Nine enclosures · nava āvaraṇa

The figure beside you is not an illustration. It is the argument.

Every line of it is derived, not drawn. Five fractions of a single diameter fix five horizontals; the remaining four are found only where other lines already cross. Nine triangles then cut one another into forty-three, in rings of fourteen, ten, ten, eight and one — and those rings, with the two lotuses, the three circles and the earth-square, are the nine āvaraṇas: the nine veils of the Mother, worshipped from the outermost inward.

Touch any part of it. Every petal, every triangle, every wall has a name, a presiding power, a tattva, a rasa, and a place in your own body — because the Bhāvanopaniṣad identifies them one by one, and nothing is left over on either side. Nothing here assumes you have been initiated. Every Sanskrit word is given in Devanāgarī, in transliteration, and in plain English, the first time and every time.

The nine outermost to innermost

Three, and nine again

The nine enclosures group into three, and each of the three is itself threefold. That is not decoration. It is why nothing in this figure can be worshipped in isolation: the innermost three are the causal body, the middle three the subtle, the outer three the gross — and within each triad the same creation, maintenance and dissolution repeat.

The tenth row

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The construction

A Śrī Cakra is judged by its marma sthānas — the points where three lines pass through one point. There are exactly eighteen, and almost every printed and cast Śrī Cakra in circulation fails at some of them. Nothing here is placed by hand: five of the horizontals are set at fixed fractions of the figure's own width, and everything else follows from them.

The five measured heights — how far above the base, as a share of the width

The other four graha lines — Candra, Budha, Guru, Rāhu — are never measured. They are placed where existing lines already meet. Of the nine triangles, Rāhu alone is equilateral. The forty-three are not copied from a list either. The nine triangles are cut apart wherever they cross, and of all the pieces that fall out, the ones kept are those lying inside an odd number of triangles — which gives back the rings of fourteen, ten, ten, eight and one without anyone counting them out by hand.

The decoding sūtra

कगजदशारद्वयमन्वस्त्राष्टदलस्वरपत्रत्रिवृत्तभूबिम्बसंज्ञाकथितं श्रीसदनम्

ka-ga-ja-daśāra-dvaya-manvastrāṣṭadala-svara-patra-tri-vṛtta-bhū-bimba-saṃjñā-kathitaṃ śrīsadanam

One — three — eight — two ten-cornered — the fourteen-cornered — the eight-petalled — the vowel-petalled — three girdles — the earth-disc: this design is called Śrī Sadanam, the dwelling of Śrī. The whole yantra, encoded in a single compound word.

Word by word

The first three syllables are letter-numerals in the kaṭapayādi manner — ka one, ga three, ja eight — so the innermost forms are counted, not described. From there the sūtra simply walks outward, and the walk is the drawing.

What is being built on this

The cakra is the spine, not the subject. Three commentaries hang off it, each name and each verse anchored to the enclosure it belongs to:

Where paddhatis part company — Kaula and Samaya, Hādi and Kādi, the order in which the seats are counted, Meru against Bhūprastāra — both readings are set down with equal weight and the difference is named rather than smoothed over.