The Magic of Labyrinths: Following Your Path, Finding Your Center. Liz Simpson

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СКАЧАТЬ For example, pagan communities tended to celebrate festivals every six to eight weeks, to mark the changing seasons and solar cycles. Because these were so well established throughout northern Europe, particularly in Britain, many were simply overlain with Christian symbolism. Hence, Yule or the winter solstice became Christmas, Samhain became All Saint’s Day, and the spring equinox became Easter. The latter festival, incidentally, is named after the German fertility goddess Eostre or Ostara, which comes from the same root as the female hormone oestrogen. Not surprisingly, given the fertility link and the nature of female reproduction, the symbol of Eostre is an egg – hence the notion of Easter eggs, which was a custom engaged in by pagan communities long before Christianity came on the scene.

      

      Indeed, it has been argued that the Christian figure of Mary, mother of Jesus Christ was recreated from the ancient concept of the Great Mother Goddess in her triple archetypal roles of Virgin, Mother, and Wise Woman. There were certainly plenty of precedents for virgin births among the pre-Christian pantheon of Gods. The oldest of divinities, Gaia, appeared out of nothing to give birth to Uranus, the starlit sky, while the patriarch of the Greek gods was originally called Zeus Marnas or “Virgin born Zeus.” Any number of Greek heroes, including Perseus who slayed the Gorgon Medusa, and Jason of Argonaut fame, were said to be virgin born. The reason why the Christian church has resisted the worship of Mary as anything other than the earthly mother of Jesus was because she was based on a composite of many pagan goddesses. However, by giving this archetype a role to play within its religion, the Catholic Church ensured that their new, monotheist, patriarchal religion became relevant to people who were polytheist and largely matrifocal. As well as re-defining the Mother Goddess as the Virgin Mary, the Church changed many other pagan deities into saints. In one example, the Celtic goddess Brighid became St. Brigit (or Brigid).

      

      In the same way that the Holy Roman Church appropriated existing pagan archetypes and festivals, it built its places of worship on sites which ancient peoples had long revered for their sacred energy. Many churches in England were built on “ley lines” (the phenomenon of electromagnetic energy sometimes called Earth “chi”) because the only way the Catholic church could integrate non-Christians into their own religion was to appropriate the sacred sites at which they already worshipped.

      

      The labyrinth is a wonderful tool that engages people easily and that can be used to address deeper issues around spirituality and the best way to journey through life. So, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the Christian Church appropriated it for its own needs. The Christian church could not change people’s long-held faith, so they simply Christianized it. In the process, to set theirs apart from pagan examples, church labyrinths became more intricate in their design and ornate in their execution. They also became associated with Biblical cities, such as Jerusalem and Jericho – the latter possibly deriving from the Roman view of labyrinths as a kind of fortified city.

      Contemporary Labyrinths

      Aside from all the wonderful examples of labyrinths springing up around the world today – many of which we will read about in later chapters – this ancient symbol is proliferating on that most modern of tools – the Internet. If you are interested in the use of the labyrinth as a device in on-line and other interactive games, the World Wide Web will lead you, labyrinth-like, to the key resources.

      

      One particularly inspiring use of the labyrinth on the computer is the on-line Lenten labyrinth. Professor Paula Lemmon teaches beginner’s Latin classes at the Southwestern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. For the last two years (at the time of writing), her department has created an on-line Lenten labyrinth for which the students are charged with providing translations (from Latin into English) of various classical and religious texts. The 2001 project is totally interactive, with twelve candles pointing the way through this ancient devotional tool in order to illuminate the images and words contained within. Traditionally linked to the concept of pilgrimage by the Christian church (see here), the Lenten labyrinth allows the Web pilgrim to scroll through the Chartres design to read excerpts from medieval Latin texts (including Ovid’s Fasti), accompanied by images of the Holy Land that were created by the nineteenth-century painter, David Roberts in 1842. These images come from the archives of the University’s Bridwell Library, which holds a world-renowned collection of classical theological and other texts. This is the first time that images from David Roberts’ Holy Land folio have been digitally distributed, and presents a rare opportunity to see his work (see Resources).

       Chapter 2 LABYRINTHINE PATTERNS

      “…everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is

      because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round…”

      BLACK ELK, OGLALA LAKOTA, 1930

      THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABYRINTH PATTERN

      It may seem odd that if someone wanted to come up with a simple design symbolizing our journey through life, they did not just draw a straight line from A (birth) to (death). But then, is life ever that straightforward? The labyrinth motif has maintained its appeal because it speaks to the reality of having to navigate many twists and turns as we journey towards our goals.

      

       The meander or “Greek Key” pattern is thought to be the basis of the Classical seven-circuit labyrinth design.

      However, while all labyrinths follow a general design comprising of a unicursal path, there are many variations on that theme, and it is these designs that we focus on in this chapter.

      The Classical, Seven-circuit Pattern

      The oldest labyrinth pattern is that of the Cretan labyrinth, so-named because of its association with that island civilization and religion. It comprises, typically, of seven concentric circuits, although this form exists from three circuits up to nineteen. The oldest British example to which a date can be ascribed is that of a carving on granite named the Hollywood Stone, now on display in the Museum of Antiquities in Dublin. The stone and its seven-circuit Cretan design was found on a pilgrim’s track that wove its way through the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland from Hollywood to the Celtic monastic settlement at Glendalough.

      

      When playing around with the labyrinth design, Jeff Saward the British editor of the labyrinth journal Caerdroia (see story here, and Resources), together with a friend, worked out that the Classical seven-circuit labyrinth was simply a variation on a theme commonly depicted on Greek and Roman pottery – the meander. This meander pattern or “Greek key” was common to Old Europe many thousands of years before the Greek civilization flourished and indeed examples have been discovered on “Bird Goddess” figurines at Mezin in the Ukraine that date back to c. 18000–15000B.C.

       The Hollywood Stone, found on a pilgrim’s way in the Wicklow СКАЧАТЬ