Theos-Talk Archives (November 1997 Message tt00253)

Dear Mark

Thanks for the clarification. By your description, I do in fact know of
it by another name--RANGOLI; Rang=colours. Every housewife, learns it from
her elders, from childhood onwards. They place dots on the floor
outside of the front door (or anywhere else they might want to) make the
"design," by using these to as a grid, lines are drawn pasing within or
around the dots, forming simple to the most complicated patterns. There
are many small pamphlet-like handbooks sold showing hundreds of designs
for the ladies to use and copy. The more innovative ladies, who have no
books, learn all they can from their elders and then branch out with
their own creations.

I do not know why Mookerjee should connect it with either Tantra or
Yoga. Tantric art is extrordinary complicated, with strict mathematical
measurments, and usually appears as a complexity of triangles, one
within another, some pointing upwards, and others pointed downwards.
Any good writer on this subject has to know the mathematical
calculations, because these Tantric forms are called YANTRAS=ENGINES or
DEVICES. These drawings when formed, are the mathematical and geometric
symbol or representation of an invisible individual being or a group of
beings, belonging to the invisible, elemental and other non-material
entities. These drawing therefore are usually used in protective, or
evocative devices, by those who know what they are about. These are
highly esoteric subjects, unless one is a mere copier of what he has
seen used somewhere else.

Rarely do women--nor the ordinary man--know much in Tantra or Yantra
these days. Rangoli is a feminine art form, made of coloured chalks, or
rice flour; each day a new one, after the floor has been freshly washed
in the morning. These days you get little boxes with holes cut in a tin
bottom, the holes made a design, and the lazy lady, places chalk in the
box and stamps it down on the ground, and the design falls through.
These days even enamel paint is used to make a more perment design.
Sometimes, walls are also decorated with some of these designs. The
women-folk who do RANGOLI have never been trained in Tantra or Yantra.

Thanks again, Sophia Nov. 14