What is the Sri Yantra?

The parts

Nine triangles, 43 small ones, nine rings

The heart of it is nine big triangles that all share one vertical line of symmetry. Britannica describes the shrichakra as “composed of four isosceles triangles with the apices upward, symbolizing Shiva, and five isosceles triangles with the apices downward, symbolizing Shakti. The nine triangles are of various sizes and intersect with one another.” Press Shiva and Shakti above to color them apart. With four up and five down, it is a cousin of the six-pointed star, which uses one of each (see the merkaba).

The 43 comes from a tradition, and you can check it. The mathematician Alessandro Chiodo quotes the Rudrayamala Tantra (through R. C. Gupta) describing a bindu, a central triangle, and then “enclosures formed by 8, 10, 10, and 14 triangles.” Add them up: 1 + 8 + 10 + 10 + 14 = 43. On our drawing, the lit triangles of each enclosure are exactly the small pieces that sit inside an odd number of the nine big triangles: 14 inside one, 10 inside three, 10 inside five, 8 inside seven, and the central triangle inside all nine. The other 31 pieces are the gaps between the rings.

Around the triangles. Chiodo again: “The outermost motive is the square of defence or bhūpura. A triple circle circumscribes the core of the diagram. Then, sixteen petals of lotus surround an eight-petalled lotus and a polygonal diagram containing a central point, the bindu.” The Culture of India (Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010) adds that the petals represent “the lotus of creation and reproductive vital force” and that “the broken lines of the outer frame denote the figure to be a sanctuary with four openings to the regions of the universe.”

Nine rings in all. Counting from the outside, Chiodo lists the nine cakras (wheels) as “the bhūpura, the triplet of circles, the 16 petals, the 8 petals, the enclosure of 14 triangles, than that of 10, again 10, and 8 triangles, and finally the central triangle.” That is the order the builder above follows, with the bindu last.

The math problem

Why an exact Sri Yantra is so hard to draw

Nine triangles are easy to draw. Nine triangles that meet exactly where the tradition says are not. Chiodo lists the conditions. The two largest triangles must share the same circle around them. Seven apexes must land exactly on the middle of another triangle’s base. And in 12 places, the side of a down triangle, the side of an up triangle and the base of a third must all pass through one single point. Move one line a hair and a crossing splits into a tiny extra triangle.

Trying to pin down one perfect drawing. In 1984 Kulaichev took on a harder version with four extra conditions. Chiodo: he “discusses whether the solution is unique (p. 285), estimates the complexity, and argues that the answer is out of reach.” Gérard Huet “provided a formal definition of the mathematical problem” in 1990, published in 2002.

Old methods are close, not exact. The traditional recipes, and modern constructions built on the golden ratio, “fail to meet concurrency conditions in a way that is not visible to the eye.” Our drawing solves the crossing conditions by computer, which is why it is labelled a drawing to the traditional layout rather than the one true Sri Yantra.

Last column: our own count on the drawing above, not a published figure.

History

How old is it?

Nobody knows, and the earliest drawing we can point to is much younger than often claimed. Chiodo, following Huet: “although it is hinted in several sources that this symbol is very old we do not know of any published representation before the 17th century.” So claims of thousands of years rest on texts that describe something like it, not on a surviving dated picture.

Where it sits in sacred geometry. Like the Flower of Life, it is built from one rule repeated: here, triangles that must meet at shared points. Among the figures of sacred geometry, it is one whose tradition sets conditions precise enough to become a research problem.

What the tradition holds

The Sri Yantra in Shri Vidya

In Shri Vidya, the Sri Yantra is treated as the goddess’s own form in geometry. Wikipedia, citing Madhu Khanna in Gale’s Encyclopedia of Religion (2005): “The Sri Yantra is the object of devotion in Sri Vidya.” And: “The Sri Yantra is at the heart of Shri Vidya practice, representing the geometric manifestation of the formless Tripurasundari.” Britannica ties the figure to “the ritual worship of the goddess Shakti.”

Union at the centre. Britannica describes the five down triangles as “said to represent the yoni, or vulva,” and the four up triangles as “said to represent the lingam, or phallus,” with the figure “beginning and ending with union at the centre, visualized as a dot (bindu).”

In temples. At the Kamakshi Amman Temple in Kanchipuram, Wikipedia says “Adi Shankara is credited for consecrating the current Sri Chakra Yantram in front of Kamakshi Ambal.” That is a temple tradition, and the passage carries a “citation needed” tag.

On the news

The quarter-mile Sri Yantra in the Oregon desert

In 1990 a Sri Yantra about a quarter of a mile wide turned up in a dry lake bed in Oregon. The Deseret News reported: “A huge Hindu meditation symbol has been mysteriously plowed into a remote dry lake bed in the southeastern Oregon desert, a spokesman for the Idaho Air National Guard said Thursday. The symbol, known as a sriyantra, measures about a quarter-mile across and is oriented to true north.”

A pilot found it; an artist owned up. The Seattle Times: “A National Guard pilot on a training flight spotted the quarter-mile-wide Hindu meditation symbol last week in a dry lake bed north of the Alvord Desert.” Bill Witherspoon wrote to the local paper that he and four companions laid it out “using binoculars, sticks, wires ‘and about 12 miles of string,’” and dug it about six inches deep with an antique garden cultivator between July 31 and August 9. He called it “an artistic experiment on a grand scale”; the Bureau of Land Management called it “willful defacement of public lands.”