SELECTION FROM:
(From: The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World, Copyright © 2003 by Terrie Evans (Tira Brandon-Evans). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, copied or reproduced in any way whatsoever, including Internet usage or other electronic means, without permission in writing from Elder Grove Press.)
THE LABYRINTHINE WAY:
WALKING ANCIENT PATHS IN A MODERN WORLD
by Tira Brandon-Evans
ISBN: 0-9689135-4-7
BOOK ONE: THE UNKNOWN, REMEMBERED GATE
" 'I should see the garden far better,' said Alice to herself, 'if I could get to the top of that hill; and here's a path that leads straight to it - at least, no, it doesn't do that" - after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners - "but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path!' "
Both the labyrinth and the spiral are geometric and mythopœic metaphors, metaphors of journey and return into and from the deepest wellsprings of being. The circle is static, perfect in beginning and ending nowhere and everywhere at once. The beginning and ending of the labyrinth and the spiral are separate, individual. When we enter the labyrinth, we begin a journey to the centre. From the centre of the labyrinth, we journey to the outer edge. What is this journey and why do we take it? Are we hounded into the labyrinth, or are we called? What do we discover at the centre and what awaits us at the margin?
Why do we enter the labyrinth and what guides us in our journey? Theseus seeks heroic initiation and is guided by the silken clew of love. At the centre of the Cretan labyrinth lurks a monster, half-man half-beast. The initiation begins with the courage to enter the labyrinth and is accomplished in a ritual of combat.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll understood the perfect complexity of the labyrinthine journey, which he described as a garden, but also as a chess-board. In his tale Through the Looking-Glass, a desire to view the garden in the perfection of entirety lures Alice into the labyrinth. Once she sets foot on the spiralled path she finds she cannot reach her goal until she abandons worldly logic and surrenders herself to looking-glass reality. Only by going against reason, by walking away from the centre does she achieve her goal. Attaining the summit is, however, only the beginning of Alice's initiation into Looking-Glass Land. The Red Queen instructs Alice in the steps she must take to continue her journey. The goal of Alice's journey of initiation is mastery, the prize a queenly crown.
In Through the Looking Glass, the chessboard becomes the labyrinthine way, for chess is played by sending the pawns and pieces into the centre of the board in order to gain control of the central squares. Pawns that against all opposition achieve the final row become queens. Thus, by moving through adversity the pawn, who begins the game as the weakest and most limited in action, shapeshifts into the strongest piece and is able to move in all directions at once.
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