The following Mandala images were created by analysands during their clinical work. Exclusive permission to display these images on The Mandorla Center website has been provided by the analysand. Reproduction or copying any image or portion of image on this web page is absolutely prohibited by law.  Click on the image to enlarge.

About the Images

Row one:

1. Life’s Journey - born into a family of constant violent power struggle between the mother and father, the daughter felt she survived a war zone with constant land mines exploding.  Upon leaving the family as early as she could, she managed to survive out in the world by living out of her masculine energy.  The lower left quadrant of a mandala represents the masculine.  At mid-life she disengaged with her life as she knew it, feeling she dove into a black abyss.  This is often referred to as the dark night of the soul, and feels like moving through a death.  In time there follows a resurrection; in this person’s case it was the resurrection of her feminine, symbolized by the water.  The two purple overlapping hearts in the center represent a merging of the masculine and feminine, the coniunctio, the promise of Peace.
2. Sexual Shame - growing up in a patriarchy leads to a state of chronic shame around the feminine sexuality; gender shame for being a girl, shame around sexual development, a feeling that her sexuality is defined, controlled, in service to the masculine authority.  As a girl, this woman was threatened with utter abandonment if she got pregnant.  She felt her sexuality was taken hostage by the dark negative masculine, the negative animus, which was expressed by living her life out of her masculine, working in male dominated professions, striving to never need anyone for anything.  By mid-life she collapsed with exhaustion feeling dried out like a parched desert, aching for a long, wet, sweet drenching feminine rain.  Reclaiming her feminine allowed her to continue her life from her heart.
3. Sexual Re-memberment – this being a process not an event, once she gained some traction in her feminine energy, she had to symbolically re-enter the bloody room of her childhood that symbolized the dismemberment of her femininity.  However, this time she has all the power, holding her perpetrators responsible, giving them a dose of their own abuse by cutting the mother’s heart that abandoned her and requiring the father to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness for his devaluation of the feminine.  Finally a sacred ritual of re-membering the feminine, the heiros gamos, or sacred marriage.
4. Sexual Re-memberment – an enlarged version of the inner process of uniting the masculine and feminine. This is a holy and sacred process, thus accompanied and facilitated by the Divine Mother & Father.

5. Bluebeard Re-enacted – The Bluebeard fairytale is one of the grizzliest fairytales, depicting the murderous rage of the masculine toward the feminine. Such murderous rage exists in both men and women. This woman had to encounter her own inner negative masculine, animus, a murderous rage that had throughout her life strangled and silenced her own feminine expression.

About the images continued

Row two: 

1. Vagina Moth –finally a dream of transformation emerges. She dreams of feeling a flittering inside her vagina. She intuitively knows she must not fear or scream at what inhabits her, but instead participate in the process by going to an open and blooming meadow [the Great Mother Earth] when the time is right and “opening” her inner self so that the Vagina Moths may take flight. The number four is symbolic of wholeness / completion.
2. The Great Mother– finally she realizes that through her entire life, although she had always been a city girl, she had to go into the forest, nature. She felt Nature was her saving grace, her touchstone, her anchor, her sanity in the midst of insanity. She realized that even in the darkest times The Great Mother had always been with her, mirroring her, validating her, really seeing her. She knew she really mattered...she had her soul!
3. Group Reflections -  One group member's reflection of her experience within the sacred circle that holds the work.  She explained that each different shape could depict a different member or a different energy within herself; yet all energies are interacting and impacting the other.  The different colors and shapes could depict the different emotions such as red for anger, and gold for joy.