60 Minutes Lecture.
Abstract
The labyrinth invites us to cross emotional thresholds into a deeper self, one blessing us with tranquility and safety to confront difficult issues in life, emerging from the path with the spiritual courage to embrace needed change.
In mythology and literature the difficulty confronted at the center of the Journey is the Minotaur, a fearsome beast hovering on the edge of consciousness, threatening our very souls. How did he come to be there? Why is he there at all? Stories told for millennia retain the archetypal idea of a fearsome Underworld man-bull existing only to devour the unwary.
Yet putting the Minotaur in a historical context reveals that we are the recipients of a dark legend cobbled together from misremembered tales, linguistic mistakes, and tragic disasters that continued to resonate through time. The kaleidoscope of myth is an endless layering of emotions, interpretations of deity, beliefs surrounding death, rebirth, ecstatic religious observance, social upheaval and natural devastation, all cycling around the Minotaur.
This presentation, illustrated with the elegant art of Crete, will follow the footprints of the Minotaur legend from ancient Egyptian worship of Osiris to the religion of Minoan Crete, the roles played by constellations, Minoan worship of the sun and moon and how, 1000 years after Crete’s demise, the Minotaur became trapped in the labyrinth. Interpreting mysterious symbols central to Minoan religion, the bull, the labrys, and ‘horns of consecration’ in relation to the labyrinth reveals the Minotaur in an entirely new light; waking from a dream to find the monster isn’t so bad after all.