Up: [[Expressive Art Ideas - Larger Processes]] Related: [[The Self]], [[C. G. Jung]] Created: 2025-11-25 Updated: 2026-04-12 Jung started drawing daily mandalas in the midst of his [[Jung's Red Book]] process. He had no idea of their significance, he just found them calming and centering. Here’s Jung’s first mandala: #Photo ![[Jung's First Mandala.webp|500]] Over time, Jung started noticing mandala images in his own and his patients’ dreams. Mandala images take a wide variety of forms. They might be circular such as sun or moon, a fountain or a UFO. They might be square such as a market place or a [[Temenos]]. Or they might be an experience such as being chased around a central object. Images are as varied as the individual, but what all of the dreamers have in common is that when mandala images appeared they were always healing and life giving. They always signified the renewal of order and wholeness to the personality. Between his own experiences and those of his patients, Jung developed his foundational concepts during the time of his Red Book. The mandala was a representation of those concepts. > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] > Their (a mandala’s) basic motif is the premonition of a centre of personality, a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy. The energy of the central point is manifested in the almost irresistible compulsion and urge to become what one is….This centre is not felt or thought of as the ego but… as [[The Self]]. Although the centre is represented by an innermost point, it is surrounded by a periphery containing everything that belongs to the self— the paired opposites that make up the total personality. This totality comprises consciousness first of all, the personal unconscious, and finally an indefinitely large segment of the collective unconscious whose archetypes are common to all mankind. Or, in more concise terms > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] in *Memories, Dreams, Reflections* > The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the Self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man.