What's in a labyrinth?

By Steph Wilson

I wouldn’t say that Labyrinths have been a part of my everyday life

I wouldn’t say “Hold on while I finish walking the Labyrinth” or

“That’s a problem I can take to the Labyrinth”

Would you? I mean would you have any idea what one looked like?

I’m judging that from my comfortable back garden in Oxford where they are not very prolific

But then take Wiltshire, where Sue Allen and her husband Jeff see their labyrinth as an integral part of their rescue and revival of an unloved, run-down Georgian Farmhouse sitting grey and forlorn on a windswept hill.

They got to work and built one. Just like that---Well not exactly. They thought about it and looked up on the Internet, found a book and measured out a seven circuit labyrinth, which they bordered with wild flowers and old fashioned plants.

There it is.

I walked the circuit, waiting to be sprayed by magical “otherness”

I wasn’t, but there was a whisper….. the curiosity of .. “When would you use it and why isn’t it a Maze? What’s the difference?”

The Dictionary fed me stark sentences about labyrinths being “structures of intercommunicating passages through which it is difficult to find one’s way without a clue”…. What sort of Clue? Mazes were “an entanglement” and I would add thoroughly frustrating.

There’s a dark feeling to a Maze, all those tall claustrophobic hedges and deep-set paths which are designed to trick you. The few I have entered have always felt negative, with unrelenting ways of sending the naïve wanderer into an unmanageable knot – or even worse, into a relentless Cul de Sac. They are designed to make you feel thoroughly small.

Returning to Wiltshire and labyrinths Sue and I talked … this time about the labyrinth being a supportive presence in her life.

“I love it; I use it as a walking meditation. Anybody could. Whether they’re young, old, mother’s at home… I can take something that I can’t solve there and, I open my mind and then, by the time I get to the centre I definitely feel there’s an answer.

It’s an unwinding, and then I take it back out into the world with me as I return.”

Labyrinths have their own history, starting thousands of years ago. Originally used in ancient rites, the Church took over the practice and added different designs, incorporating them in Cathedrals, where they were used by the monks as an integral part of daily meditation and prayer.

So labyrinths are mainly for spiritual support?

“Not at all... I am a trainer and one of the Authors of a teaching programme built around Emotional Intelligence. The aim is to enable children to understand and express their own feelings. More importantly, it also includes activities which help them to acknowledge the feelings of other children in the group.”

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