Week 9: Labyrinths

Labyrinths as an Embodied Pilgrimage Experience: an Ignatian Case Study

• Labyrinths serve as a symbol for the journey to Jerusalem, symbolized with an olive tree at the center

• Serves as a mental pilgrimage

• Pilgrim travels to the center, but also has to travel back

• Metaphor of life as a continuous pilgrimage

• Labyrinths consistent throughout mythologies

  • Currently largely Catholic

• Labyrinths bring the holiness of Jerusalem to the practicioner, like 3rd class articles

• Mirrors Jesus’s call to “go out into the world” to spread his word

• Slows you down, a meditative process

• Labyrinth could be used as a rosary