Meditation Symbols in Eastern and Western Mysticism by Manly P. Hall

The Book

Meditation Symbols in Eastern and Western Mysticism (subtitled "Mysteries of the Mandala") represents a unique contribution to Manly P. Hall's bibliography. While most of his works are textual (philosophical arguments, historical surveys, ethical treatises), this book is fundamentally visual. Its thirteen chapters are profusely illustrated with reproductions of mandalas, yantras, cosmic diagrams, and theosophic illustrations drawn from traditions across the world.

Hall's thesis is that visual symbols are not merely decorative or illustrative. They are instruments (the word "yantra" literally means "instrument" or "device") for directing consciousness toward specific spiritual realities. A mandala is not a picture of the cosmos; it is a map that the meditator enters mentally, exploring its structure from within. A yantra is not an abstract design; it is a geometric condensation of divine force that the practitioner activates through concentrated attention.

This approach places Hall within a tradition that includes the Tibetan Buddhist practice of mandala visualization, the Hindu tantric use of yantras in puja and meditation, the Christian contemplative tradition of Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart, and the Hermetic use of geometric diagrams as tools for philosophical contemplation. Hall's contribution is to show that these apparently separate traditions share a common principle: sacred geometry as the language of consciousness.

What Is a Mandala?

The Sanskrit word mandala means "circle," but the term has come to designate any circular or symmetrical diagram used as a focus for meditation. In its fullest form, a mandala is a complex geometric construction depicting the cosmos as organized around a central point, with concentric rings, cardinal directions, and specific deities, colours, and symbols assigned to each region.

The Tibetan Buddhist mandala is the most developed form. Constructed from coloured sand (for temporary ritual use) or painted on cloth (thangka, for permanent contemplation), the Tibetan mandala typically depicts a celestial palace viewed from above, with a central deity surrounded by attendant figures, protectors, and offerings. The meditator does not merely look at the mandala. Through guided visualization, the practitioner mentally enters the mandala, assumes the identity of the central deity, and experiences the cosmos from the deity's perspective.

The destruction of the sand mandala after completion is itself a teaching: the most beautiful construction is impermanent. Form arises from emptiness and returns to emptiness. The mandala practice trains the mind to hold complex visualizations while maintaining awareness that all forms, including the self, are ultimately empty.

What Is a Yantra?

Where mandalas tend to be figurative (depicting deities, palaces, landscapes), yantras are abstract geometric diagrams. The most famous is the Sri Yantra (also called the Sri Chakra), composed of nine interlocking triangles forming a pattern of 43 smaller triangles, surrounded by lotus petals and contained within a square frame with four gates.

In Hindu tantric practice, each yantra corresponds to a specific deity or divine energy. The Sri Yantra is associated with the goddess Lalita Tripurasundari and represents the complete cosmos in its dynamic aspect: the interpenetration of Shiva (the four upward-pointing triangles, masculine, consciousness) and Shakti (the five downward-pointing triangles, feminine, energy). The central point (bindu) is the undifferentiated source from which all differentiation arises.

Hall is particularly interested in the yantra because it demonstrates that abstract geometry can carry spiritual content. You do not need a picture of a god to encounter divinity. A triangle, a circle, a point can be a gateway to the same reality that figurative art depicts through human and divine forms.

Buddhist Mandalas

Hall examines several types of Buddhist mandala practice:

Kalachakra Mandala: The "Wheel of Time" mandala, one of the most complex in Tibetan Buddhism, depicting the palace of the Kalachakra deity with 722 individual figures. The construction of this mandala (which takes weeks for a team of monks) is itself a meditation practice, and its public creation is considered a blessing for all who witness it.

Medicine Buddha Mandala: Used in healing rituals, this mandala depicts the Pure Land of the Medicine Buddha and is contemplated for the purpose of generating healing energy for the sick. Hall connects this to his broader interest in metaphysical medicine (see Healing: The Divine Art).

Cosmological Mandalas: Diagrams depicting the Buddhist cosmos (Mount Meru at the centre, surrounded by continents, oceans, and realms of existence). These are used in offering rituals where the meditator mentally constructs the entire universe and offers it to the Buddhas, a practice designed to cultivate generosity beyond all limits.

Hindu Tantric Yantras

Hall's treatment of Hindu yantras focuses on their geometric precision and meditative application:

Sri Yantra: The supreme yantra, representing the complete cosmos. Hall traces its geometry through nine interlocking triangles (4 Shiva + 5 Shakti), 43 resulting triangles, the surrounding lotus petals (representing the elements), and the outer square frame (representing the material world). Meditation progresses from the outer frame inward to the central bindu, corresponding to the soul's journey from material consciousness to the undifferentiated source.

Individual deity yantras: Each deity in the Hindu pantheon has a corresponding yantra. The Ganesh yantra is used for removing obstacles. The Durga yantra is used for protection. The Saraswati yantra is used for learning and creativity. Hall shows that these geometric forms condense the same qualities that the deity's figurative image depicts through visual storytelling.

Hildegard of Bingen's Cosmic Visions

Hall devotes special attention to the visions of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the Benedictine abbess whose illuminated manuscripts depict the cosmos as a series of concentric circles of divine light with the human being at the centre. Hildegard's visions are among the most remarkable examples of Western mandala art.

Her image of the "Cosmic Egg" (from the Liber Scivias) shows the universe as an oval form containing concentric rings of fire, air, water, and earth, with a human figure at the centre extending arms and legs to the four directions. This is the Western equivalent of the Tibetan cosmological mandala: a map of the universe with the human being as its focal point.

Hall argues that Hildegard's visions are genuine spiritual perceptions, not artistic inventions. She repeatedly insisted that she saw these images with her "inner eye" (in visionary states that modern scholars have variously attributed to migraine aura, epileptic experience, or genuine mystical perception). Whatever their neurological basis, the images encode a coherent cosmology that maps the relationship between God, cosmos, and human being with geometric precision.

Boehme's Theosophic Diagrams

Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) produced or inspired a series of complex symbolic diagrams that Hall considers the most important Western meditation symbols. These diagrams, produced by Boehme's followers (particularly Dionysius Freher and William Law), depict the unfolding of God from the Ungrund (abyss/unground) through the seven properties of nature (attraction, expansion, rotation, fire, light, sound, and substance) to the manifested cosmos.

The most famous of these is the "Heart of the Divine Sophia" diagram, which shows seven concentric circles representing the seven properties, with divine Sophia (Wisdom) at the centre. Each circle is labelled with its corresponding property, planet, metal, and spiritual quality, creating a multi-layered map that the meditator can explore from any direction.

Hall connects Boehme's diagrams to both the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (which maps the same cosmic process through ten Sephiroth) and the alchemical mandala (which maps it through the four elements and three principles). The geometric language is different, but the territory it describes is the same.

Hermetic Sacred Geometry

Hall examines the Hermetic tradition's use of geometric forms as meditation tools:

The Point: The undifferentiated source, the monad, the "centre everywhere, circumference nowhere" of the Hermetic definition of God. Meditation on the point is meditation on unity before differentiation.

The Circle: Unity in extension, eternity, completion. The circle has no beginning and no end. The ouroboros (the serpent eating its own tail) is the circle made into a symbol of cyclic return.

The Triangle: The threefold nature of reality (spirit-soul-body, thinking-feeling-willing, sulphur-mercury-salt). The upward triangle represents the ascent of the soul. The downward triangle represents the descent of spirit into matter. The hexagram (Star of David, Seal of Solomon) is two triangles interlocked: as above, so below.

The Square: Manifestation, the material world, the four elements, the four directions. The squaring of the circle (a problem the ancients knew to be geometrically impossible) represents the union of spirit (circle) and matter (square), the philosopher's stone.

The Pentagram: The human being, with five points corresponding to head, two arms, and two legs. The upright pentagram represents the human being with spirit (the head point) above matter (the four limb points). The inverted pentagram represents the reversal of this relationship.

How Meditation Symbols Work

Hall explains the mechanism by which visual symbols produce meditative effects. The key is that geometric forms are not arbitrary conventions but expressions of universal principles. When the mind contemplates a circle, it is not merely looking at a round shape; it is attuning itself to the principle of unity, wholeness, and cyclicity that the circle expresses at every level of reality.

The process has three stages:

1. Perception: The meditator observes the symbol with physical eyes, noting its shape, proportions, colours, and internal relationships
2. Internalization: The meditator closes the eyes and holds the symbol in the mind's eye (imaginative consciousness). This requires the concentration practice described in Self-Unfoldment
3. Identification: The meditator allows the symbol to "speak," to reveal the principles it encodes. This is not interpretation (which is intellectual) but reception (which is contemplative). The symbol opens, and the meditator enters it

Hall emphasizes that this process cannot be rushed. The first stage (perception) may occupy many sessions. The second stage (internalization) requires genuine concentration skill. The third stage (identification) cannot be forced; it comes when the meditator is ready.

Practical Method

The Universal Language of Form

Hall's most significant argument in this book is that sacred geometry constitutes a universal language that transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries. A Tibetan monk and a Benedictine nun may speak different languages, practice different religions, and hold different theological beliefs, but their meditation symbols share the same geometric vocabulary: circles, triangles, squares, spirals, concentric rings, cardinal directions, central points.

This is not cultural borrowing (there is no historical evidence that Hildegard knew of Tibetan mandalas or vice versa). It is convergent discovery: independent traditions arriving at the same visual language because they are describing the same reality. Consciousness, Hall argues, has a geometry, and that geometry is the same everywhere because consciousness is the same everywhere.

Who Should Read It

Practitioners of meditation who want to add visual contemplation to their practice. The book provides both the theoretical framework and the practical method for working with sacred diagrams.

Artists and designers interested in sacred geometry as a living tradition rather than a decorative style. Hall shows that the geometry has meaning, that it encodes principles, and that understanding those principles transforms the way you see geometric forms.

Readers of Hall's Self-Unfoldment who want the visual tools for the concentration practice described in that book. Meditation Symbols provides the objects; Self-Unfoldment provides the method.

Where to Buy

Buy Meditation Symbols on Amazon

For study of the Hermetic principles encoded in these geometric forms, see the Hermetic Synthesis Course.

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