Adam Blatner

I just received a card from a friend that had a mandala on it as a design, and that reminded me of this emerging trend to present this form of art for your enjoyment. Thousands of people are exploring this medium and you can find many examples on the internet—especially if you google “mandala.” My own tend to be less symmetrical, more a vehicle for expressing my intuition that the cosmos is dynamic—therefore, many of mine also have an odd number of vertices—more often nine, but also 5, 7, 11, as well as the more symmetric mandalas based on 4, 6, 8, 10, 12.

The card says that the role of number and sacred geometry is to reveal the truths and principles of the universe. I have problems with words like “truths,” but part of me half agrees, and I’m intrigued with what that’s about. I think it is that number and pattern represents the capacity to focus, to see definitions—not three, not five, but four. At the dream level it is more fuzzy. I always found the dream fragment compelling later in the chapter,  Wool and Water, in Lewis Carroll’s late 19th century children’s story, Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass: Alice was in a shop filled with intriguing stuff; but when she looked at a shelf, it was empty! However, she could vaguely see wonderful items, curious items, on the shelves above and below her point of focus. Yes, that’s how the dream-masters tell us that our little minds cannot really grasp what we can vaguely sense with our intuitions, and even then we tend to close down that faculty. We sense the grandeur of the cosmos, but cannot clearly perceive it, because it is quintessentially not clear. We are the lens of God, the focusing agent, the instruments for God perceiving more definitively. But all perceiving creatures do this—so in a sense, perception is a function of life. But we remember and reflect on our perceptions—that’s unique. In that sense, as I’m creating this myth, we bring things into focus, definition, make them more clear, give them boundaries.

We can even learn to perceive the world so that it seems clear and has transcended the undifferentiated body of all-creation. This advance creation towards a sharpening of consciousness, which is part of what evolution is about.

The author of the card-mandala writes that by bringing the archetype of number face to face with the archetypes of mandala, it can stir in the viewer a third archetypal experience of understanding and awe. I would add that so much depends on the set of the viewer, the inter-penetration of a lively mind with what we take to be objective, out-there.