The labyrinth is the perfect embodiment of a paradox—a concept seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense that defies expectations and yet one that is perhaps true. How can we account for its popularity, particularly when it carries with it emanations of both terror and comfort, the sense of being both lost and found? That a labyrinth can be simultaneously both chaos and ultimate order, terrifying and beautiful, debilitating and inspirational, makes it a symbol of exceptional dynamism. It all depends on your perspective.
Imagine yourself walking inside the narrow corridors of a labyrinth. Perhaps you’ve done this in a garden. Your vision is limited on all sides. As you walk you are constantly changing direction, making now a tight turn to the right, now a long looping turn to the left. The sensation is that you must be getting closer to the center because the turns are tighter. But then you feel yourself taken all the way out to the edge again and imagine that you’ll never get there.
It is impossible to make any logical sense out of the path you are following because you can only see what is right in front of you. This is all great fun. Being disoriented and lost for a short time is titillating entertainment, as long as rescue is guaranteed.
But imagine that the walls are impenetrable stone. A low ceiling drops down from above so there is no escape over the walls. There is little light. You have no idea how big this place is or how long it will take you to get through. As you swing back and forth along the senseless corridors, you begin to wonder if you’ll ever get out. Is there a center? And, if so, what is in the center? Are you going in circles? Will you survive?
Impatience gives way to choking claustrophobia and an overwhelming sense of chaos. Perhaps you’ve been deceived and wonder if you are headed for some hideous ordeal, if it is only to endure the terror of entrapment. A steadying hand on the wall comes away wet with slime. The dankness grows. Water is dripping somewhere. The rotten smell of something dead whiffs up from the stone floor and, from way down inside the walls emerges the muffled grumble of something large heaving slowly about. Now this is the stuff of myth.
But let’s change perspective again. You are the cunning Daedalus, creator of the Cretan labyrinth who was imprisoned within its confusing walls. You have built a brace of wings from wax and branches and seagull feathers to escape from this trap.
And as you rise, your great wings beating the salt sea air of Crete, you look down one last time on the walls of your former jail and marvel at your own ingenuity. How beautiful a shape it is! How regular the pattern, how harmonious the form. It is a creation of great artistry that depicts a grand sense of order, one that can only issue from the divine. Choosing a careful path to preserve your delicate wings, a path between the heavy mist below that could soak the feathers and drag you into the crashing waves, and the wax-melting heat of the sun above, you escape what would have been sure oblivion, buoyed by the joy of ultimate freedom attained. This too, is myth.
Ambiguity is the labyrinth’s central nature. It is always unstable, changing its personality and ours as we change perspective. Ambiguity doesn’t settle well with us, because it doesn’t settle at all.
Like a psychic nuclear reactor, the labyrinth generates creative emotional and psychic processes in whatever guise it appears. It is continually breeding new versions of itself that demand we revisit our categories and redefine what the symbol means to us in our time. Our experience of the labyrinth is not only ancient, it is hardwired into the brain structure of the earliest humans, biologically indistinguishable from us, who first recognized its potency.
In pre-literate antiquity, the labyrinth design and its cousins, the spiral and the meander, were symbols that occurred worldwide in rock art and weaving patterns, on pottery and was scrawled as ancient graffiti on a wall in Pompeii. From the Near East to New Grange in Ireland, and from the American Southwest to Siberia, the labyrinth pattern is one of the oldest symbols in the history of mankind and one of the most universal. To understand the significance of this mythological symbol requires that we dig into the very core of human experience and tread the paradoxical paths of belief and biology, history and myth, and discover where they cross over into transcendence, at the center.
The first modern humans in ice-bound Europe about 35,000 years ago expressed metaphor through surprisingly sophisticated art. Metaphor, in turn, enhanced culture and culture created more complex symbolic art. The people of the Paleolithic decorated caves with art that simultaneously depicted and enhanced the spiraling experience of entering a labyrinth, while in their labyrinthine caverns deep underground. These chambers were perfect sensory-deprivation environments; constant temperature, constant humidity, no smells of vegetation, having peculiar auditory qualities and the utter darkness being held at bay only by leaping torchlight. Combined, these elements presented an eerie universe that conspired to alter human consciousness. Deep trance was easily obtained through mere exposure to this weird environment and significantly enhanced by ceremony and ritual. In deep trance a vision is encountered that is very similar to the near death experience of going down a tunnel toward a light, a swirling vortex that draws one into the land of the spirits. In trance states, these ancient shamans, like shamans everywhere, communed with their deities and spirit helpers to find the herds to hunt or the enemies on their borders, to change the weather, or learn the proper healing ritual to stave off disease.
This neurological capability to enter into hallucinogenic altered states is a common and universal human experience that makes connection to divinity available. Whether in an incense-clouded cathedral, a Native American sweat lodge, a meditation retreat or an ecstatic dance event, the countless ways of entering into trance are universally sought as vehicles to make us receptive to the spirit world. The first humans in Europe, our Ice Age ancestors, discovered and perfected the journey to the other side by way of the labyrinthine vortex of deep trance. In times of difficulty or transition, a shamanic journey was made to the sacred cave for a consultation with the divine. Creative sparking between the waking world of rugged survival in a harsh environment and the sophisticated artistic expression available in the caves created the emergence of the labyrinthine idea as soul-journey, a fusion of purposeful outer and inner vision, developed by shamans as a healing pursuit.
This idea of the labyrinth as a healing journey is central to its success today. Whether we seek out a labyrinth as a calming retreat from our normally hectic lives, a place to find solace during illness, divorce, or trauma, we carry an intention with us; a request for aid and comfort. In the center of the labyrinth we confront the issue that bedevils us, but from a place of receptivity developed during the walk in, and a resolve on the return trip to overcome what ever “dis-eases” us. Admitting those things that terrify us, and allowing them out into the open mind of consciousness to be resolved can be a traumatic process. The labyrinth is a metaphor for this journey of self, spiraling into a dark center to resolve those issues that confound and frighten us.
What we see, our perspective, is what we believe. To embark on a journey of self-discovery, laying bare those fears that inhibit a healthy life is something we share with our most ancient ancestors. The validity of a spirit-transforming experience is undeniable and universal. The discipline and courage of Paleolithic shamans to train themselves to enter trance states and navigate hallucinatory otherworlds set humankind on a spiritual path we continue to pursue today. The artists of those times have left us their codices on the walls of caves. Here Ice Age shamans conversed with spirit animals, brought them through the veil separating the worlds and fixed them on the walls as testament to their power and as icons to be consulted in future.
The universal healing journey of the labyrinth has endured through the whole history of humankind, emerging into consciousness in one form, only to sink and reemerge later in new cosmic clothing, like a magnificent fish breaking the surface of a pond to consider us thoughtfully before sinking once again as we drop our net.
Where to find a labyrinth near you…
Redondo Beach Church of Religious Science
40-foot canvas Medieval Chartres replica
907 Knob Hill Ave
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Corner of Prospect and Knob Hill Ave.
Contact Camille Carter
310.540.5080
Open for scheduled events
Last Monday of the month from 7-9 pm
Neighborhood Church
Medieval pattern made of stone pavers designed by Lee Vander Pluym and Charles Kishady
415 Paseo del Mar
Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274
310.378.9353
Open Monday through Friday 9:30–5
Call church office for availability on weekends or holidays.
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
40-foot Medieval style Chartres replica made of concrete
1712 S. Glendale Avenue
Glendale, CA 91205
Located on the forecourt of the Gardens of Contemplation
Open 8–5 every day
Spirit Works Center
Portable canvas Medieval Chartres style
260 North Pass Ave.
Burbank, CA 91505
818.848.4158
RevAnn@spiritworkscenter.com
Call for availability
Monthly walk, typically the second Sunday of the month at 11:30 a.m.
Shery High School/Torrance Unified School District
Medieval Chartres replica with one-foot wide pathways made of painted concrete
2600 Vine Ave.
Torrance, CA 90501
310.533.4440 x3602
students.pepperdine.edu/kzukley
Open for scheduled events and during after-school hours: 2:45–4pm. The labyrinth may be open in the summer months if front gate is not locked.
St. Matthew Episcopal Church
A 35-foot limestone Chartres replica
1031 Bienvenida Avenue
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
310.454.1358
Always open
St. Augustine-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church
Medieval Chartres replica
1227 Fourth Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401
310.395.0977
Call for availability
Labyrinth walks are scheduled throughout the year. Please contact the church office for more information.
Monte Nido (Malibu Canyon), CA 91302
43-foot Medieval Chartres replica made of red brick on decomposed granite
Call for directions: Rosemary Alden
818.222.2936, rosemary@rosemaryalden.com
Jodi Lorimer is the author of Dancing at the Edge of Death: The Origins of the Labyrinth in the Paleolithic.
Photo courtesy of Rosemary Taylor Alden
