Arriv­ing in this little town, Chartres, seems a good choice. The cathed­ral is in sight from the sta­tion itself, leav­ing no doubt about the way. Cross­ing the little square, one comes upon the cathed­ral – sump­tu­ous, breath­tak­ing, spell­bind­ing. The main portal stands wide open and beck­ons, and it is impossible not to yield to its magic pull, unthink­able to stay out­side the won­der. The splend­our of it makes itself felt, the breath­tak­ing scale of the great build­ing, and yes, the unpar­alleled labyrinth!

Through Chartres Cathed­ral winds a paved labyrinth (labyrinthe de pavé) from the very begin­ning of the thir­teenth cen­tury, the largest ever laid in a cathed­ral. How strange that the num­ber of its stones is the same as the num­ber of days in man's foet­al devel­op­ment…

One pur­pose of the labyrinth is to urge man to pil­grim­age, to walk a path of pen­ance to its end. That is why one of its names is the Mile, for any­one who went round it on his knees took as long as if he had walked a mile. Anoth­er of its names is the Road to Jer­u­s­alem, which points to the pil­grim­age of earthly exist­ence from birth to death, in the course of which one should reach not only the Holy Land but the heav­enly Jer­u­s­alem.

The labyrinth also has a sym­bol­ic mean­ing. An out­ward pic­ture of the soul's inner, divine path helps the soul to rise. To step through the gate of the labyrinth is in truth to step onto one's own inner path. Fol­low­ing the path to its end, man walks his own way, for the labyrinth is not a maze. Its pur­pose is not that he should lose his way, but rather that he should find the way out. For this he must reach the centre. Labyrinth-walk­ing is an invit­a­tion to a sin­gu­lar inner jour­ney, on which man fol­lows the long, wind­ing track all the way and so arrives at the centre. And this centre has but one great task, to bring man face to face with the epi­centre of his own inner tur­moil, of his fears, of his inner dark­ness, and with the demons that dwell there. Here, in the inner­most depth of his exist­ence, he may meet his own shad­ow side, his weak­er self, but this centre is also his own centre. The inner­most focus of his self, of his inner world, of his exist­ence and his being, and at the same time the point of break­through where con­tact with the divine essence is made. And when man is at last lost in the darkest depth, that is when he must cry aloud into this centre, or whis­per into it with an unspoken word: There is no dark­ness! There are no demons! The Evil One does not exist!

Anoth­er pur­pose of the labyrinth is that man should pay heed to the sounds, pay heed to the signs; that he should hear the play of the howl­ing wind among the Goth­ic towers and pil­lars, and that he should seek, and indeed find, the pos­sib­il­ity of pur­ity, recon­cili­ation, per­fec­tion.

At the centre of the labyrinth, light is of course still only a hope. But at the sac­red moment of the sum­mer sol­stice a shaft of light, shin­ing in through the tall glass win­dow in the south wall, marks out the centre, the mid­point of the uni­verse, and the light drives away the dark­ness. Man finds his way back to him­self.

For the hope of light to become real­ity, one must set out anew and fol­low the wind­ing path once again, but out­wards now. He must find the right way out of the labyrinth. And when, hold­ing the golden thread of provid­ence in his hand, he walks this path and finds his way out into the light again, then the thought that until now was only hoped for strengthens into real­ity: There is no dark­ness…

Man comes out into the light, into the reborn real­ity of his own exist­ence. Even at the first step inward this was his aim: to find the way out, to break free. Bless­ing leads him back into the outer world, stronger now, rich­er in insights. From the outer world in, into the deep circles of dark­ness, then back once more to the light… As if at this thought the Sun, until then hid­den in a veil of cloud, shone forth and flooded the mar­vel­lous rose win­dows with light. Along the path of golden sun­light, step through the gate of light! The inner path and human life, the search for the way and enlight­en­ment – this is what Chartres speaks of, and this is what the labyrinth speaks of.