LABYRINTH:

MYTH, MEANING & SYMBOL

Clement Jewitt

Scandinavian rock labyrinth —Trojaburg (Troytown)

 Clement Jewitt has asserted his right under the
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be
identifed as the author of this work.
© 2003, Clement Jewitt

First published in the Music & Psyche Journal, 3. Jan.’04, (8-29) and then in White
Dragon, 41, Beltane ’04, (16-20-Part I) & 42, Lugnasa ’04, (4-8-Part II).
Also loaded to www.musicpsyche.org & www.labyrinthmusic.com, and in extract
or full versions to several other websites,
Extracts are to appear in forthcoming books by Sydney Baggs, Australian writer on
the built and esoteric environments, and by transpersonal psychotherapist Hazel
Marshall.

'Finger' labyrinth in Rocky Valley near Tintagel

 Theseus and the Minotauro

Minotauro in the centre—Roman pavement, Conimbriga, Portugal

 Each man’s life is a labyrinth at the centre of which lies his own death, and even
after death it may be that he passes through a fnal maze before it is all ended for
him. Within the great maze of a man’s life are many smaller ones, each
seemingly complete in itself, and in passing through each one he dies in part, for
in each he leaves behind him a part of his life and it lies dead behind him. It is a
paradox of the labyrinth that the centre appears to be the way to freedom.1
To enter the labyrinth that is life, is to enter a world of meander, twists, and
turns, of coming back to oneself, and of a circuitous route to a goal. This
provides life with a torque, a tension, so that we come not to fall asleep to the
deeper levels, not to slip into inertia, obsessed with surface trivia, but to be
constantly alive to dancing our Dream awake – to becoming what we can be,
and who we are – awakening to self.
… When we fall asleep to the very labyrinth we are constructing, as the making
of our own lives, then we are deep in inertia and will be gobbled up or frightened
to death by the bull-roaring Minotaur that lurks at the heart of the labyrinth. To
dance your Dream awake is to grab this bull-man by the horns. … there are as
many ways to dance the Dream awake as there are people on the Earth, each
with a personal Minotaur living within the fabric of life as it is constructed, and
unfolded.2

Fig.1. The classical labyrinth as it commonly

appears on ancient Cretan coins

This little essay is largely an exploration of symbolic correspondences. The

ancient alternative to, maybe predecessor of, currently preferenced causational
deductive reasoning, can hardly not be associated with ancient curious patterns laid
on the ground, or under, or marked on stones or artifacts, bearing in mind Jean
Gebser’s leaps of human consciousness, particularly the Magical and the Mystical 3.
What were the patterns for? How were they used? Some answers to these
questions are suggested below. Though sources have been carefully considered, the
author does not attempt to provide full documentation. The subject is hoary
enough to make careful academic cautions a source more of deletions than of
elucidations. So he decided to theme the whole text as a journey of feeling reactions
to progress through the winding paths, conceived as hidden, in the dark. And
indeed, there are plenty of maintained labyrinths in many places where can be seen
thoughtful travelers as well as revelers following the turns and twists.
1
Michael Ayrton. The Maze Maker
2
Alan Bleakley. Fruits of the Moon Tree
3
Jean Gebser. The Ever-present Origin.
 Contemplating the entrance, which leads the eye into the enfladed, half hidden,
mysterious paths, we may be seized with a sense of adventure, and the fearfulness
that attends that, acknowledged or not: precisely, a sense of misgiving, viscerally
felt, of wondering what will be expected from us, which must be courageously
surmounted as we step out into the unknown, take command of our own destinies
in living our lives, as symbolized, paralleled, in the winding gyres of the labyrinth.
We will encounter several worlds on our journey through this, a many stranded
text of necessary complexity, as commentary and explication of the labyrinth we
now contemplate from outside, as also of the living of our lives. Dizzying spirals of
association, cascades of linkage, will draw into our orbit all manner of intertwined
things, viewpoints, attitudes, contrarieties, corollaries. We shall fnd resonances and
remembrances in the labyrinthine past, in the uses and proprieties of ritual, hoary
lore and ancient story, and that which seems basic, intrinsic to the human condition,
music and dance.
Labyrinth is a word derived from an ancient root meaning ‘stone’, la, whence
Greek laos and Latin lapis, the solidity, the frm-on-the-ground materiality of the
noun. The labrys, the Cretan double headed axe, is sometimes thought to be the
origin of labyrinth. (Fig.2) The etymology is the same, but, symbolizing waxing and
waning moons, the two halves of life, it can also be seen as the enclosing labia
at birth, and the labia of the Devouring Mother at our death, and between them
inscribed in the axe, the four-pointed cross of manifestation. For these reasons it
appears (often held by a goddess) guarding the labyrinth entrance, as gateway to the
unknown world, or the inner underworld.
The alternate word maze derives from Old English dmasian, meaning ‘to confuse’,
the alert activity of the verb, the trickery of airy wind against which we need to re-
member our grounding, pull ourselves together to maintain
feeling contact with Earth, or we shall lose our way.
The labyrinth, from time immemorial associated with
dualities of entrapment and release, outer and inner, death
and birth, appears in similar form throughout the world,
whether in myth, as a built structure which can be entered, or
as a small depiction used talismanically, tracing the winding
paths with eye or with fnger contemplatively as an aid to
Fig.2. The labrys,
witchery, or the shaman’s journey. associated with
In the British Isles the latter are known as Troy Stones, Cretan mysteries.
Left, Death, the
linked with the ancient Wisewoman tradition. 4 In parallel, waning moon; Right,
since midwifery was a part of that, is a labyrinth form of Life, the waxing
meditational Yantra called Chakra-Vyuha, used in Indian moon. After Bleakley
women’s magic to focus the mother’s attention during childbirth. A similar
talisman known as Kota (the fortress) is found in South India as a domestic
threshold protection.

4
There is one carved on slate in the Witchcraft Museum at Boscastle, Cornwall, whose credentials trace
back through several generations to the Isle of Man in the 19 thC, with many earlier handings down
reasonably asserted. And see the coloured illustrations, above.
 In Scandinavia many, and in the British Isles some labyrinths are named
Trojaborg, Troytown, or the equivalent. These are the commonest names, others
apparently named after Nineveh, Babylon, Jericho or Jerusalem. We shall come
back to this place naming. There are also names which mean ‘turn’, ‘winding’, or
similar, or speak of protection—Windelbahn (winding road), Gångborg (walk-fort)
—though the place names suggest ancient links with Mediterranean lands. This
seems perhaps less mysterious—or maybe more—when we realize something of the
wealth of ancient geographical linkages, for example, that the detail of several
mythic stories of Ancient Greece are shared with the equally ancient equivalents
from Indonesia (identity of labyrinth themes occur in both traditions), or in the
realm of iconography, that prehistoric ample thighed stone ‘Venus’ fgurines are
found from Mesopotamia to Mexico.5

Entry: the Spiral

The time has come to take the frst step, and the outer world recedes as we
advance into the tunnel, with only that which is truly meaningful kept with us, all
the trivia of mundane life left behind, each pace a naked step in the dark into a
future as yet unseen. And we perceive little else but the curve of the enclosing
walls.
Labyrinth geometry is clearly spiral, and this is a symbol of great antiquity:
appearing among the 10-30,000 years old palæolithic cave paintings in Southern
France and Spain; notably in the passage of the important, and spectacular, New
Grange so called passage grave in the Boyne Valley north of Dublin; inscribed on
Celtic monuments, where it is held to signify water (symbolically the Water of Life,
or of Death, the unconscious); and elsewhere throughout the world. Spirals
spontaneously arise at certain stages of meditation, and also to some succumbing to
anæsthetic. From the natural world we might also mention spiral galaxies, the
vortex of a hurricane, the cochlea in the inner ear, and the spiral form of the DNA
molecule, at the defning centre of life.
The shape is primordial, seen by the ancient hunter in the coils of gut spilt out
after he has plunged his fint knife into the belly of his prey, a parallel with the
resting snake, and maybe leading him to wonder where in these coils the females of
his family/tribe harbour new life. Here is the spiral as symbol of cycles of growth
(coils of gut seen as the microcosm to the macrocosm of the underworld), becoming
the perfection of the circle when there is no more growth possible, unity with the
One achieved, this also symbolized as the serpent Uroburos with tail in mouth who
encloses the universe. Hence too the ancient association of the snake with the
Goddess who presides over Life and Death, the snake seen as immortal from the
suggestive imagery of shed skin, and from the absence of legs as chthonic, hugging
the Earth in grounded, feeling intimacy with the Mother who spawned us all. 6 Here

5
Knight & Lomas in Uriel’s machine argue for meaningful contact between neolithic NW Europe,
particularly Ireland, and the Middle East, and they also discuss the evidence for early european contact
with the Americas.
6
From the mystery of birth the human female may well have been seen as the Goddess manifested, with
is a suggestive origin of the labyrinth and its use for ceremonies and rituals of
initiation, rebirth, rites of passage.
Connection with the cycles of death and rebirth is strong. In a myth from the
stone age culture of Malecula in Vanuatu (the New Hebrides) the dead person
approaching the entrance to the underworld, a cave, fnds that it is guarded by Le-
hev-hev, the Spider Goddess, who erases one half of the labyrinth which she has
drawn on the path. The dead must complete it to be allowed to enter, or be eaten.
Having succeeded—and success is expected from long practice of the labyrinth
dance in life—and descent made to the underworld, the dead person then discovers
a great lake, the Water of Life …
The terror so many feel in the presence of the spider may be in part related to
arachnid’s spiral web, a reminder, we may now perceive, of that at which all must
in due time arrive.
Similarly the devout hero Æneus, mythic founder of Rome in some accounts, in
his wanderings after the sack of Troy fnds a labyrinth drawn on the gates to the
cave of the Cumean Sibyl, by the contemplation of which we may suppose he
composes himself into a suitable state for entry. The Indian Kota, mentioned above,
evidences a similar belief in the labyrinth as protective pattern, found in connection
with all kinds of boundaries, thresholds to other realms. For labyrinth, spiral and
circle all share the fundamental symbolism of the Border of the Cosmos, and so of
representations of the cosmos in little, of sacred spaces built or natural, and also of
the domestic. Model houses dating to the archaic period of Greece, ancient times of
magical consciousness, show large meander decorations around the walls, which
may be read as shorthand for the protective labyrinth itself.
Labyrinths and spirals are also physically associated with gallows hills, some of
which exist with spiral paths to their peaks: the condemned felon is prompted to
review the turns or reversals of his or her own life on the way to its ending. And by
a reasoning into opposites labyrinths are likewise seen as patterns of healing,
renewals into fresh life.7 So, treading our winding way, we may also refect on the
pitfalls and ensnarements we have encountered in our own lives, and may hope for
our own redemptions.

First turn: History

We are led away from the goal, the Centre. This apparent retrospective step
suggests a review of our own past, and linked with that, labyrinth history, and
prehistory.
Boulder labyrinths8 constructed spectacularly often along the Baltic shores of
Scandinavia may predate the Minoan culture on Crete, source of the Minotaur
story, by the abiding meaningfulness of which labyrinth lore survives in the
modern west. We might here note the very ancient association of stone with aspects
menstrual blood as corollary to the rain which nourishes the earth.
7
All symbolism shares a fundamental ambivalence such as this.
8
See illustration on title page
of the divine, implied partly in the etymology (laos, lapis), partly in the likely
ritualistic associations of certain carved stone objects chronologically congruent
with neolithic stone circles, and partly from a mystical interpretation of meteorites.
Clearly they have fallen from the sky, the abode of the gods, and therefore have
accompanied that other divine bolt from the blue, the Thunderbolt, hurled by
wrathful sky gods everywhere: a forgivable error of association on the part of those
not culturally nurtured with the scientifc attitude, more likely concerned with the
mysticism of universal interconnectedness expressed by symbol, than with fact,
demonstrable or not.
The labyrinth, then, dates back in all likelihood to the Stone Age. Could it be
older? As initiatory structure, a route to the divine, the labyrinth Centre is related
symbolically to the Cave as transformational space, the spiritual centre, by intrinsic
nature hidden, and symbolized by a downward pointing equilateral triangle. This
in turn is related to the Mountain as spiritual centre, represented by an upward
pointing triangle. The latter is visible to all in sight of it, so relates to an earlier
period of culture, before spirituality was conceived as a quest pertaining to an elite,
thus requiring initiatory processes, which must be hidden from the ineligible, access
denied.
Labyrinths therefore associate with a later stage in human cultural evolution than
the very earliest, but possibly placing their beginnings in times of magical
consciousness, preceding that of the mythical. Indeed, notions of entrapment, of
binding and wind magic, accompany them to quite modern times: in living memory
Baltic fshermen would resort to labyrinth walking if the wind was in the wrong
quarter for setting out, hoping thereby to induce an auspicious change of direction.
Caves naturally occur within mountains, and
this is symbolized by taking the six pointed star
composed of those two triangles superimposed,
and shrinking the cave triangle to ft within the
other, as the cave within the mountain, or
indeed the chamber within the pyramid. (Fig 3)
Fig.3. The Seal of Solomon, the This symbol has four equal divisions, displaying
Shield of David or the Mark of the Three of creation, the active, dynamic shape
Vishnu, & the Cave within the of the triangle, and the Four of manifestation,
Mountain
the solidity, weight, of foursquaredness. But we
digress, and must beware of inattention to the
task in hand. What, we may ask ourselves as we continue round the circuit, may we
expect to fnd in the shape and layout of this journey?

Types of Labyrinth
There are two fundamental kinds of labyrinth, the Unicursal, in which there are
no diversions and dead ends, and the Multicursal, which may contain many. The
latter is the common form of hedge or turf maze found in the British Isles, seen
touristically as not much more than entertainment. These have their antecedents,
descendants and indeed associated lore, which will not fnd space here. Nigel
Pennick’s Mazes and Labyrinths may be consulted for comprehensive coverage.
The Cretan coin in Fig.1 shows precisely in its unicursal path the geometry of the
commonest form of labyrinth, appearing all over the world, circular or squared.
That basic overall dichotomy itself leads to the symbolism of the Square and the
Circle, of imperfect manifestation and divine perfection. We must leave this,
however, in favour of focus in this essay on the unicursal classical seven circuit
labyrinth, in whichever framework, appearing all over the ancient and new worlds:
associated with initiatic sites; as defenses (symbolically if not actually) around
towns, such as Nineveh, Troy, Jericho or Jerusalem, held at different times to be the
Centre of the World, and so to be the Holy City, requiring the most sacred
protection; in talismanic form inscribed on many kinds of stone; and in myth—
Æneus encountering it on the gates of Hades, the Malecula story, or in Hawaiian
lore where also the labyrinth forms a trial to be negotiated before entering the
underworld. The classical seven circuit labyrinth is also known as the Cretan, from
its depiction on surviving
Cretan coins. (Fig 1) We will
prefer the appellation ‘classical’
because of the possibly more
ancient labyrinths in
Scandinavia, mentioned above,
and the world-wide
Fig. 4. The meander extended on a curve. After Pennick
distribution.
The Christian labyrinth, divided into four quarters, the path fowing between
them, is derived from Roman elaborations of the classical form, based on
topological extension into quadrants
of the meander, that interweaving
abstract symbol widespread in
classical decorative art, which can be
further extended into the classical
labyrinth. (Fig 4) The Chartres
labyrinth is the best known of this
type. Pilgrimage is the symbolism:
the four quarters relate to the four
parts of the Mass; and the total
number of turns in the path (in to the
centre and out again), approximates
the Biblical ‘three score years and
ten’ of human life. It is considered
that the point at which the pilgrim
turns away from the inner ring Fig.5. The Chartres Labyrinth, showing energy
data on an amalgamated scale devised by
signifes physical death, the rest of Blanche Merz, who instrumentally investigates
the path symbolising eternal life, or sacred sites, where average human energy is
its beginnings at any rate. (Fig 5) The 6500: the Pilgrim must suffer a moment of
intensely debilitating energy before being very
centre of the Chartres labyrinth greatly elevated in the Centre. After Merz.
depicts the Rose, which has its own
rich symbolism, not least within Christianity (we refer in passing rose windows,
and the Rosicrucians).
Other types of labyrinth are variants of the basic forms, such as the Rad, which
has two entrances. European folklore relating to that involves a ceremonial ‘game’
with a maiden in the centre, to whom young heroes race each other from the two
entrances to claim her (that is release her from maidenhood, symbolized by the
entrapping labyrinth), a connection with Goddess worship, marking the transition
to the second of the Triple Goddess appearances, from Maiden to Mother, as the
year’s green growth burgeons.
There is also a variant which from the centre provides a path directly out. This
allows a ritual requiring plentiful space to be preceded by traversing the labyrinth
to achieve the required inner orientation, and if desired followed by direct re-entry
to the labyrinth centre, then out again via the winding path, as a symbol of return to
profane but new life. A wedding or hand-fasting can be performed beautifully in
that way, with suitable music …
And we reach the end of the frst returning gyre. Our musings undergo a change.
We feel a need to count the turns, an urge to mark our progress, to fnd a measure
for our life.

Second Turn: Number Symbolism

We turn forward again, are brought to the outermost circuit. We cannot now be
further from the goal. The spirit droops. How far must we travel? When will our
number be up? Now old rhymes spontaneously appear to consciousness: ‘…
Wednesdays child has far to go …’, ‘… It’s a long long way to …’, but ‘Count your
blessings’ too, and the road will pass behind, each step a milestone, a checkmark in
life’s tally book.
So we contemplate the labyrinth from within, imagining ourselves into the
Archimedean position from which we may also perceive from without, and as well
as geometry we fnd number symbolism.
Seven and Nine pertain to the classical seven circuit labyrinth. Seven, known
anciently as the Virgin, is the number which mediates between those which precede
and those which follow within the decad,9 containing within it the three of creation
and the four of manifestation, as we saw above in connection with the cave and the
mountain. Sevens appear everywhere, and most often we choose it when asked to
‘think of a number’: seventh heaven, the seven planets known to the ancients,
celestial spheres, days of the week, types of crystal, colours in the rainbow, musical
notes. We shall meet more of them later, and a deeper encounter with the musical
connections.
And the equally richly endowed Nine, the threshold beyond which lie the higher
mathematical orders of magnitude, representing superordinate realms for which
9
As a link, 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 = 7 x 8 x 9 x 10 = 5040. As a chasm, 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 8 x 9 x
10 = 720. The Virgin because indivisible by any other number, and producing no other number within
the decad (3 & 5, also indivisible Primes, produce by multiplication 6, 9 & 10).
our soul yearns: depicted as Norse Odin of the Nine Worlds, hanging one legged
(Primal Unity, and the Wounded Healer) and one eyed (the mystic focus of the
Third Eye) nine days upside down on the World Tree in order to bring back the
Runes of expanding awareness; nine years of the siege of Troy; the nine months
Persephone spends above ground overseeing the years growths and its decline
towards the three months of death and desolation when she is banished to the
underworld; the nine Muses who amuse us, which originally meant being under
their sway, and still implies that, for are we not carried away, taken out of
ourselves, when amused, as when dancing (Terpsichore) or writing poetry (Erato or
Calliope)? And among much else there are the nine character types of the
Enneagram, and the original nine Templars, who may well have encountered the
Enneagram with the Sufs in Jerusalem, part of a profound culture shock, and who
reportedly did not increase their number until nine years had passed. 10
Sevenfold and ninefold forms of fully developed living systems or minerals are
rare. Rather the numbers seem to imply process, creation, as in the progression of
proportions in the seven types of crystal. Forms of nine associate with conception,
growth and birthing: nine twisted threads of the sperm’s tail; the circle of nine tiny
tubules which form the centriole of the cell, the frst thing to duplicate in the
process of mitosis, cell division. And the nine months of pregnancy during the
course of which the nine orifces of the human body have formed. Anciently ‘nine’
was cognate with ‘new’, from Sanskrit nava, from which Latin nova, and this
survives in modern French as neuf, the noun of ‘nine’ and the adjective of ‘new’. To
‘go the full nine yards’ is to reach a limit from which only a new beginning can
ensue, as only the next order of magnitude can follow the number nine.
And just so is the birth of the classical labyrinth, for a St Andrew’s cross of nine
dots with an upright cross through the centre is the structure from which this
labyrinth can be built, or drawn, as can also the Celtic Rose and Knot, without the
upright cross. (Fig 6)

Fig.6. Nine dots as the St Andrews cross, as basis for the

Celtic Rose & Knot, and with the upright cross in the
middle, for the classical seven circuit labyrinth. After
Pennick

So we tread or dance our labyrinthine way, striving to go the full nine yards
before accepting each of seven reversals or changes of fortune. To refuse to
recognize the turn, the new direction, to cheat by stepping over the path’s
boundaries, is to lose face, fall prey to confusion, fall into the mire, which may then

10
This from Gordon Strachan’s book Chartres: Sacred geometry, sacred space. Floris Books 2003
force us to face up to having gone too far, and admit we are lost. Re-cognizing is to
once more grasp with the understanding, to be awake to the signs, the turns in the
spiral, the vicissitudes of life, and so persevering to the seventh turn, from which
we reach the Centre, the octave, in the middle of the nineness of the labyrinthine
structure as of our life. And there …
The rich implications of the centre will be explored later. Meanwhile, these
cogitations have served to carry us round the longest, the outer circuit, and now we
must take a leap three gyres in.

Third Turn: Double Spirals, and Trickery

A leap of faith, and of expectation, to the last track of the frst half. Hope rises, for
we are momentarily but a boundary of the track away from the centre. But only
momentarily, for this is but a ghostly foreshadowing of the frst glimpse of our goal,
as the Grail Castle, a glimpse which may possibly be vouchsafed to our questing
inner Lancelot. Now, though, we may begin to grasp the sly deviousness of the
labyrinthine way, the unexpectedness of life as we live it: a rhythm of waves—
forming spirally as they do—which sweep forward, then ebb back, carrying us as
fotsam on the tides of life.
There is a symbolic connection between labyrinth and Sun worship, supported
perhaps in the physical realm by the fndings of the artist Charles Ross, who
between the autumn equinoxes of 1971-2 tracked the sun’s motion in the sky with
the aid of a fxed lens focussed onto planks of wood, changed daily. Collating the
burn tracks so created he found that the apparent path of the sun forms a double
spiral, not unlike the double spiral of the Lorenz ‘strange attractor’ perceived in
atmospheric circulation data, an important fnding in Chaos mathematics, this in
turn being similar to the attractor found by Valerie Hunt in human biofeld data
(the aura).11 (Figs 7&8)
The outline of the Ross sun track is
also, and appropriately, the infnity
sign, reminding us of the endless
cycles of life and death, and of the
Wheel of Fortune turning within the
labyrinth of our lives. Double spiral
shapes also appear on Celtic
monuments, in simplifed form, and
Fig.7. The Ross sun track double spirals. more abstractly within the familiar
After Knight & Lomas Yin-Yang circle, the Taigetu. (Fig 9)
We are dealing with something
deeply primordial, not to be adequately represented in words—when we walk or
dance the labyrinth with due attention, we know…
In the labyrinth we see the spiral reversals confated into one of the containing
11
see Valerie Hunt. Infnite mind: science of the human vibrations of consciousness. Malibu Publishing,
2nd ed. 1996

Fig.8. The Lorentz 'strange attractor' double spiral.

After Ball
round or square shapes, and here is another correlation. There is a traditional
association of the classical seven circuit labyrinth with the planet Mercury. Why?
The apparent motion in the sky of Mercury’s cyclic seven year journey through the
Zodiac forms a yearly pattern of three or four direct motions and four or three
retrograde.12 The left handed classical labyrinth, the usual form, runs clockwise four
times and counter clockwise three (right handedness would reverse that), thus
providing, naturally, seven reversals or turns of direction or of fortune in the
approach to the centre.
Mercury is the Roman name for the Greek Hermes,
paralleled among others as a messenger by Egyptian Thoth,
or as a language master by Norse Odin (Wotan in High
German). Hermes is one of the oldest of ancient gods, patron
of travelers, rogues and thieves, god of boundaries and
cross-roads, originating as hermæ, cairns, no doubt created
over time by travelers marking with a handy stone an
uncertainty on the way, a corner, boundary, crossroad, and
Fig.9. The Taigetu those following later adding another, and another stone to
the heap. Eventually mythic consciousness imbued these with invisible person-
hood, and Hermes was born.
Deciding to change or not the direction of travel is to become momentarily
uncertain, a small introspection which carries the possibility of inner attention to
soul, of motion in the vertical dimension, to the underworld, or upperworld. So
Hermes acquired other aspects, as Messenger of the Gods, able to travel freely from
this world to Hades as well as Olympia, and thus the conductor of souls in
transformation, like Brigit to the Celts.
Eventually he appears at crossroads as a single upright stone carved with a head,
and an erect phallus. For he stands also for the Trickster, cousin to the Celtic Pooka,
or to Gwydion of the Welsh, who might embarrass or confuse us (disorient us in the
dark labyrinthine passages), or rob us of our baggage (and so he should, for we no
longer need it) while, as the psychopompos who spans the worlds, the shaman, he
conducts us to the place of death, the underworld, as the shady side of life, Jung’s
shadow function,13 the place of unconsciousness (which all of us visit every night in
deep sleep) where may be found that which is needful for the next stage of our
journey, and where we may leave behind that which is no longer required, the shed
skin of the old. He knows routes there which allow return, the return out of the
labyrinth, bringing back the revealed riches—the way to en-Lightenment is through
taking a step into the Dark. He is present at all our transitions, transformations,
changes of direction or of fortune, imbuing them with sanctity, if we care to notice.
Our awareness of Hermes’ presence opens us to the sacredness of such moments
12
22 direct and 22 retrograde in the cycle, which precesses about six days each 7 years. So at the same
date each year Mercury is 2/7 th further into the 7th reversal of the year, which is quite a good approximate
model for the classical labyrinth. The implication of this and perhaps the sun motion spirals is a
knowledge of heavenly bodies’ motions on the part of the ancients. Knight & Lomas Uriel’s Machine
includes a study of precision in neolithic astronomy—the use of the machine of the title itself. We have no
frm knowledge of the antiquity of such skills.
13
The undeveloped, primitive aspects of ourselves, which we would like to disown.
 [unexpected silences], of those in-between times that are strangely frightening
and that we so often try to hurry past. We never really know what may lie on
the other side of any threshold. I think particularly of the moments of silence
that may fall in the midst of a conversation with a beloved friend, when eye is
locked into eye, and one suddenly realizes how all the words have been evasions
of this moment when soul gazes directly into soul.14

Fourth Turn: Earth Energies

As that path ends, we turn again, and Hermes leads us on the shortest circuit,
which passes close round the centre, but not yet into it. Is this the glimpse of the
Grail castle? Here we must be most fully embodied, fully grounded and earthed in
the wisdom of feeling, or we may be subject to disorienting elation at being so close,
though still so far.
Dowsing and more technological Biogeological 15 explorations have not only
identifed relationships with earth energy lines, but crucially underground water-
courses beneath many ancient sacred sites. The energy of the site on the surface is
measurably affected by both, causing trees to twist in their growth, a striving
towards the spiral, and charging up we who are there by entrainments with our
bodily electro-magnetic resonances, changing our state of consciousness. 16
The knowledge of how to build in such ways, mysterious to modern man, dates
at least as far back as the time that the megaliths were erected at Stonehenge, co-
temporal with the Scandinavian boulder labyrinths, 4,000 years ago and more.
Many of the latter have been examined, revealing specifc relationships with
underground water, in particular having been built over so-called domes, where a
concentration of water trapped by an impervious layer lets out streams, known as
‘veins’, in various directions. Often the labyrinth entrance is situated over such a
stream, and the curvature of the paths follows the edges of the dome.
All this could be done now aided by dowsing: what we moderns have lost is the
way of placing stone structures (it appears that stone is the crucial material) on or in
the ground so that the energy lines (which are often in directional relationship with
underground streams, or they with them) are controlled, diverted, opened out to
make space, so that it may be free of energies deleterious to the human organism,
such as those which give us restless nights or worse if our bed is wrongly placed.
Such abilities are not evidenced after the 14 thC, with the beginnings of the
Renaissance, the so called ‘Enlightenment’, the start of the modern period of
forgetting, banishing from the mainstream non-rational wisdoms and ancient lore,

14
Christine Downing Gods in our midst
15
The study of the effects of earth energies on human behaviour and health.
16
It is salutary to note here that the electro-magnetic feld generated by our heart is 50 times stronger
than that generated by our head.
The most powerful meditation I have ever experienced was with two close friends, hands mutually on
shoulders, in the centre of the Rollright Stones circle in Oxfordshire during an autumn equinoxial night
of full moon: the illusion of being elevated above a sea of heads flling the circle was startlingly vivid,
totally ‘real’, and almost unbreakable.
for the reason that popularly evident versions had by then mostly degenerated into
superstition. Of course those old traditions went underground (appropriately),
where not all was lost.

Fifth Turn: Ritual Space

The wave ebbs, taking us once more away from the centre. Excitement ebbs into
sobriety, inducing inward refection as to how best we may mark the passage of
thresholds and staging posts in our lives, how best we may make use of the
labyrinth as symbol and mirror of our life-journey, anticipating perhaps the lessons
to be expected, hoped for, when we reach the centre.
Linked as it must be with ritual, the labyrinth can be seen as in two parts: the
spiraling path; and that to which the path leads, the central space. We touched
above on the associations of labyrinths with the entrance to the underworld, as
defensive enclosures of cities as centres-of-the-world, and as domestic threshold
protection. These are really the same: all have the meaning of exclusion of the
ineligible and protection of the interior. Only the dead should enter the
underworld, citizens and allies the city, friends and family the house. And only
Love should enter the Heart, that divine centre within the labyrinth of life. All can
be seen to be sacred to their purposes, by analogy with superordinate, universal
considerations.
Traversing the disorienting labyrinthine way is then the Trial which tests
eligibility for the Initiation into the ways of the dead, the ways of the (sacred)
community, the ways of the family, and the ways of the heart. Can we stay the
course? Will the defeats in our lives cumulatively weigh us down in the end? Will
we then lose our grasp of the bull-man’s horns, and succumb to the living death of
unawareness? We, as seekers/candidates must fnd resolve, to be conditioned for
what is to follow by the necessities of the winding traverse. We will need our
awareness centred and grounded, need to be fully embodied, focussed in feeling, or
the way will be lost, the longed for rites forbidden.
Just these are the requirements and challenges of life in the manifest worldly
realm.
So the central space of the labyrinth is the place where ritual is conducted. As
such it is the Centre of the World, and so is indeed sacred space. It is the centre of
the universe of present focus, where we are now in our journey: when we have
become aware of all that is needful in this present now, and are ready to move on,
we then fnd ourselves at the entrance to the next labyrinth of our life, and must set
forth on the initiation to that centre, gathering our courage once more, or be
swallowed up by our personal Minotaur.17
The four directions point to the centre (the cross at the heart of the labyrinth),
also the four elements in their opposing pairs: Fire and Water; Air and Earth. And
in the middle, at the centre, is Ether, the ffth, the quintessence, the quint essentia,

17
C.G.Jung saw the rituals of the psychoanalytical process as most often a circumambulation around a
central axis of the Self, focussed on the affect of present concern .
that which cannot be directly apprehended, the divine principle, represented by the
Rose, and in the east by the Lotus. 18 The rose is at once the living expression of
divinity, and also the Cup, the Grail, a vessel for containment of that divinity which
may in the fullest sense heal us all, through the rose at the centre of our heart as the
receptacle for that of the divine essence. The rose is therefore linked with the cave as
the divine centre, needfully hidden from profane view.
That caves have been seen/felt as appropriate to that of ‘otherness’ since remote
human times is attested by the earliest known ritual burial site, a Neanderthal cave-
bear sanctuary of c.40,000 BCE at Drachenloch, Switzerland, where bear skulls were
found, long bones inserted in the eye sockets, surrounded by a small stone circle,
suggestive of the sun disc. Bear cults survive in circumpolar cultures, where the
bear is seen to disappear into the earth in the winter as the sun appears to do, both
reappearing with the new year, the return of light and of warmth and of life. This is
why the circumpolar constellation, Ursa Major, is The Great Bear.19
Subsequently, caves and other ‘doorways to the earth-mother’, into which the
setting sun was seen to descend, fgure prominently in the elaborating spiritual rites
of mankind. In Classical Greece oracles were sited at caves, fssures, caverns, from
where echoing sounds, often of underground streams, could be heard as the voices
of the Oracle, the God or Goddess to whom the site was dedicated. The sense of
something ‘other’ remains: who does not experience a change of mood when
entering a cleft in the earth, or indeed entering artifactual tunnels or other unlit or
dimly l it unfamiliar enclosed spaces, a sense of binding, of pressure which impels
us within, to introspect, to see what may await us in our internal otherworld, to
engage with soul. These are other such occasions “that we so often try to hurry past”
by being unconscious to it, or by denial.
So we can see that the centre of the labyrinth, as the centre of spirituality—what
is unmanifested—is simultaneously, in the ambiguous way of symbols, the centre of
the world—that which is manifest form—macrocosmically or in the microcosm of
our individual hearts. As such it necessarily incorporates images of the Axis Mundi,
the World Tree: for, remembering Hermes as psychopompos, we must expect
‘vertical’ connections too from this crossroads on our journey, as befts a place of
transformation.
The world tree, on which Odin hung, with its roots below and its crown above,
with the trunk representing the intermediate, the mundane world, 20 is the axis on
which the world as we experience it spins. As the axis mundi it is an orienting
system, necessarily pointing towards the Pole star.
Now we see the labyrinth of our lives linked to the Heavens, as an expanding
awareness of the awesome glory of interconnectivity with all else in this universe
(how securely we are held, we see, after all blind fear is banished, and trust

18
The Chakra system of centres of energy in us and in built space, in sequence from the corporeal to the
Divine
19
The bear occupies the primary place in ancient hunting community lore that the bull occupies in
agricultural.
20
analogous with the Dorje of Tibetan Buddhism, which also represents the two worlds
established), the heavens abiding beyond the symbolic exit from the initiatic cave,
which lies precisely at the Keystone to which ‘the plumb line of the Great Architect’
falls, suspended from the Pole star, thus defning the axle of the world.
And in the Heavens we may, if we wish or must, transfer our need for
orientation, for guidance at our times of change, to a different system, the Zodiac,
the twelve-spoked Wheel of Life and of Law and of Fortune, symbol of the World,
and depicted as the spoked wheel, also of the Sun, and much else besides.
This leads us to consider the Solstitial Gates, the ‘poles of the year’ as two exits
from the cave as place of manifestation—the world, or life as it is lived. They are the
Gate of Man in the South (the candidate descends, conceptually, with the sun’s
movement towards the winter solstice—the sun is at it’s lowest point in the sky,
therefore the south) and the Gate of the Gods in the North (the Initiate rises with the
sun’s movement towards the summer solstice—the sun at its zenith, furthest
north).21 This translates into the compass of a day, ascending from midnight to
midday (summer, north), descending from midday to midnight (winter, south).
The cave as place of manifestation is compatible with the initiatic function of the
cave in the sense that, having manifested physically in this world, we will leave by
the appropriate gate according to the degree of spirituality attained during this life.
When, as is commonly the case, we have at the end further spiritual growth
awaiting us, we will leave by the Gate of Man, which thus is also an entrance, for
our return: only when we have attained the ultimate Union with the One will we
leave by the Gate of the Gods, which is therefore only an entrance for the voluntary
descent into the manifest world of the perfected being, as Avatar.
The Rad labyrinth form, with two entrances, may have evolved in relation to
such symbolic considerations.
We may recall in these contexts the astronomical abilities of neolithic peoples
apparent from the precise alignments of stone circles to the sunrise or other celestial
event, and so we are returned full circle to the double spirals of the heavenly paths
of the Sun and Mercury concentrated in their essence in the seven circuit labyrinth.
And so we approach the penultimate turn, which again takes us further from the
centre, but now we have discerned the pattern, of a double wave advancing and
receding, and can trust with joy in our hearts that the succeeding forward fow will
carry us to our goal.

Sixth Turn: Music and Dance

The connection of music and dance with ritual hardly needs stating. We may
note that the term ‘orchestra’ derives in part from orcheomai, to dance, or a dancing
place. The orchestra in the ancient Greek theatre was the circular place of dance,
possibly the most ancient part of the drama—circle dances, indeed. We may note
21
We should be clear that we are not concerned here with actual physical locations: the Keystone and
either of the Solstitial Gates are symbolically identical depending on which gate the initiated being is to
use as exit in that manifestation. The Keystone and the Gates both relate to orienting systems.
too that very young children involuntarily move their bodies when singing—for a
few years they simply cannot do otherwise. On the other hand dance without music
has always been unthinkable, except in some subversive varieties of modern dance.
The parallel in the Classical seven circuit
labyrinth with the commonest division of the
octave, into seven notes, is easily and often
noticed, and is suggestive. Each path can be
associated with a note of the scale. (Fig 10) The
(musical) objective is then the octave, as the
aimed for transformed state, the resumption of
the cycles of sound and of a ‘sound’ life at the
next higher level. The journey there may be
based on descending or ascending scales. With
the former there is analogy with the descent to
death or the fertile unconscious, then followed Fig.10. The classical labyrinth with
by the ascent from the centre out of the musical note letters assigned
labyrinth into re-birth or renewed life. Chanting seems implied, changing the pitch
with the turn into the next passage, a way of keeping track in the internally felt,
imagined or actual darkness.
Entering the labyrinth on an ascending scale of C to C 1 major gives this order:

On the descending scale, entering, the order of notes will be:

The ascending exit scale will be the mirror image of that: 22

Leaping fourths characterize these sequences, though utilizing the major mode
results in the awkward augmented fourth F to B, the diabolus in musica, in the
ascending entering scale. Two of the traditional European modes will successfully
eliminate the ‘devil’s interval’, while changing the felt and heard character of the
chant.23 The Mixolydian (G – G on the ‘white’ notes), which expressed as C – C has
Bb, would give the ascending entering sequence :

and descending on entering :

22
So we can see the identity of the two halves of the path, expressed as (ascending) EDCF—BAGC 1, the
disjunctive, identical in ‘shape’ in both halves, or EDCF—FBAG as conjunction, thus paralleling the
tetrachords of Ancient Greek musical thought as basic musical units. We can only speculate on the
relationship as perceived by the Greeks, and what they may themselves have chanted in labyrinth rites.
23
Or their equivalents, Ragas from the Indian tradition for example. Ragas not represented in the
European tradition may be tried for ft and suitability, as could 7 note modes from elsewhere.
 The Hypodorian (A – A), also banishes the augmented fourth. Or maybe we are
not unhappy to include that interval, feeling that it may express particular meaning
at that passage turn. This is the fourth turn on the ascending entrance sequence,
taking us to the shortest gyre, adjacent to the centre: an important milestone on the
path. Perhaps it is marked by the slight uncertainty of a change from chest to head
register.
Entering, on the ascending scale, one third from the keynote or ‘fnal’ of the
mode (after suggestions by Rudolf Steiner) may be seen to stand for, as the minor
third (Hypodorian mode) an experience of inner balance, but leaning back to the
second. As the major third we may experience a strong statement of inner balance.
From both the labyrinth takes us back to the second, as a disturbance from the
keynote, which we then approach. And here we fnd the absolute inner rest from
which we can fnd the energy to make the leap of a perfect fourth which follows, as
our frst major step towards the ‘unknown’ goal, a relationship with otherness.
Similarly, having reached the seventh gyre we are taken away again for two
circuits, and only then, unexpectedly, led home. Leaving the labyrinth is the mirror
of these remarks, as is the descending entrance in its own context.
Such considerations suggest strongly that the sonic power of such working will
be brought out by chanting to a drone on the keynote.
We can play with these scalic ideas a little, perhaps by using a ‘stepped’ scale:
assigning (say) C E D G F B b A C1 to the successive gyres, which would be
experienced as (upwards entering):

—featuring leaping ffths.

The downwards equivalent form would be:

In this version we enter the labyrinth on the interval of a second, imparting

against the drone a powerful discord, contrasting with the comfortable sense of
inner balance experienced on entering at the third, and perhaps foretelling the
changes of mood to come. This discord returns only when the B b is reached, which
would then signal that the goal was near.
Such sequences can be used entirely according to our felt needs within the
present circumstances of our lives, for received traditions pertinent to
contemporary attitudes are not apparent. As mirror of our entire lives a rising
sequence to the centre may be felt to be appropriate (grabbing the bull-man by the
horns), reaching the midpoint of life’s achievements in the centre, followed by
unwinding with descending tones as we refect in the mirror of the ascent on the
meaningfulness of what we have wrought, a traverse suited to those who have
reached an age for such refection, or to those who wish to re-enter more deeply
into a particular life experience. Or we may prefer to descend, as has been
suggested throughout this text, to the underworld as place of divine darkness
which then leads upwards, outwards, to the light of renewal.
Another type of music, quiet, slow, peaceful, can be used to accompany the
labyrinth journey as walking meditation, which may be how most approach it. 24 Or
again, something altogether more spritely could accompany an energetic approach,
if we feel an inner urge to run the labyrinth, as Baltic fshermen used to do before
setting sail in order to leave behind mischievous sprites who would otherwise
subvert the catch. Being stupid sprites, it was said, they easily got lost in the
winding paths—the labyrinth as entrapment. 25
The crane, a creature greatly concerned with curvature, laying out it’s catch in an
arc or circle before taking it home to it’s young, is linked with the labyrinth via its
mating dance, spiraling forward and back, forward and back. Cranes, imbued by
this patterning with sun symbolism and that which follows of life, death and
rebirth, as we have discussed above, are therefore also seen as dead souls in fight,
leaving in the dying of the year, returning to central Europe with the spring as the
(re)born, a symbol of renewal, of new life.26
Tsakonikos is the circle dance specifcally associated with the labyrinth in Greece,
and also with the crane dance, Geranos, which meets the creative sexual aspect of
the crane’s dance by having the line of dancers connected with erect thumb in the
curled fngers of the adjacent person. The dance proceeds sideways with slanting
forward steps and some back, to a fvefold rhythm in one version: 27

Another version suggests nine steps and a leap (as the crane does), which would
be suitably danced as three threes, symbolizing the Triple Goddess as presiding
deity, followed by the leap on the fourth triplet. The dance is best done in the
labyrinth in small groups, or contact is easily lost, particularly at reversals in the
path. What a powerful impression this would make, done while chanting to the
pitch patterns explored above!
But now, we reach the …

Seventh Turn: Myth

24
Or, as “music tends towards the condition of silence” …
25
Stupidity perhaps being a consequence of the condition of immateriality: we may imagine certain
diffculties in successful negotiation with our material world.
26
The stork arriving with the new baby remains a living image on greetings cards and in advertisements
for nursery accoutrements.
27
The detailed rhythm can be varied within the eight measure form, and indeed should be to maintain
spontaneity in the melodic material.
 Arrival at the centre! Our goal, the initiatory sacred space, the great turning point
of the entire traverse, is achieved. Meanings unfold, concatenate, illumine. The
world’s old stories rise up to consciousness, showing us that we are far from alone.
Many others have been here before us, leaving indelible marks on the collective
psyche, writings in the sands on the shores of the great waters of life.
In myth thus seen as record, or foreshadowing, of the human predicament, the
great themes relating to the labyrinth are centred on impenetrability, which the
hero or initiate will defeat, and entrapment, whereby Malevolencies are im-
prisoned, as we know from Minoan Crete. This Beast in the labyrinth is comple-
mented (in the way of mythic pairs of opposites) by a tradition of the Virgin or
Goddess within, who must be found and released in order to exert her powers, as
modern man (particularly) needs to fnd his contrasexual inner treasure in pursuit
of wholeness.
Among other accounts, the successive encircling defensive walls surrounding
ancient Troy, found by Schliemann and later excavators, strongly suggesting the
labyrinth as threshold protection, links the famous abduction of Helen with this
Goddess tradition. And in parallel, from an apparently unrelated tradition, there is
a legend concerning the origin of the boulder labyrinth on the island of Gottland in
the Baltic, that it was constructed each day stone by stone by a king’s daughter
imprisoned under the Galgenberg (gallows hill), completing it upon her release.
This would mean symbolically that the completion gained her the release, as in
the Maleculan myth recounted above, in which the Spider Goddess requires the
dead person to complete the labyrinth before admission to the underworld. So here
the Goddess, in the person of the king’s daughter, constructs the labyrinthine
entrance to the place of death (she builds it round the gallows hill), the connection
with re-birth being here an allusion to her release—a ‘new’ life unfettered by what
was binding her, or ‘holding her back’, previously.
The Afghan tale of Shamaili’s house provides another variant of this theme, the
hero subverting the labyrinth trial. Only the Princess Shamaili knew how to enter
her ‘house’ with a hidden entrance. She was the daughter of King Khunkar the
Bloodthirsty, who had promised her hand in marriage to he who could fnd the way
in, on pain of death by hanging upon failure.28 In an honourable tradition of folk
tales the youngest of seven brothers must wait until all his six elders had failed and
suffered the penalty—asleep to their lives, they failed the trial, so were banned from
initiation as unsanctifed. Our alert hero, Jallad Khan, resolved to succeed by
trickery—shades of Hermes here. Aided by the royal sculptor he hid in a metal
statue, which was presented at court. Shamaili was so fascinated by this dancing
metal man that she had it brought to her (labyrinth) house, where of course Jallad
revealed himself and claimed her as bride (his contrasexual inner treasure).
Here we are reminded of the Trojan Horse, and of Dædalus the inventor, the
metal worker, who is said to have built the labyrinth to hold captive the Beast, the
savage bull-man of King Minos of Crete, embarrassing result of the union of Queen
Pasiphaë and the White Bull given to Minos by Poseidon, Lord of the Sea. This
28
Note the association of the (hangman’s) rope, death, and the labyrinth
beast, the very Minotaur, can be seen as the content of the unconscious, feared by
those who are unawakened, Jung’s shadow function, which troubles us more, the
more we ignore it, because we who are gripped by that fear of the more primitive
parts of ourselves, have in consequence lost contact with our sense of body, the
physicality of feelings. Confront this shadow we must, sooner or later: and then
what?
In the famous story, Theseus as hero represents the bold Ego, plunging into the
depths fearlessly, aided by the clue to return given him by his Anima fgure,
Ariadne, (her name means very holy) whose clew 29 of thread is the Umbilicus, the
connection between the worlds, part of the birthing of the new as it was in physical
birth out of the darkness of the mother’s womb.30
Why did he need the thread? Navigation of the unicursal labyrinth is easy, if we
are fully centred, fully awake. There are no blind passages: just keep a hand on the
wall and follow it round! Something else is therefore needed in explanation. His
‘heroic vision’, serving him well in the light of the sun, left him ill-equipped for the
necessary grounded feelingness of negotiating the dark confning tunnels. This,
Ariadne supplied in her own fashion, obliging the hero to an un-heroic stoop, to
feel his way out by following the thread lying on the ground.
Just so Dædalus, banished to the labyrinth with his son Icarus by an irate King
Minos following the death of the Minotaur and the escape of Theseus,
unable to fnd a way out of his own invention, hits upon a panic solution by
constructing wings for Icarus and himself, …. This is an avoidance of the
muscle-and-touch sensations Dædalus needs to balance his high-fying intellect,
represented as his son Icarus, who fies too close to the sun … and plummets
into the sea (the much-needed feeling). Dædalus then did not follow the ground
of the problem, but resorted to an intellectual solution, … a spiritual, sky-
seeking solution to what was a problem of soul and body. 31
Similarly, in a very different tradition, Rahab of Jericho (certainly no virgin) after
showing Joshua’s spies the way through the defensive labyrinthine walls—an
image of the complexity of the placenta as icon of birth, and of the coils of gut, as
we have seen—was instructed to hang up a red thread as a signal that she should be
spared from slaughter. The seven circuits with seven trumpets the priests were to
make round the walls on the seventh day are highly suggestive of the paths of the
classical labyrinth in the light of what we have discussed above. 32
And what did Theseus do? He killed the Minotaur, his own shadow beast deep
in the labyrinthine underworld of unconsciousness, the scarce grown youth
knowing not that he has ‘killed’ part of himself, and thus presaging his future
deeds, defned by this failure to wrestle aspects of himself into life. Then, re-
birthing himself as hero by following the thread out, he set sail with Ariadne, her
29
From Old English cliewen, a ball, clue being a metaphor of the unravelling, as the ‘thread’ of
narrative, or the lines on navigation charts. Clew is still in use as a nautical term.
30
Again we have associations of thread, here as escape from death, on the one hand, reminding us of the
hangman’s rope, and on the other, release into this world.
31
Alan Bleakley. Fruits of the Moon Tree.
32
It's tempting to imagine the trumpets signalling the turns.
sister Phædra, and the thirteen other Athenian tribute youths and maidens, now
given the opportunity to wake up to life instead of being swallowed by the beast of
unconsciousness.
Calling at the next island, Delos, the party danced the Crane dance in celebration
of the victory, which can be seen as Theseus ‘dancing his animal’ to the sacred
space, with Ariadne as the Goddess ruling the labyrinthine dance of life. Then,
leaving Naxos, another stop on the way, he, as the Dragon Slaying Hero in hu-
bristic certainty of his own self-suffciency, apparently ‘forgot’ Ariadne, and
abandoned her: a denial of his necessary femininity, the loss of his very holiness.33
Rahab was also abandoned, left with her family to fend for themselves, her
livelihood gone, in a ruined town, all others slaughtered. And Theseus, true to the
heroic youthful unawareness we have outlined, ‘forgot’ another matter: the white
sail he was to have hoisted to signal his success on approaching Athens. His father
Ægeus, seeing from afar the usual black sail, drowned himself in sorrow in the sea
that took his name, thinking his son dead, thus living out the feelings of the
situation, the fowing wateryness opaque, alien to Theseus.
Here we have a clear image of the patriarchal hubris, the suppression of the
feminine, that for some thousands of years has characterized our culture, which
was forming at the time the Minotaur story arose. Similarly the Wasteland of the
Fisher King, as another parallel, foretells the spiritual wasteland of our modern
times.

Dancing the Labyrinth of Life

As with Theseus, so it is with us. If we fail to take life by the horns, sink into
unawareness, focussing instead on the ‘heroic’ vision of our desired egoic victories,
losing our sense of embodiment, so unable to respond groundedly, feelingly, to the
unexpected reversals in the dark labyrinth of life, someone else is obliged to suffer
our unacknowledged feeling states, and we leave a trail of abandonment behind us.

But we have the opportunity now to do better, and we can live the labyrinth
form as music and dance or walking meditation, fully present in the embodied
ground of our being, the better able to feel our way through the turns, the
vicissitudes of Life as it is Lived, and be guided by the red thread, with help from
Hermes and from the presiding Goddess, to the place of healing, of reconnection
with that which has been ‘lost’, the otherworld where our souls reside, umbilically
joined to the Manifest World, and oriented to the Gate of the Sun, towards a future
reconnection which is not regression to a supposed golden age of innocence, but
strives towards, yearns for, holistic completion, union of opposites, in full
awareness balancing heart, head and soul in the Pantheon of magnifcent humanly
being at its best.

33
Some accounts say she was pregnant, and died in childbirth; others, that Dionysus found her there and
married her.
 CJ; Sparkbrook; Dec.2003

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