Earthly Beings

Kala Mandala Art & Research

Earthly Beings, a.k.a. There Is a Severe Lack of Southeast Asian Fantasy Visuals–Part Two, is a collection of selected illustrations (black and white only) from 2024. 

Alongside these illustrations, researcher/writer/collaborator Elizabeth Gimbad writes about interesting Southeast Asian objects such as barkcloth textiles and blowpipes and their components.

This art zine was created to help folks imagine a Southeast Asian space.

I also wrote something about the name of Kala Mandala and how it informs my process:

About the Name

Mandala: Form and framework

In their most basic physical form, mandalas are shapes, motifs or figures commonly configured in a geometric and concentric manner. Their centre is the most important or sacred part of the motif.

A mandala can be a ritual tool, a spiritual aid, a representation of cosmology, or a sacred space.Mandalas can be art or represent all of the above, all at once.

In the 4th century BCE treatise, Arthashastra, polymath Kautilya used the Mandala or Rajamandala (circle of kings) as a framework for imaging foreign relations. Kautilya posited that your neighbour is a natural enemy, while your neighbour's enemy is a natural friend; thus forming concentric circles of alternating friends and enemies radiating from your centre.

In History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (1982), historian O.W. Wolters further developed the mandala framework to describe the various polities of ancient Southeast Asia. In contrast to the conventional idea of a state characterised by unified bureaucracy and territorial borders, the mandala is characterised by a polity without fixed borders. 

Within Wolters’ framework, smaller rulers look towards the centre — the most powerful ruler, often men (or women) of prowess — for security. The centre's power is maintained by all manner of relationships, cultivated through a mix of diplomacy, magic, and coercion. The mandala’s centre of power is dominant; however, each village, town, kingdom, and ruler possesses their own focal centre, creating a mandala from multiple mandalas. Each individual mandala looks out for themselves, paying tribute to overlapping centres of power, or even usurping power over the larger mandala.

The mandala is an unstable, organic and dynamic space.

On Making Fantasy Mandalas

I feel that in many fantasy worlds, there is a taxonomic approach to world building: Categorical checklists of factions, races, or gods, closely paralleling the conventional modern ethno-nationalist state and its rigid categories of identities and racial narratives.

I find more kinship with the aforementioned mandala model; specifically with their emphasis

on the centre, and how influence radiates out in an organic and personal manner.

My personal approach to fantasy worldbuilding is as follows: I begin with a germ of an idea,

reinforcing its centre, before slowly pushing outwards, exploring its consequences and effects on food, art, magic, anything and everything to do with life.

The mandala expands until I am satisfied, or my editors and collaborators are satisfied, or I hit a page count.

Then I move on to another settlement, another adventure, another mandala.

Hopefully someday, these mandalas will overlap, creating a world that feels, smells and tastes like fantasy Southeast Asia.

What is Kala? 

Kala is a Sanskrit term.

It can be Art.
It can mean Time, of which there is a deity of time, central to Southeast Asian mythology.
It can also mean Black, of which its feminine form is Kali: The black goddess who is also a deity of time.

Art of Mandalas? Okay.
Time of Mandalas? Good.
Black Mandala? Punk.
The ambiguity of which it is? Yes.

This is my Kala Mandala.
—Munkao

Specifications: 40 pages, A5 size  (148 x 210 mm or 5.83 x 8.27 inches) 

Want more? Check out the entire Kala Mandala Collection!