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The Labyrinth:A Spiritual Journey

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The Labyrinth:A Spiritual Journey

Ellyn Sanna with Kenneth McIntosh

ANAMCHARABOOKS

Ancient Mythmodern meaning

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I

The Classical Labyrinth:The Hidden Monster

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The Labyrinth: A Spiritual Journey

We each have a part of our nature that we have a rejected,

a monstrous, twisted creature,

the illegitimate child

who proves weve been unfaithful:

a Minotaur.

We hide this beast deep inside us,

where no one will ever catch a glimpse of it,

not even (especially) ourselves.

And yet, echoing from the labyrinthine

depths of our own hearts,

we hear the beasts roars of pain.

The thunder of its angry hooves shakes our being.Judith Nystrom Kennedy

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The Classical Labyrinth: The Hidden Monster

King Minos had a terrible secret, one he sought to hide from

the world. His wife, Pasiphae, had fallen in love with a huge

white bull. That alone would have been shameful enough,

but Pasiphae had conceived a child from her illicit affair,

a horrifying monster that was part human and part bull.

Minos could not bear to see the proof of his wifes adultery,

and so he built a labyrinthand he hid the Minotaur, the

hideous, rejected child, at the very center.

It is the Minotaur

who conclusively justifies the existence of the Labyrinth.

Jorge Luis Borges

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The entire myths cast lives within you.

The jealous King Minos is you.

The infatuated and heartbroken Queen Pasiphae is you.

And most of all the Minotaur is you.

You have betrayed yourself.

You have hidden your deepest shame

inside the labyrinth of your heart.And you will never know peace

until you go in and confront it.

Jayne Silverberry

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But although the Minotaur was hidden away from sight,

King Minos could not forget himnor was the Minotaur

easy to forget, since deep in the dark of night, his bellows of

rage and hunger echoed through the palace. Consumed with

shame and frustration, the king lashed out at his enemies,

the Athenians, demanding they sacrifice to the Minotaur

seven young men and seven young women every ninth year.

What do you sacrifice to the monster that lives inside you?

The people you encounter?

The people you love?

Yourself? Judith Nystrom Kennedy

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A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth,

but only his Ariadne.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The terrible feast continued every nine yearsuntil on

the third cycle of nine years, Theseus was one of the young

men who came to Crete to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. The-

seus was determined to kill the monster rather than be killed

by it, and the kings daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with the

brave young man.

Ariadne gave Theseus a sword and the end of a thread

from her spool, so he would not become confused within

the labyrinth and would be able to find his way out again.

Theseus fought the Minotaur, killed him, and emerged tri-

umphant from the labyrinth.

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We want to be in control.

We want to map our own life.

Ultimately, life almost always requires

that we simply surrender control,and trust the direction that comes to us

from something outside,

our Ariadnes thread.

It could be a relationship.

It could be a job,

or parenthood.

Always, it is something

we cannot control

that leads us on a pathwe could never have predicted.

Annie Brown

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Ariadnes thread was known as a clew, the root meaning

of our modern word clue: something that points the way,

something seemingly small that helps us unwind a greater

meaning. Feminist scholars have viewed the threads role in

the labyrinth story as a connection to women as spinners and

weavers, to the Fates (the three women who spun the thread

of human life), and to still more ancient feminine symbols of

spider and web.

The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece.

The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.

M. Scott Peck

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The Ego, the monster, wants what it wants.

It is hungry, always hungry,

and it will consume everything in its path

in its futile attempt to sate his hunger.

Theseus is the Everyman Hero who comes to kill the Monster,

to stop the endless sacrifice.But he cannot succeed without giving in to Ariadne

and following her lead.

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Ariadne, the embodiment of emptiness

and the transcendence of Ego,

the utterly passive and submissive,

is the only one who can lead Theseus

through the complex labyrinth and back out again.

His . . . ego is no better than the Minotaur he seeks to slay

his ego, is in fact, the Minotaur itself.Only by this submission to Ariadne,

in seeking her help, can he succeed.

Adam Zatheos

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