In Memoriam: Philip Ambrose Walker (Part Two)

The  Years of the Bull: 1942-1945

The first installment of my remembrance of Philip Ambrose Walker left us at his arrival in Florence, Italy.  At his family's grave consternation and against their most lachrymose entreaties, Walker reached Florence in the late fall of 1942, when the nation, under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, was over two years into the hellish fires of the Second World War.  With Italian forces waging war in France, North and East Africa, the Balkans, and throughout the Mediterranean, it was a perilous time for a young Briton to study labyrinthology in a country that declared war on his motherland. 

Yet, Florence at the time was home to the premiere university for labyrinthological studies in the Western world: L'istituto Classico del Labirinto. But, for Walker, the greatest lure of the institute was the venerable president Francesco Zappatore, whose groundbreaking interdisciplinary scholarship in both labyrinth mythology and archaeology especially magnetized Walker.  Zappatore vehemently opposed the war, although he had to guard vigilantly his stance in public. However, in his country's fanatical patriotism and fascistic nationalism, Zappatore beheld the opportunity to undertake rare labyrinthological excavations. The preeminent labyrinth scholar, historian, and archaeologist persuaded Mussolini himself to fund excavations at various ancient labyrinth sites in the name of further fortifying Italy's 'position' as the greatest civilization of past and present. Walker refused to miss out on this venture, and thus, equipped with counterfeit citizenship, impeccable Italian, prodigious knowledge of antiquity, and the recommendations of Britain's finest labyrinthologists, Walker was admitted into the institute--and was given Zappatore's blessing to join the excavation team. (His pseudonym was Philip Camminatore.)

In 1943, during the middle of the second year of excavation, the team, under the protection of the Italian navy, sailed to the Greek island of Kefalonia, whose labyrinths were largely unexplored in that day. Excavations were fruitless, and Zappatore was considering abandoning the endeavor, until Philip Ambrose Walker made a discovery that, many argue, revolutionized the historical understanding of labyrinths. As he was digging in what the team identified as the center of the labyrinth, Walker's pick struck a long, thick, osseous remain. Further digging unearthed a bed of the remains. Walker, who was raised near pastures in his hometown of Exeter, knew exactly what he was beholding: the horns of bulls. 

Walker presented his discoveries to Zappatore, who believed the horns were the remains of the ritualistic sacrifices of bulls in pits at the centers of labyrinths. At the time, Zappatore was developing the theory that, before the mysterious extirpation of the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete, a group of seafaring natives emigrated to Kefalonia to form a new society. Zappatore argued that the Cretan emigrants sacrificed the bulls in a reenactment of Theseus' slaying of the Minotaur, an act to propitiate the gods. 

But, in a bold challenge to Zappatore, Walker agreed with his Kefalonian theory, but flatly disagreed with Zappatore's figuration of the sacrifices.  While the horns spanned over three feet in length, Walker knew that bull horns normally grew to even greater lengths. Both mentor and protege observed markings on the butts of the horns. Zappatore claimed that the markings resulted from the removal of the horns from the skull, while, based on his familiarity with bovine morphology, Walker declared that the markings resulted from deliberate truncation. (The team's resident biologist concurred with Walker's hunch, and, on the team's return to the Italian mainland, laboratory work confirmed the hypothesis.)  In a brilliant epiphany, Walker posited that the Cretan transplants affixed the horns to a ceremonial headdress, the truncation necessary to reduce the weight of the onerous horns. 

Despite their contention, Zappatore saw enormous promise in Walker's explanation, and thus chose to focus the remaining time and money for the excavation on the Kefalonian labyrinth, thereafter informally christened The Minotaur Abattoir. The team discovered a veritable graveyard of bull horns, all exhibiting the same markings; the team never discovered any other skeletal bovine remains, which further corroborated Walker's theory. However, the excavators did discover tailored hides and the fossilized remains of the tails of bulls. Walker quickly fired off his explanation, fleshing out his nascent theory: ceremonial garbs. Time and money were exhausted, but the team did not return to the Italian mainland empty-handed. With their discoveries, Walker formed the foundation of his Minotaur Cult.

The ceremonial bull horns Walker discovered, on display at the reconstructed Kefalonian excavation site at the Exeter Museum of Labyrinth Myths and History.

Soon after their return, the escalating hostilities of the War was threatening Walker's family back in England. Walker decamped back to his home, where he relocated with his family to Anapolis, Maryland, whose library housed one of the world's most comprehensive collections on Ancient Greek Island Civilizations. Walker immersed himself in research until 1945, where he celebrated not only the end of the War but the publication of his first (and many argue most important) masterwork: Becoming the Monster: The Cult of the Minotaur. Walker explains his thesis in this passage from the first chapter, entitled "The Androtaur":

For the ancient Minoan, the true threat that the Minotaur posed was not his ravenous demand for human flesh, which the civilization fearfully propitiated by their provision of seven youths and seven virgins. Rather, the true threat the Minotaur posed was his dual nature: a monstrosity formed of the body of the man and of the head and tail of the bull.  In the ancient Greek paradigm, the body of the man housed his heart, which was the seat of man's wisdom, and thus the Minoans could not reconcile how such an ill-begotten being could possess the capacity for virtue but arrantly and basely reject to actualize the virtuous potential that rendered man as man. Hence, Daedalus and his son Icarus were commissioned to fashion the Labyrinth, which not only immured the Minotaur, but which veiled the very existence of the monster that so challenged the Greek notion of humanness. Theseus may have nobly slain the Minotaur, but the physical death of the monster could not extirpate his existence in Greek consciousness. As long as such a being as the Minotaur could haunt the earth, the Greeks feared that man's perfectibility--and the concomitant telos of perfection--was a mere delusion. 

As archaeological and historical evidence now evinces, there dwelled in ancient Crete a group of heretical thinkers who held that man was not only condemned to but also must embrace his imperfectibility. In their paradigm, man's fundamental nature was dual: base and virtuous, bestial and rational, barbarous and civilized. According to this paradigm, man could never aspire to become wholly virtuous, rational, or civilized, but, on the other hand, could never devolve fully into depravity and animality. Some texts liken man's dual constitution to man's inhabitation of earth, lodged between the promise of godliness and the inferno of monstrosity.  This cohort, either by volition or by persecution, abandoned Crete for Kefalonia to establish a new society founded on their notion of duality. In reverence and homage to the unjustly slain Cretan Minotaur, they named themselves the Androtaurs: half man, half beast.

The Androtaurs assembled their new civilization near Kefalonia's modern capital of Argostoli, where they erected a colossal basalt labyrinth, whose center they believed was the real Axis Mundi.  Further, bulls were sacrosanct in Androtaurean culture; they did not feed of the bull's flesh nor drink of the female's milk. The Androtaurs did offer human sacrifices to bulls in return for their horns, their tails, and their hides. Priests conducted the sacrifices in the center of the labyrinth, during which they donned ceremonial headdresses made of the horns, cloaks fashioned from the hides, and tails painfully pierced into the small of their backs. But these sacrifices were of the most unusual character: the priests themselves were the sacrifice.  The priests donned the accouterments rendered from previous ceremonies, and, during the act of sawing off the new horns, skinning the new hides, and excising the new tails, the bulls battled the priests--and the priests only defended themselves until they accomplished the amputations, after which they surrendered their lives to the agonized creatures. Man was transformed into monster, and monster was transformed into man. The Minotaur was birthed anew, and the Androtaurs believed cosmic harmony was restored. And thus we have the ancient Cretan-Kefalonian Cult of the Minotaur (Black Thicket, Fourth Edition, 12-13) 

Upon the publication of this masterwork, the labyrinthological community hailed Walker as a rising giant, and thus Walker secured his position at the forefront of labyrinthological work. In the next installment, we will see Walker's transformation from mythicist, historicist, and archaeologist into labyrinth theorist. 

In Memoriam: Philip Ambrose Walker (The Early Years)

My fellow labyrinthians, today a sun sets behind the great, slate monolith that erstwhile defined the center of modern labyrinthology. It is my solemn and somber task to inform you that Phillip Ambrose Walker passed away around 3:00AM this Friday, December 12th.

His beloved wife Johanna, eldest daughter Rosemarie, eldest son Gerald, and youngest son Alistair survive him, as does his prized basset hound Winder, who was always seen astride and abreast Mr. Walker late in his life. Only Alistair is taking up his father's mantle. He's currently writing his dissertation in labyrinthology at Oxford University in Oxfordshire, England. Alistair has tentatively titled his dissertation Obstruction and Permission: An Exegesis of Enclosure and Disclosure in the Labyrinth.

Philip Ambrose Walker was born on January 17, 1925 in Exeter, the county town of Devon in England. As a young child, Philip became enamored with Thomas Bulfinch's seminal Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes. His father, Benjamin Walker, a poor, uneducated cobbler, secretly saved a few sixpences every month until he was able to purchase the text, through which Philip learned to read and write, as well as build a foundation in Greco-Roman literature considered essential for a proper education in the times. But one story particularly fascinated the young Walker—the legend of the Minotaur's Labyrinth. As Walker biographer Sheldon Browne explains in Walker as Walker:

"The myth was formative for the young Walker. Not only did it plant the first seed for his lifelong love of labyrinths, but it also laid the philosophical foundation for his labyrinthological framework. While Walker gave much credence to the theories that emerged after World War II, he staunchly believed that the history and mythology were far stronger ports of entry into understanding the labyrinth. Curiously, it was not Daedalus or Theseus with whom he most identified. It was Icarus. The hubris, the overreaching, but also the grand endeavor, was both cautionary and inspiring for Walker throughout his career. The idea of wings—the ultimate boundary circumvention—haunted Walker, but perhaps also represented the notion of liberation from lostness that dominated Walker's investigations" (Paragone Press, 2006, 24).

The next formative moment in the life of Phillip Ambrose Walker occurred on a family vacation—a rare event for the Walker family—to Aberdeen, Scotland. During the holiday, the Walker family visited the Stocket Hedge Labyrinth. To his terror, Walker, a quiet, introverted, and claustrophobic boy of ten years, was separated from his family as they wandered the hedges. Alone, lost, helpless, Walker navigated his way to the center, where he reunited with his distraught mother, father, and siblings. Walker has extensively reflected on this moment, and declares the experience "instilled in me my dual terror of and romance with the center. I think my fixation with man's condition of lostness was cemented in the ordeal. The egress, the return to the perimeter has always represented for me, personally and theoretically, some glimmer of redemption. Even late in my life, I still relive my first confrontation with lostness, and I still relive the great ecstasy on arriving back at the perimeter. It's primordial."

At 17, Walker left his family to begin studies in Florence, Italy, where he would meet some of the great labyrinthologists of mid-century—and where, in his Roman excavations, he would become one of the great labyrinthologists himself.

Philip Ambrose Walker, 17, in Florence, Italy.

It's a sad day for labyrinthians, a passing of an era, but I hope this first installment of Walker's retrospective will inspire all of us to continue navigation and labyrinthology not only as activities and studies, but as ways of life.

Await the next installment, "The Birth of a Monolith."