Enter the Mandala: The Law of Gender
This is the last painting in the Enter the Mandala Project I was Guided to co-create to understand the 12 Universal Laws. This is Mandala #12 – The Law of Gender.
The Law of Gender is about both creation and gestation.
First, gender exists in everything. On the physical, this manifests as sex. On the psychological, it’s the right and left brain traits. On the spiritual, it’s the yin and yang qualities of the soul and ego, the heavenly and earthly.
It takes both male properties (will, penetration, action, expression) and female properties (intuition, openness, allowing, nurturing) for all creation. This is as true on the mental and spiritual planes as it is on the physical plane.
The key to using the Law of Gender on the spiritual plane is in nurturing harmony and balance between the male and female aspects within ourselves.
Second, the Law of Gender states that everything needs time to gestate and grow. For humans, it takes 9 months. For dogs, 63 days. For carrots, 70-80 days. When it comes to dreams and goals, it depends. There’s what I call Divine Timing, but like with anything, where attention goes, energy flows. The more you focus on your dreams, the faster they’ll come to fruition. The trick is keeping the faith and exercising both inspired action and gratitude along the way. Don’t give up. Don’t get negative. That will only delay, stunt, or kill its growth.
Like with all seeds, our ideas need time and nourishment. Be patient and keep on believing.
The Intuitive Process
Like with all 12 mandalas, I started this painting with an intuitive reading.
You can listen to it here (14 min) – starting with my Spirit Calling Card spread and going into the mini-movie I downloaded from my Angels and Guides. This is their way of teaching me – a beautifully entertaining visual journey filled with symbolism.
The Creative Process
Bringing this painting to life is a good example of the Law of Gender in action.
Its creation required both the female (receiving Guidance for the project, asking for an intuitive download, embracing the unknown through every layer of paint) and male (making a grant request, ordering the supplies, planning, doing).
It took 10 months for the idea to manifest into what you see here today. Watch it grow.
A Closer Look at the Symbolism
From Crib to Coloured Swirls
In my vision, a half baby blue and pink rectangle hung statically in the background of a crib of the same colours. It was the object of a tug o’ war between a man and a woman. It wasn’t until they joined hands and looked at each other in the eyes that the scene transformed into a dynamic swirl of psychedelic colours. It was through the harmonious joining of male and female that the scene came to life, inviting me into its flow.
In the studio, I watched this first layer of watery colours shift for hours , just sitting with it and listening when it wanted to be tilted the other way or have another colour added. It may look chaotic, but it was very peaceful, especially when the creamy colours transformed the scene yet again.
Wholistic Growth
The yin yang symbol in the middle represents the complimentary forces of masculine and feminine in the greater whole. It’s dynamic, just like the background. It’s also in balance.
This principle is mirrored in the womb (teal circle) where a fully grown man & woman both procreated and rested in a pool of embryonic fluid. The live question mark (that later turned into a snake eating its tail) is now wrapped around the embryo with its final dot between the couple’s hands.
Full Potential
At first I was surprised to see adults in the embryo scene of my vision. But I later made the link with the fully grown oak tree in the acorn.
Full potential is already present in every seed. It takes time for the oak tree to grow. But at every stage, it’s being fully itself, the result of the Law of Gender.
The full potential in this painting is also represented in the full-grown tree that started with the acorn. It looks more like a fountain, part of the creative flow.
Follow the dotted trunk up and into the foliage that supports the embryo If you look closely, it’s made up of male/female symbols in pink and blue, but also both super tiny and dotted XX and XY chromosomes. Then, of course, the acorns. Creation is cyclical. From the acorn comes acorns and so it begins again.
Tumble Dry
In my intuitive reading, the hand, representing both the receiving (feminine) and giving (masculine) had a tattooed symbol in its palm. It was a square with a circle and dot in the middle.
Help me out here if you come up with anything else. But the only thing I could find on Google was the “Tumble Dry on Low Heat” symbol on clothing tags.
In a way, that makes sense. You don’t want to rush a baby out of its womb. But you do want to provide the most ideal environment for it to grow.
Same when you’re drying clothes. If you put some garments in a dryer that’s too hot and too fast, you’ll damage them. It’s no use! Give all your seeds the proper care and attention for them to be all that they were meant to be in divine timing.
As I watched the plant grow in slow motion from the dot in the hand, I was reminded of the lesson of faith and patience in the movie The Secret. In one scene, the seed had germinated and the sprout was just about to pierce through the crust of the earth. But then doubt and negativity crept in the person’s mind and the plant, representing manifestation, said “your wish is your command” and shrunk back into the ground.
Note: Years after I published this, I received an email from Dr. Meenakshi Noll, who explained the tattooed symbol in the hand:
In geometry, this is called squaring the circle and was deemed impossible in the 19th century. However, according to alchemy, within the smaller circle are a man and a woman, the two halves of our nature that are supposedly brought together through alchemy (one in Michael Maier’s book “Atalanta Fugiens,” first published in 1617).
Philosophically and spiritually, to square, the circle means to see equally in four directions—up, down, in, and out—and to be whole, complete, and free. Circles often represent the spiritual because they are infinite—they have no end. The square is often a symbol of the material because of the number of physical things that come in fours, such as four seasons, four directions etc. The union of man and woman in alchemy is a merging of spiritual and physical natures.
The Snake Eating Its Tail
Thank goodness for Google. I had to do a bit of digging to find out how this part of my intuitive vision related to the Law of Gender.
“The Ouroboros is a Greek word meaning ‘tail devourer,’ and is one of the oldest mystical symbols in the world. It can be perceived as enveloping itself, where the past (the tail) appears to disappear but really moves into an inner domain or reality, vanishing from view but still existing… This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death…. It is found in Gnosticism and alchemy representing cyclical natural life and the fusion of opposites. It also symbolizes the transcendence of duality… As a symbol of the eternal unity of all things, the cycle of birth and death from which the alchemist sought release and liberation. It unites opposites: the conscious and unconscious mind.” (http://www.tokenrock.com/
Creation from the unity of masculine and feminine on all planes. It makes sense to me now!
The Creative Flow
Remember the creams added to the psychedelic flow of colours in the first layers of the painting?
I found myself swimming in it, first in a school of fish (I didn’t see the eggs in my vision, but added them in the painting) and then as sperm flowing toward the egg.
At another point in my vision, I saw the creative flow in the mental / spiritual realm. A toy boat kept shapeshifting back and forth into container ships and other huge ocean liners.
This was a reminder of how creation requires both the imagination/idea and the will to make it happen – the feminine and masculine are part of everything!
The egg that I later painting behind the couple’s hands represents the full meaning of the Law of Gender – creation & gestation.
Your Turn
Can you see how this Law can help you in your life?
Be grateful for whatever stage your dreams are at and keep believing in them.
Give them the energy they need without overworking the soil.
Ask yourself:
- “How can I better achieve the balance of male and female qualities in this project?”
- “What are the ideal growing conditions for this seed to grow”?
Feel free to add an example to the discussion below to help inspire others. Thanks.
