The Mandala at the Heart of the Serpent
Sanctuary of Meaning · Journal Entry
Lucas Varro
All things shine not with their own light,
but from the stillness they guard.
—from a roadside note, driving home from Phnom Penh
—
The rains had just passed through the capital, leaving the air washed, tender, and still. After a luminous weekend in Phnom Penh—sharing a joint exhibition with my dear friends Ponleu and Alda Waddell—Annie and I began the long, quiet drive home to Siem Reap.
Alda remained in the city, her studio rooted in Phnom Penh, but her work lingered with me. Her paintings—radiant, spiralling—seemed to echo something older than memory: the mandala patterns carved into the chests of the naga guardians at Angkor.
One tiny dot of paint at a time, she had drawn their forms from the stone—translating sacred geometry into pigment and breath. As the road unrolled beneath us, shimmering with late light, I found myself tracing those same patterns in my mind: concentric forms coiled across serpent bellies, etched into sandstone with a precision both mathematical and mythic.
How many times had I passed them by—camera in hand, mind elsewhere—without pausing to truly see?
—
To the casual eye, they appear ornamental—floral medallions, stylised discs, perhaps ceremonial shields. But once the eye is opened, the meaning deepens.
These are mandalas. Sacred diagrams.
And they are not random.
In Khmer cosmology, the naga is both guardian and ancestor. He is the bridge—between water and earth, between mortal and divine. His body forms the balustrades of temple causeways, his heads rise in sheltering arcs at the threshold of holy ground. Seven heads, sometimes nine—arching not in menace, but in protection.
And at the heart of his form—on the chest where his silence breathes—rests a single, unbroken shape.
The mandala.
Not an adornment, but a seal.
Not armour, but offering.
Not strength alone, but structure—the pattern of the universe drawn into the flesh of myth.
—
In Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, the mandala is the universe made visible: the world spiralling outward from a sacred centre. In silence and symmetry, it becomes a mirror of Mount Meru—a cosmic axis, a diagram of divine order.
Carved into the chest of a naga, the mandala becomes a convergence point.
A still point of spiritual force.
A yantra of protection.
A silent hymn of kingship, guardianship, and eternal return.
Some say these patterns are chakra symbols—echoes of Tantric energy maps woven into Khmer stone. Others see in them the mark of sacred rule: the naga bearing not just temples, but the very order of the king’s dharma.
But the longer I dwell in their presence, the more these interpretations dissolve.
The naga is the bridge.
And the mandala at his heart is not a key—but a doorway.
—
These carvings are not uniform. Some shimmer with layered lotus petals, geometric rings, interlacing wheels. Others are spare—only a single line, stylised and serene. You find them where the world changes: at entrances, causeways, liminal spaces.
Places of passage.
This cannot be coincidence.
The naga appears wherever movement becomes meaning—where crossing over asks more than footfall. And the mandala is his seal, his blessing, his invitation into unseen dimensions.
They were never meant to be read.
They were meant to be entered.
Felt.
Allowed to open—like a flower, or a breath, or a forgotten prayer.
What god breathes
through the belly of the stone—
silent, coiled, awake?
—
Perhaps the ancient sculptors understood. Perhaps they carved not just with chisels, but with reverence—tracing circles they no longer needed to explain, only to repeat.
A seal of stillness.
A wheel of return.
Not outward motion, but inward.
Toward the centre.
Toward what cannot be spoken.
—
We reached Siem Reap just after dark. The trees stood hushed along the road. The sky lay wide with stars.
And still the symbol remained—burning softly in the space between thought and breath.
Stone serpent.
Sacred circle.
Cosmic heart carved into silence.
These are not decorations.
They are invitations.
—
Some truths
are not spoken in stone—
they are circled.
—
The naga does not guard the way forward—he guards the sacred centre we forgot was already within.
Also in Library
Hands of the Sculptor — The Craft as Meditation
In the hush of the galleries, the sculptor listens rather than strikes.
Each breath, each measured blow, opens silence a little further.
Unfinished reliefs reveal the moment when mastery becomes meditation—
when patience itself is carved into being,
and the dust that falls at a mason’s feet becomes the residue of prayer.
The Asura Within
At the gates of Angkor Thom, gods and demons share a single serpent.
Across this bridge of struggle the pilgrim learns that the asura is not evil but unfinished — the restless force within each of us still grasping for light.
To cross the naga is to balance passion with compassion, struggle with stillness, shadow with dawn.
Garuda and the Serpent · Flight and Surrender
Between Garuda’s wings and the Nāga’s coils, Angkor breathes its oldest truth: flight and surrender are one motion. In the carvings where sky and water entwine, the pilgrim learns that freedom depends upon gravity, and that stillness itself is a kind of flight.
