SW School of Mandala Arts

StarWheel School of Mandala Arts and Sacred Geometry

 

 

The Sedona-based StarWheel School of Mandala Arts & Sacred Geometry, currently seeeking a location in West Sedona, is the first phase of the StarDome Eco-Campus University project. A curriculum of classes, seminars and children playgrounds will be started as soon as an appropriate property can be purchased.

 
Goals of the School
 

 

Interactive, multi-media & pluri-cultural, the Mandala School will provide a pioneering environment to directly experience the new possibilities of learning, awareness & creativity offered by the archetypal model of the Mandala and the wisdom of harmony & fractal coherence offered by Sacred Geometry.

 
  • Interactive - The Mandala School will draw from and contribute to the other educational activities & services offered by the StarDome Art Center at large. Students will be encouraged to co-create experiential mandala settings: labyrinths, sand mandalas, medicine wheels... to be walked and shared. Personal hands-on projects and apprenticeships will be pursued with the facilitation of the staff and visiting practitioners of the Sacred Arts.
  • Multi-media - Three "colleges" are offered as study frameworks: Dance, Color & Music (see below). Each student will thus choose a "major" but will also be exposed to a wide range of pluri-disciplinary learning & experimentation: from traditional ceremonial art & folk crafts to sacred dance & cymatics (the scientific study of the forms taken by media sujected to varying sound frequencies)... The students will be guided to master a large palette of art tools in order to best express their personal creativity. Correspondences between vision, audition & motion will emphasize the oneness of perception behind sensory channels.
  • Pluri-cultural - The focus of the StarDome Art Center is essentially pluri-cultural, as the mandala teachings from many traditions will be studied and researched. The StarWheel Gallery & Exhibit spaces, for instance, are envisioned as an open exploratorium to learn the universal language of the Mandala and its varied geometric & symbolic modulations inherited from many cultures. The Library & Research Center will provide ongoing references & support to approach personal projects from a variety of traditons.

 

Mandalas as Holograms

Traditionally, "Mandala" refers to the understanding of the Sacred Circle (or Sacred Spiral) as a model of the universe and of Consciousness itself.

A mandala can be a holy site, a ceremonial circle, an atomic or galactic structure, a colored design... or a perceptual experience, an inner attitude... the form truly is just a bridge...

The Mandala is an "attractor" that takes observers into its vortex dynamics and leads everyone to transcend its outer forms in order to enter the Center. There resides the very Essence of the mandala: Oneself.

The real event happens within the heart of any mandala: a sudden understanding of Life, a spiritual & mystical realization. That wisdom has always been kept alive and transmitted by all sacred Traditions, the world over.

In the western cultures, the contemporary equivalent of a mandala is a "hologram". Both words point to the understanding that the "fragment" contains the "whole".

The Mandala model provides a Hologram for learning the evolutionary dance between Oneness & Multiplicity.

 

Sacred Geometry: the Cosmic Dance of Harmony

Sacred Geometry is currently re-discovered as a knowledge KEY for shifting to a new paradigm of universal wholeness and the loving inter-connectedness of the Web of Life. Traditional wisdom holds the universe to exist because of a profound harmonic order. From quantum foam to atoms to DNA to galaxies, certain precisely reoccuring ratios and geometric symmetries are the foundation of the whole cosmos.

The Golden Ratio, as exemplified in the Fibonacci series and the Platonic Solids, is the pulse and power orchestrating "Cosmos". Etymologically, the Greek word "cosmos" means order & beauty and refers to a universe perceived as a "divine ornament".

The contemporary faces of Sacred Geometry are called: Design Science, Fractality, Invariance-scale Physics, Phi Recursiveness, Hyper-Harmonics, Self-Similarity and Quantum Geometry...

The study, understanding & applications of Sacred Geometry in nature and in consciousness offers a needed and substantial gift: to open our human awareness to perceive again a living, interconnected, intelligent and benevolent universe.  Sacred Geometry is the collective re-appearance of our deep innate wisdom: seeing and becoming the all-encompassing Unity of Life...

... so that the heavens can be understood as spiritual realms preceding and continuing life on earth; harmonic chords can be played by celestial bodies choreographing graceful time-space dances; the "Big Bang" can be heard as the Primordial Song of the Universe and each star can be smiling to each flower... while the human family is holding hands with all of creation...

 

A new Approach to Education

 

In synchrony with a nascent global culture of rediscovering the Sacredness of Earth and the spirit of Oneness among all humans, the StarWheel School of Mandala Arts is using the mandala model & experience to pioneer a new approach to education.


As a prototype "new earth" educational campus, the School will emphasize:

  • The Implicate over the Explicate. The students are given recognition of their innate Consciousness, i.e. everyone is related to as being the mirror of the Totality.
  • The Universal over the Particular. The students are supported in their explorations of new ways for the "Earth Mandala", i.e. the "homework" is to facilitate a global civilization of Harmony.
  • Unification over Separation. The students are encouraged to create personal and collective holograms, i.e. integrated and radiant selves within group-selves.

 

Structure of the School - 3 colleges

 

Three main colleges ("majors") are envisioned within the StarWheel School. They correspond to three basic modes of perception & expression: visual, auditive and gestural. (These colleges will in fact interface & nurture each other, as student research projects keep opening new avenues.)


1. College of Sacred Dance and Celebration:


Purpose: Teaching, sharing and researching new understandings, attitudes, practices and technologies that can bring about an Interactive Dance of Harmony:

  • personally: between mind, body & spirit and between people "at home".
  • locally: within families and between communities and their eco-systems.
  • collectively: between regions and nations.
  • globally: between nations, as humankind is becoming a conscious partner of Earth.

The College of Sacred Dance and Celebration offers:

  • Teaching and revivifying the Sacred Dance Traditions from around the world.
  • Co-creating Interactive Dance Events to celebrate: rites of passage in the life-journey of community members, seasonal rituals, moon & star cycles, global events and more.
  • Resurrecting and adapting the ancient knowledge of Geomancy and Feng Shui as the arts of dancing with & within the energy matrix of Earth
  • and the wisdom of nurturing a conscious partnership with the galactic neighborhood.
  • Presenting and studying the life work of visionaries and pioneers of "Planetics", the global vision of a planetary dance of peace: Gandhi, Buckminster Fuller, the Dalai Lama...
  • Facilitating the sacred dance of the Human Body through the yogic, martial and shamanic arts.

This college will benefit those students called to bridge and interface the many aspects of the One Consciousness as the inspiration to dance, change, exchange and keep a harmonic balance...

Thus, the College of Sacred Dance and Celebration is teaching
the gestural - dynamic - acting aspect of Space-Time.

2. College of Mandala Creativity and Color:

Purpose: Transmitting. modeling and developing the "Way to the Center", i.e. the art-ability to always cut through the veils and perceive the seed within the fruit, the fruit within the tree, the tree within the forest, and oneself within the seed...

This College offers hands-on apprenticeships in specific mandala practices and traditions, in order for students to create mandala sacred art and sacred events.

Available areas of study are:
  • Presentations of traditional mandala art from around the world.
  • History, science and practise of Color theory & therapy.
  • Study of the properties of Light as a physical & meta-physical principle.
  • Explorations in holographic, yogic and depth perception: synaesthesia (cross-sensory perception), cymatics, dermovision ("skin-seeing"),
  • stereograms (computer art designed to appear in 3D), third eye yogic practices...
  • Studies in Sacred Geometry as the language of Mandala Consciousness.
  • Practices to realize mandalas as a state of consciousness.

This college will attract students inspired to explore and create new cultural tools, mythological forms and color schemes as a reminder to always see the Center in everyone and everything.

Thus, the College of Mandala Creativity and Color addresses
the visual - seeing - form perception aspects of Space.

 

3. College of Sound Healing and Music:


Purpose:
To help students rediscover the power of sound as the prime mover of the Universe. All major civilizations were seeded by certain sound frequencies and musical modes & chords. This College is offering a creative ground to manifest the musical signatures supporting the global shift of Humanity.

The following areas of interactive study & practice are available:

  • Sacred music & drumming from religious, shamanistic and spiritual traditions.
  • Chanting, toning and sound modulation practices.
  • The musical harmonies inherent in Nature.
  • A Cymatics Laboratory will teach the forms of music and the music of forms.
  • A "music instrument making" shop will re-create ancient instruments and invent new ones, from the classical monochord to electronic tone generators.
  • Study of vibration fields, harmonics and proportions leading to research into infra or ultra sonics (the dolphin’s range), birds songs, acoustic levitation.
Thus, the College of Sound Healing and Music
facilitates access to the Time aspect of consciousness.

 

Note: A menu of access options will be developed to accommodate a variety of students: on-going weekly classes, week-end workshops, full-time 6-month or 1-year programs, long-term resident apprenticeships. The vision is to offer a unique creative training that could seamlessly complement other existing school curricula, through credit equivalence.