Sorbitol Unbranded“Problems are solved by walking,” St. Augustine is said to have said. When it comes to prayer, many mainline Protestants seem to take this adage to heart, with churches dedicating considerable space and funds to building labyrinths, mandala walks designed to foster contemplative practices and spiritual healing.
Since the pandemic, the trend has spread beyond churches, with mazes appearing on interfaith college campuses, community centers and hospitals. New York Post And the BBC has recommended maze walking as a form of stress relief, rather than as a spiritual discipline.
The story of the labyrinth as a Christian symbol begins with Chartres Cathedral, whose floors have had labyrinths since the early 13th century, but proponents of the practice also cite examples of Amerindian, Celtic, and Kabbalistic labyrinth designs. Touted as a source of inspiration by the founders of the modern Labyrinth Movement, the Chartres Labyrinth bears little resemblance to the “interspiritual” practices that surround the movement today.
Thirteenth-century pilgrims probably walked the labyrinth, most of them on their knees, using the structure as an opportunity for penance: the original purpose of the labyrinth was sanctification, not self-realization, but this has been entirely forgotten in the modern labyrinth movement.
The priest of Chartres Cathedral points out that the Minotaur, believed to be at the centre of the design, represents Satan, and that the whole design is a physical representation of relief. A 16th century manuscript states:This labyrinth shows just what the world is like: wide for those who enter, but narrow for those who return. So that those who are taken prisoner by it, and crushed under the weight of vice, can hardly return.
Mazes built in recent decades hardly convey the spirit of Chartres or medieval labyrinth reliefs, a disconnect that dates back to the founder of the modern labyrinth movement, Lauren Artres, a priest at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, who built the cathedral’s labyrinth in the early 1990s.
Artres claims to have “rediscovered” labyrinth walking after removing a pew from Chartres Cathedral that had previously concealed the design. Artres acknowledges that the practice she popularizes has no historical evidence, but her New Age historiography attributes it to “teachings hidden by ancient teachers to be discovered at the right time.”
Rather than reconcile her innovative spiritual techniques with the Christian history of the labyrinth symbol, Artres has always staffed her movement with mystics, citing shamans, geomancers, and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as inspiration for founding her organization, Veriditas. Ironically, geomancers were condemned by the late medieval church less than a decade after the labyrinth was embedded in Chartres Cathedral.
The New Age spirituality associated with the Labyrinth Movement continues to this day at Veriditas. Next month, Veriditas will host an event celebrating the “journey from ‘good’ to ‘better,'” a Pelagian formula that is entirely at odds with traditional Christian understandings of sin and atonement. Interestingly, “making good people better” is also a common motto in Freemasonry.
Despite its non-Christian origins, the labyrinth movement has become popular among progressive churches, and even some of the most iconic mainline Protestant churches have installed labyrinths as permanent or temporary spiritual disciplines. These depictions are not all negative: most faithful churches use labyrinths functionally, as a walking aid to devout, contemplative prayer.
However, the development of the labyrinth has encouraged further secularization and liberalization of the church. Modern labyrinth practice is rooted in the occult and universalism, making it an easy gateway to heretical beliefs. At the Washington National Cathedral, a “Labyrinth Coordinator” instructs practitioners to pray to God or the universe while walking the labyrinth, and Christian belief is left to personal preference.
The vaguely pantheistic worldview promoted by many labyrinth advocates explains well why the growth of labyrinths in churches has stagnated while labyrinth construction in the secular world has increased. The labyrinth’s non-binding, self-improvement ethos makes it an ideal choice for universities, public parks, rehabilitation centers, and other institutions that want to accommodate a “spiritual but not religious” public.
The purpose of the labyrinth in Christian tradition has always been to draw attention to the reality of evil and the saving power of Christ. Modern labyrinth walking exhibits a kind of aimless, vague spirituality that’s appropriate for a county library but not for a church. A church looking to incorporate new spiritual practices would be better off digging into thousands of years of accumulated faith rather than shuffling furniture around in search of secret wisdom.
