Chartres in Angkor

Psyche & Co. presents · Retreat

Two cathedrals of the soul: Gothic light meets the stone mountains of Angkor.

Psyche & Co. presents a week among the temples of Angkor with Andrew Harvey, holding two of humanity’s great sacred architectures side by side. One is Chartres, the Gothic cathedral of the labyrinth, the Black Madonna and coloured light. The other is Angkor itself, where the Khmer built their image of the cosmos in sandstone. Both were made to be walked through, and both were made to change the person walking.

We will read these buildings as maps of the soul’s journey, letting Christian mysticism and the Hindu-Buddhist vision of the world speak to one another. At a time when traditions are so often set against each other, this is a week for noticing how deeply they rhyme, and for asking what that asks of us.

The place

Angkor Wat was built in the first half of the twelfth century by King Suryavarman II and dedicated to Vishnu. Its five towers stand for the peaks of Mount Meru, the mountain at the centre of the Hindu universe, and its walls and vast moat for the mountain ranges and the ocean around it. Over the following centuries it became a Buddhist temple, and it remains a place of Buddhist worship today. A short distance north, at the exact centre of the walled city of Angkor Thom, stands the Bayon, the state temple of the Buddhist king Jayavarman VII, whose towers carry some two hundred serene stone faces, often linked with the bodhisattva of compassion. Ta Prohm, founded by the same king in 1186 and dedicated to Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom, in the likeness of his mother, has been left largely as the forest found it, its stones held in the roots of enormous trees.

Chartres will be with us in spirit and image: the cathedral built mostly between 1194 and 1220, with the labyrinth laid into its nave floor in the early thirteenth century, its Black Madonna, and its great company of medieval windows, more of which survive there than in any other cathedral of the age.

The teachings

• The temple as a body of the cosmos: how Angkor Wat’s mountain, moat and towers, and Chartres’ nave, rose window and labyrinth, each set out the soul’s path from the edge to the centre.
• The labyrinth as a practice: a way of walking that turns inward and returns outward, read alongside the Hindu and Buddhist idea of circumambulating the sacred.
• The Divine Mother in two forms: Mary of Chartres, enthroned in the crypt and on the pillar, beside Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom honoured at Ta Prohm.
• The faces of compassion at the Bayon, and what Christian mystics such as Julian of Norwich might say to the bodhisattva’s vow.
• Ruin and renewal at Ta Prohm: what it means to let the forest in, and to let life break open the structures we have built.
• From vision to action: Andrew’s Sacred Activism as the bridge between inner illumination and how we live and serve.

A sketch of the days

1. ArrivalGathering, welcome and an opening evening introducing Chartres and Angkor as two maps of the same journey.
2. Days 2–3Angkor Wat: the temple as cosmic mountain, its galleries and reliefs, with teaching on the labyrinth and the inward path.
3. Day 4The Bayon: the faces of compassion, the Divine Mother and the meeting of Christian and Buddhist devotion.
4. Day 5Ta Prohm: ruin, roots and renewal; a quieter day for reflection, journalling and walking practice.
5. Day 6Integration: how a vision of the sacred becomes a way of acting in the world.
6. DepartureClosing circle and farewell. This is a sketch of the days; the final programme will be confirmed.

This is an outline to give you a feel for the days. The final programme, teachers and timings will be confirmed with the dates.

What you'll take home

• A felt understanding of how sacred buildings are designed to transform the people who move through them.
• A labyrinth-style walking practice you can return to at home, alone or with clients.
• A deeper sense of the Divine Feminine as it appears across Christian and Buddhist traditions.
• A way of holding several traditions at once without flattening their differences.
• Clearer intentions about how your inner life can shape your work and service.

Who it's for

This retreat is for psychotherapists, psychologists and others in the helping professions who want to bring a richer understanding of symbol, pilgrimage and the sacred into their work, and for thoughtful laypeople drawn to mysticism, architecture and the meeting of traditions. No prior knowledge of Christian or Hindu-Buddhist thought is needed, only curiosity and a willingness to walk slowly and look closely.

Photographs via Wikimedia Commons: LBM1948 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 3.0); Radek Kucharski (CC BY 2.0).

← All retreats and mystery schools