• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 187 0

make something unfamiliar that will not only feed the body but nourish the soul. This is just like preparing to make a labyrinth for the first time. First you study the recipe. When you’re done with that step you gather the ingredients. Then, when you’re ready to go—whether in cooking or labyrinth making—you allow yourself to be as relaxed and focused as possible. The attitude with which you approach making the labyrinth, just like cooking, affects, in so many intangible but powerful ways, the final product, whether it’s a new dish or a new labyrinth.”

There are six steps involved in the process of making a labyrinth:

Clarifying your intention

Choosing the type of labyrinth and materials

Siting the labyrinth

Consecrating the space and the construction process

Constructing the labyrinth

Dedicating the labyrinth

Read through each section first. Notice that step 5, Constructing the Labyrinth, is not included in this chapter, but is the entirety of Chapter 6. Read that chapter as well, referring to its diagrams.

Before you start, allow me to let you in on a little secret: If I can make a labyrinth, so can you. Spatial orientation is not my forte, to put it mildly. I get lost driving to the drugstore. After I moved into my new home, it took me several months to choose which of the two traffic arteries, each within three blocks of my house, I should take and have some confidence that I’d actually end up on the right street in the right direction. No kidding.

So, if I can make a labyrinth, so can you. If you’ve taken the time to “gnow” the labyrinth through drawing it, can follow a recipe, and can give yourself and anyone who helps you permission to relax and enjoy the process, you will soon have yourself a new labyrinth for exploration, learning, and healing.

A seven-circuit labyrinth made of gravel and grass in St. Louis, Missouri.

CLARIFY YOUR REASONS FOR MAKING A LABYRINTH

Jean Lutz claims that your reasons for building a labyrinth are the most important ingredients when constructing a labyrinth. “Nothing else—layout, materials, preparation—is as important as your purpose for building the labyrinth,” says Lutz. “With a clear intention you can build a tiny three-circuit labyrinth in a courtyard, and it would be a powerful labyrinth. It doesn’t make any difference, all the rest of it: the foundation of the labyrinth is your intent.”

Ask yourself and have all others involved in the process of building the labyrinth ask themselves as well:

Why do I want to build a labyrinth?

What do I hope to get from actually making a labyrinth?

Why is it important to me that I have my own labyrinth?

What do I hope to get from walking and working with this labyrinth once it has been created?

An aerial view of the Prairie Labyrinth in Sibley, Missouri. The Prairie Labyrinth is a seven-circuit labyrinth with four-foot wide paths mown into native prairie grasses.

Labyrinths are being built all over the country for many reasons: They are being created specifically for healing from cancer and other diseases, for working with learning disabilities, for bringing in the millennium, for individual meditation. Your reasons can range from one or more specific purposes to a more general intention. Some possibilities include:

The need to eliminate stress in your life

A way of meditation that involves your body as well as your soul

Becoming more attuned to the land and the cycles of seasons

Fostering community

Healing from a specific illness or disease

Celebrating the deeper meaning of holidays such as New Year’s or a solstice or equinox

Celebrating or ritualizing an important event, such as a birthday, an adolescent coming of age, or the blessing of a new home

Building a turf labyrinth in Michigan.

PERMANENT OR TEMPORARY: SELECTING THE MATERIALS

PERMANENT LABYRINTHS

Youcan construct a permanent labyrinth in your backyard, family room, or basement. You also can make one on the grounds of a church, school, hospital, or community center, or in a meeting room or auditorium. A permanent labyrinth will always