The cyberRites

One of the projects dear to our hearts had been the idea of "on-line rituals" or workings. Right from the start of the Labyrinth site this notion was kicking around in the backs of our minds and really, we suppose, it was simply a question of "waiting for the right time" - or maybe, even, the right circumstances.

One of the uncertainties had always been regarding the form they should take.

1.  Should we be looking at a situation where a whole bunch of people come on-line at the same time and do something together?

2.  Or should we simply post the "raw materials" for a working and let everyone assemble something for themselves? (This is very much what we'd already done in fact by publishing the formal texts.)

3.  Perhaps something for individuals that entails interaction with the computer in some way?

4.  Or maybe the details and instructions for a working that a person can then do in their own time, on their own?

Well, that pretty much covered most of the options that we could think of, though it was never very clear what particular direction we should go in. That we actually should go in one direction or another had never been in question. That's the commitment we undertook right at the very beginning, and that we described on the then Labyrinth home page in the following terms:

The idea behind Labyrinth is to create and service a web community, that can participate in the activities and rituals of the Fellowship, by rendering accessible via the Web material that has hitherto been exclusive to the Fellowship. This provides an opportunity for solitary practitioners to acquire many of the benefits of group-work whilst still retaining their independence and privacy.

At the time the easiest and quickest for us was Option 1, which we implemented by publishing first the Temple Rites and the Visions, followed shortly after by the Guides (with more to come) and the Discoveries.

Once Labyrinth had begun to become established as a web community we set up a further site named The Dungeon (originally an "MSN Community" site) where registered members of Labyrinth could meet on-line for a chat and so forth, with the intention being to use it as a springboard for us to implement Option 4.
(This idea has now been modified somewhat, with the role of the Dungeon being transformed into a Participants-only forum and site management centre.)

Option 1 was fraught with so many difficultes (both logistical and technical) that, at the time, it wasn't even worth considering.
Which left Option 3. That was always the one that we'd had a secret hankering for but, again, technical difficulties prevented its immediate launching.
As soon as those were overcome we launched the very first on-line working, "The Haven".
More were to have followed, but with the passage of time we began to suspect that cyberRites was possibly not the wisest approach after all, and so for all intents and purposes the entire project was "put on hold", probably to be abandoned entirely.

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