Ariadne

In the centre of the labyrinth at Amiens a large flag-stone used to be visible, encrusted with a bar of gold and a semi-circle of the same metal, showing the sun rising above the horizon. Later on, the gold sun was replaced by a copper one and the latter in its turn disappeared, never to be replaced at all. As for the labyrinth at Chartres, called in the common tongue La Lieue (the league) for Le Lieu (the place) and drawn on the paving stones of the nave, it is composed of a whole series of concentric circles coiling one within another in endless variety. At the centre of the figure, the combat of Theseus and the Minotaur used to be seen-yet another proof of the infiltration of pagan themes into Christian iconography and consequently of an evident mytho-hermetic meaning. However it is not a matter of establishing any connection between these images and those famous constructions of antiquity, the labyrinths of Greece and Rome.

The picture of the labyrinth is thus offered to us as emblematic of the whole labour of the Work, with its two major difficulties, one the path which must be taken in order to reach the centre—where the bitter combat of the two natures takes place—the other the way which the artist must follow in order to emerge. It is there that the thread of Ariadne becomes necessary for him, if he is not to wander among the winding paths of the task, unable to extricate himself.

Ariane (Ariadne) is a form of airagne (araignée, the spider) by metathesis of the i. In Spanish, ñ is pronounced gn; αραχυη(the spider) can thus be read arahne, arahni, arahagne. Is not our soul the spider, which weaves our own body? But this word appears in other forms. The verb αίρω means to take, to seize, to draw, to attract; whence αίρην¹, that which takes, seizes, attracts. Thus αίρην is the lodestone, that virtue shut up in the body, which the Wise call their Magnesia. In Provençal, iron is called aran. The félibres² called the spider aragno and iragno, airagno; The Picard version is aregni. Compare all that with the Greek Σίδηρος, which may mean either iron or lodestone. Nor is this all. The verb άρυω means the rising of a star from out of the sea. Further, άρυω has also the sense to attract; thus αρυαν is also the lodestone. If we now compare Σίδηρος, which has given the Latin sidus, sideris a star, we shall recognize our Provençal aran—the Greek αρυαν, the rising sun.

Let us recall in passing that the most celebrated of the ancient labyrinths, that of Cnossos in Crete, was called Absolum. We would point out that this term is close to the Absolute which is the name by which the ancient alchemists designated the philosophers’ stone.