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CIRCLE
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"Mandalas are birth-places, vessels of birth in the most literal sense, lotus-flowers in which a Buddha comes to life."
Collected Works
(Carl Jung)
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"The oldest mandala drawing known to me is a paleolithic 'sun wheel', recently discovered in Rhodesia….Things reaching so far back in human history naturally touch upon the deepest layer of the unconscious and affect the latter where conscious speech shows itself to be quite impotent. Such things cannot be thought up but must grow again from the forgotten depths, if they are to express the deepest insights of consciousness and the loftiest intuitions of the spirit. Coming from these depths they blend together the uniqueness of present-day consciousness with the age-old past of life." C. G. Jung
The Secret of the Golden Flower
(Richard Wilhelm, translator)
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"It seems the circle has resided within us since the dawn of time, and is a form familiar to us at a deeply resonant level. Over and over again, when this mythic resonance is activated, people experience a sense of 'having been here before' as they enter the circle."
Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture
(Christina Baldwin)
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"The hearth in the home, the altar in the temple, is the hub of the wheel of the earth, the womb of the Universal Mother whose fire is the fire of life."
Hero With A Thousand Faces
(Joseph Campbell)
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"The circle is ever open, ever unbroken. May the Goddess awaken in each of our hearts."
The Spiral Dance, A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
(Starhawk (Miriam Simos))
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"In the Mind's Eye I see the Infinite Sphere and Its Self-Awareness, two that are One."
The Child Within Us Lives!, A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics
(William Samuel)
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"The world and its inhabitants are integral facets of one Mandala."
Mandala
(Jose and Miriam Arguelles)
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"God fashioned the sphere of light round himself. 'God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere'(cf. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5). The point symbolizes light and fire, also the Godhead in so far as light is an 'image of God' or an 'exemplar of the Deity.' This spherical light modelled on the point is also the shining or illuminating body that dwells in the heart of man."
Collected Works
(Carl Jung)
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| 9 |
"The word 'mandala' means circle in Sanskrit. The mandala, a design form which radiates out from a center, is ancient and universal, appearing in art, architecture, and dance of cultures everywhere. It is the 'magic circle' and often has a ritual, religious symbolism as in the rose window of medieval churches….In times of confusion or stress it is a way to collect your thoughts."
Marilyn Ferguson's Book of PragMagic
(Marilyn Ferguson)
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| 10 |
"In both dreams and religion, the relation of the center to the mandala expresses the relation between the potential and the actual." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy'
Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing
(Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)
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"The mandala is an image and a synthesis of the dualistic aspects of differentiation and unification, of variety and unity, the external and the internal, the diffuse and the concentrated. It excludes disorder..because, by its very nature, it must surmount disorder. It is, then, the visual, plastic expression of the struggle to achieve order – even within diversity – and of the longing to be reunited with the pristine, non-spatial and non-temporal 'Centre', as it is conceived in all symbolic traditions."
A Dictionary of Symbols
(J. E. Cirlot)
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"No matter what cultural lens is used, the symbol of a circle which contains the whole world and the various evolutionary levels of consciousness is powerful and universal."
Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing
(Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)
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"They [mandalas] are among the oldest religious symbols of humanity and may even have existed in paleolithic times (cf. the Rhodesian rock paintings). Moreover they are distributed all over the world."
Collected Works
(Carl Jung)
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"In Jung's view, mandalas and all concomitant images….are derived from dreams and visions corresponding to the most basic of religious symbols known to mankind – symbols which are known to have existed as far back as the Paleolithic Age, as is proved, for example, by the Rhodesian rock engravings."
A Dictionary of Symbols
(J. E. Cirlot)
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"Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were…. and so it is in everything where Power moves." Black Elk, Native American elder
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science
(Michael S. Schneider)
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"The World Snake, called 'Ouroboros' in Greek, was said to be itself both male and female, self-impregnating, self-feeding, immortal and complete. Thus it is the mythic image for both God and nature."
The Mythic Tarot
(Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene)
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"The Light will return to the Infinite Source whence it sprang, forming a luminous circle that will encompass the universe throughout eternity."
Kabbalah for the Modern World
(Migene Gonzalez-Wippler)
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| 18 |
"Well, there is something magical about a circle. For one thing, geometrically it encompasses more space than any other shape. But this is just a mathematical beginning. The circle is also profoundly symbolic, for a circle travels without leave-taking. So it combines journeying with returning. It's powerful in bringing the two together."
The Way Things Are
(Huston Smith, edited by Phil Cousineau)
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"Looking at a circle is like looking into a mirror. We create and respond irresistibly to circles, cylinders, and spheres because we recognize ourselves in them. The message of the shape bypasses our conscious mental circuitry and speaks directly to the quiet intelligence of our deepest being. The circle is a reflection of the world's – and our own – deep perfection, unity, design excellence, wholenes, and divine nature."
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science
(Michael S. Schneider)
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"Although 'wholeness' seems at first sight to be nothing but an abstract idea, it is nevertheless empirical in so far as it is anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols. These are the quaternity or mandala symbols, which occur not only in the dreams of modern people who have never heard of them, but are widely disseminated in the historical records of many peoples and many epochs. Their significance as symbols of unity and totality is amply confirmed by history as well as by empirical psychology. What at first looks like an abstract idea stands in reality for something that exists and can be experienced, that demonstrates its a priori presence spontaneously."
Collected Works
(Carl Jung)
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"Jung, in his studies of the mandala geometric designs which arise from the depths of the unconscious, came to the conclusion that in these mandalas one can find the expression of the Anthropos, or 'complete man.'"
The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead
(Stephan A. Hoeller)
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“The elements are conjoined in the circle of true friendship.” Petrus Bonus
Collected Works
(Carl Jung)
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| 23 |
“All the radii of a circle are brought together in the unity of the center which contains all the straight lines brought together within itself. These are linked one to another because of this single point of origin and they are completely unified at this center.”
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works
(John Farina, Editor-in-Chief)
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"In the circle of life all things are present and connected."
Manual for the PeaceMaker
(Jean Houston with Margaret Rubin)
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"It is no accident that Jung discovered the mandala in the context of psychiatry. The mandala often is constellated naturally to heal and protect such profound transformative experiences." ." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy'
Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing
(Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)
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We are gathering together the primary insights of spirituality and bringing them together into one place.
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