Candle-Maker’s Diary Week 8
Greetings from quarantine–a time for restoring what’s been lost, making it cleaner and better, and infusing it with new ideas. In the spirit of the times, I’ve been examining the idea of patterns as a theme for a series of black-on-white decorated candles featuring the Mandala, a shape with a long history. Based on the repetitive patterns that organize much of the natural world, mandalas can briefly be described as a symmetrical pattern of identical shapes organized around a central point.
Unlike fractal patterns that repeat over infinite perspectives, the Mandala is an enclosed shape that induces the viewer to see a huge world in a small space. It is part of the iconography of many religions: consider the Christian rose window, the Jewish Star of David, or the varied mandalas of Eastern religious art, where they can represent diagrams of the world, earth and heaven, or social hierarchy.
If you played with the Spirograph sketch game as a child, you might remember how absorbing it was to sit in a comfortable spot and doodle away a rainy afternoon. Perhaps you were—or are—part of spiritual practice that honors the Mandala as an aid to meditation. In that vein, I find it an un-provable truth that belief is the glue that connects a person’s mind to its object of reverence, be it a statue, a Mandala, or a person.
I create the Mandala in a small space reserved for stress-busting. Soon (sort of) they will appear on my candles, see pics.
Wishing you love and light, Wilda
