In the most recent edition of Caierdroia: the journal of mazes & labyrinths [v.45, 2016], I was struck by the following quote:

As Ullyatt notes in “Gestures of approach”: aspects of liminality and labyrinths, “A threshold constitutes a boundary line or marginal area… from which a movement inward or outward may be inferred, even if not necessarily pursued….”¹

Given my interest in all things liminal, I tracked down Tony Ullyatt’s article, published in Literator [32(2) Aug 2011: 103-134] and gave it a read.  Here are some thoughts.

Summary: Ullyatt discusses some definitions of liminality, discriminates between two- and three-dimensional aspects of labyrinths, summarizes various descriptors of the labyrinth walking process, and finishes up with a “brief consideration of the liminal significance of the Knossos Labyrinth’s location on the isle of Crete.”

For those just joining us, a limen is a boundary; the term—as liminal and liminality—has been appropriated by ritual scholars (Turner, Van Gennep, et al.) to describe the boundaries between “real” life and the mental/social/spiritual states entered into by practitioners of various rituals: shamans, priests, labyrinth walkers, artists,etc.  I have used it in  Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy to link ritual, the Hero’s Journey, and the creative process.

Essentially, the liminal state is where we are when we strike out from the normal (State A₁) and find ourselves in unfamiliar territory (State B).  With any luck, we will return to State A₂, changed/triumphant/renewed.  If we’re talking about labyrinths, that boils down to entering/center/leaving.  That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.

What I found curious about Ullyatt’s article was that he (she?) takes the OED definition of liminality and springs from the concept of “threshold” to discuss the opening of the labyrinth as an entrance to a house, i.e., entering a labyrinth is in some way similar to returning to one’s own hearth.  It seems to me that this is missing an essential element of any labyrinth: crossing the threshold of a labyrinth is not returning in any way but rather a leaving, a striking out from State A₁ to arrive at State B.

Yes, “threshold” implies a house/home, but Ullyatt has not considered that, like Bilbo Baggins, we may find ourselves over that threshold following a road that goes “ever on.”  Or that we may someday need to break through a wall and make a new door where there was not one before so that we can create new paths for ourselves.  We may go into a labyrinth, but I think it is the same as going into the woods: in no way are we seeking the familiar when we do so.

As we Lichtenbergians say, while sitting around the fire pit beside my labyrinth,

Take the pathway
to explore
uncover
confront.
Return to the fire
to confirm
affirm
retreat.²

Ullyatt goes on to talk about the labyrinth as sacred space, quoting Eliade:

The sacred is always dangerous to anyone who comes into contact with it unprepared, without having gone through ‘the gestures of approach’ that every religious act demands.

This concept has always interested me since I have found, both with my labyrinth and especially with the 3 Old Men labyrinth, that there is a tension between the expectation of “dangerous approach” and the reality of these two labyrinths.  Indeed, at the burns we have found that many people express trepidation in entering the labyrinth, especially when the Old Men are officiating.  (We are fairly awe inspiring.)

My take is that the burners who pull back from entering/experiencing the labyrinth are responding to the labyrinth’s powerful pull as a sacred space and to their own fear that they don’t know the “gestures of approach” that will allow them to enter it safely.  I also believe that they recognize somehow that to enter the labyrinth is to strike out to the unknown, to leave State A—and who knows what State B could even be? If you’re a hippie who’s just trekking down to see the Effigy or to boogie at Incendia, that may not be on your agenda.

As Ullyat asks in a series of pertinent questions:

Apart from the certainty of the path itself, what expectations might we have about what could happen to us, psychologically at least, on the journey to the centre? Where are we heading? And in which direction? Are we moving “inwards” and, if so, what does that mean geographically, physically, psychologically, or spiritually? When we arrive at the centre, where are we then? Have we arrived at some sort of inner sanctum, the core of our being, the central purpose of our journey, after which our lives will be changed in some manner forever? What were we expecting to find at the centre? Have those expectations been met, and, if so, in what ways and to what extent? What are we meant to discover there? […] At the centre, are we only halfway through our travels? Uncertainty seems unavoidable unless we are made ready for the experience.

… Further, we might ask: Is the obliteration of the self, even temporarily, one consequence of arriving at the centre?

I wouldn’t go in either.

Of course, the Old Men are not there to guard the space, although that may be difficult for the average hippie to discern by torchlight.  We simply hold the space for anyone to encounter on their own terms.  We knew going into our first burn that we would host drunken revelers, smart-ass kids, and idiots.  All are welcome to enter, race through, step over the walls, laugh riotously, and in general miss the point.   That’s perfectly fine.  We’re not there to enforce orthodoxy.  Or heterodoxy, for that matter.

I will note here that the labyrinth of the 3 Old Men presents an interesting variation and challenge on the usual definition of labyrinth and the process of walking one.  First of all, there’s not one path, there are four—and each of those four paths split and rejoin twice before reaching the center.  We often see burners enter the labyrinth under the assumption that they are encountering a maze—that is, they are there to solve a puzzle and must be on guard not to be tricked—only to find, if they’ve chosen the “wrong turn” that they are merely in a simple loop and cannot be tricked except by their own expectations.  However, it is undeniable that there is an element of choice present in this labyrinth that is simply not there in the traditional unicursal design, from which entrance to use through the splits in each path to which exit to take.

Further, when the Old Men are officiating, the shape of the experience changes.  Without them, participants can walk to the center and back—the usual A/B/A journey (albeit with the above-mentioned choices to make).  When we’re standing at the entrances, though, there’s another, significant focal point.  After journeying “there and back again,” the walker is offered an additional, final opportunity to find meaning in the experience: depending on which Old Man he encounters, he will be offered a blessing, a request for a blessing, or a struggle (however he defines it).  I would be interested to know whether most participants regard that final encounter as in fact “final,” the end of their experience; or, as I see it, a second “beginning,” a hippie equivalent to Ite, missa est.³  I imagine that mileage varies.⁴

At any rate, in the second half of the article Ullyatt goes on to lose the thread of his topic with a meandering discussion of three-dimensionality, i.e., the space around labyrinths, and something something Minotaur.  He does note that a labyrinth is a “sheltered space,” that “the space around the labyrinth (rather than just the area the labyrinth itself occupies) may offer some sense of spiritual refuge and safety.”  I have certainly found this to be the case, both in my own back yard and with 3 Old Men.  Even with the camp next door blaring karaoke “Total Eclipse of the Heart” or Incendia’s DJ whomp-whomping away across the road, burners have told us repeatedly how calming they have found our installation—and now that we’ve been to enough burns, they look for us to provide that refuge.

Liminality.  It’s a thing.

—————

¹ Louët, A.P., & J.K.H. Geoffrion. “Labyrinth doorways: crossing the threshold.” Caierdroia, 45: 11-31.  This was a discussion of representations of literal doorways at the entrances to floor labyrinths and need not concern us here.

² Lyles, et al. The Book of the Labyrinth. The Path.

³ Said at the end of the Catholic Mass.

⁴ Deserving of some thought and analysis, but not here: what choices are being made by those who leave by the “front” entrance to the labyrinth, i.e., the octagonal mat with our bowl of white kaolin body paint, and where there is no officiant?

I have not reported on my experience at Alchemy 2015: Amalgamation because I’ve been busy getting A Christmas Carol on its feet.  Not only that, but as you will guess, it took me two weeks after the burn to get the 3 Old Men’s stuff all cleaned, dried, and packed away.

Disclaimer: Many of these photos were taken by other people, and to my shame I did not make any notes for crediting them in this post.  If I can go back and find them, I’ll correct that.  If you’re reading this and recognize one of yours, let me know and I’ll credit you.

Also disclaimer: You will notice a great lack of people in these photos.  The burn community is very protective of its privacy, and I feel a little strange even posting about the weekend, but I think it’s worth sharing.  For the same reasons, I will not be giving an overly detailed account of the burn.  Sometimes you have to experience the mystery for yourself.

Alchemy was nearly a month ago, the first weekend in October. I arrived at the burn on Wednesday on “early entry,” to set up the labyrinth along with another of the 3 Old Men troupe, who was bringing fire art to our camp for the first time.  Here’s our theme camp area:

I had gone up the weekend before to help the Placement Team lay out the theme camp areas, so I knew what to expect (which was an area smaller than I had requested and which barely had room for all of us).  First we set our tents up, and then we got to work on the labyrinth.  You will recall that I spent many weeks sewing hundreds of yards of muslin to create the new walls for the labyrinth, and on the whole it looked good.

There were still some saggy spots due to some inexplicable errors in my measuring.  Safety pins worked; I’ll pull it all out and fix it next April before we hit the road again.  You will also notice in the photo above the octagonal mat at the north entrance, with the tripod holding the bowl of kaolin.

Here’s our first test of the new fire thingies—actually called “poofers” by those whose craft this is.  It was very cool:

However, the weather was not in our favor.  It was supposed to be pretty all weekend, with a high pressure area keeping a rain front at bay until we were done, but Hurricane Joaquin ruined all that.  It began raining Wednesday night and did not stop until Sunday.  The 3 Old Men generally do four of our labyrinth rituals a day, but at this burn we were barely able to do four altogether.

But boy, we looked great when we did:

It looks like we’re holding the flame, but we’re not.  We’re holding our 8-foot staffs; the poofers were right behind us.  Quite impressive.

For some reason, I own more tarps than necessary, but thank goodness for that.  We were able to fashion a reasonably comfortable shelter from two of our canopies and the tarps.  Here’s our kitchen/living room area.  I bought a propane fire pit after last year’s experience of freezing half the time—you can see it back with the chairs.  Everyone rejoiced that I had made the purchase:

I joked that the number of new structures in our camp was deplorable.  Passersby would have seen multiple Old Men poring over instructions while others helped assemble their tents and canopies.  But we were not alone in that regard, I discovered as I walked about.

It rained.  After so much planning and execution, it was very disappointing that everything you owned was wet and muddy.  Dry socks became a commodity.  The camps became mudpits; the parking lot and roads became impassable:

The leadership of the event prevented what could have been a catastrophe with speed and decisiveness.  They closed the gates to keep the parking lot from trapping thousands of vehicles in the mud; had gravel brought in for the roads inside the burn itself; reopened the gates; provided shuttles to get people/stuff into (and out of) the burn; and in general leadership neither played nor slept for the four days of the burn.

This didn’t solve all the problems, of course.  More than a few theme camps never made it, and several funded art projects were never installed. Those that did were severely hampered by the weather—a cuddle pit of stuffed animals, for example, becomes problematic when they’re all soaked.  It was uncomfortable to travel, so many people didn’t get out and about as much as they normally would have.  (My personal goal this burn was to get out and experience more of the burn.  Because I’m a great wimp, I partially failed at that, although I did see more this year than last year.)

In our own camp, three members never made it, and three went  home on Saturday afternoon during a break in the rain.  Because the labyrinth was now a sopping wet, heavy mess, I asked my campmates to help me take it down while they were still there, which they kindly did.

After we got it all down, we found that despite the weather we had had enough visitors to trample the grass into the very recognizable outline of our labyrinth:

At that point we were grateful that the owner of the property had not mown our area again before we got there.  The trampled grass prevented our camp from being a complete mud hole.

However, everything was still soaked to the core.  I had put my tent where a depression ran through the campsite, and it became a river.  One corner of my tent ended up below the water level, pulling a Titanic and letting water in over the rubberized flooring.  Even after I shored up the corner and then mopped/bailed out the inside, it felt and sounded as if I were walking on a water bed, and after I took my tent down on Monday I discovered why:

By Sunday afternoon when the rain finally stopped, the three of us remaining had all decided to stay until Monday to let the mud settle a bit and to see if there was less competition to get out of the parking lot.  This proved to be the right decision, and without too much trouble I was able to load the trailer and cross the flooded “dry creek” to get back on the road to Newnan.

Here’s the thing: even though my mantra for the entire burn was “I can be cold, or I can be wet, but I cannot be cold and wet,” and nothing I owned would dry out, and half my camp either left early or didn’t arrive at all, and everything was just wet, wet, and gross, it was still a burn.  It was still full of wonderful people doing amazing things.  Art still went up, food and drink were still served, whomp-whomp music still played all night [I’m looking at you, Discordia…], and stuff was still burned.

For example, here’s the Minotaur, a 30-foot tall sculpture by Vermont artists Kim and Chris Cleary:

Here’s the Effigy itself, atop the hill:

That thing was actually climbable.  Hippies younger than I did that.

Here’s the Temple at night, lit from within:

So much more, none of which I have photos of, and which I would be hard pressed to list or describe.  There was a butterfly dome with scores of Monarch butterflies, all released the last day of the burn to find their way south.  There were amazing sculptures of light, programmed to react to the presence and movement of the itinerant hippies.  There were camps to dance in, to sing in, to eat and drink in, to take shelter in.  There were thousands of muddy hippies, ruefully making the best of a terrible situation with good humor and sass; the burn was soon rechristened as “Alchemuddy: Almudgamation.”

Because of the Principle of Radical Self-Reliance, Alchemy never threatened to turn into a disaster like TomorrowWorld, which had stranded thousands of unprepared party-goers in similar muddy woods just the weekend before.  (Someone who camped at Tomorrow World told me that for those who were burners, TomorrowWorld was fine.  It was just the “sparkle ponies” who descended into chaos.)

Above all, there was that sense of community which sustains those of us who burn and which lures us back again and again:

That’s a shot of Center Camp—information stations, performance space, and art projects—from Effigy Hill.  Does that look like a terrible place to be?  It was not, rain or no.

Here’s another shot of the main camping area, taken from Silent Hill:

Behind this view is a hilltop covered with more camps, and out of sight to the right and to the far right are three more camping areas.  You never run out of places to go and hippies to meet.

And did the rain stop the hippies from burning All The Things?  It did not:

The Minotaur burned—the Effigy burned—the Temple burned.  We cheered, we danced, we sat in silence.  On Sunday, it was very strange to walk around the burn and be aware that the hill was empty: no Effigy, no Temple, all consumed, gone.

And Sunday was just fun.  The burn officially goes through Monday morning, but many people leave on Sunday since they have to work on Monday.  I of course do not have that problem, and now I plan to stay through Sunday night anyway.  The rain had stopped and it was warmer.  My fellow Old Men and I tromped all around the burn—all the large camps were in full swing, and we ended up at a sound camp deep in the woods, watching brilliant fire spinners do their thing and dancing to the DJs set.

So was it miserable?  Absolutely.  Would I do it again?  Without any hesitation.

So here are two photos of Alchemy 2015:

 

Both are true.