The hidden centre of the labyrinth
(Abstract)
Labyrinths have been painted on wall caves, known from ancient Egypt, represented by Indians from pre-Colombian America, drawn on cathedral paving and reproduced in the form of dance from Greece to China. However, the most famous of all of them remains the labyrinth built up by Daedalus, in Knossos, and associated with the just as fabulous myth of Icarus. What are the links between the myth and the real meaning the labyrinth ? This is the task which has been worked out in the present article.
The labyrinth symbolizes, at the same time, both ways of lost and progression :
- Loss of the being into the lower states either to better rise again after having touched the bottom or to have desired a premature access to higher states.
- Long and difficult progression alongside the initiation pathway, the thread of which links the lower states to the states proper to the human being and then to the higher states of the total being, who has reached the Centre, symbol of the spiritual achievement.
In the famous myth of Icarus, his father Daedalus knows the Centre and the higher water states. His spiritual son only joins, for the moment, the human state, intermediary between the higher and lower waters. Therefore, the father advises his son not to fly too high or too low. To rub shoulders with the sun without enough preparation can only lead to the fall into the lower waters. A fall occurring with a lack of concern as in the just as famous painting of Bruegel the Elder. The labyrinthine progression is a personal matter, which does not depend on anyone else.
This search for the truth, hidden within everyone, is a real pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a search for the Centre of the world, which may be related to the quest of the Holy Grail, a symbol of the Heart of the world.
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