Past Events

The Labyrinth as Inspiration

An undeniable inspiration for our transcultural and ecosophical platform has been Alain Daniélou’s labyrinth. In the context of his work, the labyrinth is at the same time a concrete place at Zagarolo (Roman Province) where Daniélou spent the last decades of his life, the main fictional locus in his second collection of tales published shortly before his death, a topological metaphor of the universe seen from different cosmologies, and a figure that epitomizes his permanent re-orientation of ideas to broaden already established exploration fields.

In the Greek myth of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur represents the radical ‘Other’ who must be conquered by the civilizational power of Theseus. The figure of the labyrinth at the cradle of Western thought is therefore disquieting and even threatening, and its reception has mainly emphasized the disorientation one could suffer along the way from the entrance to the center – and back again. Daniélou inverses the picture and focuses on the trajectory and the manifold paths, which renders both the center and the exit inconsequential – since the center is everywhere and the labyrinth knows no external limit.

Daniélou’s attitude toward the labyrinth is a remarkable way of expressing a perspectivist approach to knowledge (against both religious fanaticism and positivist reductionism), and a declaration of faith in the significance (i. e. the enriching power) of indirect, winding or twisted paths as well as in the traces left by former explorers of the labyrinth. It could be summarized as an imperative to learn from the Other instead of trying to conquer it.