Nine triangles woven around a single point — the cosmos folded into a diagram you can enter.
The Form
The Sri Yantra is the most revered of the Hindu yantras, a figure of nine interlocking triangles radiating from a central point called the bindu. Five of the triangles point downward, expressing the feminine energy of Shakti, and four point upward, expressing the masculine principle of Shiva; where they interpenetrate they generate a web of forty-three smaller triangles, arranged in concentric tiers of astonishing precision. Around this central weave are drawn rings of lotus petals and a square enclosure with four gated openings, so that the whole reads as a temple seen from above, a sanctuary rendered in pure line.
Constructing the Sri Yantra accurately is famously difficult, for the nine triangles must be sized and placed so that their intersections meet exactly, three lines to a point, with no error accumulating across the figure. This exacting interlock is part of its power. The eye is drawn inexorably inward, tier by tier, toward the bindu at the center, the dimensionless point from which the entire pattern is understood to emanate and to which it returns.
Correspondences
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Construction | Nine interlocking triangles from a central bindu |
| Downward triangles | Five (Shakti, feminine) |
| Upward triangles | Four (Shiva, masculine) |
| Enclosures | Lotus rings and a four-gated square |
| Symbolism | The supreme yantra, cosmos and consciousness |
Meaning
The Sri Yantra is a map of the cosmos and of consciousness at once, the outward unfolding of creation from the bindu and the inward path of return traced back to it. Its interlocked masculine and upward and feminine and downward triangles enact the union of Shiva and Shakti, the marriage of opposites from which the manifest world is continually generated. As an object of meditation it is entered rather than merely viewed: the practitioner moves attention through its gates and petals and tiers of triangles toward the central point, dissolving multiplicity back into the source. It is thus both a cosmogram and a technology of contemplation, a figure in which the structure of the universe and the structure of the mind are shown to be the same shape.