The circle is a fitting shape within which to capture dream art. You can fill a circle with abstract color, shape, and line that represents the emotions or actions that take place in your dream. You can fill a circle with representational drawings of symbols, characters, or settings that appear in your dream. You can fill a circle with art that combines these two approaches. In fact, you can fill a circle with any type of art that feels “right” as a representation of your dream.
But why do we use a circle to guide this exercise in art making? The first answer is to say that we learned this from Carl Jung, the father of modern dream work. In 1918-1919, Carl Jung was a medic in World War I. In his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he recounts this time in the army. He writes, “While I was there I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, a mandala, which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time.” He goes on to write, “With the help of these drawings I could observe my psychic transformation from day to day.” (p.195) As his career as a psychiatrist developed, Carl Jung came to use the term “mandala” to describe the circular drawings of himself and his patients. Mandala is a Sanskrit word which can be translated to mean center, circle, and circumference. The term “mandala” can refer to the traditional designs found in the sacred art of traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. In contemporary times, thanks to Carl Jung, it can also refer to any artwork created in a circle. In The Art of Dreaming, author and clinical psychologist, Jill Mellick writes “Drawing mandalas, whose conscious practice in the West we owe to Jung, allows us to pay homage to images of wholeness, completeness, big S Self, images that take us home to our inner core.” (p. 88)
This leads us to a second answer to the question of why we use the circle, or mandala, to capture dream art. Circles are important symbols. They represent wholeness. They represent completion. Circles are an important symbol in both the history and the development of our human species. In her book Creating Mandalas for Insight, Healing, and Self -Expression, Susanne Fincher writes “The motif of the circle appears very early in human history.” (p.2) She goes on to recount how we find ourselves on a circular planet that orbits a circular sun and is graced by a circular moon. She then gives an excellent overview of why we humans, throughout our history, have considered the circle to be a special, or sacred shape. Think of the life-giving force of the circular sun. Think of the cycle of seasons that turn from one to the next. Given the sacred nature of dreaming and dream work, it is fitting that the circle would be used to capture the otherworldly feelings, actions, images, and symbols that are a part of one’s nightly dreams.
A third answer to the question of why we use the circle, or mandala, to capture dream art requires an understanding of the nature of the circle itself. The circle is a shape that captures the finite and infinite in one “body.” Mathematically, the radius and circumference of a circle can never both be measured in the same units at the same time. When one dimension is measured in whole rational numbers, the other must be expressed in terms of “pi” which represents an irrational, infinite decimal. So, the circle, by its very nature, is transcendental. That is to say that the circle, in one shape, represents both the physical and non-physical (or spiritual) realm. (See Schneider p. 4) In my mind, the circle is therefore the perfect shape with which to capture elements of a dream (which originates in non-ordinary reality) and give them form in the material and concrete world in which we live.
These three brief answers just scratch the surface of why one would want to use a circle (mandala) to capture one’s dream art. I believe that we humans have always intuitively sensed the importance of and sacred quality of the circle. Carl Jung certainly did. The mathematical facts about the circle bear out an intuitive sense that this shape embodies, all at one time, both the concrete and the ineffable. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Jung writes “I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate.” (p. 197) It is for these reasons that I have said that the circle (mandala) is a fitting shape within which to capture dreams since a dream, as does the circle, carries within itself elements of both this world and another, day and night, conscious and unconscious, and the self and larger-than-self.
Selected Bibliography
Fincher, Susanne F. Creating Mandalas for Insight, Healing, and Self-Expression. Expanded Edition. Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, 2010.
Jung, Carl Gustav. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Edited by Aniela Jaffe. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Revised Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. First published 1961.
Mellick, Jill. The Art of Dreaming: Tools for Creative Dreamwork. Berkley, California: Conari Press, 2001.
Schneider, Michael S. A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.