Book Reviews - Jill Kimberly Hartwell Geoffrion's Labyrinth books

Today I am going to review and compare 3 different labyrinth books by Rev. Jill Kimberly Hartwell Geoffrion. If you are not familiar with the author she has her own website where you can learn about all her writings, labyrinth pilgrimages, and ministries. If you are interested in the spiritual aspect of walking labyrinths she is a resource you will want to be familiar with. On her website, in her about section it notes that she “is a world-renowned expert on labyrinths, labyrinth prayer, and the Chartres Cathedral.”. I couldn’t say it any better than that. Some of you will want to read all 3 books, but I will aim to show you the differences if one is more to your liking. Short summary is at the end. Let’s get to the reviews.

Living The Labyrinth (2009) - 88 pages. AMZN.

This third book is the least spiritual of the tomes and the one I like best. It is broken into 11 parts which groups different ways of approaching a labyrinth together.

What I learned in this book:

• This book is all about 101 different ways to walk / approach a labyrinth. The supposition is that there is no right way to walk it. This gives you options on how to walk the labyrinth.

• I really liked the quote below which has been added to my maze/labyrinth quote page. What follows is a discussion of the passage which I really enjoyed.

Although most of us acknowledge the desirability of labyrinths, when it come down to it, we generally see our lives as mazes, not labyrinths

What this book does best: It is very creative in coming up with ways to walk a labyrinth and how those ways can be thought about. If I asked you to come up with 101 ways to walk a path when would you get stuck ? After 10 ? And could you give meaning to each ‘way’. This author can.

If you want to experience labyrinths in a new way, this is the book for you.

Pondering The Labyrinth (2003) - 112 pages. AMZN.

The book has fifteen short chapters broken into 4 parts. Part One is a nice overview of Labyrinths. Each of the next 3 parts deal with questions to ponder in different stages of walking a labyrinth. The author is a Reverend and the book is spiritually based.

This is the follow-up book to Praying The Labyrinth from 1999 from the same author. The books are similar.

What I learned in this book:

• This book is not about facts as much as it is about reflection. Reflection when you walk a labyrinth.

What this book does best: I really like the historical labyrinths that are featured, one in each chapter at the beginning and end. The questions are very good and plentiful - while not all will have meaning for you, you will find meaning in some in the depth and breadth presented here.

If you are a spiritual person that likes to walk labyrinths, this book is for you, similar to her previous book, but shorter and with less scripture than the book below.

Praying The Labyrinth (1999) - 181 pages AMZN.

The book has two main parts - Getting ready for the labyrinth and then walking it. It has many short one page sections (chapters), each with their own thoughts and accompanying prayers. The author wrote the book about her experience walking the Chartres Labyrinth in France.

What I learned in this book:

• The Chartres Labyrinth in France has a unique design and the center is often called the rosette, which has a six-petaled rose shape

• That walking a labyrinth can be a deeply religious experience. The book is a prayer guide that mixes thoughts on walking a labyrinth with scripture from the Bible.

What this book does best: Is a guide of the feeling, meditations, thoughts and prayers that go into walking a labyrinth with intense purpose. Full of Biblical scripture.

If you are a spiritual person that likes to walk labyrinths, this is the book for you.

Summary:

• Praying the Labyrinth delves into a Biblical look at walking labyrinths.

• Pondering the Labyrinth is focused on reflection, or basically how you think about walking the labyrinth.

• Living The Labyrinth is the least spiritual of the books. It features 101 different ways to walk / approach a labyrinth.

Similar posts to this one:

5 BOOKS ABOUT THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF LABYRINTHS

Reviews these 5 books with long titles !!!

Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool

Labyrinth : Your Path to Self-Discovery

Exploring the Labyrinth: A Guide For Healing and Spiritual Growth

Walking the Labyrinth: A Place to Pray and Seek God

Labyrinths from the Outside In: Walking to Spiritual Insight

THE BEST BOOKS ABOUT MAZES AND LABYRINTHS (THAT AREN'T ACTUALLY MAZE BOOKS)

This post reviews 8 books that are more about the history of mazes and labyrinths.

A Review of 5 Maze-themed Books for 7-10 year olds

I wanted to pull together a collection of maze books that are perfect for kids aged 7-10 years old. None of these are traditional maze books but have mazes as part of the plot. We get Batman and Robin, Scooby-Doo, the boxcar Children and 2 Christian books. 2 corn mazes, 2 hedge mazes and a colorful labyrinth.

Scarecrow's Nightmare Maze (2016) 88 Pages AMZN

by J. E. Bright, Luciano Vecchio

Ages 7-12 years old

If I’m being honest when I saw this book I thought it was a comic. But it is not a comic, it is a young adult book of 88 easy to read pages. I found digitally from my local library. Our antagonist is Scarecrow and his very effective fear gas. In this story we have Scarecrow using a maze to confuse and scare his victims when it is effectively combined with his fear gas. Batman and Robin are on his trail and are trying to catch him and return him to Arkham Asylum. There are only a few illustrations in the book, but I think the few that there are are very good (Check out Batman and Robin walking in the corn maze below!). The story is good and reads like a Batman comic although the vocabulary is targeted at a younger audience. Overall, If you are fan of Batman and mazes, you will like this book.

Batman and Robin in a corn maze !

If you are a fan of Batman, check out my review of a maze centric episode from Batman the Animated Series called If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? from way back in 1992.

The Mystery of the Maze Monster (2014) 112 Pages AMZN

by John Sazaklis

Ages 7-11 years

First I need to mention that this is different from “choose” books I have read in the past. To me this this has longer passages between decisions, so you get more story before making that decision. As you can tell from the cover there are 10 different endings ! Personally I did the book 4 different times and I never caught the villain ! This is a Scooby-Doo book. I thought I would catch them each time like on the cartoon ! It is not a bad thing, just surprising.

This book is fun and does take you in many different directions after the initial set-up. That set-up is what made me read and do a review of the book. A minotaur appears to have stolen some valuable items and has escape into a hedge maze. Can the gang catch it ? (As I said before I went 0 for 4).

There are some nice illustrations in the book that made me nostalgic for the tv show. I also found myself hearing the different characters voices in my head as I read. I enjoyed the book and think you would too !

One other thing of note - If you enjoy this book, there appear to be a total of 14 Scooby-Doo ‘You Choose’ books available !

The Clue in the Corn Maze: The Boxcar Children Mysteries, Book 101 144 Pages AMZN

by Gertrude Chandler Warner

from Albert Whitman & Company, for Ages 7-10 years

I am really glad that I decided to read this book. Of course I picked it up because I knew the story included a corn maze, but I was pleasantly surprised by the story. Yes, this book is meant for children 7-10 years old and I am an adult. I still appreciated the simple way the story was told. I am currently learning how to speak a second language and would love this kind of book in that language.

The story takes place on a farm that has a festival for the town which features a corn maze. Someone is vandalizing the maze each night and leaving notes to not hold the festival. Along the way a variety of people are shown to have motivations that may mean they are the perpetrators. The feel of the story reminded me of a Scooby-Doo episode. The short chapters pace in story just right and this is a good read. I also noticed some words that were meant to expand the vocabulary of the young reader which I liked. I don’t give a score for books, but this book is recommended.

Molly's Maze Discovery (2021) Own Image 57 Print Pages AMZN

by Carmen Allen Ages 6-10

Part 2 of the Molly Greenwood Adventures series

I came across this book, Molly's Maze Discovery, while browsing for something to read from the library. You know I can’t pass up a maze book no matter what age it is intended for. This book is about Molly (Greenwood) and her friends as they are tempted to enter a hedge maze despite being told they are not old enough by the King. I should mention that Molly is a princess (see book 1, this is book 2 in the series), thus the King.

After finding a map of the maze with an X hidden inside the children give in to their temptations and enter the maze. What follows is an adventure that includes 2 men chasing the children to try to get them into an orphanage. We have secret trap doors and secret rooms and a nice adventure for the kids. Without giving away too much of the story, we get a nice message (and a hidden message). This is a Christian book and suitable for ages 7-12.

You can find information on the complete series at the author’s website.

Baby's Labyrinth (2022) 44 Pages AMZN

by Bobby Holley

from Christian Faith Publishing, For ages 3 months to 10 years

The book is a bedtime story for kids about a book of bedtime stories that is lost. It is a quick read of 44 pages ( although that may depend on just how sleepy your children are!). The story is composed of 8 chapters and follows a group of five babies and their mother.

After the initial set-up we get into the main part of the story, and the part we are most interested in in Chapter 2, titled Into the Labyrinth. The kids have found their way into a colorful labyrinth (details are saved for the book). This starts our quest to find the book, and we meet a variety of characters along the way. It is in Chapter 4, titled Magic of the Maze where we learn that the children won’t be able to fall asleep without their book (oh no !). The quest continues and we eventually reach our conclusion (spoiler….any guess?). The book has a few illustrations, but is really a story to be read ( versus a bedtime story book that uses pictures and reading together). I would have liked more illustrations, but overall, a nice story.

What I learned using AI to make maze art

When I started this blog series on AI image generators I said I wanted to answer some questions. After spending a full month using and working with a dozen text to image generators let’s see what I have learned. Here is the original post with the questions, and my added answers:

What do I hope to accomplish ?

• See what the competition is. How good is the output.

The output was mixed, with some generators producing intriguing abstract patterns while others struggled with basic maze structures. I did not find any generator who could actually make maze art if only because the current text to image generators can’t make a solvable maze. They can make maze and labyrinth inspired images that are wonderful. They just can’t be solved. I think this will be fixed just like “hands” were fixed.

• Become more familiar with what AI image generators are capable of

It seems the standard is to generate 4 images from every prompt text you input, allowing you to pick the best. Many of them also have pre-selectable styles. Each site has a slightly different style and strengths. I found the sites I like to use and those I don’t.

• Evaluate and compare the different sites to determine how well they create based on my prompts

As discussed in my previous post there are 4 sites that were better than the rest in my challenge ! Different prompts may mean slightly different results but I imagine the order would not meaningfully change much with new prompts. Some sites just work better than others.

• Be inspired (hopefully)

Yes. So many interesting takes on my text prompts (many more terrible ones, but..). I think these sites are a good place to look for inspiration.

• Answer: Can I compete with AI generated maze art ?

Right now, they cannot compete with the current quality of maze artists. The odd thing is that a standard program for computer programmers to write is an algorithm to create a maze. There are dozens of sites, many that I have reviewed before to do this. At some point an AI text to image will learn from these sites and I will need to come back to reevaluate this.

And some additional things I learned:

• Asking for a famous building means you may not get the full building - usually the top is cut off for some reason. Here is a gallery of the prompt “Make a medium difficulty maze of the Eiffel tower in black and white with arrows at the start and finish” from many different sites. I think none of these actually came out as I expected and none of them were able to execute the prompt.

• Prompts are often ignored. Expect the AI’s to miss some things. It might be you and a bad prompt…it might be the AI. A few sites allow you to select an image to “start” with as inspiration. So if things aren’t quite what you want, keep manipulating an image until you get it right.

• Sometimes you write a bad prompt. If you keep getting bad outputs on multiple websites, the problem is your writing. I would give the example I used for #7 “Make a maze of a slice of an orange in color” didn’t work. My bad.

• It's best to approach AI image generation with an open mind, rather than trying to achieve a specific outcome. Better to try a prompt and see what comes out. I cannot tell you how many times I have prompted “make a maze on the surface of the Death Star” because I knew it would be awesome and I have yet to be impressed. Here is one from StarryAI. It looks cool but is not what I wanted because I was expecting a specific look.

While this is the end of this blog series, I will continue to play around with AI generators and you can expect more content from me on the subject !

Conclusion:

While AI image generators can create visually interesting maze-like patterns, they still fall short of producing truly solvable mazes.

If you missed any of the previous 13 blog posts in the series here is the full series with links:

An exploration into Al Image Maze Generation

Making mazes with AI: DallE2

Making mazes with AI: Stable Diffusion

Making mazes with AI: Craiyon

Making mazes with AI: Dream by Wombo

Making mazes with AI: Nightcafe

Making mazes with AI: StarryAI

Making mazes with AI: DeepAI

Making mazes with AI: Canva

Making mazes with AI: AI Image Generator

Making mazes with AI: ToolBaz

Making mazes with AI: Photosonic

Making mazes with AI: Bing AI Maze Generator

Comparison of 12 AI generating websites - Who did mazes the best ?

See you soon with more maze content ! And don’t forget to check out my maze art !

Maze of the Week #71 - Old Stone Butter Church Maze

Maze of the Week #71 is of the Old Stone Butter Church on Comiaken Hill on the southern portion of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It is on private land (Cowichan Tribe), so if you would like to visit you need to get permission. If you do you will find a wonderful structure in equally impressive surroundings. Built in 1870, but abandoned just 10 years later, the structure is still going strong.

Photo: I suggest you click through a large collection of photo content from Toad Hollow Photography.

The Maze: I went with black and white…and then decided to go full color. I think that was the right decision although both look good IMO.

Old Stone Butter Church Maze

And here is the full color preferred version:

I hope you enjoy the maze. If you want to solve it - a maze download is available.

Coming next month: More religious buildings

A temple maze - Bagan Temple

A church maze - Old Stone Butter Church (this maze)

A mosque maze

A church maze

A church maze