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| Since June 03, 2008 You are Visitor Number |
| Moon Path CUUPS Labyrinth What When Where Why It all started one Thursday evening during the Moon Path CUUPS study group held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ft Lauderdale, 3970 NW 21st Avenue, Oakland Park, Fl 33309, 954-484-6734 sometime in early 1999. The exact date is lost to antiquity. The study topic for the evening was Labyrinths and a video was played. That's all it took for me to get hooked. For some reason I was fascinated. I brought the tape home and made a copy of it. Then decided we needed to build one on the grounds of the UU Church As a group we discussed building a labyrinth. We walked the grounds to find the perfect location. Spelcastor, who is our gatekeeper for the UU Church, said he would check with the powers that be at the Church and see if we could get permission to build one. We got our permission but we could only build a temporary labyrinth since the grounds keepers would have to mow the grass where we wanted to build the labyrinth. We put our heads together in a brainstorming session on how to build our 7 circuit Circular Labrynth and came up with the idea to use plastic yellow caution tape and wood pegs to build our first Labyrinth. One of our members made the wood pegs to stake the tape to the ground and another made some longer ones to lay out the diagram of the 7 circuit seed pattern we were using. We would lay the plastic yellow tape on the ground over the long wood peg diagram and and use the small wood pegs to hold it onto the ground by hammering the pegs into the tape. The yellow tape and pegs would hold up, in case it rained, from the time we built it to the time we had to take it down and we could then reuse the pegs. We also found out we could reuse the tape. With lots of help, and work, the first three labyrinths were built in 1999 for Beltain, Mabon (Pagan Pride Day), and Samhain/Witches Ball. We used 500 tea lights for the labyrinth at Samhain, Since the Witches Ball and Ritual was at night we thought it would be wonderful to have a lighted labyrinth. The wind kept blowing out the candles faster then we could keep them lit. We did have a reporter there who managed to take a picture and I was surprised to see how many lit candles she got in the picture. I then decided to buy strings of small lights (outdoor faerie lights) to use instead of candles for our next lighted labyrinth. By this time I had seen pictures of the square labyrinths which were on ancient reliefs and coins. Using the square design would make it a lot easier to build the labyrinth and string the lights. So the square design has been used to build our labyrinth since Imbolc 2000. The Labyrinth has been built for Beltain, Mabon (Pagan Pride Day), Samhain, Yule, and Imbolc. We had a dedication ritual each time we built a new labyrinth. We set up an alter in the center and invited the Goddesses and Gods to watch over and protect the labyrinth and everyone who entered the labyrinth. We also thanked the Goddesses and Gods before we took it up. We created our own dedication verse which we use upon entering the labyrinth. The labyrinth area is our sacred ground. Most people feel the positive energy from this area. We started talking about making a permanent labyrinth since putting it down and taking it up was becoming a chore and a bore. Spelcastor navigated and negotiated us through all the church politics and before we knew it we had permission to have a permanent one in our labyrinth location. Now we had to decide on what and how to build our permanent labyrinth so it would be maintenance free for the grounds keepers. After taking a field trip in December 2001 and viewing the various permanent labyrinths in the area we decided to use rocks, instead of the yellow tape, and mulch for the paths, instead of the grass and weeds which have to be mowed. The permanent labyrinth was started in January 2002 and completed in March 2002. It covers an area from north to south of 53 feet and from east to west of 52 feet with a center of 6 feet x 18 feet. This allows for 3 feet wide paths with wider paths around the existing trees. There are more then 1800 rocks in the permanent labyrinth. Our permanent labyrinth is layed out as in this picture with a center large enough to hold up to 20 people. Spelcastor and I have conducted workshops and built a temporary labyrinth in St Petersburg at the Florida Pagan Gathering for both the Samhain and Beltain gatherings since Samhain 1999. During the 2000 Samhain gathering Spelcastor discovered we had access to electric near the labyrinth area. So starting in 2001 we also had a lighted labyrinth which stays lit from sundown till sunrise. Sophialinus The Drum Lioness http://MoonPathCUUPS.org [email protected] [email protected] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MoonPathCUUPS/ |