This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A mantra is a sound, word or short phrase repeated as a form of religious practice, most closely associated with Hinduism and Buddhism but present in some form across a number of traditions that use repeated sacred sound as a devotional or meditative technique. A mantra can carry a plain semantic meaning, a name or an invocation, or it can consist largely or entirely of syllables a tradition treats as sacred in sound rather than as ordinary vocabulary carrying a dictionary meaning.
An entry records a mantra's language and its attributed source, since many mantras are credited to a specific deity, teacher or scriptural passage, along with how it is traditionally recited, silently, aloud, or counted on a strand of prayer beads, and how many repetitions a given practice typically calls for, since repetition count itself often carries significance within the tradition that uses it.
Some mantras recorded here belong to traditions that restrict their transmission, holding that a mantra should be received directly from a qualified teacher rather than read from a book or repeated by anyone untrained in its use, and where that restriction applies the atlas records it as a fact about the tradition's own practice rather than supplying the mantra as something to be freely adopted.