I've been doing two types of light painting mandalas. Straight and hybrid. The straight light painting mandalas are an un manipulated light paintings except for cropping it into a circle.  The hybrid light painting mandalas are very manipulated in Photoshop with tools within the program.  Here are two examples of the same mandala "Simple " one a straight image and one a hybrid.

These are both the same image of straight and manipulated 

light painting.

Might just be my best mandala ever.....~sigh~

   For me my contemporary art has always been about mystery and beauty along with color & abstract design. When talking with someone about my art the first question I almost always get asked is how did you do that? Most of the time I just say it's magic.

Go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_painting

Regarding mandalas:

Western psychological interpretations[edit]

According to art therapist and mental health counselor Susanne F. Fincher, we owe the re-introduction of mandalas into modern Western thought to Carl Jung, the Swiss analytical psychologist. In his pioneering exploration of the unconscious through his own art making, Jung observed the motif of the circle spontaneously appearing. The circle drawings reflected his inner state at that moment. Familiarity with the philosophical writings of India prompted Jung to adopt the word "mandala" to describe these circle drawings he and his patients made. In his autobiography, Jung wrote:

I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, ... which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time. ... Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: ... the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious.

— Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 195–196.

Jung recognized that the urge to make mandalas emerges during moments of intense personal growth. Their appearance indicates a profound re-balancing process is underway in the psyche. The result of the process is a more complex and better integrated personality.

The mandala serves a conservative purpose—namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique. ... The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point.

— Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, C. G. Jung: Man and His Symbols, p. 225

Creating mandalas helps stabilize, integrate, and re-order inner life.^[35]

According to the psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises.From the  wikapedia   Mandala

Regarding Light paintings:
There are five basic types of light painting or light drawing: They tend to be just clumped into a category called light painting, what I would like to do here is make sub classes of the different ways you can use a light recorder (aka a camera) to make photographs of just light or adding subject matter into a light painting or light drawing. A distinction can be made between light painting and light drawings or sub groups of this type of work, this is a beginning; 1. Picasso's classic light drawing with a pen light published in life magazine circa 60's. 2. Light painting the subject: in a totally dark room with camera on a tripod you open the camera up and paint light onto the subject with a light source generally a small pen light. 3. Long exposure with camera fixed on a tripod. Open the camera up and paint light into the camera - draw light into the camera - use a strobe to freeze subject, or illuminate the scene with different light sources. 4. Ambient light and strobe. With hand held strobe in hand separate from the camera - in your dark (night) environment - open hand held camera to create a low light expanded time image and set strobe off to freeze subject matter as most photographs do. The strobe is a very short blast of freezing light, and freezes intended subject. Great for party pic's 5. Pure Light - just light a Painting (Abstract); With a arrangement of fixed lights in a dark room or studio and a hand held camera - open the hand held camera up and move through the lights painting the light into the camera sensors. Yields images of just light as a abstract design. The reverse can be done with fixed camera on a tripod and moving lights. Both drawing and painting. www.peteranger.com     Light Painting   Wiki