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Spirals, Spirals Everywhere

David Raven said:
Seriously though, I once saw spirals after a heavy day on the ale etc.!
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Pscylocibin mushrooms are great for filling the World with little swirling rainbow coloured vortices and spirals, so I've heard.
 
AndroMan said:
Pscylocibin mushrooms are great for filling the World with little swirling rainbow coloured vortices and spirals, so I've heard.
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The ones I saw were sort of 'transparent', like the moving 'motes' that you see sometimes when you look at the sky and rest your eyes.
 
Maori art features a lot of spirals which is believed to be influenced by the spirals from ferns as the fronds emerge (there being a lot of ferns in New Zealand).

Also another example of spirals a religious symbol would be bishop's croziers.

Wasn't the Minotor's maze in ancient crete supposed to be a spiral and an exact replica of it has been found in Britain carved on a stone? I am not sure about this though.

There are also a lot of spirals & mazes in celtic art.

Also I believe that some rock carving of spirals are the oldest cave art that has been discovered (or I could be wrong)
 
Anonymous said:
... Wasn't the Minotor's maze in ancient crete supposed to be a spiral and an exact replica of it has been found in Britain carved on a stone? I am not sure about this though. ...
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There's a distinction between 'unicursal' and 'multicursal' labyrinths or mazes. Unicursal ones afford a single path with no branches or dead ends. Multicursal ones allow multiple options (branches) and dead ends.

The legendary Cretan labyrinth was intended to keep the Minotaur confined, so it implies a multicursal maze. Nonetheless, the labyrinth's depiction on ancient coins (etc.) is most commonly unicursal.

A spiral or set of spirals is the simplest layout or motif for representing a unicursal labyrinth.
 
I've always thought the significance of a spiral form lay in the way it graphically connotes both cycles and infinity.

A spiral motif is the simplest way to create an arbitrarily elaborate figure by merely repeating the same elementary shape over and over (at different scales). This naturally connotes repetition or cycling.

A spiral figure is also the only motif that affords the ability to extend a continuous line to the limits of feasible representation, because you can extend the spiral's line inward / smaller or outward / larger as far as you can draw (carve, etc.). This implies infinitude.
 
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