[Stones] Gotland / Breamore / penance

[Ric]

Mark White <markjnwhite at hotmail.com> wrote: 
  
>Thelma Wilcox wrote:
Knew Ric had got it wrong, but was too tired to reply, Heywood Sumner also 
has one of his soft watercolour paintings of the miz maze in his Book of 
Gorley. He says that "the early uses of labyrinths seem to have been as 
prisons, and as burial places" When the church took over from the pagan use 
of labyrinths, it was used as an instrument of penance for non-fulfilment of 
vows of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.(you had to go round on your knees) He 
>actually gives a lot of information, several other mazes as well....

I've been lurking for a while now but I couldn't not comment about Heywood 
Sumner's comments. I can't agree with his assertions that labyrinths seem to 
have been places of punishment. I've always understood that the church 
adopted them as a more convenient alternative to pilgramages; if you 
couldn't take a year out to visit a shrine, you could still enjoy the 
exquisite pain that the journey involved (on a slightly more than symbolic 
level). The struggle wasn't a punishment - pain was positive proof of the 
lengths to which you were prepared to go for your god.

Hope everyone's OK, and if anyone sees Terence or Pete Glastonbury, please 
say hi.
mw x

_________________________________________________________________

    hello Mark,
   
  i should rightly be condemned to going round in circles on my hands and knees for placing Breamore in Dorset instead of Hampshire, but must admit - the notion of labyrinths as actual - as opposed to mythological - gaols, is a new one on me: i wonder which labyrinths specifically, though? the one from Gotland wouldn't detain a fieldmouse, let alone a human being? 
  
http://blog.hanshan.org/images/1163681111.jpeg


ric
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