'The most striking thing', reports Jungian analyst Marie-Louise Von Franz, 'is that whenever mandalas were used for divination they were frequently DOUBLE mandalas; namely, two wheels intercepting each other, one wheel generally being fixed and representing one aspect of reality, and the other wheel rotating over the fixed wheel, the combination of the two being used for divination'. (Von Franz, On Divination and Synchronicity, page 99)

We have previously described mandalas as representations of psychological environments that are effective in calling the spirit of the 'sacred order' down into the 'mundane'. Here we shall explore how such a process invokes what Jung called 'synchronicities' (ie, acausal meaningful events). Causal and acausal orders come into close juxtaposition as a result of organizing experience according to the principles that we see utilized in the mandala, which are deliberately exaggerated in the 'double-mandala'.

'As far as I can see there is everywhere this idea of two orders, which I will now call, as Jung does, acausal orderdness on the one side, which is timeless, and synchronistic events, which enter linear time, on the other side. Now comes the great problem - how are those two things connected? .... Since we have no other information available at the moment, we can only look at the products of the unconscious, namely the double mandalas, and see how they are connected'. (Von Franz, On Divination and Synchronicity, page 107)

They are usually represented as wheels, she tells us, connected at the center, where they intersect each other at right angles. Linked like this, two ordinary wheels could not actually rotate, she observes - a simple fact that we may even take as suggestive of a certain 'incompatibility' or 'incommensurability' between the two orders. But, 'in spite of it all', Von Franz concludes, 'these double mandala models assume that one wheel is rotating and the other standing still', ¹ and when the wheel representing the temporal order is spun, the final juxtaposition of the two in respect to each other provides the user with the sought after divinatory information.

'The only place where the two systems link is at the hole in the centre, which means that they link in a nowhere, or in a hole', says Von Franz. This is the 'hole of eternity', or 'window on eternity', or 'window of escape'. As she points out, this is also the only place at which there is no doubleness. In this point, at the center, there is only oneness. It is the hole through which 'eternity breathes into the the temporal world', the hole where heaven and earth succeed in meeting, and where creation occurs. In this context Von Franz reminds us that Jung's viewed synchronistic events as 'acts of creation'. These double mandalas thus symbolize the primordial creative process that results when such a 'hole' into the other order is accessed. ²

Some of these double-wheeled devices have an outer rim that is divided into nine sections, or - like the 'Wheel of Fortune' in certain Western mythological systems - are nine-spoked. Von Franz describes the figure below, a mandala-shaped cybernetic machine, which, it was hoped, would answer any question put to it, as '... one of the most curious inventions of the Middle Ages, the idea of a magical computer, celebrated in the ARS MAGNA of Raimon Lull of Majorca (ca. 1235-1315)'.

It was 'a mandala composed of various circular discs, some static, some rotary, arranged concentrically above one another.'

The figure to the left, at the top, is one of the main designs in the ARS MAGNA. The idea for such a machine apparently came to Lull from the unconscious, according to von Franz, as a sudden inspiration that 'earned him the title of DOCTOR ILLUMINATUS'.

'A' signifies God; B to K signify attributes of God, such as goodness, truth, wisdom. Thus one can relate God's characteristics to each other by mathematical equations'. Von Franz,Number and Time, page 204

Notice that the outer circle has nine points on it, and each point is connected to each other point by a straight line. By highlighting some of these lines in red, we can bring into relief the figure of the Enneagram that is latent in the ARS MAGNA figure.

The presumed divinatory power that symbols such as this are believed to have come from the fact that 'one cannot make head nor tail of a chaotic pattern', Von Franz explains. 'One is bewildered and that moment of bewilderment brings up the intuition from the unconscious...'. Milton Erickson, the father of contemporary hypnotherapy, and the man whose work gave Gregory Bateson the idea of the 'double bind', frequently used a similar procedure, which he called 'the confusion technique'. In his terminology, by presenting his subject with a confusing/paradoxical verbal formulation, he would 'depotentiate' that individual's 'conscious set', catapulting her/him into a state that Erickson called 'unconscious search'. All over the world divination techniques use chaotic or half-ordered patterns to access information in this way, Von Franz explains, and these primitive divination techniques have been 'rediscovered' in modern tools like the Rorschach test. 'Looking at a chaotic pattern is like putting one's mind to sleep for a minute and getting information about what one is fantasying or dreaming about in the unconscious. Through the absolute knowledge in the unconscious one gets information about one's inner and outer situation'. ³

It is during the moment of 'unconscious search' that the individual naturally experiences that point at which 'epiphanies' (or, to use Eliade's term, 'hierophanies') happen. The sacred breaks through into the profane and there occurs a '... manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world [of profane objects]'. According to Eliade, 'It is impossible to overemphasize the paradox represented by every hierophany, even the most elementary'. This is because the two orders that come together are, indeed, incommensurable. Consequently, Eliade speaks of 'two modes of being' and 'two modalities of experience'. ⁴

'Where the break-through from plane to plane has been effected by a hierophany', says Eliade, 'there too an opening has been made'. Such an 'opening' is the hallmark of a consecrated place; it is what makes that place 'sacred' -

A sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space ... symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, page 36)

Eliade describes this breakthrough, from one plane of existence to another, as a peak experience for the individual, one that permits her to 'enter a pure region transcending the profane world'. As one might expect from our previous discussions regarding the nature of the center of mandalas, it is at the CENTER that this break of plane is conceived as occuring, and it is there that something like a 'communication with heaven' is capable of taking place. ⁵

Von Franz describes how, when an individual is in this kind of 'communication', he or she is in touch with creative energies -

Then comes this beautiful Chinese idea that man can actually get in contact with that - he can get to the place where heaven and earth create in an unfathomable way, with-out doubleness, through utmost sincerity. Of somebody devoid of all illusions, and all that makes the world of the ordinary ego, goes into himself with utmost sincerity, then he comes to this central hole where creation, even in the cosmos, takes place. That is why the Chinese thought that certain sages or saints, very rare personalities, could reach the centre and by having come to this contained innermost center of their personality could support heaven and earth, and be with creation in the universe. (Von Franz, On Divination and Synchronicity, page 111)

From the Buddhist perspective there are at least two senses that we can give to this phrase 'being with creation' that Von Franz uses in this context. First, according to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, if we have developed the requisite skill in meditation, at the moment of death we are presented with a unique opportunity to connect with this 'central hole where creation takes place' - that is, with the 'emptiness' or 'plenum' or 'fullness' that is at the center of things. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it manifests at that time as a 'clear light'. If we are capable of realizing what is going on at that moment we also gain control over the creative process in which emptiness manifests in form, and conscious reincarnation becomes possible. But, secondly, we can also take all of this in a less literal, more figurative, PSYCHOLOGICAL sense - as a description of what must take place within the individual in order for her to become a conscious participant in her own inner creative processes, an agent of personal change, and skilled at what is sometimes called 'paradigm shifting'.

The realization that form is, essentially, 'empty', and that emptiness is also form, is considered to be the ultimate spiritual realization in at least one Buddhist school, where it is called 'Mahamudra' (ie, 'the great symbol'). In this tradition, the mandala ('chil-kor', or wheel, in Tibetan) is identified not only as a cosmic diagram illustrating a truth about the ontological structure of reality, but also a map on which spiritual paths can be located, along with personality types that are associated with specific 'functions of consciousness', energies, obstacles, and wisdoms.

The Book of Changes and 'movement'

In her book on divination, Von Franz (1980) describes the 'two ideas or aspects of time' that the Chinese had - namely, a TIMELESS TIME or eternity, which is 'unchanging', and a CYCLIC TIME. In this system, which underwrites the Chinese 'I Ching', or 'Book of Changes', there is

... the Older Heavenly order, an arrangement of the sixty-four possibilities or permutations of the hexagrams of the I Ching, and the Younger Heavenly Order which had a different arrangement of the same I Ching trigrams and hexagrams. In the Older Heavenly Order there are no energic temporal processes but a kind of dynamism in balance with itself, while in the Younger Heavenly Order a cyclic energic process is represented. ( Von Franz, On Divination,page 99)

When the two orders are represented as mandalas, superimposed and rotated against each other, they form a 'double-mandala' that comprises a fortune wheel or divinatory mechanism -

1) First, there is the Ho-T'u (or 'heavenly') Order -

'The underlying numerical order of eternity is called the Ho-T'u, a mandala and also a cross. There is again 5 in the middle. One counts 1,2,3,4, and then moves to the middle, 5, then 6,7,8,9, and then back to 10 - 10 would really be in the middle. One must always cross and come back to the middle'. (Von Franz, On Divination, page 14]

Von Franz likens the movement that she describes above to dance. 'Actually', she remarks, 'it is the movement of a musical dance because it always emanates into four and contracts into the middle - it has a systole and diastole movement'. There are two things that we find particularly interesting about this observation. First, as the reader may recall, according to Gurdjieff the Enneagram actually had to BE DANCED to be understood. Here, then, we curiously witness something very similar being said about another member in the same class of mandala representations. Secondly, as we will see in the next paper in this series, if one were to try to describe the type of movement of consciousness that is cleverly alluded to by the Shri Yantra, one could find no more apt a description than could be provided by referring to the 'systolic/diastolic' contraction and expansion of awareness.

2) Secondly, there is the Lo-Shu (or 'temporal') Order -

The Lo-shu model or matrix is a 'magic square' - which means that when you add up the numbers in any column, row, or diagonal, the result is always 15. Notice that there are nine cells in the matrix, like in the Navapadma (nine lotus) Mandala 6

The diagrams immediately below depict the movement associated with the 'temporal order' when that order is mapped, as Von Franz does, onto the cardinal directions and the numbers are then connected in numerical order - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and back to 1. To get a better feel for this as a MOVEMENT, try tracing the shape in the air with your finger.

'The Lo-Shou is the world of time in which we live', says Von Franz, 'and underneath is always the eternity rhythm, the Ho-tou. That idea underlay the whole cultural and scientific application of mathematics in China'. The 'temporal order' pattern in the diagrams illustrate complex motion, a kind of dynamism, that contrasts with the concentric figures traced by the simpler 'eternal order' figures, which have multiple degrees of symmetry.

The reader might be interested in learning that certain Tibetan mandalas which are used as astrological charts have a structure similar to the one that Von Franz describes. To the left is the central figure in a nineteenth century Tibetan astrological chart ('sid-pa-ho') based on the Kalachakra ⁷ tantra. On the back of a tortoise, the symbol of Manjushri (the Buddha of Wisdom), there are nine squares containing the nine 'magic' numbers ('me-wa-gu'), surrounded by the eight Chinese trigrams. The mandala, in its entirety, can be seen in greater detail at ' Tibetan Art'. [Western examples of the same pattern]

The shape that we know as the Enneagram is also comprised of two distinct figures like the ones in Von Franz's diagrams - an equilateral triangle over which is superimposed a more complex figure. We can conceive of these figures as representing motion, and put arrows on the lines in each figure, to indicate the direction in which the movement is occuring. As mentioned in an early part of this series, the 6-pointed figure in the Enneagram was derived by dividing one by seven (1/7=.142857...), so we shall make the directional arrows in the 6-pointed figure lead from 1 to 4 to 2 and so on. And we will make the movement in the equilateral triangle consistent with the numerical order of the triangle's points - moving from 3 to 6 to 9.

Enneagram Double Mandala

=

eternal order

plus

temporal order

Compare the motion described by the 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 circuit within the Enneagram to the Lo-Shu or Temporal Order of the I-Ching. Although it is not identical, it has similar features. Both trace complex figure-eight patterns of movement that have left-right symmetry and seem to move alternately in a larger (outward-going) orbit and then a small (inner) orbit. [Another example of this kind of motion in a mandala.] Given the resemblence between the movements in the respective 'temporal' pattern associated with the I Ching and the Enneagram, and the 'double mandala' nature of both, it should come as no surprise to hear Bennett say -

In certain parts of Asia [the enneagram] is used as an instrument of divination, that is, for interpreting the patterns of events to come. (J.G. Bennet, Enneagram Studies, Combe Springs Press, England, 1974, page 4)

The movement in both sets of diagrams create patterns that are not unlike those that form around socalled 'strange attractors' in contemporary 'chaos science' - the first instance of which was mapped by Lorenz in his 1963 diagram shown to the left. In both of Lorenz's diagrams notice the two centers (strange attractors) around which the chaotic movements described by the lines pivot. They are 'virtual' centers of movement, not unlike Enneagram points 3, 6, and 9 are with respect to the movement that follows the 1-4-2-8-5-7 path, as is suggested in the animation below.

There is another feature of the relationship between the movement in the 'eternal' order and the 'temporal' order diagrams of a double mandala to which we would like to turn the reader's attention. The movement is characteristically depicted as going in opposite directions in these two orders. This is subtly demonstrated in the above animation. There is an 'outer' movement (of numbers), going in a clockwise direction. As this movement passes point 3 (which acts like a strange attractor), the three turns red. At that moment the 'inner' movement occuring within the 6-sided figure is making a counterclockwise loop around the 1-4-2 corner of its path.

This kind of attempt in mandalas to depict movement as 'paradoxical' - i.e., traveling simultaneously in both a clockwise and counter-clockwise direction - is characteristic of the movement in mandalas and is brought more starkly into relief in the following two examples.

1) In an earlier paper in this series we described the Enneagram as a representation of the 'Self', and compared it to Jung's diagram of the self - which we reproduce here. In that paper we pointed out that Jung's figure is fractal - the individual parts (abcd) reflect the same arrangement as is depicted in the whole (ABCD). But what we did not mention at the time is that in each of the parts or subunits if one moves in an alphabetical direction (from a to b to c to d) one is traveling counterclockwise, whereas in the larger WHOLE, if one moves in an alphabetical direction (from A to B to C to D), one is moving along a clockwise path.

2) Also in an earlier paper in this series we mentioned the fact that in the Tibetan tradition, the 'mandala' is first and foremost thought of as spiritual PRACTICE, in which a psychic 'field' is constructed and 'offered' to the divine energies, which are thereby invoked. A hand-held mandala plate or disc is used for the associated 'mandala offering practice', on which rice is piled in a heap. Although the resulting heap of rice does not reveal a structure or pattern, it is the result of a stylized and complex movement that the practitioner's hand follows in dropping the rice onto the plate. That movement is depicted in the following animation.

Conceiving of this movement as a two-phase process, an obvious resemblence between this movement and the 'eternal' and 'temporal' orders that are described in Von Franz's diagrams above becomes apparent. The 1-2-3-4-5 movement used with the mandala plate is the same as the 'eternal'order, circumscribing points on an outer circle or square that moves in a clockwise direction. The second phase of the process - the 6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13 movement - is also a very regular and symmetrical movement, but is much more complex and might even be described as 'counter-intuitive', by which we mean to suggest a kinetic movement that is 'difficult to perform'. To see this, try the following brief exercise. Draw the four points of a square, labeled like in the diagram below - but don't yet draw the square.

A B
C D

Now draw the square by connecting the dots in the following order-

1) first, draw a line from B to A;
2) then a line from D to B;
3) then a line from C to D;
4) then a line from A to C;

If you have followed these instructions correctly, the four segments were drawn one at a time in an order that moved in a clockwise direction - first segment BA, then DB, then CD, then AC. But as you drew, the pencil on the paper moved in a counter-clockwise direction - from B to A, and so forth. So the movement is about as close to 'paradoxical' as one can make linear movement. And this is why it is hard to perform, like the child's game of rubbing one's tummy in a circular motion with the right hand while patting one's head with the left.

Both of the circles to the left are fractal. They are different sizes, and are composed of a different numbers of 'epi-circles'. But there is also a more essential difference, a difference in basic design. With your finger, follow the line in the diagram to the left/top in a clockwise direction, and notice that you are also traveling in a clockwise direction within the smaller circles. But if you follow the line in the diagram to left/bottom in a clockwise direction, you will notice that within each smaller circle you move in a counterclockwise direction. The second diagram is not only more awkward to draw, the PARADOXICAL MOVEMENT that it describes is disorienting, as anyone who has been on any of the amusement-park rides that utilizes this kind of motion for entertainment purposes will attest. As the teacup in which you ride orbits in a clockwise direction, it spins in a counterclockwise direction, and your insides feel torn between two worlds of motion.

If you did the square-drawing exercise above, you will have ended up with a simple square drawn on your paper. No-one who looks at the static figure will have any idea of the complex movement that went into its production. But as we are trying to demonstrate here, the movement and/or the 'practices' behind mandalas may actually be more important than the static figures associated with them, especially when it comes to trying to understand their most profound meaning. This is why Gurdjieff and Ouspensky insisted on emphasizing that the Enneagram is NOT merely a static figure, and cannot be understood as such.

If you have done the exercise, or tried to reproduce the movement in the animated diagram above, you will have gotten some sense of how strange, uncomfortable, and counter-intuitive such movements can at first be. Klaus Vollmar alludes to this when he write -

Many followers of Gurdjieff believe that the body exercises or holy dances called 'Movements' are at the core of Gurdjieff's teachings. They consist of more than 100 very complicated, mostly counter-rotating body Movements that are intended to help the student develop greater consciousness. In these Movements not only do the different body parts move with the music, but, also, sometimes against its rhythm. At the same time, the student has to adjust to the movements of the other dancers and coordinate with them. Klaus Vollmar, The Enneagram Workbook: Understanding Yourself and Others, 1998, Sterling Publishing Company, New York, page 9

Quoting Bruno Martin, he continues,

'According to Gurdjieff, complicated word and number sequences were added, which were either thought silently or spoken out loud. Furthermore, the student had to percieve parts of his body in a certain sequence and activate certain feelings'. Bruno Martin, Handbook of the Spiritual Paths: A Journey of Discovery (Basel 1993)

The counter-intuitive movements in question are indeed challenging - a fact which, quite obviously, is intended to break habitual patterns of motion, thereby expanding awareness. But what we hope to have additionally suggested here is that the movements in question also have a deeper meaning. Behind the 'paradoxical motions' such as the kind that we have explored above is an attempt to draw the sacred or spiritual down into the material world, to give the 'undifferentiated infinite' a finite embodiment - which, in this series, we have identified as the overall purpose of mandala-work.

Emerging here is the notion of paradoxical action that is associated with paradoxical movement - the 'double-bind' as PRAXIS, a method for catapulting the individual into an undifferentiated state, in which 'unconscious search' is stimulated. When this technique is built into the STRUCTURE of one's PERSONALITY, as a paradoxically formulated 'persona' presentation, we arrive at the idea of 'the magician' - the individual who seems to embody mystery and magic, the person who can 'do' by 'not-doing', in the words of the Tao-Te-Ching. Or by undoing, as the work of Milton Erickson exemplifies.

This is a very differently structured 'personality', to say the least.

9 2 6   By connecting the numbers serially,
5 1 3   One gets two superimosed squares. 
8 4 7