Mandalas at the Botanical Garden

It was a beautiful day today in Atlanta, perfect for a visit to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Henry Moore's sculptures among the flowers were a perfect combination. Here's a view through one of his sensuous works. To me it looks like a moment of creation for a sky blue mandala.

Mandala from Group

This mandala was created in our 2007 mandala group by Patty O'Keefe Hutton. It is in colored pencil and ink on cardboard. There is an abalone shell button in the very center. Her mandala expresses a stage called "Reaping Rewards." It is a time when life comes into a pleasing balance.

Mandala Workbook

Hello All,

My newest book, The Mandala Workbook, grew out of experiences I had with a group of friends who came to my Plum Blossom Studio in Decatur (Atlanta), Georgia, each month. All during 2007 I wrote and sent a monthly letter to my friends. It included a description of the stage we would be exploring, a short story that conveyed the qualities of the stage, and some suggestions for mandalas that we could create during our monthly gathering.

When we got together we talked about how our month had been, and our thoughts about the stage we were focusing on. Some folks shared poems they had written--or discovered--about the stage. I had fun coming up with theme-centered refreshments. For example, we had lots of fresh cherries for an early meeting which focused on a stage reminiscent of early childhood and life's sweetness and abundance. For a group when we explored a stage aligned with adolescent issues, and a "black and white" view of life, we had vanilla flavored sugar cookies with chocolate icing on half of the cookie. We created lots of mandalas together that year. When I learn how to put pictures on my blog, I'll share some of them. with you!

My New Mandala Book December 1, 2009

Dear Reader,

The Mandala Workbook will be out in December. Whew! What a process it is to create a book. To spend the time it takes, I always must find an approach to the subject that I find fascinating. That's easy with mandalas. They are so simple, yet deeply mysterious.

During the writing of this book the Eastern approach to mandalas (that considers them representative of cycles in time) was an important focus for me. The overlay of Joan Kellogg's theory of mandala stages (the Great Round) with the twelve months of the year gave me the structure for my project. Activities for a workbook need to be thoroughly tested, to see if they really can be done and if they are rewarding for the people who use them.

So I invited some friends and friends of friends to join me in a mandala group that met monthly to explore the archetypal stages described by Kellogg and to try out my suggestions for mandalas designed to evoke a taste of each of the stages. The book is rooted in process: the creative process of individuals making mandalas, the process of the group itself as it moved through the archetypal stages, and the process mandala manifested by the group as we moved through the cycle of a complete year together.

More about this later.

Chinese Influence on Jung

I just read an interesting article by Murray Stein (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2005, 50, 209-222.). He describes the relationship between Jung and Richard Wilhelm, the translater of the I Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower (for which Jung wrote a wonderful introductory essay). Jung claimed that Wilhelm had influenced him more than any other individual in his life. According to Murray Stein, Jung envisioned himself and Wilhelm supporting a bridge between East and West. Jung felt such an exchange was of the greatest importance in balancing the Western attitude formed by the "one-sided rationalism of the Enlightenment," Stein, p. 219. His "relationship with Wilhelm and the integration of his contributions from Chinese culture and philosophy helped Jung to anchor himself even more profoundly than before in his own thinking." ibid. In a letter, Jung wrote that the text of The Secret of the Golden Flower "gave me undreamed of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the center." (cited by Stein, p. 215) In other words, Jung realized that there is no linear psychological development, except possibly in childhood. Adult psychological development is a circling movement around a hidden inner center (the Self), spiraling into ever greater realization of the Self as true center--and creating mandalas is significant in this growth process.