Mandala is an ancient Sanskirt word meaning "circle" or "center". It is symmetrical in design, usually circular, surrounding a clear center. Contained within it are subtle or precise references to cardinal points, the number of which may vary. Mandalas may be artworks or forms found in nature. The Aztec calendar stone is a mandala, as is the Earth when viewed from space. The compass rose is a mandala, and so is a snowflake, a sand dollar, the human eye, and a pattern of iron filings gathered around a magnet.

For centuries, Tibetan Buddhist monks have created mandalas in artwork, weavings, and designs made with colored sand, much as Navajo shamans have done in the New World. The Tibetans use these designs as meditational devices for centering the mind so that it may pass, one step at a time, through the many dimensions of space, time and consciousness to the freedom of pure "being" that lies at the center of all things. This is always, no matter how often you have taken it, a journey of profound inner change, marked by new insights into one's self and the nature of life.

It was Carl Jung who first introduced the idea of the mandala to Western dreamers. In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung tells how he painted his first mandala in 1916, and that two years later he was painting a mandala in his notebook on a daily basis. He found that each new design evoked his inner life at that moment, and he used them to chart his "psychic transformation". Eventually Jung concluded that the path of the mandala is the path to our center, to becoming a unique individual.