Distribution of Mazes

In the last century, mazes were reported in Ethiopia, and maze traditions were reported by settlers in South Africa and Namibia, but with no formal method of construction.

Vikings used Greek-style mazes in Iceland and on the shores of the Black Sea, but no Swedish, Danish or Norwegian maze is known to be more than a few hundred years old. Remains of about 500 mazes have been found in the Baltic littoral.

In the rest of western Europe magical traditions were suppressed. An exclusively Christian pattern was invented about a thousand years ago, a maze which always had the same path. These mazes were built in cathedrals as emblems of the "one true path" to spiritual redemption. Some people protested that they were pagan symbols, but Sprenger and Kramer (who defined witchcraft for the Inquisitors of the counter-reformation) don't mention them. Puzzle Mazes took the place of the Magical Maze in secular gardens after the construction puzzle of the original mazes was displaced by the Christian Maze. Europeans later spread this new type of maze to their colonies around the world.

The maze tradition also seems to have reached the New Hebrides Islands and Ceram, but although the myths survived, the construction methods were either lost or replaced: on the island of Malekula the search for new methods was a national preoccupation, and new designs were traded. In China and other areas where Taoist mysticism prevails the labyrinth is absent, but its mystic rôle is fulfilled by the symbol Ba Gua, which represents Tao (the Way) through eight interchangeable symbols derived from the magic square.

Literary Mazes survive from the Greek occupation of the Holy Land after the death of Alexander the Great, but may have had their origins in Chaldean tradition picked up during the Exile of the Jews in Babylon.