How have I managed to be pagan so long without knowing how to draw a basic labyrinth!
Recently I hosted a Stitch and Witch at my home with invocations to Brigit, great company, great cake and a skills exchange. I taught sock darning and various aspects of knitting and in return I learned to draw a 7 step labyrinth. Thank you M!
It is so elegant and simple I want to share it all with you.
1. Starting point.
2. Now draw a connecting loop from the top point of the inner cross shape to the top of the L shape on the right side of the page.
3. Then working from your left to your right draw loops linking the points of the cross and the points of the L's. Move out one on each side every time until all the points have been connected and you have circled the whole Labyrinth.
Just remember that the top of the Labyrinth will be much bigger than the bottom so make sure you take this into account when choosing where start your drawing.
I am so impressed with this technique - I don't draw often and yet I shall always be able to make a Labyrinth, it won't be long because I am embroidering them on prayer flags, icing them on cupcakes and splashing them all over my house. Best of all if I want to lay out a huge Labyrinth in my garden for a ritual working I can just use this template. Want it to be bigger than 7 steps just keep on adding the L shapes in the four corners.
It couldn't be simpler!
You will be drawing labyrinths on everything for days to come, I promise you.
You may remember one of my goals this year was to achieve better
integration of my spiritual and physical lives.
So far things have been going well (despite the lack of blogging!)
I have been getting more comfortable with being open and fluid with my spirituality generally. In particular I have found walking at
lunchtime has become a cornerstone of my practice. I take a 50 minute walk by the canal at least 3 sometimes 4 lunchtimes a week.
I use that opportunity to feed:
- my body with exercise
- my soul with the rhythm of the water and trees
- my mind with meditation and space to think away from the internet, phones, people and expectation.
So far so good.
But a period of ill health and stress in April put a bit of a spanner
in the works. Nothing too serious but I hit a point where I just
wanted to feel well again. I came out of that period straight into a
holiday with friends, this was amazing fun and very restful but didn't help me re-establish a healthy routine for getting more integrated.
Now I am starting to get back into that healthy routine and I am really feeling the benefits.
The reason I am blogging this on a spirituality blog…well this is all
about integration baby! If my body, mind and spirit aren't all
pulling together then no amount of magick is going to help. In the
first part of the year I started to merge the two separate areas of my
mind (Work Antara and Spiritual Antara) that has been going well but I have now hit a point where I need to pull my body into line as well.
I have be working on eating more healthily and getting more exercise since September last year and doing well. But after my holiday I needed to give my body a little extra boost to get over the illness and stress. So I started by revisting Leonie Dawson's Radiant Goddess course.
This is 21 day course with great videos, recipes, inspiration and
ideas for incorporating more movement in your life. But above all it
is not a diet, not about punishing yourself but more about including
things in your life which are joyful and supportive. That is a
philosophy I can really get behind.
More on this coming up!