Perhaps the best-known mandala-cum-plotting device in the Tantric universe is the Sri Cakra and Sri Yantra of Hindu Tantric practice, a perfectly bal… - David Gordon White

Tantra is the [[w:Asia}Asian]] body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm in creative and emancipatory ways.

Tantra emerged out of South Asian elite and popular mainstream some time in the middle of the first millennium C.E.

The energy levels of the Tantric universe are generally represented as a set of concentric circles (cakras) of hypostasized forms of the divine energy which, in addition to appearing as an array of divine enlightened, perfected , demonic, human or animal beings, also manifest themselves on an acoustic level, as garlands or piled-up aggregates of phonemes (mantras), on a graphic level, as the written characters of the hieratic alphabets and as the hierarchized cakras of the yogi body.