SIMPLE GIFTS: BUILD YOUR OWN STONE AGE RITUAL SITE
Have you ever walked a labyrinth? Not a maze, a labyrinth. A maze has false turnings and dead ends; the way in and the way out are hidden by walls or hedges. A maze is a puzzle or a trap; a sort of crossword for the feet. The purpose of a maze is to get lost. A labyrinth does not need concealment; it has curves and turnings that in the end bring the walker to the center of the pattern. The way out is the same as the way in. Turn about and follow the same meanders coiled on themselves. Step over threshold and exit where you entered. Like all forms of meditation or prayer the only change is the self of the one walks the path. The purpose of the labryrinth is to be found.
I'm building one in my backyard. It is a classical seven course labyrinth, a pattern that comes down to us from prehistory. I laid it out the courses with white duct tape and plain old masking tape, after I ran out of duct tape. The center is made out of scavenged bricks and pieces of brick, tiles, and glass insulators from old telephone poles. For the outer circuits I am using chunks of native sandstone and limestone, the goaf left over from my fossil fossicking, whacked to pieces with hammer and chisel.
This afternoon and evening, I put down rocks and took up tape, finishing the fifth course just in time to walk the labyrinth as the sun was setting. The two outermost circuits are still in tape, but I need more stone. The entrance to the labyrinth is flanked by two stones that stand about 18 inches high that I think of them as mini-menhirs, and between them is a flat stone. This is the threshold. I step onto the flat stone, take a breath, let it out, and step into the labyrinth.
I walk with my head inclined, because the lanes are not all that wide, and I need to watch where I put my feet. When I reach the end of the turning path, the off center center of the labyrinth, I look down at the large porcelain power line insulator that marks the spot, take a breath, let it out, turn on my heel, and wind my way back to the threshold, step onto the flat rock, take a breath, let it out, and step off into my backyard, standing in front of the old brick fireplace/grill that we use at solstice for the fire ceremony. I think I will have completed laying stone for the last two courses by then, and my homely homemade labyrinth will become part of our homemade solstice ceremony.
I first walked a labyrinth one evening by candlelight, with my wife and several hundred other people, at a war protest, back when it was still an invasion and not an occupation, a mission that could be accomplished according to the man who set it all in motion. It was a temporary labyrinth staked out on the lawn in front of the local United Church of Christ (The "Don't put a period where God put a comma," people). I think that labyrinth was on the Chartres pattern, much more complex than the one I'm making. Walking that labyrinth was like being wrapped in a prayer; we all committed magic without a license as cars whizzed by on Harvard Blvd. I know it may seem absurd to some pilgrims and seekers for an atheist (with a Goddess Archetype on his back) to speak of prayer or of having spiritual experiences; but I do pray, I do have spiritual experiences, and I don't believe in god. So there.
The experience of that labyrinth moved me, and moved with me. I wanted to do it again. I walk my heterogenous little backyard labyrinth every day, morning and evening if I can. I go out and walk it when I come home from work or when Elspeth is pissing me off, because I find the simple ritual very calming. I step off the flat rock between the mini-menhirs, and I come down where I ought be, as the Shaker hymn has it:
'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves
in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley
of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd
To bow and to bend
we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning
we come round right.
[This post © 2005 Dana Pattillo]
8:26:20 AM 
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