• The labyrinth is a Jungian archetype that features in prehistoric rock drawings.
• Mediaeval labyrinths were not simply ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God.
• Today, labyrinths are increasingly found in therapeutic settings as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.

In Greek myth, Poseidon punished Minos by making his wife Pasiphaë lust for a white bull. Sometime later, Pasiphaë gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. As the Minotaur grew, he became increasingly fierce and even began eating people. Fearing that his people would rise against him, Minos sought to contain his stepson in a series of ever-stronger cages; but after he broke out of the strongest cage, he asked Daedalus to build a maze of tunnels beneath his palace. The Labyrinth, as it came to be called, was so intricate that even Daedalus, having built it, struggled to escape from it.

In time, the Minotaur was killed by Theseus, who retraced his steps out of the Labyrinth with the help of a ball of crimson thread given to him by Minos’ daughter Ariadne.

History of the labyrinth

In the early twentieth century, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, working on Crete, uncovered the existence of a complex civilization whose people he called the Minoans after the mythical King Minos. Minoan Crete flourished from 3000 to 1500 BCE and revolved around a series of palace complexes, the largest of which was at Knossos in the north of the island. The palace at Knossos covered an area of around six acres (or three football pitches); it contained some 1,300 rooms connected by various corridors and stairways, leading Evans to speculate that the mythical labyrinth was none other than the palace itself.

Although the labyrinth was a branching, multicursal maze, it has long been represented, for example, on fifth-century BCE Cretan coins, as a single-path, unicursal maze in which it is, of course, impossible to get lost. As a result, “labyrinth,” although essentially synonymous with “maze,” has come to connote unicursality, whereas “maze” has come to connote multicursality. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) describes four ancient labyrinths—in Egypt, Crete, Lemnos, and Italy—all of which seem to have been enclosed multicursal complexes, confirming that this is the ancient, original meaning of “labyrinth.” In the Histories, Herodotus (d. 425 BCE) claims that the Egyptian labyrinth surpassed even the pyramids in scale and ambition:

I myself have seen the [the Egyptian labyrinth], and no words can tell its wonders: the sum of all that the Greeks have built and wrought would be a matter of less labour and cost than was this single labyrinth.

The psychology of labyrinths

Far from a mere folly, the labyrinth is, like the serpent, the flood, and the trinity, something of a Jungian archetype, found in prehistoric rock drawings at, for example, Pontevedra in Galicia (Spain), Val Camonica in Lombardy (Italy), and Rocky Valley in Cornwall (England).

In mediaeval Europe, cathedrals sometimes contained a labyrinth traced in the nave from contrasting paving stones. Those that have survived, such as the striking one in Chartres Cathedral, can still be walked today. Cathedral labyrinths were not simply ludic or ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God and provided a substitute for going on pilgrimage. Cathedral labyrinths were, therefore, unicursal, as were the first hedge mazes, which evolved from Renaissance knot gardens.

As I argue in The Meaning of Myth, mazes and labyrinths are spiritual tools, not mere amusements or diversions. Multicursal mazes such as the Cretan or Egyptian Labyrinth may have been built not only to guard against gold diggers but also to deter or trap evil spirits, including the Minotaur.

Unicursal labyrinths, on the other hand, may have been traced to guide rituals or dances. The circular unicursal labyrinth symbolizes the cosmos, completeness, and unity, and, by extension, the spiritual path or journey of life. More than a simple garden, it is a removed, secluded, and liminal space that serves to calm and concentrate the mind—which is why labyrinths, often simply mown into a summer field, are increasingly found in therapeutic settings such as hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes.

Labyrinths, especially single-path, unicursal ones, serve not only as a thing of beauty but also and above all as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.

To walk the labyrinth is to re-enter the womb and travel inward, and to come back out is a kind of rebirth. Ariadne’s crimson thread is thus an umbilical cord that ties Theseus to the world while he undertakes the hero’s journey into the underworld and slays the monster.