Whether the product of Eastern culture or the West, the circular mandala or sacred diagram is a familiar and pervasive throughout the history of art.
India, Tibet, Islam and medieval Europe have produced it all in abundance, and much of the tribal cultures also used it, either in the form of paintings, buildings or dances.
Such diagrams are usually based on the division of the circle into four quarters, and all parts implaid elements are interrelated in a unified design. Most of the time are somewhat cosmological, that is to say, a symbol representing what is considered to be the essential structure of the universe: for example, the four spatial directions, the four elements, four seasons, twelve signs of the zodiac,different deities,and often the man himself.
India, Tibet, Islam and medieval Europe have produced it all in abundance, and much of the tribal cultures also used it, either in the form of paintings, buildings or dances.
Such diagrams are usually based on the division of the circle into four quarters, and all parts implaid elements are interrelated in a unified design. Most of the time are somewhat cosmological, that is to say, a symbol representing what is considered to be the essential structure of the universe: for example, the four spatial directions, the four elements, four seasons, twelve signs of the zodiac,different deities,and often the man himself.
One of the most striking applications of the mandala appears in the architecture of the domes, both Islamic and Christian. The square represents the earth, covered in a fourfold embrace the circular dome of heaven, and therefore subject to the wheel of time in constant motion.
When the incessant movement of the universe, represented by the circle, gives way to comprehensible order the square appears. The square presupposes the circle and is therefore a result of it. The relationship between form and movement, space and time, is evoked in the mandala. But the most notable and constant in this form of diagram is that it expresses the notion of the cosmos, the reality conceived as an organized and unified.
The Gothic cathedrals with their rosettes created one of the most developed expression of the mandala, on having combined and turned into unit the light, color and form. This, however, ended the cycle of evolution of the mandala on the continent. We see that the arts are disappearing first, and then of conscience. Gradually saving holistic thinking, is being displaced by the interpretation of analytical-rational world and intellectual. From Occident the decadence of the mandala radiates throughout the world, we can see precisely how this mentality has led us to the brink of destruction of the mandala-earth.
In itself these cycles are not wrong, however, nothing that we should fight, but simply expressions of the rotation of the mandala. The same we find clearly symbolized in the mandala of the tenth Tarot card, the "Wheel of Fortune", which often also seen in the doorways and the windows of some churches. This coincidence between a source from the deck, which comes from a deep root esoteric and other of the Roman Catholic Church, perhaps initially surprising, but there are many coincidences.
What does the wheel of fortune? Do not say ...? That what goes up must come down again, and what is down will go up. This is an ancient esoteric law, or at best timeless, applicable to both cultures as historical eras, art forms, nations, individuals, economic trends, current fashion trends and taste . So the mandala shows us the movement of history and that of their own destiny through time.
After meeting its climax with the great cathedrals and large rosettes, began the destruction of the mandala, and with it the holistic cultures, characterized by "the sacrum. The Spanish began when they destroyed the cultures of Mesoamerica and typically did so because they sought gold, but only in external appearance and materials.
They stole the gold from the Aztecs, Mayas and the Incas who knew how to value the inner side of gold, the noblest metal of all, who symbolized for them the Sun God is therefore not surprising that the Spanish did not find never "El Dorado", the legendary gold-rich country, because it has no physical existence. Only one who finds his inner Dorado get it externally. Similar and equally doomed to failure in the criteria by which modern chemistry work and the desire of the alchemists in their quest for the "fabrication of gold."
In the concept of conquest agreed all Westerners. Several European nations have been taking turns in the destruction of entire cultures outstanding living mandala. Or in other words, the left cerebral hemisphere declared war on the right and defeat the latter has apparently been completed. But only in appearance! This is declared by the timeless symbol of T'ai chi.
Indian cultures of North America, with its sand mandalas succumbed to the Europeans commanded by the English. By then the Europeans also were enemies to each other but were in agreement as to the direction of thrust against holistic cultures of the two Americas. In another continent, "sacred" cultures nor had the opportunity to address the new way of thinking and acting. Mandala also perished in India, where it had determined the entireG life. And the symbol of liberation in our century has been precisely the wheel again, the spinning wheel that Manhatma Gandhi turned to remind fellow compatriots their roots. That the Indians returned to spin the thread that bound them to the roots of their traditions.
In the destruction of the cultures of the Mandala, there was a sort of climax when Tibet was taken over by the Chinese government and Tibetan culture shaped by Taoism and ancient symbol of T'ai chi, in turn was displaced by a new mentality. Mandalas in Tibet played a major role controlling its entire existence.
In the whole world the cathedrals degenerated into mere tourist attractions which charge for entry. However mandalas never died at all. They survived in the shadows, in the ruins, imagination, the art,but Mandalas are not perish while surviving a single individual of the human species. And while one half (of the brain or the symbol of tai chi) prevails, at its heart always survives the opposite pole (the black dot on white field).
This unilateral evolution is neither good nor bad: it is. It is implicit in the Mandala itself, and also the Mandalas's cultures foresaw it (there serve of example the predictions of the American Indian clairvoyant Black Deer, who predicted the via crucis from the Indian nations up to the decline, and also the visions of the Hopi).
Today we have reached a point of inflection, the point that marks the rediscovery of our roots, of ours interns Mandalas. Little by little, and not by chance, we are attending a renaissance of Mandalas in the external life: in the arts and in the meditative traditions now reborn. This process we could read it in any Mandala ; it is a natural law and it is fulfilled. Let's recover now our shade, and it turns into our mission: the search that had precipitated us completely towards the external thing, ending in obsession and desperation clogged in the polarity, turns again towards the center, towards the meditation.
The Mandala circle has closed again, and we know that it will be open again, it will close, it will be open...
