These are our February mandalas for The Great Round: Stage Two – Bliss. Again, we used Crayola markers and colored pencils. The feel of coloring the Stage 2 mandalas was very different than The Void mandalas of January. I pay attention to the colors I am drawn to when I sit down with the circles. My body responds to color.
According to the book Coloring Mandalas by Susanne F. Fincher:
Color is produced by waves of electromagnetic energy perceived by cells in your eyes, your skin, and your bones. Reds have the longest wavelengths and transmit the least energy. Violets have the shortest wavelengths and the most energy. Red is stimulating, blue causes relaxation. Color is simple, direct, and measurable in the natural world.
Color is a way in to your personal life story. Wearing colors we associate with a specific memory, or another time in our lives, layers our experience. Color is universally physiological, personal, and cultural. If I start to make a list of the colors I have used in the last few months, patterns start to emerge.
I wanted to get these up before February ends. Of course, it’s a Leap year, so there’s one more day of February in 2008! Stay tuned for Stage 3 of The Great Round in March.
FIRST PAIR: The first two are the same template, Sky & Stars. One is completed, one in progress. We are shaped by our choices. The challenge of Stage 2 is to focus on only one choice, and take it as far as you can.
SECOND PAIR: The first template of the 2nd pair is about living a life pregnant with possibilities. The second is based on an illustration by archaeologist and archaeomythologist, Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess. It is about the mystery of memories of birth (and before). The regenerative powers of the Great Mother were worshipped by many of the Ancients.
THIRD PAIR: The two mandalas in the 3rd pair are the same template, Earth, the universal womb. The first is Liz’s in colored pencil; the second I did in marker. I enjoy seeing the same templates, side by side – same lines, different colors.
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, February 28th, 2008
-related to posts, Coloring Mandalas, The Void – January Mandalas, and WRITING TOPIC – CIRCLES
These are amazing.
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These definitely have a different feel and look than the January set. I love all of them. Very grounded in nature.
My favorite is the fourth one down (second from second set), in terms of the design. There’s something primitive and folk art-like about it. I’m not surprised to read, then, that it’s designed by an archaeologist.
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I, too, am drawn to the fourth, though in it I see a vessel, not a circle.
I have been drawing a mandala a day for nearly a year – I find the ritual/routine very soothing.
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I love the mandalas. Very inspiring! I tried making a few beaded ones once… 🙂
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Daniel, thanks for visiting, and welcome. Thanks barbara and LB. I actually find the practice of coloring to be relaxing and regenerative. It’s something I can do when I’m too fried to do anything else late at night. I like that the templates and themes are already there, I don’t have to think too much – just let myself be drawn to shape and color.
ybonesy, the 4th one down was the first one I worked on this month. I was pulled to it right away, though I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t until I did this post that I went back and read the reference to Marija Gimbutas and The Language of the Goddess.
She was an amazing woman with a profound body of work on goddess culture and symbols (nearly twenty books and over three hundred articles on European prehistory).
I also found a website featuring the work of her and Joseph Campbell. He had great respect for her and her work.
Here’s a little something from that site (you can read the whole bio at Pacifica Graduate Institute – Joseph Campbell & Marija Gimbutas Library (LINK):
Way, way, back in time. There’s an interview with her in the link in the body of this post. She seemed pretty humble. And I read that she was surprised at the resurgence of interests in goddess culture that happened in the 70’s and 80’s.
I remember reading a lot about it in conjunction with the particular movement of Earth back to some of the more healing traditions. That was a few decades ago though. And it seems we have moved back into the more aggressive energy of war and conflict, rather than peace.
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These are very interesting.!!! I find the first one pleasing to look at and happy. The second one makes you feel which way am I going.,kinda like an unfinished symphony. The third one is like an out of body experience, a pleasant floating experience. The fourth one I can see why QM likes it , it is a symbol reminding me of the Aztecs or Indian culture , or what is going on in one’s brain. All those wheels turning. The fifth one reminds me of a happy ,content world, which I wish it were. And the sixth an uneasy world ready to explode. I love all of them. I just started one with the moon and stars.
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Mom, thanks. I love how you described the experience of looking at each one. The one with all those wheels turning – it was one of the hardest to color. Not sure why. But once it was done, I liked the wildness of it. It looks like a big goddess chair to me, a goddess throne.
Good to chat for a bit today. I got in my 5 hours of time on the book. It was time well spent, but exhausting! I’m happy to take a break tonight and maybe focus on some images.
Hey, where did you get your Moon and Stars mandala? It’s great you’ve started it. Let us know how it goes and if you find it relaxing. 8)
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The 4th one is my favorite as well.
I have a treasured piece of art done in colorful string by an unknown Mexican Artist named Efvain Batista Diaz that it reminds me of. I just ran into the other room to grab it and although the shapes are not the same, it still gives me the same feeling. And like your Mom wisely said, it has Aztec elements as well.
All of them are wonderful.
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That fourth one is just so different, and I love MOM’s interpretation of cogs in the brain. It’s like mini-mandalas inside the big mandala.
The background about Marija Gimbutas and Joseph Campbell is also interesting. BTW, I also really liked the one with the people floating inside, as if tey are suspended in some sort of ambiotic fluid of a womb. Really cool imagery.
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I like the second one as it stands. To me it is a finished piece not an incomplete piece.
As for the fourth one my initial thought was a womb full of potential with the triangle at the bottom limiting the release of only one thing at a time.
I find completing mandalas challenging because my mind tries to create symmetry and I find I color patterns into the piece. I admire it when others can do this.
R3
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R3, I like your take on the second one – that’s it’s already finished and doesn’t need anything more. If you go back and look at it through those eyes, it has a totally different feel.
I’m glad you brought up the piece about color symmetry. I started doing that on one of the January Void mandalas as I recall (though I don’t remember which one it was). Anyway, after a while I couldn’t keep track of the symmetry and found I was driving myself crazy.
So I just let go and went with what felt right. There is a kind of letting go in the color choices and feeling what’s right in the body that is freeing.
In the February ones above, I didn’t think about the symmetry and chose color intuitively. But I think it’s really natural to want to create symmetry, especially in the beginning. To make them orderly. And there’s nothing wrong with that approach either. It’s all a study of the mind.
I do want to say, about the last two Earth mandalas (Third Pair), Liz did one of them, and I did one of them, but at different times, a few weeks apart. What happened for both of us was that the organic lines bled one into the other – there was very little symmetry or boundaries in terms of lines in that particular template.
So instead of having too much of one color, we both ended up unconsciously creating our own boundaries at almost the exact same spot. If you look to the top, left center area on both mandalas in the Third Pair, you can see where we both deviated. I thought it was so interesting that it happened naturally and by two separate people.
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Wow, I love them. The colors seem to flow from one to another. My favorite is the fourth one (last one on the side panel). It reminds me of Huichol yarn art.
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Thanks, Estrella Luna. I like the idea of Color Flow. 8) Your fave seems to be a popular favorite. I wonder if it’s the archetypal quality to the image. Kind of plucked from the Akashic Records.
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They’re beautiful and eye catching.
I love the last one, but the first two, beside eachother are my favorites.
The one in the 2nd group looks like a light bulb.
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It’s really interesting to see which ones people like. I love it that people like the 1st two, because the 2nd one of that pair was not what we thought was “finished.” Yet R3 found it complete as well. And now when I look at it, it feels complete. I’m not going to change it.
It DOES look like a light bulb, doesn’t it (the middle Goddess one)? I like the last one, too. It feels happy to me. Expressive energy.
I just completed the March series last weekend. I’ll try to post on them before the end of the month. They are my favorites so far. Liz has been creating her own mandalas. Maybe I’ll ask her if I can photograph and post some of those in the March series, too.
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