Yantra

a yantra is an instrument designed to curb the psychic forces by concentrating them on a pattern, and in such a way that this pattern becomes reproduced by the worshiper's visualizing power. It is a machine to stimulate inner visualizations, meditations, and experiences.

Zimmer provides the corpus's foundational definition of yantra as a psychic concentrating device with three functional registers: divine representation, inward devotional model, and dynamic chart for guided visionary transformation.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946thesis

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a great many of the eastern meditation figures are purely geometrical in design; these are called yantras. Aside from the circle, a very common yantra motif is formed by two interpenetrating triangles, one point-upward, the other point-downward.

Jung integrates the yantra into depth-psychological discourse by reading its interpenetrating-triangle motif as a symbol of the union of opposites — the ego and the non-ego — and as a form continuous with the mandala's function of expressing psychic wholeness.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Man and His Symbols, 1964thesis

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yang and yin, 18, 59, 98, 109, 341, 358 yantra, 356, 383, 387

Jung's index to The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious situates yantra alongside kundalini yoga, yogi, and yoni, signalling its role within a cluster of Tantric symbols addressed across multiple passages.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting

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Yantra, 140–1, 143–4, 202, 215 … yantra in practice of, 143, 215

Zimmer's index maps yantra across multiple chapters of Myths and Symbols, associating it directly with yogic practice and confirming its structural importance within the work's overall symbolic architecture.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946supporting

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See also Mantra; Yantra … Mandala, 144, 153

Zimmer's index cross-references yantra with mantra and mandala under the heading of magic devices and worship, establishing the tripartite terminological nexus central to Tantric ritual typology.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946supporting

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to support his preliminary approach, he sets before his eyes and mind an image (pratīka, pratimā) of the deity. This may be a statue, pa[inting or geometrical diagram]

Zimmer's account of Tantric devotional practice in Philosophies of India contextualizes the yantra within the broader category of the divine image (pratīka), situating geometric diagrams alongside statues as preliminary supports for meditative identification.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting

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The most elaborate and illuminating readings of this vivid pictorial scripture are those of the so-called Tantras—religious writings representing the Shivaite schools of the latest great period of Hinduism.

Zimmer's discussion of Tantric erotic symbolism provides the broader doctrinal context — the polarization of divine essence into Shiva and Shakti — within which the yantra's geometric encoding of the union of opposites is intelligible.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946aside

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