About the Moving Mandalas

Sesame Street: Lena Horne and Kermit Sing Bein' Green

Reseda Three

About the Moving Mandalas

by James Clair Lewis

Part One : How I came to make them

In the late 1960s I had a series of geometric visions while tripping. They were elusive, because they were moving, and the colors shifted prismatically. In the early 1970s I began making drawings of what I had seen. These were geometric abstracts in a six color spectrum. Many years later I learned they were called interference patterns in physics I got a friend to rig up a blue and a red light using a noisy ratchet relay. When the blue light was one, the blue end of the spectrum sort of whited out, while the red end of the spectrum darkened. The opposite happened when the red light was on. This simulated the moving aspect of my visions, but the ratchet relay was just too darned noisy, even with music playing loud. I also tried using individually blinking Christmas Tree lights, which was quiet, but the colors flashing weren't regular or consistent

In 1998 I got an iMac computer, and eventually stumbled across a freeware program called GIF Builder. It is not supported now, and no longer available, but it can do some truly nifty things. Of course, you do have to assemble your animated GIFS one frame at a time, which is rather time consuming. It won't run on any Macintosh Operating system above 9.2, so I make all of my Moving Mandalas on an IMac, and use my new G5 Tower for other stuff

Another program I found for the IMac is PicWave, which also is now unsupported and not available, and won't run on any Macintosh with an OS above 9.2. This program takes a single picture, and animates it into a MOV file (which GIF Builder can accept). PicWave uses Triangle, Sine, Cosine, and EXP functions to modulate lines, checks, Circles, and fancy Circles. You can layer these MOV files. This allows me to set different functions at different rates which dovetail at the end of the sequence. I like to use Classic Pythagorean numbers for this

I use a number of different sources. Some are Fractal designs I've made, others are from photos I've taken. Many are objects I've scanned, like flowers that grew around here, or crystals. A few are from pics I found on the internet, and I don't know who originally took them. I would Credit them with a link, if I could. They were just sooooooo good, I had to find out what they would look like as Moving Mandalas

I haven't found any programs for my G5 Tower which will allow me to make Moving Mandalas, but they may be out there somewhere. I have no idea how you would do this (or anything else) on a PC

Part Two : How the Moving Mandalas Work

Originally, I made the Moving Mandalas as artwork, and only later on discovered that they were useful meditation tools. Simply put : They give the brain something to do, while the Mind is busy meditating

I mentioned that I timed the sequences at different rates rates which dovetail at the end by using Classic Pythagorean numbers. With some of the simple Moving Mandalas you will have one thing which happens once during the whole sequence, while something else happens twice, something else happens three times, and one other thing happens four times. This embeds the number sequence one, two, three, four into the whole sequence

When using the Cosine function as a modulator, I set it at a point five. So I might have one function modulating on a Sine of 3 or 4 times through the whole sequence, while a Cosine function modulates at a 3.5. This appears to add some syncopation to it. Often the Moving Mandala will go to a zero point of its initial condition, but not in the exact half way point. It will occur somewhere else, and then go off in some other directions before dovetailing at the end

Many of the Moving Mandalas are fairly long, being around 600 frames. If I made one with 1000 frames, it would take a full minute before it began repeating again. It's kind of a stretch for the brain to follow a movement that long, which is why the brain is kept busy, and the Mind can meditate at peace. People with ADD always complain that they can't meditate properly, because their brains keep moving around, and distracting them. I've been told that when viewing my Moving Mandalas, that they don't have this problem

There are no subliminal messages in the Moving Mandalas. They are all pure artwork. So if you look at a Moving Mandala of a Flower or a Crystal, or a Fractal, or of a pretty hillside, that is the only Message which will be going into your brain. I think that's pretty safe, and probably better

Enjoy!

PS: I know they take time to fully load, but once they do, the Moving Mandalas will move like liquid

These animated Moving Mandalas are very large files. Please click on the pic, and wait for it to load. The Contemplation will be very enabling, carrying your Mind beyond the mundane world

Faerie Lands

53.6MB