The thought started with the film from 1986, and of the spell cast by her own words at the beginning, and the final realisation that she alone could break the spell. And although she had to physically speak the words to break it, it was the mental adjustment to understanding that she was pivotal to it, and the root of it, that led to being able to break it.

But what was it she was really breaking, a spell? A hypnotic state, or just a carefully constructed illusion that the mind created and adjusted to. Making it ‘reality’. And the word labyrinth meaning “an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one’s way or to reach the exit“. That could easily be description of thoughts, and ideas and mental pathways rather than physical ones.

And the clock that features so heavily, with the pendulum of time ticking away, like a watcher of your mortal self, prompting you to try and solve the mystery or get to the conclusion before your time is up. Just as we do in life, giving thought perhaps to the how’s and whys of it all, knowing we have an expiry time and date, just not being privy to what that is. The other noticeable thing about it, was the number of hours, being thirteen, and not the usual twelve we are used to. Because there has been talk of when we used to have thirteen months in the calendar year, and of changes to the timeline, or rearrangement of things past to how we know them today. My article April New Year, Don’t Be Fooled looks at the calendar subject a little more. But the idea that you are trapped in a labyrinth of information is an easy one to imagine, with blocked and hidden doors and opening, just as in the movie. With traps and tricks to deceive and distract you, and a charming, persistent ‘character’ to seemingly encourage you as well as trying to bewitch you to fail.

But what of the other representations we have of them, multiple examples on cathedral floors, topiary of them, they have been drawn, written into stories, and even built in ancient times they say with the mythical Minotaur Maze. It is also said there is a huge lost maze underneath the ground in front of the pyramids in Giza, Egypt, so they are not a new structure or idea by any means. I can’t help but notice that there is a similarity of the round ones to the cerebral structure of the brain, as we are told, with the square ones looking geometric and harsh in comparison. And we do have an abundance of mazes too in the same formats, even using them for various experiments with animals, In A Maze goes into that a bit more. It is starting to seem as though we are trapped in one, whether it be a physical maze, and a mental labyrinth holding us back so we never work it out who can say for sure. Or as if we are playing out this mental existence within the parameters we have been set, as they insinuate in The Matrix, making us believe that the majority were actually comfortable and happy with their constructed and automated ‘lives’ plugged in to the mainframe.

What is it precisely we think we are going to get out of or escape from I wonder? Again, we have many representations of escapes, of freeing humanity or bringing a great evil to an end and stopping ourselves being used for someone else’s ‘greater good’. Why do we have those ideas? Have they placed there like so much else, to make us fight something that isn’t as it seems, creating a thought process of fighting to save what you have, even if that is what holds you down? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate trickery though, to make the people fight to save that which enslaves them, and any who do might start to realise end up getting stuck in the labyrinth, until maybe one day we all come to realise as she did and understand what the words mean “You have no power over me…”

(c) K Wicks