Rangoli is a women's art from India, creating sacred spaces by using rice flour and colored spices or flowers to make patterns.  These patterns are an invocation of a deity.  They are a sort of "ad hoc" cathedral.  They are impermanent, as life is impermanent.  They are done rice flour, so minute creatures can carry the prayers to the universe as they consume the offered food. 

A Rangoli is a physical prayer.   I took the space of the roundhouse, and 20 pounds of rice flour, 3 pounds of turmeric, 3 nails, string, 8 hours,
and the occasional help of some friends and my daughter to do a rangoli that spanned about 40 feet..  Here's how it went:  (click on each image for full size)

2.  Donna and Ward come by to lay out the fire, so I get going on the rice flour patterning.  The rice flour pattern is  fragile and beautiful, as life is fragile and beautiful.  I can't start the rice four lines until the central fire wood  is brought in  by the wheelbarrow full. A small fire is more than enough, and doesn't take long to construct.   I begin the rice pattern at the center and slowly work outwards.  Many ritual acts of contemplation or grieving involve deliberate self-abnigation, self injury, or duress.  Getting up and down from this positon repeatedly, hundreds of times,  for 8 hours seemed ok at the time, but the next day ...DAMN! 

3.  I keep working, around and outward. It feels "trippy" to work slowly around the structure, watching the lotus grow.  The geometry is mesmerizing, and the physical labor is suprisingly strenuous.

4.   I stand up to get more rice flour, and to stretch my back.  The kneeling/crouching positon for 8 hours is a pennace and prayer by itself!  My daughter says this is the way she sees me most often!  Filthy, besmeared  from some creative activity, and grinning. 

5.   I lay down the rice flour with my fingers, or with a paper cup.  I get more deft with it as  hours go by.  The concentration of making the lines is much like praying, chanting, or saying a rosary. Repetative, calming.  The orderliness of the lotus becomes my discourse with life: I experience the day through creating order and beauty, patience and getting up and down  time after time..  People experience me as an old woman bringing a lotus into being. 

6.   A few people stop by to offer help.  As the pattern grows, more people are intrigued.  The outer circles require more and more petals, and I'm glad for the help!
 

7.   Mostly women work on the lines.  Rangoli is a women's art, working with flour, spice, and kitchen stuff in household courtyards.  Men come by wanting to help as we're nearing completion.  I ask the men to get wildflowers to place in the petals.  Ward brings in goldenrod.

8.   We finish off the pattern as we run out of rice flour.  I brought 20 pounds of rice flour, next time I'm bringing 40.  I used 3 pounds of turmeric.  It's 7 pm now, and time for dinner.  I'm very tired and hungry from the work. I wanted the sun to go down on this rangoli ...... finished and perfect before we began to dance it into the earth.

9.   It's dark.  People come in to drum and dance at the fire.....  We sit around talking about Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and what it to be understood, embraced, mourned for, learned from.   Gwyn bravely climbed up the tower to get this, and other shots ..... I don't do "high"!.

10.   I tell the people gathered the intent of the rangoli, a prayer for the living, a prayer for the dead, a prayer for wisdom and a prayer for compassion.  ....  light candles around it, and light the fire.  Some drummers start up.  I cut the rangoli in 4 directions with my foot, and begin the dance around it.  Life is fragile.  Life is short.  Deal with it.  Accept it.  Learn from it.  Where there is injustice .... work for a better solution.   Other dancers come in.  We dance the rangoli into the dust.  It's a good thing. 
 

Most of these photographs were taken by Gwyneddh Thomas

If you want a class in the history, traditions and practice of rangoli taught at your school, library, or festival; or have a rangoli constructed at an event, contact me: