Labyrinths and mazes - designs, functions, history, and myths

[thorbiorn]

Since I could not find a thread dedicated to discussing labyrinths, below are some references to books, articles, threads on the forum, and external sources. One idea was that with enough knowledge it might be possible with constructing one. However a prerequisite would be familiarity with different designs and their qualities.

Before getting to what others say, here is some of what Laura has written about labyrinths, and mazes:

In Secret History of the World, there are these entries:

Cosmic Maze, 65

Egyptian labyrinth, 295, 296, 304, 319
Egyptian Labyrinth, 294
Egyptian labyrinths, 318
Egyptian maze, 531


labyrinth, 291, 297, 302, 303, 304, 318,
321, 334, 490, 491
Labyrinth, 290, 293, 294, 318
labyrinth and the Minotaur, 297
Labyrinth at Chartres, 333
labyrinth at Knossos, 299
labyrinth of Crete, 295
Labyrinth of Solomon, 334
labyrinths, 294
labyrinths of Greece and Rome, 333

maze, 95, 318
Maze, 290
mazes and labyrinths, 290
mazes of Europe, 303

spiral, 537
spiral maze, 537
Spiral mazes, 303
spiral motifs, 300
spiraling maze, 303
spirals, 220, 264

Troy mazes, 303, 319

On Cassiopaea.org and the Forum:
Among the articles on Cassiopaea.org, a search gives several pages of articles where the word labyrinth is used, beginning with this page.
On the Forum there are very few threads relating to Labyrinths, I will give comments to some of the posts and add a lot of links
Labyrinth (2009)

I've been reading the Adventure Series, and have arrived at chapter 26 where Laura discusses the Hyperboreans, Stonehenge, Appollo and the differences between the Egyptian labyrinth and the more ancient Greek labyrinth. Searching on the net for some pictures I came across this item of interest:

_Julian's Bower Maze - Alkborough, North Lincolnshire

_www.daylife.com/photo/03J40zx1Apgpf

The above appears to be a British turf labyrinth. For more of these see this page.

Legendary Egyptian Labyrinth discovered in 2008 and then covered up? (2014) There has been an update about this story recently. It is not clear to me if it is a real labyrinth or whether it is labyrinthine or maze-like due to the alleged complexity of its design.

Another thread was Labyrinth Locator (2024)

If anyone is interested in walking a labyrinth near their location this site was posted in the American Society of Dowsers Quarterly Digest,
Labyrinth Locator

About the Labyrinth Locator, there is if one goes to their page:

This project is sponsored by The Labyrinth Society and Veriditas, through a generous grant from the Faith, Hope and Love Foundation.

The Labyrinth Society explain who they are in Energy Keepers: A Circle of Loving Support
About Veriditas , see the short Welcome, and their longer about page.
It appears the founder of Veriditas group was inspired by the labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral. About it another author in A Short History of the Labyrinth explains what she thinks is the symbology of a labyrinth in a Christian perspective. According to the labyrinth topology page found on the site of the labyrinth locator the Chartres Cathedral is a medieval type labyrinth. Interestingly, Veriditas has a Considerations for Labyrinth Construction. On the topic of construction, there is also, this Laying out a Labyrinth on Labyrinthos.net founded by Jeff and Kimberly Saward.

Labyrinth typology
The Labyrinth Society has a text about Labyrinth typology by Jeff Saward and Yadina Clark

While people have been writing about labyrinths since the mid-1800s, the first person to really describe different types of labyrinths was W. H. Matthews in 1922—essentially a century ago now—when he defined the difference between what we now call labyrinths and mazes by pointing out that labyrinths are unicursal (one continuous path; a non-puzzle) and that mazes are multicursal (many branching paths; a puzzle).

The different types of labyrinths has been the subject of much more discussion.

Various people have tried to talk about these ideas, starting with some writers back in the 1950s and 60s. In Spain, John Heller and Stewart Cairns, for instance, did an interesting mathematical analysis of what we now call Classical labyrinths. Paul De Saint-Hilaire, who published several books in French in the 1970s through to the 1990s, broke labyrinths down into different types, but more based upon where they occurred than anything to do with their actual designs. Most of these early studies were restricted to specific types of labyrinths or were very generalised, and are now mostly outdated by modern research and developments.

In Scandinavia, where there are five to six hundred stone labyrinths that have been described, and in many cases preserved, there were lots of different types of labyrinths, albeit that they are nearly all based upon what we call Classical labyrinth designs. Consequently, John Kraft, Bo Stjernström, and several other researchers in Scandinavia have been working on a classification of those labyrinths that occur in northern Europe since the late 1970s. But their work was particularly concerned with the different types of stone labyrinths. They do notice things like, for instance, what we call Baltic labyrinths: labyrinths that have a path that comes in and then splits two ways and go into a double spiral, so that you can walk through the labyrinth and all the way back out again (rather than retracing your steps back out from the center).

The Roman mosaic labyrinths are another group that have been studied. Wiktor Daszewski, John Kraft, and Anthony Phillips have all published papers on the Roman mosaic labyrinths, the types of designs that we now refer to as Roman. Daszewski’s study (1977) broke Roman mosaic labyrinths down into three groups: what he called meander, serpentine, and spiral (based on the repeated movement in each quadrant before going to the center).

Kraft’s study (1985) broke them down further into four distinct types, based on design, splitting meander types into simple and complex. Phillips’ papers (1988, 1992) were based entirely upon the mathematical structure of those labyrinths, and he found 25 distinct topological types from the 46 well-preserved mosaics that were part of his study.

Stone labyrinths of northern Europe
Some are covered in the material found in Trojas murar - The Walls of Troy: Labyrinths during 3000 Years by John Kraft. It is an English translation of a Swedish book available as PDF.
Here is an image of the content list:

A related topic is Nordic Church Labyrinths by John Kraft & Jeff Saward.
A Norwegian blogger and author of Viking era historical fiction, Maria Kvilhaug, has an article about Labyrinths and rituals in Scandinavia with notes on how some village people played with labyrinths in the 19th, and up to the early 20th century.

John Kraft, author or “The Goddess in the Labyrinth”[1] has shown that a labyrinth symbol accompanied by myths and rituals that appear to have been common in the Mediterranean world as well as in Afghanistan and India during the Bronze Age was adopted by contemporary Scandinavians. This universal labyrinth symbol has been found carved into rock surfaces as far north as Northern Norway. Real stone and turf labyrinths still abound in Scandinavia, especially along the coastlines, and particularly along the coastlines between Sweden and Finland. But most of these surviving labyrinths are much younger – only between 20 and 30 labyrinths date back to the Viking Age, whereas many have been built later, many as late as the 18th or 19th century.[2] ’(See illustration with the distribution of labyrinths in Scandinavia at the bottom of this article.)

In the White Sea above Finland and Russia, there are the Solovetsky Islands:

One interesting feature of these islands is stone labyrinths and other stone settings, especially the Stone labyrinths of Bolshoi Zayatsky Island. Such labyrinths were typical for Northern Europe, but most have perished and now Solovetsky Islands have some of the best remaining examples.

About the Stone labyrinth on Bolshoi Zayatsky Island, there is:

Lacking standard archaeological study, a research group from Saint Petersburg theorize that the labyrinths are about 2500 years old, according to their orientation, their supposed ritual use, and changes in the direction of the zenith on the solstice throughout history. Most researchers doubt that they are that old; the vast majority of labyrinths in this area date at the earliest to the Middle Ages.

Apart from the labyrinths, there are more than 850 heaps of boulders on Bolshoi Zayatsky Island, plus numerous other stone settings such as a stone symbol with radial spokes, possibly representing the sun. All the labyrinths are concentrated in an area of 0.4 km2 on the western part of the island. Another enormous complex of stone settings on Sopka Hill, in the eastern part of the island, does not include any labyrinths.

All in all, there are 35 labyrinths (known as vavilons – "Babylons" – in the local dialect) in the Solovetsky Islands. All have been made of local boulders. Excavations in the stone heaps have yielded parts of bones.

"at the earliest to the Middle Ages": About the Solovetsky Islands there was also:

The Solovetsky Monastery (founded in 1436), in 1923 became the site of the first Gulag establishment, the Solovki prison camp.

Which would suggest that the labyrinths came after the Monastery, but is that credible? Well, it is very cold there in winter and to stay warm it may help to walk.

Some Russian articles and presentations about labyrinths
1) Stone labyrinth of Northern Europe: Каменные лабиринты северной Европы.
2) Review of foreign scientific works devoted to the study of stone labyrinths in Northern Europe Обзор зарубежных научных работ посвященных исследованию каменных лабиринтов Северной Европы
3) Stone labyrinths in the Russian North: who and why laid out spiral patterns on the ground Каменные лабиринты на Русском Севере: кто и зачем выкладывал спиралевидные узоры на земле This article has some good photos, understandable even if the text is not translated.

An attached image with Russian text, shows some types. The "formatting" is by hand, but it is still clear there are different orientations of the spirals and degrees of complexity. First there are one spiral labyrinths, though the spiral can move both clockwise and counterclockwise, followed by two spiral or bi-spiral labyrinths, and last approaches concentric circles. One can also find examples in this Russian slide presentation, on page five and six, though they are not categorized according to type but according to where they were found, which is all over Europe, though most in the north, maybe because there were fewer people and they had enough of stones, each collected stone was not used for houses and infrastructure.

A SOTT selection about labyrinth

• Mysterious labyrinth found hidden under a church in Mexico... Archaeologists working at the Mitla site in southern Mexico have come across a discovery worthy of an Indiana Jones movie: a labyrinth of chambers and passageways hidden below a church, representing an 'entrance' to the underworld. When the buildings were pu...
• Discovery of a large labyrinth in Denmark, relic of Stone Age people? A series of Stone Age palisade enclosures have been discovered in Denmark in recent years and archaeologists are still wondering what they were used for. One of the latest additions is a huge construction, discovered by archaeologists from the...
• Swedish "Blue Virgin" island with labyrinth and ritual caves dates back to Mesolithic stone age...situated in the Kalmar Straight along the east coast of Sweden, is mostly bare rock and dense forests, and sports an ancient labyrinth, but it is the caves which interest the team of researchers from Kalmar County Museum and Linnaeus University of Sweden.
• Nazca lines: Mysterious desert drawings form labyrinth Some of the Nazca Lines, mysterious geoglyphs that span a vast swath of the rugged Peruvian desert, may have once been a labyrinth with a spiritual purpose, a new study suggests. The new insight, published in the December issue of the journal Antiquity,...
• Labyrinth lies within mysterious desert drawing A large labyrinth lies in the midst of Peru's Nazca Lines, according to the most detailed study on the enigmatic desert etchings created betwe...
• Archaeologists in Bulgaria Find Labyrinth Resembling One in Crete The archaeological expedition Strandzha discovered a labyrinth, similar to the famous labyrinth on the island of Crete. The discovery was made near the village of Golyam Derven, close...

To actually construct a labyrinth, one needs to carry a lot of stones, or dig a lot of turf, or shovel snow, or mark the ice, or cut grass, or put down poles, or cut some maize or corn. The good news is that there seems to be quite a lot of materials to choose from, and people have done it before.