- the Seven Trumpets -

The woodcut room of the Seven Trumpets is the first woodcut room encountered when travelling through the labyrinth. In the revelation, the Book with the Seven Seals is a scroll held by God in his right hand. This scroll is sealed with seven seals.

A large scroll occupies the center of this room of the labyrinth. The scroll breaks open when the seventh, the last of the seals, is broken. At this moment four trumpets sound. The scroll is slowly opened. Its contents are unclear at the beginning, but resolve over time into an image of Durer's woodcut, "The Seven Trumpets", in which the end of the world and the coming of Christ is depicted. After the image becomes clear, it is magnified and centers on one portion -- the section in which a plague of locusts, ascending from the abyss, rain upon the earth.

In this point in the Apocalypse the sounding of the fifth trumpet brings the plague of insects. Their shape is that of horses, their teeth like those of lions, their hair like the hair of women. They have the tails of scorpions, with which they are charged to chastise man. The small sketchings that represent the locusts in the image on the scroll pour out of the parchment, into the room, and begin to grow. The room becomes flooded by the small creatures.

The sixth and then the seventh trumpet sound and the door that leads to the exit of the room opens: this represents the actions of man judged and the kingdom of Christ established.

The loud trumpet sounds are excerpted from Wagner's opera Das Reingold .