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disappeared. Ovid describes this catastrophe movingly in his Metamorphoses: ‘The nearness of the consuming sun made soft the fragrant wax, the feathers’ fastener. The wax melted away. He stroked with naked arms, but with no wings, he could beat no air, and the mouth, still crying out his father’s name, was swallowed up by the blue waters .... And the father, now a father no longer, shouted, "Icarus! Icarus! Where are you? Under which stretch of heaven shall I look for you?’ When at last he spotted the feathers in the waves, he flew around and around until he found his son’s corpse. Cursing his craftsmanship, he bore the body to a nearby island and buried it there" (Jaskolski, 149-150).
Daedalus continued on to Sicily and was kindly received by the King. "Minos was enraged at his escape and determined to find him. He made a cunning plan. He had it proclaimed everywhere that a great reward would be given to whoever could pass a thread through an intricately spiralled shell. Daedalus told the Sicilian king that he could do it. He bored a small hole in the closed end of the shell, fastened a thread to an ant, introduced the ant into the hole, and then closed it. When the ant finally came out at the other end, the thread, of course, was running clear through all the twists and turns. ‘Only Daedalus would think of that,’ Minos said, and he came to Sicily to seize him. But the king refused to surrender him, and in the contest Minos was slayed" (Hamilton, 145).
Although most commonly associated with the previously recounted ancient Greek myth, the labyrinth symbol has refered to various universal concepts to a multitude of cultures. This is evident by the diverse locales which have displayed signs of the intriguing labyrinth symbol: Paleolithic painted caves, resplendent Medieval cathedrals, Neolithic and Egyptian tombs, thresholds of India, and the hedge-mazes of England. Indeed, it appears as though the labyrinth did not "diffuse outward from an original birthplace, but developed independently in more than one area" (Bord, 10).
While death and rebirth are perhaps the predominate concepts symbolized by the labyrinth, other concepts include the womb of the Mother or Mother Earth, the cosmos, the world, the course of the sun, the underworld, the path of life, a pilgrimage or journey, the unconscious, transcendence, initiation and self-knowledge, confusion, and protection from evil. The labyrinth, having symbolized such numerous and profound concepts, and being one of the major psychological archetypes, continues to fascinate and has been the subject of numerous studies. These studies have provided valuable information and insightful interpretations that have heightened our understanding of the symbol’s historical applications.
The concept of initiation stands out as one of the main concepts symbolized by the labyrinth. In fact, Hermann Kern, the author of a virtual encyclopedia about the labyrinth, has asserted that the inherent nature of the classical labyrinth figure can be interpreted as symbolizing the process of initiation. Kern has described this process through visualizing the path of the labyrinth as tread by a prospective initiate. "The prospective initiate stands at the single narrow entrance of the Labyrinth. His task is to penetrate into what appears to be the frighteningly complicated inner space, a space that isolates him from those who remain behind ... through a movement that progressively distances him from those outside, in the same way as if he were dying. The movement through the labyrinthine