Liberation Psychology
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The labyrinth is an archetypal form found in disparate cultures across eras spanning from prehistory and to the present day, when it has experienced resurgence in popularity due to interest in its psychospiritual applications. Regardless of how it is styled, a labyrinth is marked by a shape, usually a symmetrical one, containing a unicursal path to or through a center point. This distinguishes it from a maze, which is multicursal and contains dead ends. Following the path of the labyrinth, the traveler is eventually and inevitably brought to the center and then back out again. While travelers may not know where exactly they are on this labyrinthine path, they are never lost, but rather, somewhere along the way they need to travel. As a result, the labyrinth has become common both as a metaphor and as a symbol of the human pilgrimage through life. A great deal of conjecture exists about its history, origins, and purposes, suggesting that the labyrinth has proven fertile ground for the imagination for millennia. Its universality among prehistoric cultures indicates the so-called classical labyrinth was a primitive form of symbolic communication, perhaps an earliest form of written transmission. It was drawn from a central cross surrounded by four angles and four seed points that were connected until seven circuits were contained in its circle. Cave etchings of this particular labyrinth appear circa 2000 BCE in Spain (Saward, 2002). These symbols appear at approximately the same time in the Indian subcontinent, as well. Later, multitudinous stone arrangements of the similar symbols appeared in Scandinavian soil, often near the coast, leading some to speculate that seafarers would walk them in preparation for their journeys over water. In mythology, the labyrinth first appears in the Greek lore surrounding the Minotaur of Crete. Unmistakably, the Cretan labyrinth was a built environment, an
architectural structure, yet coins from Knossos featured the rounded, two-dimensional form of the classical labyrinth as its signifier. Later, Romans exported labyrinth mosaics throughout the Roman Empire (Kern, 2000), from Great Britain to Eastern Europe to North Africa. Some were purported to be sizable enough for people to travel on horseback; others were too intricate to serve anything other than decorative purposes. Roman labyrinths are distinct for their sharp angularity, both in their pathways and their outlines. The Hopi tribes of North America had a squared version of the labyrinth that they used in addition to the classical labyrinth (Conty, 2002); it was unique in having two entrances. The Pima tribes, in their depictions of labyrinths, placed a human figure at the very entrance, in what later became known as ‘‘The Man in the Maze’’ pattern. This man was thought to be seeking the mythic place of his origin as a place of eternal return. Labyrinths were associated with a variety of burial rituals in Celtic cultures as well as Egyptian society, where they were believed to protect the sanctity of the tomb. Despite its strong
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