There’s something new in Oasi Zegna and it’s a place that summons up ancient symbols linked to the Divine Mother, the interior God and the sacredness of the spirit of creation. It’s the Labyrinth at Stavello. Come and see it and walk around the great, brain-shaped stone spiral in the middle of which there’s a staff, a symbol of equilibrium. And rediscover the meaning and purpose of the soul in this life.
WHY A LABYRINTH IN OASI ZEGNA?
To honor the land or celebrate ourselves? You walk in a labyrinth and you walk in Oasi Zegna, along paths laid down by man, the old transhumance routes, under the kindly shelter of conifer and beech woods, on mountain ridges where the eye can roam into the hazy distance of the plains or focus on majestic snowcapped peaks. The labyrinth is a view of our surroundings, providing information through observation and connecting us at the same time to something more subtle and interior. The beauty of nature, the landscape in which we’re immersed nourish and amaze us. It may generate a sense of harmony or wellbeing or even bewilderment. For our emotions are involved and we are both mind and emotions.
WHY IS THE LABYRINTH A SYMBOL?
Labyrinths exist in nature, in all its manifestations, in the Creation itself, which sprang from the Spiral, a sacred symbol, an archetype of life itself.
We live in a spiral, our galaxy. We can see spirals far closer to us, in nature, in water generating a whirlpool, in the uncoiling fronds of ferns, in rams’ horns and in autumn breezes creating tiny swirls of leaves, not to mention more destructive manifestations, such as tornadoes spiraling outwards from their center.
The labyrinth is seen as a sacred symbol also because it has accompanied humankind over the ages. Found in the most disparate regions of the earth, it’s been engraved in rock with primitive tools, painted in churches, inlaid in the flooring of cathedrals, carved on doors or built in the open, in nature.
A labyrinth is also a path towards our center. Walking in silence, taking our time, step by step, we are led to the heart of ourselves, our feelings. It reconnects us to our interior horizon, our essence, the life outside and within us and from which we sometimes feel separated. With its pattern and oscillating path it disorientates us so we can free ourselves of the voices crowding our mind and lead us back to inner silence, where the only true voice, our soul, may at last emerge.
HOW TO APPROACH THE EXPERIENCE
The Stavello Labyrinth was built to offer every one of you the opportunity to reconnect to a profound sense of life, a sense of our personal journey on this earth, unique and therefore priceless, and to honor the earth and feel we are a part of it.
The movement of the single-path circuit of this labyrinth (with a maximum diameter of 29 meters) proceeds forwards and backwards to help us transcend obsolete ways of thinking and encourage opening up to the invisible connection with the Source.
Thanks to the colored crystals used to energize the circuit, this labyrinth will lead you through the 12 levels of awareness of the Color Rose associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac.
Passing through the labyrinth, you can become aware of your interior guide in life. Open your senses and take long, meditative strides. Focus on a question to contemplate on the way to the center. And having reached it, stop, interiorize and receive an answer or a deeper revelation. On the way back, keep pondering. And on exiting, prolong the meditative process to assimilate the experience, keeping in mind the words of Saint Augustine: “solvitur ambulando” (it is solved by walking).
In September, a number of workshops will beheld in the Labyrinth. Further information will follow shortly.
