labyrinth apprentice training part 1: ritual drafting
Yesterday was the first half of the labyrinth apprentice training. I was very fortunate to receive a significant scholarship towards it, and it has only been offered two other times in the seven or so years the New England Labyrinth Guild has been around. After some hard considerations, I stayed at the training and didn't leave to go to ignited_spark's profession of vows. As it turned out, when I would have needed to leave to get there would have had me missing the major part of the day; we were way behind schedule from early on, for all the right reasons (interesting people with amazing things to contribute), and the day went longer than planned.
There are six students in the group, maybe half of us with about a decade each of experience with labyrinths. We had been told to bring something for the altar/focal point of the labyrinth, and I brought a flat stone I had drawn the Cauldron Farm labyrinth on, one weekend in August 2001, when a group of us at an event were digging out the lane divisions for the [first] stones going in the ground. I have had it ever since, most often propped up within sight of my bed. Even though I have connections to the Chartres style labyrinth which is my Christian lineage, this one feels like my "home" labyrinth.
The day proceeded with some history, practicalities, and beginning discussion of ritual and group work in labyrinths. One of the things we will be doing for the main project of this apprenticeship is creating a ritual. I have something I want to do some day, but it is a bit complex - a shifting through the roles of Theseus, the Minotaur, and Ariadne, in turn, by each person going through the labyrinth. The theme is dealing with internalizations of stigma and horizontal hostility from peers, as each participant enacts and embodies the roles of hero/self-advocate (Theseus), aggressor/perpetrator/challenger (Minotaur); and finally, guide/transmitter of wisdom and compassion (Ariadne). I don't think it is giving "spoilers" to lay this out here, although I would prefer in the ritual itself if the set up included preventing those not yet in the labyrinth to not be able to see what is happening with the people before them. The participants would cycle through, and so I'd need two staff to play the initial Minotaur & Ariadne, and then complete the set of players at the end.
That is a bit complex, and would work best within a larger workshop frame that includes a telling of the relevant parts of the myth, discussion of those issues (especially, as I see it initially, about how those impact community dynamics), and also a readiness and willingness to engage the roles, especially the dual trial of being Theseus in the face of the Minotaur's onslaught (accusations, the worst of inner voices, and so on)...and then becoming the Minotaur, who voices the worst an insider can throw at you, and who, for hirself, is perhaps saying these things consciously for the last time, an expulsion.
Too complex for this training, I suspect. So what I am considering instead is some sort of reconciliation work between the Christian and the pagan symbolic forms of labyrinth encounters. The labyrinth at the church where this training is held is a seven circuit modified Chartres labyrinth. It takes far longer to walk than I had expected, having walked it twice now. An amazing property of this form - the size of a cretan or classical seven circuit, but with more switchbacks (180-degree turns), the experience is very different. The one at the church is painted onto the old wood floor of a large side chapel, and so walking on it, the wood creaks in places, and in socks you feel small gradations of age, where the boards slope gently up and down. Here is a photo which gives a sense of the space, and then a photo of a canvas labyrinth with the same path, to get a better idea.
There are six students in the group, maybe half of us with about a decade each of experience with labyrinths. We had been told to bring something for the altar/focal point of the labyrinth, and I brought a flat stone I had drawn the Cauldron Farm labyrinth on, one weekend in August 2001, when a group of us at an event were digging out the lane divisions for the [first] stones going in the ground. I have had it ever since, most often propped up within sight of my bed. Even though I have connections to the Chartres style labyrinth which is my Christian lineage, this one feels like my "home" labyrinth.
The day proceeded with some history, practicalities, and beginning discussion of ritual and group work in labyrinths. One of the things we will be doing for the main project of this apprenticeship is creating a ritual. I have something I want to do some day, but it is a bit complex - a shifting through the roles of Theseus, the Minotaur, and Ariadne, in turn, by each person going through the labyrinth. The theme is dealing with internalizations of stigma and horizontal hostility from peers, as each participant enacts and embodies the roles of hero/self-advocate (Theseus), aggressor/perpetrator/challenger (Minotaur); and finally, guide/transmitter of wisdom and compassion (Ariadne). I don't think it is giving "spoilers" to lay this out here, although I would prefer in the ritual itself if the set up included preventing those not yet in the labyrinth to not be able to see what is happening with the people before them. The participants would cycle through, and so I'd need two staff to play the initial Minotaur & Ariadne, and then complete the set of players at the end.
That is a bit complex, and would work best within a larger workshop frame that includes a telling of the relevant parts of the myth, discussion of those issues (especially, as I see it initially, about how those impact community dynamics), and also a readiness and willingness to engage the roles, especially the dual trial of being Theseus in the face of the Minotaur's onslaught (accusations, the worst of inner voices, and so on)...and then becoming the Minotaur, who voices the worst an insider can throw at you, and who, for hirself, is perhaps saying these things consciously for the last time, an expulsion.
Too complex for this training, I suspect. So what I am considering instead is some sort of reconciliation work between the Christian and the pagan symbolic forms of labyrinth encounters. The labyrinth at the church where this training is held is a seven circuit modified Chartres labyrinth. It takes far longer to walk than I had expected, having walked it twice now. An amazing property of this form - the size of a cretan or classical seven circuit, but with more switchbacks (180-degree turns), the experience is very different. The one at the church is painted onto the old wood floor of a large side chapel, and so walking on it, the wood creaks in places, and in socks you feel small gradations of age, where the boards slope gently up and down. Here is a photo which gives a sense of the space, and then a photo of a canvas labyrinth with the same path, to get a better idea.