guardians...

Found this passage on wikipedia while I was researching Mandalas. It's about Guardians. I find it very inspiring.

" From The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen, Teachings of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, compiled and edited by John Shane:

Guardians of the teachings
There are eight principal classes of Guardians each with many subdivisions. Some are highly realized beings, others not realized at all. Every place - every continent, country, city, mountain, river, lake or forest - has its particular dominant energy, or Guardian, as have every year, hour and even minute: these are not highly evolved energies. The various teachings all have energies which have special relationships with them: these are more realized Guardians. These energies are iconographically portrayed as they were perceived when they manifested to masters who had contact with them, and their awesome power is represented by their terrifyingly ferocious forms, their many arms and heads, and their ornaments of the charnel ground. As with all the figures in tantric iconography, it is not correct to interpret the figures of the guardians as merely symbolic, as some Western writers have been tempted to do. Though the iconographic forms have been shaped by the perceptions and culture of those who saw the original manifestation and by the development of tradition, actual beings are represented."

It reminded me of the vision of Ezekiel in the old testament.