What makes a labyrinth

Making a great maze can be a challenge. Giving one to your kids can offer them a chance to practice their logic skills and problem-solving. It can also keep them out of trouble for a good few minutes. So here are a few tips for making one. Walking a labyrinth can be an excellent tool for helping with meditation and mindfulness exercises. There is no set rule about which way your labyrinth should face.

A path width of 1 foot is a good minimum size. This is a comfortable width for a single person to walk through. If you plan to have more than one person walking at a time, then 2 feet would be advisable.

It depends on how big you want the labyrinth to be. But, smaller is usually better. You can always walk through it more slowly. You can get an excellent-sized labyrinth with a diameter of between feet. She also loves to volunteer at local STEM fairs to show kids, especially girls, how awesome it is.

Skip to content. Old classical labyrinth drawn on paper. Labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral. A perfect example of a roman labyrinth. Finger labyrinths: Which do you prefer — simple or elaborate? Add a labyrinth made with stones in your backyard! The Chartres Cathedral in France still has a labyrinth constructed in the 13 th century. From there, the practice moved into village common areas in Europe, particularly England and Germany.

Labyrinths were also found in caves of India and Indonesia, as well as with works of rock art of the American Southwest. Ultimately, colonization spread labyrinths around the world. In a world caught up with speed and convenience, labyrinths stand in stark contrast.

They are acts of love, works of art that require patience and persistence to construct and the same to walk. But, the act of doing these things have similar healing and healthful effects as meditation.

Moreover, just about anyone with a lawn or green space has whatever skill and land it takes to build a labyrinth. Backyard labyrinths can be constructed of many different materials. Paths can be grass with stones to mark out the labyrinth designs. Small hedges of lavender, flowers and other herbs can be grown as the walls to offer a living version. Bricks can be laid as the pathway amongst a grassy yard.

My mom has wanted to build a labyrinth in our backyard for a long time. She first walked in a labyrinth many years ago in a park and really enjoyed the experience. From that moment on, the special process of walking a labyrinth was something that she had always wanted to recreate in her own home. My mom turned 60 this past November and as part of birthday celebration my family and I finally built a labyrinth in the backyard.

We came up with a rope and steel stake system which was relatively low cost, easy to install and semi-permanent that looks and works great.

Here's why and how we did it What is a labyrinth and why would anyone walk in one? Simply put, a labyrinth is similar to a maze, however unlike a maze which has branches, a labyrinth is one single path, and as such, there are no wrong turns. A labyrinth's path is supposed to be easy to follow and is not constructed with the intention of making the participant feel confused or lost. Instead, one of the intended outcomes is quite the opposite, as labyrinths are used as meditation tools, to calm and focus the participant.

Generally speaking, the labyrinth has a single opening, you walk in a back and forth pattern on the path until you reach the end. At the end, you turn around and walk out along the same path you came in on. It's pretty straight forward when you see this in person.

Most labyrinths don't come with signs, or directions, they are "just there" for people to walk on and enjoy. Why someone would want to walk on a labyrinth is a simple question with many different answers. Labyrinths are found all over. Sometimes they have religious affiliations, others are simply just installed in a natural and beautiful setting like a park.

Some walk them to feel a sense of calm, meditation and clarity, others probably just think of it as a fun path to stroll on. No matter why you may find yourself walking a labyrinth, it's generally agreed that labyrinths are beautiful and interesting creations. In short, labyrinths are built to be enjoyed, and that's certainly why we built ours. Wikipedia's labyrinth page has lots of interesting information on the history of labyrinths and their uses.

While labyrinths warrant a more detailed explanation then what's offered here, this Instructable is more concerned with how to make one and assumes that if you are reading this, you've already got some interest in making one yourself, or at least learning how one is made, and can research more about the derivations and properties of labyrinths from other resources. The first step was to identify a labyrinth design that we liked.

We chose to go with the fairly conventional design pictured above. This 7 circle concentric pattern with a straight forward entrance, simple pattern and non-bifurcating path spoke to my mother and my dad and I were confident we could re-create it without much fuss - other labyrinth designs can get more complicated. My dad had the great idea of drawing grid lines over the design.

That way we could scale up the drawing to something we could actually walk on With the grid lines drawn, a simple letter labeling system for the y axis and a number labeling system for the x axis, it was pretty easy to identify where the pattern crossed a grid line. The next thing to consider was scale. We had a patch of the backyard in mind where we wanted the labyrinth to go that was roughly 20' x 20'.

Some labyrinth's are bigger, some are smaller. Doing some testing with two pieces of 2 x 4, we identified that 16" was the narrowest path that still felt comfortable to walk on. Any smaller and you feel like you're on a bit of a balance beam. This defined a few parameters for us, the whole thing had to be within a 20' square, and the path couldn't be any less than 16". Luckily these two requirements work out just about perfectly with the design we chose.

If you follow x axis line "G" across the drawing you can see that it crosses 15 boxes along the way from edge to edge of the labyrinth. With a path width of 16" that results in " in total width across the labyrinth, which is exactly 20'.

The next question we asked ourselves was what the heck should we build this thing out of? We have seen labyrinths that are built out of just about everything, from wood, to stone and rocks, earth, grass, vegetation, a flooring material, and even a cloth mat you can spread out on the floor. We also didn't want to hire a professional with an earth mover, since that's also expensive and not very DIY. My parents live in New York, where the winters are cold and everything dies, so a "living labyrinth" was out too.

To be honest, nothing that we'd seen before was quite right for what we wanted, and what's more, my parents are planning on moving in the near future, so we wanted to installation to be only semi-permanent, and ideally, movable to their next home. After some further consideration my dad suggested that we use a wide diameter rope to create the bounds of the path and some steel stakes to hold everything in place.

This system is relatively cheap, semi-permanent and easy to work with. Rope Wanting a natural look I suggested that we test with some wide diameter manilla rope. We quickly learned from the salesman that manilla rope on the ground will quickly rot. Luckily there is a landscaping product called "promanilla" or "unmanilla". It's made from polypropalyne instead of natural fiber like manilla is. To the eye, and even to the hand, it looks and feels just like natural manilla rope.

It's completely static, doesn't leach, doesn't shrink, and won't rot when it sits on the ground and weathers the long wet New York winter. The bigger diameter stuff looks and feels great, but is unfortunately really expensive and so we compromised and went with a 1" diameter unmanilla rope that we bought online for around a buck a foot prices vary depending on supplier - so poke around for good deals.

According to our calculations which we derived from adding the different circumferences of the 7 circles that make up the labyrinth which can be calculated from the graph paper, we estimated that we'd need between ' and ' of rope to construct the labyrinth.

Greek mythology did not recall, however, that in Crete there was a Lady or mistress who presided over the Labyrinth, although the goddess of mysteries of Arcadian cults was called Despoine miss. A tablet inscribed in Linear B found at Knossos records a gift "to all the gods honey; to the mistress of the labyrinth honey.

The Mycenean Greek word is potnia. It is possible that the Cretan labyrinth and the Lady were connected with a cult which was transmitted later to the Eleusinian mysteries. The labyrinth is the referent in the familiar Greek patterns of the endlessly running meander, to give the "Greek key" its common modern name. In the 3rd century BC, coins from Knossos were still struck with the labyrinth symbol. The predominant labyrinth form during this period is the simple seven-circuit style known as the classical labyrinth.

The term labyrinth came to be applied to any unicursal maze, whether of a particular circular shape or rendered as square. At the center, a decisive turn brought one out again. In Plato's dialogue Euthydemus, Socrates describes the labyrinthine line of a logical argument:. Thus the present-day notion of a labyrinth as a place where one can lose [his] way must be set aside. It is a confusing path, hard to follow without a thread, but, provided [the traverser] is not devoured at the midpoint, it leads surely, despite twists and turns, back to the beginning.

Knossos has been supposed since Classical times to be the site of the labyrinth. When the Bronze Age site at Knossos was excavated by explorer Arthur Evans, he found various bull motifs, including an image of a man leaping over the horns of a bull, as well as depictions of a labrys carved into the walls.