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This is one in a series about the deities in the pantheon of Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP). You can find the full list of posts in this series here.

Today we're focusing on a well-known god, Dionysus, and the places we can find him in Minoan art and artifacts. The ecstatic god that many people know from classical times (a millennium after the destruction of the Minoan cities) is actually a syncretic deity, a combination of the Minoan god (or at least, whatever remained of him after the Bronze Age collapse) with a similar ecstatic god from Phrygia.

This is one in a series about the MMP pantheon. Find the other posts here.

In this post, we'll have a look at Korydallos, one of the gods who are the sons of our three Mother Goddesses. Korydallos (or The Lark, as we sometimes call him) is a new name for an old god. We discovered him via dance ethnography, Mediterranean folklore, and a close look at some of the interesting details of Minoan art and artifacts. In MMP, we consider him to be the son of our Sun goddess Therasia, though there is a sense in which all the son and daughter deities are children of all the Mothers - more about that in a bit.

These days, we in the Pagan community have many choices in terms of traditions and paths to explore and practice. Most of the folx I know include more than one tradition in their regular spiritual practice.

How does that work, and what happens when you have traditions whose calendars don't fit with each other?

One of the aspects of spiritual practice that we've developed in Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP) is a standardized ritual format. It took a lot of research and even more experimentation, but what we ended up with is, we believe, true to the spirit of religion in the Bronze Age Mediterranean.

What that means, though, is that it doesn't look like Wicca's circle-casting and quarter calls, which is what many modern Pagans think of when someone says "standard ritual format." Much of Wicca's ritual basis comes from ceremonial magic, which is fascinating and nifty but has no relation to the centuries-earlier religious practices of the Bronze Age.

I'm pleased and proud to announce the release of the new second edition of Labrys and Horns: An Introduction to Modern Minoan Paganism. Since the publication of the first edition in 2016, we've expanded our pantheon and sacred calendar, created a new standard ritual format for both groups and solitaries, and developed a set of spiritual practices that we all share.

When I say the second edition is expanded, I mean it. The first edition, in print format, is 140 pages long. The new second edition clocks in at 243 pages.

This is one in a series about the MMP pantheon. Find the other posts here.

Today, we're focusing on Tauros Asterion. He's one of three gods who are sons of our mother goddesses. As you might guess from his name, he has both earthly and cosmic aspects. In MMP, we consider the Minotaur and Zagreus to be two of his faces. But for now we're focusing specifically on Tauros Asterion, whom we consider to be the son of our Earth Mother goddess Rhea as well as having a connection with our cosmic mother goddess Ourania.

It takes a number of different approaches to build a revivalist spiritual tradition like Modern Minoan Paganism. We started with some of the usual reconstruction methods: ancient artifacts and art; archaeological information about cities, buildings, and homesites; astronomical building and tomb alignments; myth fragments recorded by later writers; dance ethnography; and comparative mythology. But even with all those methods stacked together, we still ended up with holes to fill in order to create a functional modern spiritual practice. In the case of Minoan religion, those holes are pretty big.

What do we use to fill those gaps? Shared gnosis.