To see a world in a grain of sand,

And eternity in an hour.

— William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Imagine a symbol that represents Everything. Picture a structure imbued with such symbolism, it speaks of the deepest core of what it means to be human and of the vast concept that is the universe. This is something so understood, it is created in similar forms by disparate cultural and religious traditions the world over. These symbols are something so deep in us, psychoanalyst Carl Jung called them “the representation of the unconscious self”. We translate the word for this symbol as “circle” or “completion”, but the best description is the Sanskrit word, mandala.

Mandalas are probably as old as humankind. In their simplest form — a circle — they are seen in some of the oldest art made by human beings and in the first scribbles of a young child. They are a magic symbol with no beginning and no end: a universal representation of wholeness, unity, completion and eternity. They are the still centre of a turning world, a containment that defines and protects a stillness and emptiness within — and a symbol often linked with meditation, healing and prayer.

Think of mandalas and perhaps what first comes to mind is the Buddhist tradition in which the mandala is a form of devotional art and its creation an aspect of meditation practice. But mandalas appear everywhere, and not just in the context of worship. Mandalas can be as simple as the black-and-white contrast of the yin-yang symbol, as complicated and colourfully geometric as the images in a kaleidoscope, or as purposely symbolic as the confounding pathways arranged in a maze. Mandalas are also in nature: the arrangement of petals in a flower, the whorl of leaves around a succulent’s centre, the perfect filigree of a snowflake — even the repeating rhythms of the seasons.

Mandala artist Barry Cunningham writes eloquently in his book Journey to the Centre about the significance of circles and mandalas: “Our lives are lived within cycles and circles. Cultures throughout history ... have witnessed the circular poetry of our solar system in motion day and night, birth and death, ebb and flow. As the archetypal model of the cosmos, the earth and life itself, the circle is the common denominator of human experience; a symbol for wholeness and centring. From the first image scratched in rock to the ancient stone circles, to expressions of spirituality and balance and architecture and art, we create circles, mandalas. Together, we dance in circles and hold hands in circles of prayer to symbolise the energy we bring to a common thought. Alone we go into our personal centres to experience connection with a higher power. Our human constructions reaffirm our innate reverence for, and belonging within, the circle — the symbol of one.”

The religious use of circles and mandalas for meditation and worship is thought to have originated in ancient Hinduism. A Hindu temple’s ground floor takes the pattern of a perfectly symmetrical mandala and temple decoration uses brightly coloured geometrically patterned discs, often centring on a star symbol or a burning sun at their core. Islam uses the crescent moon and a star, also symbols at their deepest level of symmetry around a central, perfect core. Native Americans’ sand paintings and medicine wheels, too, have this characteristic.

Buddhism’s mandalas vary according to the tradition. The circular framework with symmetrical divisions appears in the Buddhist stupa, in the structure of some Buddhist writings and — best known — in the intricate Buddhist painted mandalas. In Vajrayana Buddhism, a kyil khor — the Tibetan word for mandala — is usually composed of an outer circle around an inner square. Often depicted within this are the contrasting emblems of the Buddha realm and the realm of unenlightment, representing the different stages of the process of realisation of the truth.

Sand mandalas — worked on meditatively by monks for days to create a rich and minutely detailed symbolism — also represent the Buddhist notion of impermanence. These gorgeously intricate artworks in sand are swept together when complete and the sand is distributed as a blessing for personal health and healing to those present.