What's the difference between a labyrinth and a maze? The original, primal Labyrinth - the first in human history - the one from which all others derive - is of course Jim Henson's 1986 David Bowie vehicle. That labyrinth had a thousand paths - that labyrinth was all about choices. But, confusingly, most reference works will tell you that that this is the difference between the two: a maze has choices and many paths, while a labyrinth is unicursal, with a single choiceless path to the centre.
You'll have seen the design of the classical and mediaeval labyrinths - the symmetrical single-path concentric-rings that look like a piece of jewellery or a ball of unusually elegant string. Henson's Labyrinth wasn't like that, and neither was the Cretan one. But they were both designed experiences.
One was intended to bring the protagonist to David Bowie, and the other was intended to feed the protagonist to the Minotaur. Unicursal knot-labyrinths were experiences too - in prayer, in ritual, for luck. Pilgrims shuffled round cathedral labyrinths on their knees; fishermen used them to ensure favourable winds and good catches; Lapp herdsmen walked labyrinths, and I love that I'm writing this sentence, 'to protect their reindeer from the ravages of wolverines'.
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