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The Pleromatics Project
About
the logo
The "star mandala" selected for the logo of The Pleromatics Project was discovered in October 1994, while I was idly browsing the program, James Gleick's Chaos: The Software by Autodesk. This striking mandala image exists within that abstract mathematical reality known as the Mandelbrot set.
Mandalas are images of wholeness, based on circular symmetry, and they often feature four-way symmetry as well. They are especially prominent in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but are found in the religious imagery of all traditions (for example, the aureole or halo on ikons), in dreams, in religious architecture, and in art generally.
In my excitement and surprise over its perfect symmetry, I saved only the image, not the mathematical parameters from which it was created. The chances of browsing to the same image again are almost infinitesimal. It is thus a rare and striking synchronistic "find", which happened while I was deeply involved in an earlier phase of this personal inquiry into the wholeness of the universe.
This inquiry leads to a question: Did I find the image, or did it find me? Because of the circumstances of its discovery, I consider it to be a perfect symbol for the search for the hidden symmetries of the cosmos, which this project represents.
The Spirit and Cosmos logo, discovered later, is also from the Mandelbrot
set. In contrast to the “perfect”
four-fold mandala above, it exhibits eleven-armed symmetry. If the four-fold symmetry is taken to
suggest wholeness and perfection (the goal of the Pleromatics process), this
odd-numbered symmetry must suggest a process evolving, having not yet reached
its goal (telos).
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