Labyrinths as an artistic process
This is a long rambly one! Grab yourself a cup of tea and enjoy!
Reiki Course
I am offering two Reiki Level 1 courses in October. One is on weekends and the other on weekdays so folks can choose what fits best in their schedule.
This course is for anyone who would like their Reiki Level 1 training and I am specifically reaching out to caregivers. Reiki is enormously helpful for those who are caring for family or who work in the caring professions. Parents, those helping the elderly, doctors, massage therapists, PSW’s, teachers… care giving can take many forms.
I am starting to incorporate tools from Anthroposophy and New Adult Learning in my course. This adds a rich layer. We also take time to walk the labyrinth and learn overtone chanting as a bonus.
Labyrinths as an artistic process: An interview with Bruce Parsons
I met Bruce Parsons over ten years ago through his daughter, my friend, Jenny Parsons. He came to the farm to make a labyrinth and the process was amazing, moving for me. Let’s back up even farther.
I have always been interested in the land. As a young adult I studied garden design at UBC. The artistic process of a person dreaming up an idea and then working with the earth to create that idea in the physical realm has always intrigued me.
I am also interested in the energies that the earth sends up and the way that we interact with these energies. When we were looking for the farm I had hoped to find lay lines, to feel the energy of the land choosing me. The process was in fact a mundane one. Price range and location were the driving forces but I’ve since learned that even the mundane can have spiritual sparkle around the edges.
So, ten years ago Bruce came to the farm to make a labyrinth. He dowsed the whole site looking for an underground river or some sort of indication of a high energy spot to place it. There was no spot. Turns out our farm is very calm. So he went to the trees to ask. A friendly maple said yes, this is a good spot.
Bruce laid out the form with landscape flags.
It was beautiful. I planted heart nut trees around the circle.
We did not, however, take into account the mowing. It was laid out on pasture land and soon the grasses grew, the plastic blew off the flags and we were left with a circle of trees.
When we put in a pasture fence a couple years later we held space for the labyrinth. The fence curved around the space.
I finally worked up the courage ten years later to ask Bruce if he would lay out the labyrinth again, this time taking into account the width of the mower. I spent the spring of 2024 raking the area and using a metal detector to find the old flags.
Then, with the help of some volunteers, we made the new labyrinth. I now use it as part of my reiki practice here at Crickhollow. People are welcome to walk the labyrinth before or after a reiki session or just on its own.
Rosemary:
What is Land Art?
Bruce:
Land art is something that in the 70s, people were doing. Going to locations in the desert or in the mountains and sometimes changing the environment, sometimes building something, sometimes for a cause about environmental conditions in the rain in the forests that are being cut in BC. So that kind of action.
When I started out, I was a landscape artist. But not just taking a photograph and coming back and making a great picture.
It was the practice of sitting in a place for an hour or two or a day and just responding to the landscape. You're probably not looking at a big event, a special tree or something, but you're just taking it in. And also, I was interested in Chinese landscapes because the Chinese landscape, too, is you go out into the mountains and you sit in a tea house, you have tea, you think, you just take it all in.
You don't draw anything. And then when you get back to the studio, you try to draw it out of yourself as a kind of filtering device to make a picture that can be read in time. In other words, you can walk through the landscape from the distance to the front and it's a walking tour.
So both of those things were, I'm sure, inspirational for my interest in working in an environment. And also because I spent a lot of time as a Boy Scout, as a lifeguard and taking care of other young people. I just, I like it in nature. So being out there and finding a focus is part of my attraction to that.
On top of that, there was the group of seven.
They went on their camping trips. So it comes out of that. That's the only thing I really knew when I was beginning to make my art.
And then more recently, there's an artist called Joseph Beuys, who's a German artist. He was involved in the Green Party.
He did installations that involved bees and honey. He did some things with a coyote dog in New York. And he did a big tree thing in Documenta, which is a big exhibition in Germany every five years.
It was called 7,000 Oaks. And so his project, because all the oak forests had been cut down in Germany, he would replace the forest with a basalt stone, about four feet tall, sort of pillar, which ideally feeds oak trees, makes them very special. So what his idea was to get people to buy one of these stones and plant an oak tree somewhere in Germany.
And then he wanted it to happen all over the world with 38 different other trees. And it took him, I guess, five years to get rid of, to get places for 7,000 oak trees.
And I think there was about 12 of them in New York City in the Soho area. But anyway, he's a big influence on my approach to social art and interactive art and work that causes discussion.
Rosemary:
What introduced you to labyrinths?
Bruce:
My first contact with the labyrinth as a kind of installation piece was at a conference for dowsers. You know, they're the water diviner people.
I got very interested in places like Stonehenge. And I had already gone to Egypt because I was curious about the pyramids as a land project.
And I spent a lot of time there walking around it and trying to figure out how they moved it and the reasons. So all that kind of installation stuff has always been on my mind.
But at York University, as part of the thing, one of the guys set up a 30 foot by 30 foot flag labyrinth on a site that they determined was an Indian special site where there's an underground river on the campus. And so I would go out there and look at it all the time. The guy said, you can see that the Indian souls are speaking through the flags.
If you look at it, you'll see that yellow flags flow first, and the red flags flow later, and then the blue flags, and then the green flags. And I thought, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I've heard a lot of tall tales, but that's a good one.
And then I went out and learned that if there was a breeze and one group of flags would blow, and then the other one would blow. And they're all the same plastic flags. The only thing is the difference of the colour.
I never did figure that out. Except that it's possible that the colour did make a difference to the wind and the motion.
I don't know. Anyway, it was fascinating. I kept thinking, okay, you know, I don't believe in ghosts and spirits or soul.
I'm an atheist. But I'm interested in, you know, there's a world that's bigger than we are.
And it has some kind of, and we're part of the whole system. It's more like a Buddhist vision of the world.
Although I grew up a Catholic, so angels and Virgin Marys and all that stuff is part of the folklore. I'm not against that.
I just can't get on board. My favourite was the Virgin Mary.
Carl Jung was also a big influence, too, in a way, because I was also interested in dreams and art and the subconscious. And, of course, he did these wonderful paintings of mandala, circular paintings.
Rosemary:
I found it interesting watching you with Jenny, when you came to just lay it out, just the idea that you have a concept of something, and then to actually carve it out onto the land. My background is in garden design so I connect with that. I find that whole thing of like, you walk into a space, and the imagination just gets going, and all these ideas come. And then, over time, you're able to actually make it real on the ground. Could talk a bit about that process?
Bruce:
All right. So, usually, because it's a walking labyrinth, and you really are connected to the earth, that's part of the energy you get out of it. That, you know, I've done ones on canvas, and ones that go on the highways that are painted, not in the middle of the highway, but at an off intersection, and flag work.
And I've actually put some over where there's an underground river and allowed people to douse with it. So, I sort of had fun with that.
But at the Dowsing Society, they talk about it as a kind of, it's a womb, and it's a pilgrimage. So, you're doing an inner pilgrimage back to your birth, and then coming, being reborn. And because you don't get lost in the labyrinth, a maze is the one where they try to make it difficult.
But a labyrinth, you just walk to the center, and you turn around, and you come back out again.
You can make it going uphill and downhill. All of those make it much more interesting as how you engage the landscape. And then, you really want to decide to set it up on the compass somehow, so that you're facing the sunset or the sunrise, or it could be even north-south.
Or you can go, in the Chinese version, you go from the north to the south. And it usually depends, too, on the site, you know, how you arrive at it, how you want to leave it, what you want to include. You know, the one I did for Jenny is on the riverbank, and it winds around all the trees, which was really fun to try to get that one to work.
So, just arriving at a place that is suitable, and whether it's going to be a long time. And, you know, it doesn't have to be permanent.
That's what's nice about the flag thing. But if you have a field that you can actually use a mower on, then that's great, you know, because you get an automatic, natural path.
Those are the kind of things that I'm asking when I go there. And also, as a dowser, I ask permission. You know, is this an auspicious place to put this, or is there some reason not to put it here?
And then it answers me yes or no. And then sometimes I ask, is this suitable to be entered from the south? Because I've already thought that was the way to go, but I ask it.
If it says no, then I make further inquiries. And another thing that the dowsers were doing, there was at one point, it's at York University, so all my friends seem to be going through this crazy thing. There was a guy who was doing talking to trees, an exercise in that.
So I said, oh, I'd sign up to that. That's fun. I've always liked drawing trees ever since art school.
And then, of course, the thing is, you take your dowsing tool and you ask around to see is there a tree that would like to have a conversation with you? So you pick a nice big oak tree and you say, I'd like to talk to you about longevity. And it doesn't want to talk to you.
So then you find another tree and you ask it, and it says, no, no. And then finally, you're just sort of swinging around, and it says, yes, here. And there's a big tree, and it's not distinguished by anything, but it's really big.
And you can't get into the trunk, even, because it's so gnarly with all this stuff. So I'm like, OK, I won't even be able to see this bloody tree. But anyway, I go in and I put my hand on the tree, and I try to find a place on the tree where it's a receptive place.
And I say, you wanted to talk to me, and I've got some questions about whatever I can. Then you're talking to yourself, of course, because it's not going to answer you back. You don't expect that.
But you're in a dialogue with a tree that's connected to the ground and to the sky. And it's been there a long time. And anyway, so you have this wonderful conversation.
And of course, I'm not speaking. I'm just saying these things in my head. And I ask it a question. I'm saying, is this the place you've always been happy with or are you having tough times? And all of a sudden, a voice comes out of the tree, and it says, this has been a very long time. And I'm thinking, no, no, no, because I'm freaking out.
It turns out there was a girl on the other side of the tree asking questions! Anyway, so we had a great friendship after that. That's funny.
But that tree brought me together with somebody very interesting that I wouldn't have known otherwise. So that's a side story.
But that's the dowser society. And I found that it did work.
I looked for a well for my brother and I found it. I've used it other places to locate water.
So dowsing works. I have no idea how it works. But it's a matter of subtle energies and just not thinking, but allowing this balance thing to respond in some way.
I don't know how it works.
Rosemary:
What sort of feelings do you feel like people get when they walk labyrinths?
Bruce:
Well, there's the feeling of, if you ask it a question, it's an oracle. The idea is that if you have a question on your mind, you can actually form it. It's like using yi qing, the Book of Chants from the Chinese. You form a question and then you put the question out of your mind.
And you just pay attention to your feet and the ground and the horizon and the sounds. So you use it like a yoga device to keep your mind empty so you get to the center. And once in the center, you leave your mind empty but you face north, south, east, west for maybe three seconds, five seconds, and you just take in what is in front of you looking in different directions. And it's quite a surprise sometimes because you're looking in places you're not attracted to normally. You're just putting it in place and you have to spend it there.
So that gives an extra clarity and cleansing to your brain. And you don't address the question in the center.
You keep it that way. You keep in your body and your connection to the ground. And then you walk out. When you get to the outside, you can also face the four directions.
Just, again, it's to kind of keep you in the zone of meditation, I guess.
And then at that point, you can see if you see your problem differently or better or with a resolution. Or at least you've had a rest from thinking about that damn thing that's your bugbear.
So it really is a landscape experience. It's about feeling your feet and the earth and the sky and your connection.
And it's a nothing experience. That's the beauty of it, except that it's like yoga. You kind of get an energy from your chakras.
Rosemary:
One of the things that I'm doing here, I'm offering Reiki. And the type of people that I'm intending to reach are people who are caregivers - parents or people looking after aging parents or people in the healthcare field. The labyrinth is a way to relax and forget your troubles for a while.
Bruce:
Yeah. And, you know, you don't have to ask it a question to walk it. You can just use it as a refreshing thing.
But there is an advantage of starting with a focused idea, you know, should I get married? Should I make a trip?
Should I get a new pair of shoes? It doesn't have to be, you know, am I going to die tomorrow? You know, but it could be that.
But it is just a focus to allow you to unfocus.
So when you do come out, you don't necessarily get an answer. What you get is a new perspective on it. But you've cleared your mind for maybe 15, 20 minutes, which is already a healing kind of experience.
And now the best trick is when you get to the center, if you can actually bring all your energy together and levitate about a foot off the ground, you sit on the chair and move off the chair and lose all your weight and then come back to the chair. And if you're really good, you can astral travel from that position, which I've done, which is another mind surfing thing. You sit quietly, you take three breaths, and then you try to relax all over, starting with your feet, maybe going to your head.
And then as you reach your head, you feel lighter and lighter until you actually can feel yourself move off the chair and look back on that spot.
Rosemary:
Wow.
Bruce:
And then you can decide where you want to visit. You can go to Vancouver, where I go often, or I can go up to Black Lake in Quebec, and I can sit on the dock there and spend some time. And then I fly back to the chair and I sit down and then I walk out of my circle.
Rosemary:
Oh, my goodness. I'm going to try that!
Bruce:
That takes a little bit. You know, it's one of those things that I, you know, do the meditations probably every day to sleep well if I wake up at night.
So for me, it's an automatic pilot at this point. So if it doesn't work the first time, it's just a matter of you do it and you do it. And then all of a sudden, one day, you don't know what you did differently, but your body has started to build a body memory.
Rosemary:
I've never tried to astral travel before, but I have had some really deep and wonderful meditations in the labyrinth.
Bruce:
Oh, that's nice.
Rosemary:
It's part meditation and it's part daydreaming.The imagination comes up with some really great stories and images. I've had some really nice ones.
Bruce:
Oh, that's good.
I don't think I've ever done anything creative after doing it. You know, it's really just a very relaxing, grounding me, because all my ideas are... my head is full of too much stuff.
Laying out a labyrinth is a creative act. And when Carl Jung does his meditations to paint these mandalas, that's a creative exercise.
…
Thank you so much to Bruce for spending time to talk with me, share his art, and make the labyrinth. If you would like to walk the labyrinth please email me to set up a time, rosemary@crickhollow.ca.
Full Moon Eclipse
As a reward for getting this far through the newsletter you are invited this Sunday September 7th for a full moon fire and eclipse watch here at Crickhollow. Arrive 6pm onwards. Contact me rosemary@crickhollow.ca if you need more information.
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