Labyrinth 2021

The first time I walked a labyrinth, I didn’t know what I was getting into. My head was full of Greek mythology, medieval history, and the confusions that come with being in your early 20s.

Back and forth, always turning before I could get my bearings, almost reaching the center and then veering away, never knowing exactly where I was in the process—I was disoriented, frustrated, intrigued. But I kept putting one foot in front of the other, even if it seemed it was never going to end, and suddenly, without realizing how close I had been, I had arrived in the center. On the way back out, I thought, This is just like my life. I was hooked.

Since then, I’ve walked many labyrinths. They’ve seen me through seasons of delight and seasons of upheaval, through two children and moves to three continents—they’re a reset button for my soul.

But I never thought much about them beyond that. But with everything that’s happening in the world, I wanted to know more. I reached out to Lauren Artress, the woman indirectly responsible for the existence of the first labyrinth I walked and for many of the labyrinths I have walked since. In 1991, times were tough in San Francisco, and Artress was a canon pastor at the city’s Grace Cathedral. “We were deluged with the AIDS epidemic,” says Artress. “We needed something we could do in silence, and together, in that very demanding time.”

In the early 1990s, labyrinths in North America were few and far between. Those in Eurasia went, for the most part, unused.

Artress attended a workshop where attendees walked a Chartres-style labyrinth printed on canvas. She came away intrigued enough to make a journey to France, to Chartres Cathedral itself, where the original 13th-century pattern had been built into the cathedral floor as a symbol of pilgrimage. When her group arrived, says Artress, the famous Chartres labyrinth “was under chairs and had been closed for about 250 years, at that point.” Having written earlier for per-mission, they moved the chairs, then walked the original Chartres pattern. A movement was born.

Artress decided that a labyrinth was needed at Grace Cathedral, and not just there. “The nature of the labyrinth is that it needs to be shared, and it needs to be everywhere,” she says. “We have ballparks and family parks available for people in our communities. The labyrinth needs to be among them.”

Artress now heads the nonprofit organization Veriditas, which was founded with a mission of “peppering the planet with labyrinths.” To date, Veriditas has trained over 7,000 walk facilitators, and its Labyrinth Locator database of publicly available sites contains hundreds of labyrinths in almost 100 countries and all 50 U.S. states. They’re in gardens and parking lots, meeting centers and playgrounds, at remote locations and in the hearts of cities.

Labyrinths appeared independently in places as diverse as India, indigenous North America, Tibet, and Crete. Labyrinth designs are as diverse as the creators and cultures from which they come, but they all feature a journey that is much larger within than without: bounded on the outside, seemingly infinite on the interior.

“Those who have done a lot of study in the history of labyrinths have found there are dormancy periods, periods of time where you don’t see labyrinths in the society at all,” says preeminent labyrinth designer Lisa Moriarty. “And then there are times where suddenly it becomes an important symbol for people.”

Labyrinth scholar Jeff Saward has connected labyrinth revivals not only to social upheavals, but to leaps forward in technology, which can help spread ideas and skills but also cause overwhelming change. The most recent labyrinth revival before the current one happened during the Industrial Revolution, when mass production caused the migration of labor into cities, emptying out the country-side and upending communities. Nearly all church labyrinths in England date from Victorian times.

“The labyrinth urges action,” says Artress. “It calms people in the throes of life. It helps them with transitions, and helps them see their lives in the context of a path, a pilgrimage.”

The Chartres-style labyrinth “has a beautiful way of calming the nervous system because it has an equal number of left-hand and right-hand turns,” says Kathryn Bikle, a licensed therapist and depth psychologist who uses

labyrinth work with her clients. “In terms of what’s happening psychologically as you walk the labyrinth, it throws you off with regard to where you are in physical space, yet you still know where you are in physical space, because you can see both the entrance and the center. Your nervous system is calm but aroused at the same time, and it unmoors you from your rational brain. By the time you get to the center, your rational brain is wonky, and your right brain says, ‘Oh, there’s room for me!’”

“It’s a form of walking meditation,” says John Rhodes, an educator and researcher who surveyed 1,250 labyrinth walkers over the course of 13 years and 128 events. “I think focusing on a relatively narrow path has a way of focusing the mind and allowing the intuitive part of the mind to come forth. I think by being able to walk this path, it gives the body something to do.”

Labyrinths have long been seen as metaphors themselves, mirrors for spiritual and physical processes. David Greenwood, a professor of education at Lakehead University in Ontario, makes a labyrinth on his frozen pond every winter, even though he knows that come spring it will melt away. He is now spearheading the construction of a permanent labyrinth on the Lakehead campus. Greenwood says a friend “talks about the labyrinth processing people like the digestive tract processes food. That’s what happens in the labyrinth. You don’t even really have to surrender, you just have to let yourself be processed.” Greenwood’s graduate student and partner in the Lakehead labyrinth project, Gavin Shields, compares it to a centrifuge: “All this stuff is getting thrown in and spun out, and there’s more clarity from that process.” More importantly, it makes him wonder: “What can be shed?”

Kay Sandor, a retired nurse and educator, used to lead labyrinth walks for nursing students to give them time to process all they had just experienced. “At the 7 a.m. change of shift, nurses would come out and walk during their breaks before work or after work,” she says.