Hog has the guts to face his Hedge

A sketch of a hog cautiously approaching a large hedge maze, a projection of his self, which is a projection of the labyrinth outside.

“Do you know where the idea of a labyrinth first came from?”

I shake my head.

“It was the ancient Mesopotamians. They pulled out animal intestines——sometimes human intestines, I expect——and used the shape to predict the future. They admired the complex shape of intestines. So the prototype for labyrinths is, in a word, guts. Which means that the principle for the labyrinth is inside you. And that correlates to the labyrinth outside.”

“Another metaphor,” I comment.

“That’s right. A reciprocal metaphor. Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside. Most definitely a risky business.”

— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, trans. Philip Gabriel (Vintage, 2005), 352.