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Chartres and Amiens labyrinths
Identifier
006625
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The labyrinth used in cathedrals is not only a completely different shape and structure to the labyrinths used in the Mysteries, but it was used in a completely different way.
In some respects, walking these labyrinths was symbolically an act showing the need to balance the two halves of the brain - Intellect and Emotion.
The full flowering of the medieval labyrinth design came about during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the grand pavement labyrinths of the gothic cathedrals, most notably Chartres and Amiens in France.
These new Cathedral labyrinth patterns were all laid out according to the same basic pattern, twelve rings that enclose a meandering path which slowly leads to a center rosette. The path makes 28 loops, seven on left side toward the center, then seven on the right side toward the center, followed by seven on the left side toward the outside, and finally seven on the right side toward the outside terminating in a short strait path to the rosette.
In other words symbolically a spiritual journey using the Planets symbolism.
The design was not new as such. It drew upon the ancient northern Celtic, middle eastern, and Classical Greek and Roman origins of the pattern, but was we can see, strictly speaking this is another sort of labyrinth.
A description of the experience
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