestions for newbies: 
* Three concentric circles
* A symmetric cross in a circle, or 
* A square or a triangle in a circle.

Suggestions for intermediate students: 
* A more complex geometric figure, maybe inside a circle or a square.
* A simple symbol of particular importance to your path (star of
  David, the monad, or a pentragram).
* A single letter from a special alphabet (ogham, runes, hebrew etc). 
* The mandalas on the Major Arcana cards in the Jungian Tarot
  deck.

Suggestions for advanced students: 
* A complex design of organic and/or geometric figures.
* A complex picture of particular importance to your path
  (crucifiction scene, a tarot card, a Godess).
* A word or sentence of particular importance to your path, maybe in a
  particularly meaningful alphabet.
* Three-dimensional objects. If you like to keep the circular nature
  of the mandala, a Japanese tea bowl may be appropriate, or a
  terrestrial globe. If not, candle flames and burning joss sticks are
  a fine tradition.

Suggestions for experimental students: 
* A picture that moves, for instance a fractal computer program.
* Three-dimensional objects that move. A model of how the earth and
  the moon revolve around themselves, each other and the sun, a lava
  lamp or one of those battery driven "perpetuum mobile" toys
  that were so popular in the seventies.

Colours
=======
The colours you use in your mandala will affect you in different
ways. The only way to find out exactly how, is to experiment. If you
follow a specific tradition, there is often a colour system within it
that you can experiment with. You can also try making monochrome
mandalas, or maybe black and white mandalas. There's no rule that
says that you have to use only primal and secondary colours (red,
blue, yellow and green, orange, purple) straight out of the tube. You
can use pastell colours if you prefer, or maybe use a very dark colour
scheme.

Another question is the background colour. Some say that the back-
ground should be white, but I find that a sensibly chosen background
colour will often enhance the effect of the mandala. Try using a dark,
dull tone of the complimentary colour to the main field. The
complimentary colours are green-red, blue-orange and purple-yellow.

Frame
=====
You will probably need a frame to keep your mandala in. A frame
protects the picture, and lets it stand up against something or hang
on a wall. There are some things to think of when buying a frame.

* It shouldn't be too small. About 1'x1' is adequate. 
* If you want to hang it on the wall, remember that you will take it
  down every time you change the mandala, so make sure the loop can
  take it. Don't buy a frame with a simple cut-out cardboard loop.
* You will want to change the picture in the frame from time to time,
  so pick one that opens and closes easily.
* The frame shouldn't be too elaborate, as it shouldn't detract
  your attention. Something gilt with little putti in the corners is
  out, sorry. :)

One kind of frame that is recommendable from several aspects are the
modern "clip" frames. These consist of one masonite board, one
piece of glass and an appropriate (4-6 for this size) number of oddly
shaped metal clips which keep the frame together and act as loops at
the same time. This kind of frame shouldn't cost more than 5 USD
for a 1'x1' frame.

An alternative is to laminate your pictures. The handy person can buy
transparent self-adhesive plastic film at the stationer's. Take
care when applying it to your pictures. Make sure the worksurface is
free from hair and dirt particles, as the static electricity build-up
in the plastic film will draw these to it. Start removing some of the
protecting paper from one end, and gently firm the film to the
mandala. Work from side to side, taking care not to create any air
bubbles. An alternative is to get a printer to laminate the mandala
for you in a lamination machine. This isn't very expensive, the
crux is to find someone who does it on a professional basis.

Some techniques
===============
Water-colours: 
Water colours are a medium that many have tried in school. You can get
very many different tones, and they are generally light resistant
enough, even if you buy a cheap box for children. If you have a
Chinese shop in your neighbourhood, often they have cheap
water-colours in tubes (Flying Eagle brand or Mary for instance) which
are easy to blend on a water-colour palette or a white plate. Art
masking fluid can be very helpful, too. 

If you are using translucent water-colours (which I recommend) the
depth of colour you can achieve depends to a large extent on the
quality of the paper. The less glue there is on the surface, the more
paint it can take up. Unfortunately, this quality doesn't come
cheap. A good quality water-colour paper sheet costs 2 USD or
more. Buying them in blocks is usually even more expensive. Some
brands to look out for are Hahnemuehle, Schoellershammer and
Lessebo.

Many people have a problem with waiting long enough to let the paint
dry. I find that if I walk out of the room and do something else a
short while (play Tetris, put out food for the birds, cuddle with my
SO etc) the paint has often dried when I come back, and it didn't
take half as long, subjectively, as if I had stared at it while it was
drying.

Some people also find it hard to paint even fields of colour with
water-colours, particularly so with transparent paint. This is how to
do it: Hold the paper at a slight angle towards you. 15 degrees or so
is appropriate. Blend all the paint you will need for the area to be
painted. Start at the uppermost edge and make one horisontal stroke
across the entire field. Of course the paint flows towards the
downside of the stroke, forming a "long drop". The next stroke
you make with the upper half of the brush covering the "long
drop", and the other half on uncovered paper. Proceed like this all
the time making even horisontal strokes along the "long drop"
line and starting alternatly from the left and the right. After the
last stroke, hold the brush to a piece of paper tissue to suck up any
excess paint, then lightly make one last stroke along the "long
drop" preferrably without touching the surface of the paper. This
way the brush will suck up the last "long drop". Let the paper
dry in the same position. 

Never, ever go back with the brush on the wet or damp paint. If you
think this sounds complicated, practise a few times on some scrap
paper. If you want to make a graded field, you follow the same
procedure but dilute the paint with more and more water all the time.

This is how I make my mandalas: 
I draw the basic design on good quality water-colour paper. For this I
use a cardboard circle and a ruler. The reason I use a cardboard
circle instead of a pair of compasses is that the compasses make a
small hole in the paper. That hole would later be very visible,
because the paint is sucked into it. 

Then I mask the lines with art masking fluid, and let that dry. Next I
paint the background, and let it dry. Then I go on painting each field
in turn, all the while making sure that the adjacent fields are
thouroghly dry before I start. When I've painted all fields once, I
decide if any field needs more colour, and add that. After that I
blend a slighly darker hue, that I paint along the edges of each
field. I grade it down towards the middle of the field. When every
last stroke is dry, I remove the masking fluid with an eraser. Then I
paint the lines with a dark-grey colour. This will produce a stained
glass effect that I am very fond of. Being very short-sighted, and
always meditating without glasses, it's also an advantage that the
design stands out so clearly.

Paper:
Paper can be had in many colours from the stationer's. There are
glossy and unglossy kinds, and many kinds of textures. It's quite
easy to make simple geometric shapes. Just draw the design on the back
of one paper, clip out, glue onto a sheet of another colour, and
voila'. There's generally no problem with light-resistance,
unless yo buy very cheap paper and keep it in a sunlit window.

Ink:
Ink is available in many colours nowadays, but most of them are quite
fugitive. India ink (black) is always light-resistant, but fluid ink
in fancy colours isn't recommendable. If in doubt, make a simple
light-resistance test: Paint the ink on a scrap paper. Cover one half
of it tightly, and put it in a sunlit window for a couple of
weeks. Then check if there is any difference between the half that was
covered and the uncovered half. India ink can be used together with
common water-colours and even art masking fluid.

The coloured Chinese ink sticks are quite appealing, but I've found
it to be a chore to grind enought to cover an area of more than a few
square inches.

Felt pen:
Simple felt pens in bright colours can be had for very little money in
any supermarket. The light-resistance for these is often surprisngly
good, but the colours tend to be less than tasteful. There are also
more expensive felt pens of the kind of advertising firms use. These
tend to be very fugitive, particularly the lighter colours. Highlight
pens are even worse. Felt pens give a striped effect to pictures that
I don't care very much for. Some people learn to control the
stripiness, and use it to an advantage, others simply don't mind
it. Just as with cut-out paper, there's no way of mixing colours
with felt pens.

Crayons:
These can also be bought very cheaply in supermarkets. Both their
permanence and their better colour range set them apart from felt
pens. They don't give the stripy effect that is so typical for felt
pens, either. Another advantage is that they can be blended.

Pastells:
There are two kinds of pastells, dry pastells and oil
pastells. Neither of them are easy to handle, but they have a
flexibility and a luminous quality that sets them apart from wax
crayons. 

Dry pastells feel almost like chalk when you touch them, and they give
off paint very easily. You need to use some kind of fixative to fix
the paint to the paper, but even then the surface will still give off
paint when you touch it. Buy fixative in a spray can unless you are
used to a fixative mouth sprayer, because they're very hard to
handle the first few times. 

Paper for dry pastells should have a texture that resembles velvet to
collect as much paint as possible. A dry brush can be used to blend
strokes of different colours and give a smoother appearance. 

Oil pastells are somewhat easier to handle, but they also stain very
easily.

Readymades:
There is a host of readymade mandalas to be had from books, tarot
decks and computer programs. They're often too complex to be used
by complete newbies, but once you've used mandalas in your
meditation for, say 6 months, you should be able to find appealing
pictures in many places. Many pictures practically beg to be xeroxed
(or colour copied and enlarged!). 

Some more or less obvious suggestions: totem animal pictures in
popular scientific books, a picture of a page in the Book of Kells
from a history book, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper from any art
history book, calender pictures, the output from Fractint, pictures
taken by the Hubble telescope, illustrations or covers from books, for
instance the illustrations in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger
etc. And, of course, your favourite bonsai tree.

Bibliography
============
Susanne F Fincher: Creating Mandalas -- For Insight, Healing and
Self-expression. Shambahla 1991. ISBN 0-87773-646-4.

Roshi Philip Kapleau: The Three Pillars of Zen -- 25th Anniversary
Edition. Anchor Books, Doubleday 1989. ISBN 0-385-26093-8. (A
practical book about Zen meditation. It includes the ten Ox-Herding
pictures in black-and-white.)

Starhawk: Spiral Dance -- A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the
Great Godess. HarperSanFransisco 1989 (10th anniversary edition). ISBN
0-06-250814-8. Introduction to NeoPaganism including exercises,
politics, thealogy and much more.

Robert Wang: The Jungian Tarot. Urania Verlags AG 1988. ISBN
3-921960-76-2.  This is a boxed set of deck plus paperback book. I
find the pictures ugly to indifferent, but there are mandalas on each
of the Major Arcanan cards.

Robert Anton Wilson: Cosmic Trigger -- Final Secret of the
Illuminati. New Falcon Publishing 1977. ISBN 0-941404-46-3. _The_ Book
for anyone interested in psychology, sex, occultism, drugs, the
illuminati and everything.

There are scores of books about meditation techniques, so I'm not
naming any. Try to pick one whose author doesn't claim to have the
One True Path To Wisdom(tm). If you can find one that describes many
different methods, you can try them all before deciding which feels
right for you at this stage.

Fractint is a computer program for the I*M PC that paints incredibly
beautiful fractals on your screen. It's available from major
ftp-sites.

Mandala blessings,
--Ceci


