THE symbol of the labyrinth or maze [1] is found in prehistoric carvings throughout the world and has been a feature of western architecture, art, and jewelry since classical antiquity.  Often found in Greco-Roman mosaics on floors and walls, it depicts the myth of the master-architect Daedalus, who built a labyrinth to contain the gruesome Minotaur slain by the warrior Theseus.  The principal symbolic meaning of the labyrinth in the West is thus that a monster lurks at the center (of life), and the way out of - or into - the maze is dangerous and devious.  The labyrinth was also used in both antiquity and the middle ages as a guild-symbol of the architect’s skill, the so-called House of Daedalus, evoking a mythical lost architectural wonder of the ancient world.[2]

THIS traditional interpretation was retained throughout the middle ages, but was gradually forgotten and then variously re-mythologized from the sixteenth century to the present. The interpretations and reinterpretations (or misunderstandings) can be roughly divided into six periods, linked here and discussed in detail below:

1. THE ANCIENT ORIGINAL INTERPRETATION

1. THE ANCIENT ORIGINAL INTERPRETATION (300 BC - c.1100 AD)   Knossos Coin, 300 BC Theseus Mosaic, 4th-5th cent, Austria

IN ancient pagan and early Christian mosaics, jewelry, and coins the center of Daedalus’ labyrinth was identified with the underworld and hell, while the twisting paths around the center symbolized the tortuous, seductive temptations to vice that both virtuous pagans and, later, Christians must avoid.  In the Aeneid Virgil described both the Labyrinth at Knossos (Aeneid Bk 5, 546) and the horror of the Minotaur (Aeneid Bk 6, 14-30), and he placed on the lips of the Cumean Sybil the warning that entry to Hades is easy, while the sinuous, labyrinthine river Cocytus renders departure laborious (Bk 6, 124-132). 

Labyrinths are common in classical Roman homes and tombs.  Their significance is clearly proclaimed in a family tomb-labyrinth of the third century: “HIC INCLUSUS VITAM PERDIT” (The one trapped here loses [his] life.

Third-century Roman tomb-maze: HIC INCLUSUS VITAM PERDIT	Fourth-century Pavement-Maze, Algeria Cantral Palindrome: SANCTA ECCLESIA

FROM the fourth to the the sixteenth centuries Christian labyrinths are found exclusively on the floors and walls of churches, rather then in private homes.  They continue to symbolize the twisting and dangerous pathways of life, but a fourth century mosaic maze suggests hope for divine assistance in a palindrome at the center: “SANCTA ECCLESIA” (Holy Church).

TWELFTH-century mosaic church labyrinths are found in northern Italy, in Ravenna, Piacenza, Lucca, Volterra, and Rome.  They portray the Minotaur at the center signifying that life is a dangerous journey beset with temptations and pitfalls.  Found at the entrance (“West end”) of churches or inscribed on the walls, they were too small to have served in liturgical rituals, and those on the floor would have been largely invisible to worshippers, covered as the floors of churches generally were with frequently-changes rushes that collected the inevitable mud and dung that was constantly tracked in.

2. MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANIZATION

IN northern France pavement labyrinths are larger than in Italy and are described as flagstone pavement mazes. Their significance as a pleasing geometrical display of the architect’s skill is highlighted in the labyrinth at Reims cathedral, fortunately sketched in 1585 by the architect Jacques Cellier, but unfortunately destroyed in 1779.  Cellier's drawing clearly shows images of the medieval architects at the four corners and in the center of the maze.  A similar emphasis on the architect's craft is evident at Amiens (1288) where the flagstone labyrinth is simply one complex geometrical configuration among others.

Chartres Labyrinth and Nave (c.1230)	Cellier's sketch of Labyrinth at Reims	Amiens Cathedral Labyrinth (1288)

THAT does not mean that the medieval church-labyrinth was only an attractive design and guild-symbol.  The labyrinth at Chartres (c. 1230) takes the form of a cross and lacks a Minotaur at the center, as do other medieval French church mazes.  As both Wright and Kern point out, the theological interpretation of these labyrinth should be sought in the Easter liturgies and rituals. [3] Medieval sources describe clerics processing to and standing on the labyrinth while singing the Easter Sequence, Victimae Paschali Laudes, which triumphantly proclaims the “harrowing of hell,” Christ’s resurrection-victory over Satan. 

Satan at the Center of the Labyrinth Twelfth Century MS,  Hincmar of Reims	Satan at the Center of Dante's Labyrinthine Hell Divine Comedy, Inferno,, c. 1329

IN a twelfth century manuscript of texts by Hincmar of Reims, Satan lurks at the center of a Chartres-type labyrinth.  Dante adapted this theme in the Divine Comedy (c. 1320) in his depiction of hell as a descending funnel-labyrinth where the Minotaur lurks and where Satan is encased in the frozen center, his infernal realm realm having been broken and wrecked by Christ’s descent on Easter Day.[4]

IT should be particularly noted that this Christological understanding is very different from modern spiritualities of the labyrinth (see below §4 §5 and esp. §6).  In Christian theology, ancient and modern, it is Christ, not the solitary journeying Christian, who conquers and ascends from the labyrinth of death. Christians are saved by Christ’s gift of grace, not by their own mystical practices or ascetical “journeys”. The medieval labyrinth was understood as a symbol of Christ’s Easter victory: only in His arms can Christians “ascend.”

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3. REFORMATION and COUNTER-REFORMATION POLEMICS (c.1500 - c.1700)   c.1530 The Devil's Bagpipes (Luther?) The Pope cast into the labyrinth of Hell (1545)

WITH the onset of the Renaissance the traditional meaning of the labyrinth was retained, but it was more frequently encountered in painting and figurative art than on the floors of cathedrals and parish churches. The new technology of the printing press facilitated the co-opting of religious symbols by polemical theologians and politicians, who employed pamphlets and cartoons that employed vivid symbols, including the labyrinth, to promote political and theological propaganda.  Thus Catholics lampooned Luther as Lucifer’s demonic agent and co-conspirator:

Luther and Satan Brew Heresy and Strife (1520)	Luther's “True Covenant with Lucifer” (1520)

IN retaliation, increasingly anti-Catholic and secularized Calvinists transformed Dante’s infernal labyrinth into an allegory of sin, vice, and the deceptions of the Catholic Church, with the pope and his advisors, Satan and Beelzebub, lurking in the center.

Calvinist Infernal Labyrinth (1566):	In the Labyrinth's Center the Pope is counseled by Satan and Beelzebub

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IN the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the original meaning of the labyrinth faded from memory in the wake of religious disputation and wars.  Topiary “hedge-labyrinths” became a popular diversion in the stately homes of the wealthy, and their lost origins in the now-enigmatic floor tiles of Catholic cathedrals and churches demanded a less-polemical, more pious explanation. 

[Turf-] “Maze Near St. Anne’s Chapel, Nottinghamshire,” W.Andrews,  Ecclesiastical Curiosities (London, 1899) p.197. ”	“The Maze at Sneiton” (St. Anne’s) W.Andrews,  Eccl.Curiosities (1899) p.199.

THE novel myth arose that Christians in the remote and increasingly romanticized middle ages had employed the labyrinth as a symbol of the crusaders’ or pilgrims’ journey to the Holy Land (chemin de Jerusalem). It was imagined that the pious faithful had “walked” the labyrinth as a penance or meditation on the New Jerusalem of heaven.  Unfortunately for those who champion this interpretation, there are no medieval sources that even hint that church labyrinths were ever explained or employed in this way.  This pious fantasy first appears in the late eighteenth century. [5]

AS noted above, it was only after the introduction of modern sewers, drainage, and paved streets with gutters that floor-tile labyrinths would have been regularly visible and of interest to worshippers, the floors having formerly been covered with rushes to collect the tracked-in mud and animal dung.

THE contempt directed against traditional Catholic symbols during the Enlightenment and French Revolution  resulted in the obliteration of many French church labyrinths, which were only restored (not always faithfully) in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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5. OCCULT, ESOTERIC MYSTIFICATION (c.1800 - c.1970)   Eliphas Levi, “mage” and doubtful Kabbalist Levi's Kabbalistic Pentacle

IN the aftermath of secularization and anti-Christianity spread by the French Revolution, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed the rapid emergence of esoteric and occult “spiritualities” that sought to replace Catholic piety and traditional mysticism.  Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810-1875), an apostate Catholic deacon and self-proclaimed “magus” wrote instruction manuals on casting spells and summoning spirits, urging his readers to, “Escape if you can out of the labyrinth of the Infinite,”[6]

THE spiritualist medium and founder of theosophy, Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), dismissed Eliphas Levi’s occult teachings as “superficial” and “disappointing,” rooted as they were merely in the western traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Roman Catholicism.  She claimed to have been initiated into the eastern secrets of Buddhism and Hinduism by living and deceased “transcendent masters.” She expounded the mysteries of the labyrinth in Isis Unveiled , invoking the myth of Daedalus, Aridane and Theseus.[7]

Levi's Labyrinthine Cosmos	Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891)	Charles Webster	Leadbeater (1834-1954)

CHARLES Webster Leadbeater (1834-1954), a disciple of Helen Blavatsky, was an [apostate] Anglican priest and and co-founder with J.I.Wedgwood  of the “Liberal Catholic Church,” an amalgam of Theosophy and Old Catholic practice, in which Leadbeater was “consecrated bishop” in 1916.  He claimed to have discovered ancient secrets of the labyrinth that predate the classical myth of Theseus, secrets which clarify that the “supreme highest” wisdom, rather than the monstrous Minotaur, lies at the center of the maze:

“[..] the first labyrinth was constructed in order that this sacred symbol [the double axe] might be put in the middle of it, and the way to it was confused in order to symbolize the difficulty of the path which leads to the Highest. The stories of the Minotaur and Theseus and Ariadne came much later than this.” [8]

INTEREST in esoteric symbols such as the labyrinth as chthonic patterns of an “inner journey” increased in the early twentieth century among sociologists and psychologists such as Karl Jung, who wrote:

“The labyrinth is indeed a primordial image which one encounters in psychology mostly in the form of the fantasy of a descent to the underworld. In most cases, however, the topography of the unconscious is not expressed in the concentrated form of the labyrinth but in the false trails, deceptions, and perils of an underworld journey. But there are also designs which express the labyrinth idea in the skein motif (coiling serpents, meanders, etc.)” Jung, Letter to Karl Kerényi,  March 10, 1941.

“The goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self.” Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (1962), p. 196.

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6. SECULAR and ANGLICAN RE - MYTHOLOGIZATION (c.1970 - Present)   Hemet Maze Stone [ Petroglyph ?] Grace Cathedral (Episcopalian), San Francisco

THE origins of the flourishing modern “labyrinth movement” in the United States and Europe has been chronicled by Hermann Kern.[9] It emerged in the U.S. in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties from two sources:

[1] SECULAR fascination with labyrinths in the USA arose as a collaboration in the mid-1980s between four geomancers/dowsers [10] interested in what they regarded as the relationship between metaphysical “earth energies” and sacred places. Sig Lonegren, Jeff Saward, Richard Feather Anderson, and  Alex Champion, encouraged and organized visits to existing natural and man-made labyrinths, and facilitated the construction of new mazes based on ancient patterns: see, for example, The Labyrinth Society.  In his book, Labyrinths: Ancient Myths and Modern Uses, Sig Lonegren, administrator and researcher of the “World-Wide Labyrinth Locator” explains:

“Various components make up sacred space. Although natural sacred spaces  [...] are unshaped by human hands, the holy structures humans have built upon similar power centers seem to have several things in common with natural sacred spaces. [...] Like their sacred-space counterparts, ancient labyrinths were located on power centers. The best examples [...] correspond amazingly well with Earth energies.”[11]

[2] THE pan-religious, interfaith labyrinth movement arose from a collaboration between Jean Houston, spiritual mentor and author, and the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, psychotherapist and Canon of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco.

JEAN Houston explains that her interest in labyrinths began in 1962 when she read the short story “Dromenon,” by “the shaman-scientist-mystic Gerald Heard.” [12]  In this gothic tale an archeologist encounters an occult spiritual presence in an English church and achieves a “psychophysical state of ecstasy and spiritual awakening” by walking and meditating on the  church's pavement-labyrinth.  During a visit to Chartres Cathedral in 1971, a friend of Jean Houston experienced “a spiritual state of consciousness [...] a state of spiritual bliss.” while walking the Chartres labyrinth.  Houston then commissioned a portable canvas labyrinth and made it available to participants in her “Dromenon” (later “Mystery School”) seminars, where participants were encouraged to interpret their experiences with the labyrinth in light of Houston's understanding of Karl Jung's theories of myth and symbol:

“When we descend into the forgotten knowings of earlier or deeper phases of our existence, we often find hidden potentials. the unfulfilled and unfinished seedlings of what we still contain, which myth often disguises as secret helpers or mighty talismans.”[13]

CANON Lauren Artress was introduced to the labyrinth in 1991 through Jane Houston's Mystery School Seminar. She has been successful in encouraging the creation of both indoor and outdoor Chartres-type labyrinths in Anglican churches.  Her book Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool is widely used as a guide, and her organization Veriditas offers workshops where participants may study the writings of Karl Jung and mystics such as Teresa of Avila in the context of labyrinth-meditation.[14]

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