Marilyn Strong and Jerry Wennstrom in Whidbey Island’s little town of Langley. (Photo by Drew Kampion)

 Labyrinth

by Marilyn Strong

In this year of the global COVID 19 pandemic, we are fortunate enough to live on the wild edges of mainstream culture - in wooded, rural lands on an island, surrounded by the beautiful Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges and the waters of The Puget Sound. This has helped most of us on this small Island community to be well, and gratefully so. It also means that most of us are far from the external “frontlines” of the hotspots in this country where the virus has been spreading like wildfire, killing many in its path.

As the doctors, nurses and “essential workers” risk their lives on behalf of the rest of us, Jerry and I are part of the many who are “doing our part” by staying home. However, I also believe that this means that we have a responsibility to work on behalf of all sentient beings on the inner “frontlines” whether through meditation, prayer, chanting, or just sending love and a joy-felt blessing out to the earth and all who are suffering, occasionally throughout the day.

We live on forested-land adjacent to The Whidbey Institute at Chinook, on the south end of Whidbey Island in the Northwest corner of Washington State. We bought this land in 1977, and Whidbey is truly our home. During this unique time of “Sheltering at Home,” I have been laid-off from my 10 to 12 hour per day job running a small spa, and have been joyfully walking the trails that link our home and property to the Whidbey Institute almost daily. Often I am drawn to walk the labyrinth in the meadow that (years ago) had been called “Sanctuary Meadow,” where the Chinook Learning Community members had once thought to build their sanctuary. As it happened, the Chinook Sanctuary was built later at a different (nearby) location, but having the labyrinth there seems fitting, and clearly in sync with our past felt sense of the land.

My understanding is that the rock-defined labyrinth laid out on the Chinook land, surrounded by by trees, uses the same sacred geometry that informs the archetypal, medieval eleven-circuit labyrinth which is 666 feet long and is on the floor of Chartres Cathedral, just an hour outside of Paris. It covers the entire width of the main section of the cathedral. The labyrinth design serves as a temenos (sacred container), a tool for meditative walking and for ceremonial and ritual use. It is an icon through which you can experience God’s presence. As I have been walking Chinook’s outdoor labyrinth, I reconnect to my experience of walking the labyrinth in Chartres in the fall of 2019. It serves as a mnemonic to help me recall my experience of being in that beautiful cathedral, which is dedicated to Mother Mary, The Black Madonna and The Divine Feminine; and is imbued with those energies.

I have also been thinking of the model of the great Spanish mystic St.Theresa of Avila’s “Threefold Path of Mysticism” or the “Inner Way,” also called the Threefold path to God: Purgation, Illumination, and Union. According to Lauren Artress,“This is the path that is energetically embedded in the labyrinth design”1. This threefold path is also reminiscent to me of the three phases of the transformative Alchemical path, described in one text as the three ravens - the black, the white and the red: “the black, which is the head of the art, the white, which is the middle, and the red, which brings things to an end.”2 The Raven seems a fitting character to describe the journey on this particular labyrinth, as the Whidbey Institute lands are home to many ravens, and their deep, reverberating croaks or “gronk-gronk” calls can be heard as you walk the Institute’s bountiful and beautiful trails.

Purgation or the Black Raven (Nigredo)

The initial journey from the entrance of the labyrinth to its center (and the first aspect to the three-fold path) is the path of purgation, or the Black Raven. Purgation is a word from the 14th century, from the root “to purge”. It means to cleanse or purify, to release, to empty, to quiet. This is the path of “Thy will be done”, letting go, surrendering our daily concerns, relinquishing our illusion of being in control. Alchemically it is described as the nigredo, the descent, the “black, blacker than black”. Consciousness descends toward unconsciousness, toward what we cannot see, nor control. Through this we are given the soul’s way of understanding. From the experience of facing the “stuckness” of a psychological situation, an emotional suffering, an ego shattering experience, or a spiritual darkness, the first hope of the dark light is born.3 If we live long enough, if we are conscious enough, this part of the path we know well from our own personal stories. In choosing to (or having to) metaphorically “die” to those aspects of ourselves that we thought were integral to who we were, we discover that we are held in a much larger Vessel. This is the path of Meister Eckhart’s Via Negativa, the path of St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, the path of the metaphorical death that Jerry Wennstrom writes about in his first book, The Inspired Heart: An Artist’s Journey of Transformation. This is the path that we are on individually, culturally and collectively during this year of the pandemic.

At times, writing this piece has been (as writing often is for me) challenging. At one point I came to a point where I felt to be lost in a “mini-nigredo” - I became frustrated, angry and tearful. This is always a sign for me that I need to surrender - in fact the tears are the surrender. As Saint Francis was known to have said, “tears are prayers.” If this is so, I have prayed much in my life!

In coming back to the writing after taking some time away, I remembered that the path I am describing is a labyrinth, not a maze ( in which one can get lost.) All I have to do is get out of my head, stand in my body and in my own truth, claim my own voice. Rather than a dead-end, I realized that I was merely at a metaphoric twist or turn in the path. All I had to do was (metaphorically) put one foot in front of the other, and I would eventually be led to the center, and out again. In The Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, Monica Wikman writes, “Contact with the inner darkness and unknowing brings an experience of ‘purgatory’, wherein we consciously suffer the lostness but also - with grace- a new way out of this state. Then the nigredo brings about the albedo; that is, the washing of the old, dark, unconscious state brings about a whitening as new illumination is discovered.”4 I think the most important part of this is that we must suffer the lost-ness, the darkness, consciously, not spend the bulk of our time avoiding it watching Netflix, shopping on-line, or forever spending time on social media. It is not until we suffer consciously in the dark - just being with it and holding it - that a new way or understanding is discovered. This is the power of purgation. 

Illumination or The White Raven (Albedo)

Illumination is the second aspect to the three-fold path. On the labyrinth it is found in the center, where one may pause and embody prayer and meditation, and be open to receiving wisdom and clarity. The center of the Labyrinth at Chartres is made of a six petaled Flower of Life or rose-shaped area. The Rose is a multi-faceted symbol representing the Virgin Mary, Divine love, The Holy Spirit, the human heart, and along with the Lotus, it is universally seen as a symbol of enlightenment. One of the meanings of Illumination is intellectual or spiritual enlightenment. 

The center of the labyrinth is a place of containment where we can open ourselves to Presence, to the beauty of the stained-glass window-filled Cathedral or the brilliance of the sun coming through the mist in the trees surrounding Sanctuary Meadow. It is a place where we can listen to the still, small voice within. Opening ourselves, listening in a prayerful way, does bring light to bear on whatever concerns we may have carried to our labyrinth walk. As we stand in the center and hold our emptiness after the letting go, we are changed, just as our understanding of our concerns may change. 

As the world has slowed down and come to a halt in the past nine months or so, I have never before so completely been given permission to take as many hours of prayer, reading, meditation and chanting in my meditation tower, and walking the woods and the labyrinth day after day; time that is not rushed, time to explore through my practice and reveries the “inner, mystical way.’  Internally I have been thinking about how to define the work that my husband Jerry and I have been about for these past 30 years. I have not, until recently, understood that what our lives have been about is much akin to the mystical path of service. Although we are householders, we have chosen not to have a family. To paraphrase Yogananda, if you choose to not give birth to children, you must take responsibility for a much larger family. Our prayers are for the benefit of all who suffer and are at death’s door, for all sentient beings, including the earth herself.

Union or The Red Raven (Rubedo)

Union is the third aspect of the path and the final stage of the labyrinth walk as we leave the center and walk the same path out that initially brought us in. Recollected, still and present, this is the path of integrating insights gained, the path that empowers the walker to move back out into the world, refreshed and renewed, just by opening ourselves to the process of walking it. The red raven is the rubedo or reddening - the reanimation of spirit through flesh and blood experience. This is also the path of the alchemical coniunctio, the union of opposites that, when held in the way of an alchemical container, a previously unknown third element can emerge that points the way or offers some resolution. 

Clearly this is a time when we are being challenged to respond creatively and consciously to the ecological destruction, ever-growing problems, and newly emergent realities that we are facing as a global community. A radical shift is once again being asked of us - forcing the issue of transformation, both personal and collective. The problems are intense, multi-faceted and complex. We are involved in a move from the purely masculine Father God and human dominance of society and the earth to the recovery of and integration of the Sacred Feminine (in both her light and her dark sides) ; qualities of care, nurturing, co-creation with the earth community, and a capacity to face, hold and transmute the violent and sometimes destructive aspects of the earth and of the human psyche.

If I have learned anything from my past training and work as a Death Midwife it is that facing and holding the dark, frightening and loss-filled experiences of our lives in a conscious and sacred manner can bring us to and through those three paths to God: Purgation, Illumination and Union. Often family members with the most fear of the death process and caring for the body after death are those for whom the experience is most transformative, just as it was for me personally. Turning into, rather than escaping from, the challenges, the unknown, and the (seeming) failure that death presents to us is an alchemical process whereby everything that looks black, confusing and painful can turn into a meaning-filled, dark luminosity. This is where true healing occurs. I have faith (following in the footsteps of Carl Jung) that as we each do this inner work, our innumerable outer problems will also be transformed.

As Jerry and I walk the third and final stage of our personal lives, the three-fold paths of Mysticism, the Inner Way, the transformative Alchemical path - conscious death and renewal as a path of service - is calling to us, more and more. If you tend the source and drink from these living waters, you may experience redemption, a renewal of being. Going deeply into and experiencing the mystery of oneself and all the the living beings that share this earth community is how the mystery of God is revealed, for we are each containers of the sacred. The natural byproduct of that revelation is to share it with others, and to work on behalf of others for healing, especially in this time of pandemic and climate crisis.

Over the years, Jerry and I have been available both one-on-one with the people who have come to our home, and with groups, through workshops, film, book, art, music, ritual and ceremony, or speaking engagements around the country. In this time of isolation and re-emergence into a post COVID-19 world (however that looks), we will continue to be open to be of service, with an urgency like never before. We cannot stress enough what we know to be the importance of remaining open, being available, and becoming Midwives of the unavoidable Transformation we are in. 

   1. Artress, Lauren, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice, New York, NY, Penguin Publishing Group, 2006.

   2. Wikman, Monika, Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, Berwick, Maine, Nicolas Hays, Inc., 2004, pg. 8

   3. Ibid, pg. 6

4. Ibid, pg. 7