Sri Yantra

To watch the Sri Yantra fascinates me always, it’s the most sacred of all yantras I reproduce in this post and I’m using as my avatar.

But what are yantras?  Yantra literally means ‘tool’ and those are an aid to meditation. These geometric diagrams with two or even three dimensions represent god and goddesses or mystical concepts. The bases of the temples and religious buildings are yantras with mystical and religious meanings very precise.

In the yantras are used geometrical figures, each of which has its own meaning, which, combined with other figures, give to the yantra meaning sometimes very articulate.

Points, straight lines and curves, points or arrow, triangles, circles, crescents, hexagons, squares, pentagons, crosses of various types combine to form a yantra. These symbols are usually surrounded by one or two circles of lotus petals, the flower symbol of Hinduism, the flower that is what man should be.  In fact, like the petals of the lotus while being supported on the surface of the pond it is neither wet nor contaminated, so the man should live in the phenomenal reality without being affected by that. To be in the world but not of the world.

The two concentric circles of lotus petals are in turn surrounded by a square called sisira (which means trembling in Sanskrit) with four T-shaped gates placed at the four cardinal points.

Each Hindu god has a yantra that represents, even each god has a yantra for each of his own many aspects and each yantra is also a mantra, a ritual formula that Is repeated mentally or verbally, a further aid to devotional meditation.

The Sri Yantra is called also Sri Chakra or diagram of fortune and Nava Chakra because it allows nine levels of meditation starting from outer frame until you reach the center of the drawing.

The Sri Yantra is a symbol of good luck and is dedicated to the Mother Goddess, more precisely to Rajarajeshvari, the Queen of the queens. It represents the powerful and permanent flow of the creation presided over by that goddess.

The Sri Yantra is composed of the frame (sisira), two concentric circles, respectively 16 and 8 lotus petals that surrounded a figure made of four isosceles triangles with the vertex upwards, intersecting with another five isosceles triangles with the vertex down. The four triangles represent the male aspect and the five triangles the female aspect, Purusha and Prakriti, Lingam and Yoni, Shiva and Parvati, by whose union was created and developed the whole universe whose multiplicity is represented by 43 triangles borning from the intersection of the nine main triangles.

The five triangles are feminine energy that powers the Purusha, the matrix, static property that has the unexpressed universe within itself.

The Sri Yantra is also a metaphor that refers to the oldest vedism and the centrality of sacrifice. The five triangles that intersect with four below are the symbol of the sacrifice of Shakti that is sacrificed in the fire of Agni and gives life to the manifest world.

In the middle of the last small triangle is sometimes visible sometimes not, bindu, which represents the boundary between the manifest and the unmanifest.