Decoding the Signs of Art — A Playful Introduction to Non-Dual Semiotics

(Without getting lost!)

Myth in Motion is an ongoing editorial and research project exploring the world’s great symbols as living forms of knowledge. Rather than treating them as relics of the past or objects locked inside religion, it approaches symbols as active structures that continue to shape art, poetry, philosophy, psychology, and human perception today.

At its core is a semiotic method — semiotics being the study of how images, forms, gestures, colors, and symbols communicate ideas, values, and hidden patterns. Here, that method becomes both cultural and experiential: a way of reading not only artworks, but consciousness itself. The ambition is practical as much as scholarly — to reconnect modern readers, artists, and thinkers with the symbolic intelligence shared across civilizations, bringing East and West, Africa, Indigenous traditions, sacred art, folklore, and contemporary creativity into dialogue through a clear and accessible framework.

Each symbol is studied across multiple dimensions — historical, aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and creative — and shown as a dynamic reality that evolves with consciousness rather than a fixed meaning to be decoded.

The first entry, The Circle, sets the tone for the series. One of humanity’s most universal forms, the circle appears in the sun, the wheel, the zodiac, the mandala, the rose window, and ritual dance. It can represent unity, harmony, and return — but also repetition, enclosure, and unconscious cycles. Through examples such as the Man in the Maze, the Banner of Peace, the Yin-Yang, the bindu, and the mandala, it becomes a map of inner and outer life — and a demonstration of the project’s key principle: that what first appears as limitation can become movement, insight, and transcendence.

Myth in Motion is therefore more than a study of symbols. It is a creative grammar of consciousness expressed through forms — a bridge between ancient wisdom and contemporary culture.

Card #1 was inspired by Dmitry Popov’s artwork, a self-portrait in the maze.

Note: Sahasrara chakra & Kikongo Cosmogram’s source: Wikipedia.
Data Visualization (ongoing) : Murielle Mobengo.

MYTH IN MOTION #1 — THE CIRCLE

GEOMETRIES OF MEANING

THE CIRCLE

Yantra & Mandala

In Sanskrit: “device,” “machine”
Parent: Mantra, Tantra

Left: Venus archetype in geometrical form

A yantra is a sacred geometric and artistic support used to focus the mind and prepare for meditation. It may guide attention through symbol, order, and intention. Like mandalas, yantras can be decorative too, but they usually have a more lean aspect, due to their main function. Inspired artists, like Pieter Weltevrede, for example, have aestheticized the Yantra.

See our beautiful 6th issue, Ô Sound Divine (2024), for a captivating conversation with Pieter Weltevrede, who also taught the ancient and authentic art of Yantra creation.

In Yogic philosophy, as codified by Sage Patanjali, however, realization does not depend on external objects. Authentic practice frees consciousness from dependence on rituals and symbols, the highest yantra being the body itself — aligned through meditation.

A mandal, mandana or mandala is a symbolic map of wholeness organized around a center. It may represent the universe, the inner life, or the path from multiplicity back to unity.

Ancient in origin and found across many cultures, mandalas appear in sacred art, architecture, ritual spaces, labyrinths, and cosmic diagrams.

Where a yantra often functions as a tool of concentration, a mandala reveals harmony within the whole.

Key meanings: Unity • Cycle • Return • Center • Transcendence

A large central circle with a luminous bindu point at its core.
Orbiting keywords:

Mandala • Rose Window • Chakra • Rangoli • Zodiac • Maze • Yin-Yang • Wheel • Cosmogram • Ouroboros • Song Refrain & certain poetic forms • Memory • Consciousness

2. Three Filters for Symbolic Understanding

These symbolic filters come from Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta, yogic philosophies aiming at nonduality.

They are traditionally known as the gunas, three fundamental tendencies within nature and the human mind: Inertia (Tamas), Passion / Action (Rajas), and Harmony (Sattva)

🔻 Literal & Inert — The Circle as a trap

Repetition • Enclosure • Loop

Visual references:

• dark labyrinth
• vicious circle
• thought trapped in recurrence
• closed Yin-Yang

🔥 Mental & Active – The Circle as motion & Motivation

Quest • Energy • Becoming • Desire

Visual / sonic references:

• zodiac wheel
• solar wheel
• turning chakra
• planetary orbits
• musical refrain

☀️ Spiritual & Contemplative — The Circle as Accomplishment

Clarity • Harmony • Living Center

Visual references:

• mandala
• gothic rose window
• Banner of Peace
• radiant bindu

3. CIVILIZATIONS OF THE CIRCLE

4. ARTISTS OF THE CIRCLE

West

• Hilma af Klint
• Wassily Kandinsky
• Limbourg Brothers (Très Riches Heures)
• Pointillist Artists like Georges Seurat
• Pieter Weltevrede

East

• Tibetan Thangka & mandala painters
• Harish Johari
• Pieter Weltevrede

Africa

• Kongo cosmograms
• Circular Adinkra motifs

Australia

• Indigeneous dot art

5. POETS & MUSICIANS OF THE CIRCLE

Francophone

Paul Verlaine
→ refrain, sonic return, fluid recurrence, and nostalgia

Anglophone

Edgar Allan Poe
→ obsession, echo, hypnotic return, fear

Germanophone

Friedrich Hölderlin
→ return of the sacred, cyclical temporality

Herman Hesse
→ return of the sacred, cyclical temporality & ritual (for eg. The Glass Bead Game; A Dream About the Gods)

Poetic Forms

• Pantoum
• Villanelle
• Song / Refrain
• Litany
• Iambic Pentameter
• French décasyllabe (ten-syllable meter)

MUSIC

• ☀️ Contemplative in nature: Psalmody and mantra chanting
• 🔻🔥 ☀️Boléro, Ravel & any musical movement that uses the ostinato or its variants
• Choir performances
• Music is highly subjective. Our Polymath Classical Delight playlist may or may not delight you.

6. THE THOUGHT OF THE CIRCLE

Closed Philosophy

Thought circling around itself.
Doubt without breakthrough.

Living Philosophy

Returning to the center, then moving beyond form.

Figures

🔥🔻— Friedrich Nietzsche: the eternal return, resentment, the death of God, thought burning in its own loop

☀️ 🔥 — Martin Heidegger: the enigmatic yet profound language, the builder of bridge: between Western & Eastern philosophy; science and technology; Being, time, and language; poetry and philosophy.

7. CREATIVE PRACTICE

For the Artist

• Work on your Existential / Personal Kalachakra
• Establish a Yantra study, drawing & painting practice
• Practice Mandala drawing
• Create your Book of Hours in the manner of the Limbourg Brothers
• Start a writing practice

For the Poet

• Transform a cosmogony / myth into a poetry collection or a poem
• Write songs
• Translate songs and poetry
• Practice ekphrasis (literary description or commentary on a visual artwork)
• Read Thus Spake Zarathustra by F. Nietzsche
• Study any of the essays in Poetry, Language, Thought by M. Heidegger
• Study Sanskrit

For the Philosopher

• Aim to conclusion.
• Study Sanskrit.

The circle is complete — and yet something remains unresolved. The ancients called it the quadrature of the circle: the impossible desire to give the infinite a corner, to make the boundless stand still. Card 2 begins there — with the Square.

Murielle Mobengo is the founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Révolution. Her work examines the intersections of art, poetry, mythology, and non-dual philosophy. As Ellébore Guimon, she has developed a practice she calls “neo-sacred portraiture“: an artistic translation that moves from the realistic, rational, and dramatic inspirations of the Renaissance to the visual poetry of Kerala Mural Painting, a living tradition of spiritual art from southwestern India.

MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM

Go Further

L’Atelier Révolution works exclusively with institutions — museums, universities, cultural foundations, and research centres — to bring this material into dialogue with contemporary practice.

If this card resonated, explore our issues — and watch this space. More cards are in preparation.

To enquire about institutional partnerships, coursework, or the full Myth in Motion series: institutions@revuerevolution.com