Yin Mandala Series

Years ago, I was playing around in Photoshop while meditating on “Yin” energy. Yin Yang is a Taoist symbol, and a good portion of my spirituality is based on Taoism (in addition to Zen/Chan Buddhism). Ultimately, I made about two-dozen variations of a single photo composite, and I selected my favorite. The filename was just some notation telling me pixel-shift, rotation, and hue. The name wasn’t the important aspect of any of them; the energy and symbolism the pieces contained, was.

My main external energy is Yang, and the image I made was a round-ish symbol of Yin. I called it a mandala, even though it didn’t look like any mandala I had ever seen. The Sanskrit word mandala comes from “manda” meaning essence, and the suffix “la” meaning something like “holder” or “container.” It was a perfect fit: the image I made while meditating on Yin energy was a Yin mandala. It was also huge! I had started with a very high-resolution image, and the resulting piece was gargantuan at 60,000 x 60,000 pixels.

Years passed, and I decided to meditate on different aspects of Yin energy (which is much more than what most people think of as ‘feminine’ energy). During this exploration, I tried to use color, shape, and line to represent the variety of Yin energy, and I ultimately decided to create a series of seven Yin mandalas, one of each color in the rainbow. I mastered them at a more reasonable (but still huge) size of 30,000 x 30,000 pixels.

I’m minting these images as 1/1 NFTs on Ethereum, and I’m hosting the files and all metadata on the Arweave blockchain for permanence. There’s no ‘unlocking’ to a piece; the link to the full resolution image is listed in each token’s description, and while it can be downloaded and viewed by anyone, it can only be owned by “one.”

I’ll auction the Yin mandalas one by one, until all seven are sold. Someday, I’ll complete and release a similarly-structured series of Yang mandalas. Those seven pieces will be set on white (not black) and they’ll reflect different aspects of Yang energy (which is much more than simply “masculine”).

You can view the series on Opensea.io, and note that they look best full screen. Download the full resolution image of your favorite (100–500 Mb), and meditate on Yin energy with me.

PS: I offset the environmental impact of all my projects with Renewable Energy Credits. View Yin Mandala’s REC voucher, here. More information about the NFTs on my art site, Azurine.Art.