The Seba library treats Quincunx Mandala in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Place, Robert M., Jung, Carl Gustav, Jodorowsky, Alejandro).
the entire Tarot deck is a quincunx with the four minor suits in the four corners and the Major Arcana in the center. It is like a sacred mandala and its entire structure is illustrated by the Marseilles World card.
Place explicitly identifies the complete Tarot as a quincunx mandala, asserting that its fourfold minor structure surrounding a central Major Arcana replicates the sacred geometry of the mandala form.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
The interior of the mandala now contains a quincunx of stars, the central star being silver and gold.
Jung documents the spontaneous emergence of a quincunx arrangement within a patient’s mandala imagery, interpreting it as a psychically generated symbol in which a privileged central element is differentiated from four surrounding ones.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
just as the establishment of a temple requires it to be placed in relationship to the four cardinal points, and alchemy requires fire, air, water, and earth to establish the four primordial elements, so does the mandala need to set its four corners.
Jodorowsky grounds the mandala’s fourfold structure in cosmological and alchemical precedents, providing the symbolic rationale for the quincunx pattern as the architectonic basis of sacred space.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
the ‘quaternity of the One’ is the schema for all images of God, as depicted in the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Enoch… the ‘squaring of the circle’ is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness.
Jung situates the quincunx mandala’s structural logic within the broader archetype of wholeness, tracing the one-centred-upon-four schema to visionary and theological traditions as a universal psychic pattern.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
The red sandstone saucer is supported on a pillar with a jet-black stem, in the middle of the square hall. Four gangways lead to the saucer from the four corners where they meet a gallery that goes round all four sides of the hall.
Jung draws on the architectural design of Akbar’s Divan-i-Khas as a concrete historical instance of the quincunx mandala principle — a central elevated point approached from four equidistant corners within a containing perimeter.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
The wholeness (‘perfection’) of the celestial circle and the squareness of the earth, combining the four principles or elements or psychic qualities, express completeness and Jungian. Thus the mandala has the status of a ‘uniting symbol.’
Jung articulates the theoretical basis for the mandala as a uniting symbol by describing how circular and quaternary elements combine to express psychic completeness — the conceptual foundation underpinning the quincunx mandala’s significance.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
a frequent form is the mandala with Christ in the centre and the evangelists in the four corners — the angel, eagle, ox, and lion, arranged like the four sons of Horus.
Jung identifies the Christ-and-four-evangelists icon as a historically recurring quincunx mandala, linking the fivefold arrangement to soteriological symbolism and the individuation archetype.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
The individuation process, clearly alluded to in this passage, subordinates the many to the One. But the One is God, and that which corresponds to him in us is the imago Dei, the God-image. But the God-image [. . .] expresses itself in the mandala.
Chodorow, synthesising Jung, affirms that the mandala is the privileged psychic expression of the God-image, grounding the quincunx mandala’s central axis in the Self as the organising principle of individuation.
, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997supporting
The 4 entrances are allegorized by representatives of the 4 elements. It is one of the most remarkable examples of
Jung briefly identifies a patient mandala in which four elemental representatives mark four entrances to a central space, providing an additional clinical instance of quincunx mandala geometry.
, Letters Volume 2, 1951-1961, 1975aside