Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [27]
DEDICATING THE LABYRINTH
Dedicate the new labyrinth in a way that works best for you, but do it consciously. “Each group has to figure out what is important for them and the labyrinth,” says Neal Harris. “You’ve got to have the ceremony, no matter how simple, be something that blesses the labyrinth and invites Mother Nature to commit her energies.”
Alex Champion repeats a prayer as he first walks a new labyrinth by himself for its dedication. “Thank you for the opportunity to make this labyrinth, and we bless it in the name of All That Is. We surround this labyrinth with a bubble of divine white light filled with love and protection. May all who walk this labyrinth be balanced, centered, and grounded; have peace and happiness; be healed according to their needs; have their hearts filled with unconditional love. May the energy of this labyrinth always be pure and of the highest quality. If anyone walking this labyrinth releases nonbeneficial energy, we humbly ask the local spirits to transform and recycle it. May the experiences of all who walk this labyrinth be for their highest good.”
As Champion walks, he sometimes holds his hands over the earthen walls and envisions his prayer suffusing them, so that the energy of the prayer will surround all who will ever walk the labyrinth.
When Neal Harris and his team finished constructing the massive Earth Wisdom Labyrinth, 150 people assembled for the dedication.
“We had a very powerful dedication ceremony,” recalls Harris. Participants first smudged themselves with sage for purification while ringing bells and “drumming the heartbeat of Mother Earth.” They then gathered in a circle around the labyrinth and honored and called into the labyrinth energies of the seven directions as well as those of the ancestors, the grandmothers and grandfathers. “We then brought in as a rainbow the energy of all the labyrinths from all over the world that have ever been, or are now. People visualized the energy of the labyrinths as rainbows coming from all directions, with one side of the rainbow in the center of the other labyrinth, arching into the center of our labyrinth that we were activating. To honor the process of giving and receiving, we sent back the healing energy of this labyrinth that was being activated to all the other labyrinths to increase their strength. It was so exciting to feel all that energy as people focused and brought it all in.”
For your dedication, you can create a ceremony as rich as Harris’s or as simple as walking the new labyrinth with an awareness of dedicating it.
CHAPTER SIX
Constructing Your Labyrinth
Now you are ready to make a walking labyrinth. The first two sets of instructions are for a seven-circuit Cretan labyrinth; the last instructions are for an eleven-circuit Chartres labyrinth. Read through these instructions several times. If you have made a finger labyrinth, as you read the instructions for the larger labyrinth follow along with your finger.
The figures are key to understanding how to create a labyrinth. Constructing a labyrinth is primarily a visual and kinesthetic experience; the words are just to help move you along. If you don’t understand a particular step, spend time with the corresponding figure. Read the instructions out loud, trace the step with your finger, and imagine actually constructing as you go. It also helps to have someone else to go over the instructions with you before you begin, to help make sure you understand them.
I suggest photocopying all the figures for the labyrinth you choose to make, so you can have them for easy reference during construction. Then you also can make notes directly on the figures to help in the construction of future labyrinths.
The rope-and-tape Cretan labyrinths differ in one way from the finger and paper labyrinths you have been making. Turn now to Figure 6.1. Notice that the center is wider than the one you have been drawing. This wider center