Living with a Labyrinth Floor Maze HOME All content copyright ©2005 by Lorena Babcock Moore. Do not reproduce without permission.

Since our floor maze was finished on October 31, 2003, we have walked it daily, danced and entertained cats on it,
and used it for seasonal rituals and shamanic work.  This article is a summary of my impressions and experiences.

Heart of the House, Center of the World
The maze opens up the living room and a creates sacred, structured, and protected space that is permanent and self-maintaining, growing stronger with use.  Walking it with consciousness and reverence encourages a similar sense of purpose throughout the house, which turns our home into a temple.    The mood of the maze changes depending on the time of day.  It is oceanic in the early morning light, like a whirlpool of waves and seafoam.  At midday it is cool and quiet like a wandering creek in the forest.  In moonlight it is an ancient sacred well or springhouse, a bottomless swirl of dark water within carved marble walls.  When candles are lit around the room and on the three copper tiles, it becomes an underground cavern holding a rimstone pool filled with cave pearls and moonmilk.  When a single oil lamp burns in the center, the heart of the maze expands but the edges merge into a low dome of shadow as the lamp appears to float on water.
Two of my cats enjoy the maze.  Black Impy views a mazewalk as an invitation to play, and waits at the center to attack and demand a snuggle.  Horace, Impy's brother, broods on the tiles when he is alone.  Early one morning when he was ill with a fever, I found him bathed in moonlight as he crouched on the glass bubbles while gazing out the window at the setting full moon.

Sacred Geometry
Most unicursal labyrinths are circular, although they can be adapted to many shapes.  Only the classical Roman pattern, with its four quadrants that are traced in succession, is consistently square.  We designed a square maze for practical reasons, but this shape has several unique and interesting effects.  Our house is oriented square to the compass, with the front door facing north.  The maze entrance faces west.     The square corners encourage dancelike steps that develop agility and relieve stiff leg muscles.  The turns and angles enter the body, and when combined with rhythmic music, help regulate breathing and heartbeat.  On the inward path there is the sense of spinning and being drawn toward the center.  The outward journey is more measured and geometric, and the mind becomes the map itself, easily following its ever-changing position on the familiar pattern.  As with many labyrinths, there is a release of tension on the outward journey, a feeling of accomplishing whatever inspired the journey inward.

Geology
The maze is designed to represent the four elements, but its overall theme is Water, and the geology of the stone tiles reflects this. The "porch" of tiny ceramic tiles creates a borderland with its own appeal, like a gravel beach, and walking up and down this strip is a good way to prepare for the mazewalk.
The dark green path is made of serpentine, a low-temperature, high-pressure metamorphic rock that is recrystallized from ultramafic igneous rocks.  Ultramafics are derived from the deepest parts of the earth's mantle.  They are composed of dark green iron and magnesium-rich silicates, as well as oxides, spinel, and other minerals.  Serpentine is the name of a rock composed of a group of soft, fibrous Fe-Mg silicate minerals that have water in their crystal structure.  It is found in ophiolites ("serpent rocks"), which are metamorphosed oceanic crust.  In the maze, serpentine represents Earth because of its deep mantle composition, but is connected with water through its crystal structure and its origin as an oceanic igneous rock.  The swirling felted patterns of the mineral fibers give the path a sense of flowing movement.
The white background of the maze is composed of limestone, a sedimentary rock that precipitates out of tropical seawater.  A few of the maze tiles contain recrystallized marine snail shells.  Limestone is made of calcite, CaCO3.  The tiles are chalky white and pitted because the outcrops were exposed to weathering at the earth's surface.  For this reason they were chosen to represent Air, although they formed in water.  They have a softer, warmer, more organic look than the cold sugary glitter of marble.  Marble is metamorphosed limestone, and is composed of larger calcite crystals.
In a canyon south of our house, we can visit a natural geological reflection of the maze.  Gray limestone and several types of granite form the canyon walls and the outcrops on the hills that rise above the gravel wash.  But within the wash itself are small waterworn humps of heavy grayish-green lamprophyre, an uncommon ultramafic igneous rock.  A little further upstream there is a marble outcrop, cool and white as milk, that the water has dissolved into smooth hollows, domes, and tunnels.  Both outcrops hold small ephemeral pools of water after a rain.  We walk the canyon outcrops and then walk the maze, weaving their roots together with our own, connecting our home with the land.
 

Water-worn lamprophyre outcrop after a summer thunderstorm.	Water has etched a twisting path through the Marble Canyon.

Shamanic Work
The maze is the shaman's door and path into the Otherworld, a safe enclosure for journeying and return, a permanently-cast circle, a place for meeting spirits and guiding transformations.  Working with all of these aspects, I have used it for psychopomp work, personal healing and transformation, creative inspiration, and even physical therapy after an illness.  Its protective and purifying effect inspired the Four of Spikes in the Ironwing Tarot.
I don't use a drum on the maze.  Because it is such a small, high-energy place, I use smaller musical instruments for shamanic work or everyday mazewalks.  I use a bell, a flute, or a small rattle like the one below to focus my intention and "wake up" the maze.

After the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami, I worked with the maze to dispel the unquiet and distinctly crowded feeling that overwhelmed my studio.  On a sunny, windy morning three days after the event, I walked the maze carrying a vulture feather and my ritual knife.  As often happens when I use these tools, there was a swirling disturbance in the air and the sense of the roof opening in a flash of light, then all was calm, quiet, and empty.
In the days after that I created several pieces of art.  On the January Full Moon, a month after the tsunami, I walked the maze several times in succession, calling upon the Manta Ray (one of my oldest spirit guides) and carrying a small forged iron boat.  The story of the Boatman is a description of that very intense journey.
(Using an iron boat, instead of one made from wood or paper, is not as strange as it sounds.  In parts of Indonesia, iron nails are traditionally left with food and flowers as offerings for the dead.)
The Water Labyrinths website has photos of ritual and memorial labyrinths that were created all over the world in response to the tsunami.
 
 

"Compassion" Gourd Rattle, 6" long. Painted with pink clay, with forged iron handle and ornaments.

This is a snail-shaped maze that we built of local rocks in the desert near our house. Surprisingly difficult to see, it is "hidden in plain sight" between a meandering sandy wash and a large palo verde tree. The spiral walk offers views of the intricate bajada landscape: Granite outcrops, desert peaks, and gravel ridges covered in shrubs and cacti.

A stone labyrinth induces a dynamic three-dimensional coiling effect in which the walking path appears to curve up a hill or spiral down into the earth.  The path wraps around you on the way in, and swings wide (seeming much larger than it really is) on the way out.  These are traveller's mazes - each is a way-station on a longer pilgrimage.  Walking one of them is like visiting a roadside shrine or laying a stone on a crossroads cairn.  In building stone labyrinths like the one above, or visiting those that others have created (such as the Desert Light Labyrinth near Arivaca, Arizona or the Olcott Labyrinth in Wheaton, Illinois) I am especially interested in how the materials and setting affect the mazewalk experience and purpose.  I prefer the classic seven-circuit labyrinth and its relatives (some with "quick exits" or simpler paths) because they adapt so easily to shamanic work.  The more elaborate Christian labyrinths, such as the very popular and historically significant Chartres pattern, appear to be designed for the type of meditation that produces the mental and emotional state of "nonattachment".  Achieving this state is an important spiritual practice in many organized religions, but it is essentially the opposite of shamanic ecstasy.  Shamanic work is all about connection, not detachment.  The shaman simultaneously communicates with spirit guides, the person who has requested help, the geography and events of the Otherworld journey, and the land itself.

Cottonwood rootcave mirrored in the a creek.	Vine lattice on live sycamore.	Bark beetle galleries on dead pine.