The symbol of the Labyrinth.

The labyrinth is a very ancient, mystical and universal symbol, which has been important to me personally, even influencing much of my non-fiction writing.

The labyrinth incorporates sacred geometry such as the circle (representing wholeness) and the spiral (representing growth). It also includes the sacred numbers 3,4,7 and 11 that appear in nature, and that allegedly reveal some form of cosmic order. There is some age-old mystery associated with the labyrinth: an archetypal pattern stored in the collective consciousness that the human psyche can draw on at any time.

It seems to have transcended cultures, appearing in all spiritual traditions from the Neolithic and Bronze Age earth goddess cultures, through to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and appears in geographic areas as far apart as Scandinavia, the Indian sub-continent and the Americas. This symbol has been mentioned in myths and epics, scratched on rock faces (petroglyphs), inscribed on timber, carved from turf, created with rocks and boulders in deserts and along seashores, painted on pottery, woven into textiles and basketry, inscribed on coins and laid down in mosaics and tiles in secular and religious settings.

The labyrinth, unlike the maze, has one pathway into the centre and one pathway out, and has been many things to many people across the millennia – usually some form of sacred journey. In its earliest form it seems to have been associated with a symbolic death and rebirth ritual, the return to the womb of the Earth Mother or the spiraling in and out of incarnation. In later Christianity, it was seen as the one path to repentance and redemption and a substitute for a long arduous physical pilgrimage.

For me though, it has always represented, the ‘journey’ I’ve needed to take into my own centre when faced with challenges and choices, a place to listen to my intuition and see more clearly, a place to grow and change and from which to return with a broadened understanding of who I am and perhaps greater insights into others and the world we live in. Such journeys into the labyrinth have been vital sources for my first two memoirs, Nefertiti Street and Maybe I’ll Be Cleverer Tomorrow.