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winding passages requires of him, in addition, a high degree of physical control as well as adaptability. It is an unparalleled challenge. Once he is in the interior ... he discovers the way to the middle, to the endpoint of the movement, as the longest possible way around. It requires a maximum of commitment, time expenditure, and physical effort. But the novice is also challenged psychologically. The goal is often close enough to reach out and touch, however, time and again he is led away from it. Patience and endurance are indispensable in order finally to reach the center. This, however, is sure to happen, for no false path will cause the venture to fail. Nonetheless, there at the endpoint, he is alone with himself; he experiences self-recognition or encounters something higher. At the same time, the central experience includes a radical change of direction, for only that makes the return possible. A 180-degree about-face means creating the greatest possible distance from one’s own past. It is simultaneously the death of the old person and the rebirth of a new one. The way back into the world - almost as hard as the way in - is traveled by a changed person" (Jaskolski, 60).
According to Carl Gustav Jung, the effectiveness of an initiation rite or ritual "whether it is found in tribal groups or more complex societies, invariably insists upon this rite of death and rebirth, which provides the novice with a ‘rite of passage’ from one stage of life to the next" (Jung, 130). Jung’s interpretation clarifies this idea with the explanation that the "ritual takes the novice back to the deepest level of original mother-child identity, thus forcing him to experience a symbolic death. In other words, his identity is temporarily dismembered or dissolved in the collective unconscious. From this state he is then ceremonially rescued by the rite of the new birth" (Jung, 130).
Jung has further stated that "in all cultures, the labyrinth has the meaning of an entangling and confusing representation of the world of matriarchal consciousness; it can be traversed only by those who are ready for a special initiation into the mysterious world of the collective unconscious". As the unconscious has often been symbolized by the labyrinth, one can see the connection between Jung’s explanation of the process of ‘individuation’, the "coming-to-terms with one’s own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self" (Jung, 166) and the previously mentioned process of initiation as described by Kern.
Jung observed that numerous myths, most notably the hero myth, symbolically describe the initial stage in the process of individuation. However, he has pointed out that "there is one striking difference between the hero myth and the initiation rite. The typical hero figures exhaust their efforts in achieving the goal of their ambitions - in short, they become successful even if immediately afterward they are punished or killed for their hybris. In contrast to this, the novice for initiation is called upon to give up willful ambition and all desire and to submit to the ordeal. He must be willing to experience this trial without hope of success. In fact, he must be prepared to die; and though the token of his ordeal may be mild ... or agonizing ... the purpose remains the same: To create the symbolic mood of death from which may spring the symbolic mood of birth" (Jung, 131-2).
This clarifies why the ordeal of Theseus recounted in the ancient Greek myth regarding the Cretan Labyrinth, while easily serving as an example of a hero myth, has also been interpreted as being an allegory of the concept of initiation.