Memento Mori Mandala
This piece began in the drafting practice — anatomical sketching sessions, skull studies from reference, the discipline of rendering mortality with precision before making it the center of a radial composition. The Memento Mori mandala operates as Victorian society intended the concept to function: not as morbidity, but as a sharpening instrument. The reminder of death as the technology for taking joy in the present moment.
Where most mandalas in this series move toward warmth and chromatic complexity, the Memento Mori deliberately drains color as it moves outward — warmth fades to gray, the corpselight burns cold at the periphery. At the center: an array of skulls, human and animal and prehistoric alike, held together by the hermetic ladder of transformation and rebirth that connects the underworld to what lies above it.
This is a meditation object, not a decorative one. Its function is to make the remaining time feel specific — not abstract.
Collect the Memento Mori for the space where you do your most serious thinking.