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Labyrinth: Sacred Space, Sacred Music by Clement Jewitt
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 final 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]
Myth, Meaning & Symbol
The Hopi peoples of the southern
United States built rectangular labyrinths underground, called the Kiwa,
which they related to male energy, the Sun Father. Through the dark
tunnels young men were sent in search of the centre, winding nearer,
then further from the goal, a deliberately disorienting experience, the
final approach ending unexpectedly in the central space. Unexpectedly
because of the labyrinthine geometry, spiralling forward and then back.
There in the centre, a ladder led out through a hole in the roof,
symbolising a rebirth from the darkness of the labyrinth-womb into the
bright sunlight, horizons expanded from the inwardness induced by
oppressively close passages (now it is time to be in the world again),
brother braves waiting to welcome the initiate into his ‘new’ life,
his old, younger self symbolically stripped off in the centre, the place
of initiation, after the trials of the dark winding way, and so left
behind, as the snake sheds its skin.
Contemplating the entrance, which
leads the eye into the enfiladed, 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 find 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 firm-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, symbolising the waxing and waning moons, the two halves of life, it can also be seen as the labia which enclose us as we are born, and the labia of the Devouring Mother at our death, and between them 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
finger contemplatively as an aid to witchery, or the shaman’s journey.
In the British Isles the latter are
known as Troy Stones, linked with the ancient Wisewoman tradition.[3]
In parallel, since midwifery was a part of that, is a labyrinth form of
meditational Yantra called Chakra-Vyuha, used in Indian 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.
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.
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 ‘Venus’
figurines are found from Mesopotamia to Mexico.[4] Entry: the Spiral
The time has come to take the first
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 defining centre of life.
The shape is primordial, seen by the
ancient hunter in the coils of gut spilt out after he has plunged his
flint 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.[5] Here
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, finds that it is guarded by Le-hev-hev, the Spider Goddess, who
erases one half of the labyrinth 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, there is then
discovered 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 finds 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.[6]
So, treading our winding way, we may also reflect 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, or prehistory.
Boulder labyrinths 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 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
scientific attitude, more likely concerned with the mysticism of
universal interconnectedness expressed by symbol, than with demonstrable
fact.
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 fishermen 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 symbolised by
taking the six pointed star composed of those two triangles
superimposed, and shrinking the cave triangle to fit within the other,
as the cave within the mountain, or indeed the chamber within the
pyramid. (Fig 3) This symbol has four equal divisions, displaying the
Three of creation, the active, dynamic shape of the triangle, and the
Four of manifestation, 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
find in the shape and layout of this journey? Types
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 find
space here. Nigel Pennick’s Mazes and Labyrinths may be consulted for
comprehensive coverage. The Hopi Kiwa is precisely equivalent in the geometry of its unicursal path to the commonest form of labyrinth, which appears 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 probably more ancient labyrinths in Scandinavia, mentioned above, and the world-wide distribution.
The Christian labyrinth, divided into
four quarters, the path flowing 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
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 heros race each other from the two entrances to claim her (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 (as the Kiwa does with its ladder).
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 handfasting can be performed beautifully in that way,
with suitable music …
And we reach the end of the first
returning gyre: our musings undergo a change. We feel a need to count
the turns, an urge to mark our progress, to find 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? 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 perceive from without, and as well as geometry we find 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,[7]
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 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 in all likelihood encountered the
Enneagram with the Sufis in Jerusalem, part of a profound culture shock,
and who did not increase their number until nine years had passed.[8]
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
first thing to duplicate in the process of mitosis, cell division. And
the nine months of pregnancy during the course of which the nine
orifices 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)
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
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 first 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 first 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 flotsam on the tides of life.
There is a symbolic connection between
labyrinth and Sun worship, supported perhaps in the physical realm by
the findings 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 fixed lens focussing 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 finding in Chaos mathematics, this in turn being similar to
the attractor found by Valerie Hunt in human energy field data (the
aura).[9] (Figs 7&8)
The outline of the Ross sun track is,
too, and appropriately, the infinity 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 simplified form, and more abstractly within the familiar
Yin-Yang circle, the Taigetu. (Fig 9) We are dealing with something
deeply primordial, not to be adequately represented in words—
In the labyrinth we see the spiral
reversals conflated into one of the containing 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.[10]
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 travellers, rogues and
thieves, god of boundaries and cross-roads, originating as hermæ,
cairns, no doubt created over time by travellers marking with a handy
stone an uncertainty on the way, a corner, boundary, crossroad, and
those following later adding another, and another stone to the heap.
Eventually mythic consciousness imbued these with invisible personhood,
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,[11]
the place of unconsciousness (which we 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, embuing them with sanctity, if we care to notice.
Our awareness of Hermes’
presence opens us to the sacredness of such moments [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.[12] 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[13] explorations have
identified not only relationships with earth energy lines, but crucially
underground watercourses 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.[14]
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 specific 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 14thC, with the beginnings of the
Renaissance, the ‘Enlightenment’, the start of the modern period of
forgetting, banishing from the mainstream non-rational wisdoms and
ancient lore, 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
reflection 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 spiralling 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 find 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 as 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 find 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.[15]
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 fifth, the quintessence, the quint
essentia, that which cannot be directly apprehended, the divine
principle, represented by the Rose, and in the east by the Lotus.[16]
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 found 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.[17]
Subsequently, caves and other
‘doorways to the earth-mother’, into which the setting sun was seen
to descend, figure prominently in the elaborating spiritual rites of
mankind. In Classical Greece oracles were sited at caves, fissures,
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 exper ience a change of mood when entering a cleft in the earth, or
indeed artifactual tunnels or other unlit or dimly lit 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 befits a place of transformation.
The world tree, on which Odin hung,
with its roots below and its crown above, the trunk representing the
intermediate, mundane world,[18] 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 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 defining
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).[19]
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 flow 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 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 subvertive 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 by the ascent from the centre out of the 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.
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.[21] The MixoLydian (G – G on the ‘white’ notes), which expressed as C – C has Bb, would give the ascending entering sequence:
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
‘final’ 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 key-note, which
we then approach. And here we find the absolute inner rest from which we
can find the energy to make the leap of a perfect fourth which follows,
as our first 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 Bb A C1 to the successive gyres, which would be experienced as (upwards entering):
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 Bb 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 reflect 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 reflection, 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.[22]
Or again, something altogether more spritely could accompany an
energ-etic approach, if we feel an inner urge to run the labyrinth, as
Baltic fishermen 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. [23]
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, spiralling 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 flight, 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.[24]
Tsakonikos is the circle dance specifically 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 fingers of the adjacent person. The dance proceeds sideways with slanting forward steps and some back, to a fivefold rhythm in one version:[25]
Another version suggests nine steps
and a leap (as the crane does), which would be suitably danced as three
threes, symbolising 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
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 imprisoned, as we
know from Minoan Crete. This Beast in the labyrinth is complemented (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 find 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
find the way in, on pain of death by hanging upon failure.[26]
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 unsanctified. 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 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 figure, Ariadne, (her name
means very holy) whose clew [27] 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.[28]
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 confining 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 find 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-flying intellect,
represented as his son Icarus, who flies 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. [29]
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.[30]
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,
defined by this failure to wrestle aspects of himself into life. Then,
rebirthing himself as hero by following the thread out, he set sail with
Ariadne, her 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 hubristic certainty of his own self-sufficiency, apparently
‘forgot’ Ariadne, and abandoned her: a denial of his necessary
femininity, the loss of his very holiness.[31]
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 flowing 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
characterised 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
re-connection 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, wholistic completion, union of opposites, in full awareness
balancing heart, head and soul in the Pantheon of magnificent humanly
being at its best. __________________________ WORKS CONSULTED
Bailey, Adrian 1997. The Caves of
the Sun: the origin of mythology. Jonathan Cape Ball, Philip 1999. The Self-Made
Tapestry: pattern formation in nature. Oxford U.P. Bleakley, Alan 1984. Fruits of the
Moon Tree: the medicine wheel and transpersonal mythology. Gateway Books Campbell, Joseph 1964. The Masks of
God: occidental mythology. Penguin 1976
—
1969.
The Masks of God: primitive mythology, rev. ed., Penguin Castledon, Rodney 1990. The Knossos
Labyrinth: a new view of the ‘Palace of Minos’ at Knossos. Routledge
Coats, Callum 1996. Living energies:
an exposition of concepts related to the theories of Viktor Schauberger.
Gateway Books Downing, Christine 1993. Gods in Our
Midst: mythological images of the masculine: a woman’s view. Crossroad
Publishing Frazer, Sir James 1922. The Golden
Bough: a study in myth and religion, abridged ed. Wordsworth Reference,
1993 Guénon, René 1962. Fundamental
Symbols: the universal language of sacred science. English ed., Quinta
Essentia 1995 (tr from French) Gullan-Whur, Margaret
1987. The Four
Elements: the traditional idea of the humours and why they are still
relevant. Century Hill, Gareth S. 1992. Masculine and
Feminine: the natural flow of opposites in the psyche. Shambhala Jung, C.G. 1938-54. Alchemical
Studies. (Collected works, v.13) Princeton UP / Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1967 (tr from German) Kingsley, Peter 1999. In the Dark
Places of Wisdom. Element Books Knight, Christopher & Robert
Lomas 2000. Uriel’s Machine: the ancient origins of science. Arrow
Books Lonegren, Sig 1991. Labyrinths:
ancient myths and modern uses. Gothic Image Merz, Blanche 1983. Points of Cosmic
Energy. English ed., C.W.Daniel 1987 (tr from French) Pennick, Nigel 1990. Mazes and
Labyrinths. Robert Hale The Power of Place: sacred ground in
natural & human environments. James A. Swan (ed.) 1991. Quest Books Saga: best new writings on
mythology, Vol.1. Jonathan Young (ed.) 1996. White Cloud Press Sands, Helen Raphael 2000.
Labyrinth, Pathways to Meditation and Healing. Gaia Books Schneider, Michael S. 1994. A
Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: the mathematical
archetypes of nature, art and science. HarperCollins Varley, Desmond 1976. Seven: the
number of creation. G.Bell & Sons REFERENCE WORKS Brewer’s Book of Myth and Legend,
J.C.Cooper (ed.) 1992. Cassell Myths, Gods and Fantasy: a
sourcebook. Pamela Allardice 1990. Prism The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd
ed. N.G.L.Hammond & H.H.Scullard 1970. Clarendon Press Pacific Mythology: an Encyclopedia
of Myth and Legend. Jan Knappert 1992. Aquarian Press Who’s Who in Non-Classical
Mythology. Egerton Sykes 1952. Rev. Alan Kendall 1993. Oxford U.P. ___________________ [NOTE: The number of each footnote is a link back to the corresponding point in the text] [1]
Michael Ayrton. The Maze Maker [2]
Alan Bleakley. Fruits of the Moon Tree [3]
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 19thC, with many earlier handings down reasonably
asserted. [4]
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. [5]
From the mystery of birth the human female may well have been seen as
the Goddess manifested, with menstrual blood as corollary to the rain
which nourishes the earth. [6]
All symbolism shares a fundamental ambivalence such as this. [7]
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). [8]
This from Gordon Strachan’s book Chartres: Sacred geometry, sacred
space. Floris Books 2003 [9]
see Valerie Hunt. Infinite mind: science of the human vibrations of
consciousness. Malibu Publishing, 2nd ed. 1996 [10]
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 2/7th 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 firm knowledge of the antiquity of such
skills. [11]
The undeveloped, primitive aspects of ourselves, which we would like to
disown. [12]
Christine Downing Gods in our midst [13]
The study of the effects of earth energies on human behaviour and
health. [14]
It is salutary to note here that the electro-magnetic field generated by
our heart is 50 times stronger than that generated by our head. [15]
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. [16]
The Chakra system of centres of energy in us and in built space, in
sequence from the corporeal to the Divine [17] The bear occupies the primary place in ancient
hunting community lore that the bull occupies in agricultural. [18]
analogous with the Dorje of Tibetan Buddhism, which also represents the
two worlds [19]
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. Note that the Hopi ‘Gate of Man’ in
actuality is a hole in the roof: the symbolic North is elsewhere. [20]
So we can see the identity of the two halves of the path, expressed as
(ascending) EDCF—BAGC1, 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. [21]
or their equivalents, Ragas from the Indian tradition for example. Ragas
not represented in the European tradition may be tried for fit and
suitability, as could 7 note modes from elsewhere. [22]
Or, as “music tends towards the condition of silence” … [23]
Stupidity perhaps being a consequence of the condition of immateriality:
we may imagine certain difficulties in successful negotiation with our
material world. [24]
The stork arriving with the new baby remains a living image on greetings
cards and in advertisements for nursery accoutrements. [25]
The detailed rhythm can be varied within the eight measure form, and
indeed should be to maintain spontaneity in the melodic material. [26]
Note the association of the (hangman’s) rope, death, and the labyrinth [27]
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. [28]
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. [29]
Alan Bleakley. Fruits of the Moon Tree [30]
It’s tempting to imagine the trumpets signalling the turns. [31]
Some accounts say she was pregnant, and died in childbirth; others, that
Dionysus found her there and married her. |
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