The Inward Path
When, I hear the word labyrinth, I think of Labrys, a type of double headed axe.
A weapon associated with female power, because, well for a lot of socio
historical reasons. It is a weapon of swinging rather than the more phallic
impaling of a knife or a sword. Its lines are dual curves evoking a woman’s
hips. The curve of the moon, waxing and waning. It is a symbol associated with
goddess worship by the Minoans and whose roots are the same as the latin roots
for the word labus, lips.
When I hear the world labyrinth, I think of the Minotaur, this monstrous thing,
his body a man’s but his head monstrous through the addition of a bull’s horns
and mad eyes. A creature that in myth was incapable of reason or intelligence,
only hunger and rage and bellows. An animal hunger trapped in a bewildering
complex of tunnels and dead ends designed by a genius, Daedalus.
When I hear the word labyrinth, I think of the first truly grand trip that I
ever took with my mother. I was twelve years old and we went to Greece. We sat
on the balcony of our hotel room and ate pre-packaged cheese and drank bottled
water and looked at the Acropolis. We stood in the hot summer sun in Crete and
looked at ancient murals of bulls and men and women and discussed Minos and
Minoan and Minotaur.
When I hear the word labyrinth, I think of a movie with
David Bowie as the
Goblin King.
And now I have other thoughts too.
If you look up the word labyrinth on
dictionary.com, you get,
a. An intricate structure of interconnecting passages through which it is
difficult to find one's way; a maze.
It turns out, that's not labyrinths at all.
On March 7th, our friend Gina did an absolutely incredible job organizing a
fairly large group of people on an expedition to see some of the labyrinths of
Marin County.
Apparently, labyrinth aren’t mazes at all. They are patterns with a single path
towards a center. There are no dead ends. You just walk and think. In the middle
ages, they were often placed in cathedrals to enable parishioners who couldn't
actually go on pilgrimage, to travel in their own minds. As you go into a
labyrinth, you are
supposed to set things aside. At the center, you contemplate. As you out, you
gather the world up again.
We walked every labyrinth that we visited that day and each labyrinth was a profoundly
unique experience.
Celestial Spheres
 The first labyrinth was in the courtyard at the Church of our
Savior in Mill Valley. It is a tiny pocket of brickwork labyrinth and the center
is quite elegantly also the courtyard’s drain. It was so tiny. Such narrow paths
and we walked. At one point, I stood in the center and everyone was in motion
around me. I felt as if I were the earth in some Aristotelian perfect universe.
Everything in perfect circular and eternal motion. Circling around the main
character of my life story, me. I stood and absorbed all that motion into me.
Until someone else reached the center, and then the center did not hold, not to
Yeat’s chaos, but to stepping back into motion. The central figure that is me
returning to the gyre, circling back out around some other center in that still
perfectly circular universe. Until I reached the beginning that is also the end
of the labyrinth and I emerged back into the larger world.
After that the group caravanned to SF Theological Seminary, for our second,
third and fourth labyrinths. Here we were met by Will, one of the seminary
students, who gave a wonderful and heartfelt tour.
Earth
 The second labyrinth is a Cretan style labyrinth. Nothing at all like that long
ago day in the hot summer sun, and yet here is its many generations later
grandchild of grass and earth. We took off our shoes and walked the cool wet
grass. The morning sun slanted bare shadows through a winter sleeping birch.
Here it was easy to pass fellow travelers on the journey. Wide open curving
paths with no sharp turns. As I walked in, I thought about Inana putting aside
her clothing, until she reached the realm of her sister Ershigal, the goddess of
Death. The off-center center of this labyrinth is a Celtic cross, sectioned into
quadrants. As I felt like it, I changed quadrants on the cross and changed
directions. As I walked out, I thought about Inana taking up her identity again.
I thought about Persephone and the return of spring as the world wakes up. I
thought about the grass and the earth beneath my feet.
Motion
 The third labyrinth is an 11 circuit modified Chartres style labyrinth cleverly painted onto the floor of a rec room. This experience was one of motion. The way the labyrinth is
structured, I kept walking straight for people and then circling away as our
position in the labyrinth sent us in opposite directions. At a certain point, it
just seemed right to cross lines and I ended up in the center. There are no
wrong ways to walk a labyrinth.
Dance
 The fourth labyrinth is a 7 circuit modified Chartres style labyrinth painted on a patio beneath Mt.
Baldy, Mt. Tam and the hot noon sun. I skipped on my way in. And for once was
inclined to hug other people as we gathered at the center. And since it seemed
fun, Gina and I polkaed our way out. First doing a rather heart palpitating
rotary and then switching to a skaters position, which was quite full of lovely
spin when we reached right angled curves on our path.
Conga – Uh!
 After lunch, we went to our fifth labyrinth, where clearly the heady amount of
mediation was getting to us. The pattern is painted onto the blacktop of a
playground at San Andreas High. We asked the local skate boarders if we could use their tarmac
for a bit and we piled into the labyrinth. At the center, we formed a conga line
and exited laughing and yelling.
Snoopy Dance
 From there, most of the party split off, but a few hearty souls went up to Santa
Rosa to the Charles Schultz museum where there is a labyrinth in the shape of
Snoopy’s head. We chatted, strolled, commented on the symbolic significance of
the drain behind his ear.
Once more the Stars
 Finally, we wrapped up at sunset at a double wand shaped labyrinth at the Luther
Burbank Center for the Arts. The lines were formed of mounded earthworks and
winding ditches with the occasional flower. The sun was low on the horizon and
the light was golden warm. After briefly trying to open a Stargate by touching
the monoliths beside the labyrinth, we went home.
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