Yantras: their meaning, their parts, and how families keep them

What a yantra is

The Sanskrit word yantra means an instrument, something that holds or steadies. In worship it is a diagram: a few simple shapes, drawn around a centre, that stand for a deity or a quality of the divine. Where a mantra is sacred sound and a murti is a sacred image, a yantra is sacred geometry. The three are often used together: the mantra is said while the eyes rest on the yantra.

Yantras are drawn on paper or cloth, engraved on copper, silver or gold-coloured plates, carved in stone, or made in three dimensions. They are found in temples, in home shrines, and in the meditation traditions of the Tantras and the Agamas, where the oldest descriptions of them are kept.

Some yantras are pictures made of shapes, like the Shri Yantra. Others are squares of numbers, like the Kuber and Navagraha yantras, where the numbers in every row, column and diagonal add up to the same total. Both kinds are read from the outside in, the way a visitor walks into a temple towards the inner shrine.

The parts of a yantra

Most yantras are built from the same few shapes. Not every yantra has all of them, and their number and order change from one deity to another.

What each shape means

• Bindu (the point): the centre, where the whole diagram begins and ends. It stands for the deity itself, undivided, before any form.
• Trikona (the triangle): the first shape that can enclose space. A triangle pointing down is linked with Shakti, the creative power; one pointing up with Shiva, pure awareness.
• Shatkona (the six-pointed star): an upward and a downward triangle joined, the meeting of Shiva and Shakti.
• Vritta (the circle): wholeness and the turning of time; it often separates one layer of the yantra from the next.
• Padma (the lotus petals): usually eight or sixteen, sometimes more. The lotus grows from mud yet stays clean, and stands for purity and unfolding.
• Bhupura (the “earth city”): the outer square with a gate on each of its four sides, facing the four directions. It marks the boundary between the everyday world and the sacred space within.
• Bija (seed syllables): many yantras carry a short Sanskrit syllable, such as shrim or gam, at the centre or on the petals: the sound form of the deity.

How families keep and honour a yantra

Customs differ from family to family and region to region, and none of them is a rule. Commonly a yantra is kept clean and dry on a small cloth or plate in the home shrine, and honoured the way an image of the deity would be: a lamp, incense, a flower, a little sandal paste or kumkum at the centre, and the deity’s mantra said a few times with the eyes resting on the bindu.

Before a new yantra is first placed, some families wash it gently with water or milk and ask a priest or an elder to consecrate it (prana pratishtha); others simply begin with a prayer of their own. A printed or drawn yantra is honoured in the same spirit as an engraved one.

Many families keep a yantra in the puja space, facing east; keep it however feels right to you.

The yantras, one by one

Each page has a drawing of the yantra computed from its geometry, the meaning of each part, its mantra in Sanskrit with meaning, and a few common questions.

1. Shri Yantra (Shri Chakra)
   Nine interlocking triangles around a single point: the yantra of Lalita Tripurasundari, part by part.
2. Kuber Yantra
   A 3×3 square of numbers in which every line adds up to 72, with the Kubera mantra.
3. Navagraha Yantra
   The nine number squares of the nine planets, laid out as the Navagraha mandala.
4. Surya Yantra
   The oldest magic square, adding up to 15, kept as the yantra of the Sun.
5. Ganesh Yantra
   A widely printed form: the seed syllable Gam, a triangle, a six-pointed star and a lotus.

Questions

What is the difference between a yantra, a mantra and a mandala?

A mantra is sacred sound; a yantra is a sacred diagram, usually small enough to keep and centred on a single point; a mandala is a larger sacred layout, often of a whole assembly of deities or of a temple ground. The words overlap, and the Shri Yantra is also called the Shri Chakra.

Do I need a yantra to pray?

No. A yantra is one support for attention among many, like a lamp, an image or a string of beads. Many people pray all their lives without one.

Does a yantra have to be made of metal?

No. Traditions describe yantras drawn on the ground, on cloth, on paper and on leaves, as well as engraved in metal or carved in stone. What matters in every tradition is that it is drawn with care and kept with respect.