On Making A Mandala

On Making a Mandala

- River Sauvageau

Making a Mandala is creating a sacred circle. Our intention and focused attention is what creates sacred space. 

Typically when we draw a circle we are functioning mechanically, creating an object for use. When we scribe a Mandala we are opening to the universal wisdom of sacred geometry. The circle is the elemental symbolic representation of coalescence, of the first wholeness,

The maker starts with the center point. From there a circle is drawn evenly all around that locus.  The center represents the Creator, the circumference represents the place, as well as the boundary that separates it from everything else. What is inside the circle is unified.

When we make a delineation in space with a circle, it creates a relationship with the space around it. It becomes “this’ and what is outside of the circle becomes “that”. Everything inside the circle is held, embraced by the border, the circumference.  Inner connections are revealed through what is inside the circle. As geometries, figures, symbols and colors are brought within that space, disparate elements are unified and contribute to different relationships than they evoke as separate items. 

Regardless of our method, we are scribing our circle upon the earth and she is our planetary Mother. From the center point of scribing the round we reach back symbolically to our first connection, our umbilicus inside our mother’s womb. In the beginning we are a point formed inside our our mother’s mother’s womb, the seed of our physical life begun within our grandmother.  Within this point, this seed, we connect back into time immemorial. We are made of lives of our ancestors—those who have been here before us—and we are filled with their stories, their experiences, their knowledge, their understanding and their wisdom. All possibility of manifestation is inside the seed and comes from this central point.

An energetic stream opens from the first point as what is becoming grows within the surrounding membrane. The first point sets into motion the first vibration which goes out into space until it comes back to itself again as it continues to be formed. We have each experienced this primal formation in the womb and the moment when our first heartbeat pulsed and launched its lifelong journey. 

The circle is a reflection of ourselves, all the way deep inside on the cellular level and out to the border of our skin, and then out into the various circles we live within - our families, our homes, our communities, our Earth, our Universe and Beyond. We start with that first simple point of connection, the beginning that everything comes from, and we return again to the endless possibility of creation and manifestation.

The Hawaiians speak of Vertical Reality where everything that is, has been,  will be and can be is accessible when we allow ourselves to open to all possibility. The ancestor spirits that live with us and through us can be called upon for council and as helpers in this realm.

As we open ourselves to be guided in moments of creation, what is moved to come through us for expression within the Sacred Circle begins to make seen what cannot be put into words. Focusing our hearts and minds with intention, courage and skill we dare to claim the moment of creation. We come to know ourselves as creators, a reflection of the Universal Life Principals of Beauty and Unity