Solstice blessings to you!
Today is the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere. In the Tribe, this is a day of two layers of precious mythos, both centered around the concept of birth.
...Ariadne's Tribe: Minoan Spirituality for the Modern World
Walk the sacred labyrinth with Ariadne, the Minotaur, the Great Mothers, Dionysus, and the rest of the Minoan family of deities. Ariadne's Tribe is an independent spiritual tradition that brings the deities of the ancient Minoans alive in the modern world. We're a revivalist tradition, not a reconstructionist one. We rely heavily on shared gnosis and the practical realities of Paganism in the modern world. Ariadne's thread reaches across the millennia to connect us with the divine. Will you follow where it leads?
Find out all about Ariadne's Tribe at ariadnestribe.com. We're an inclusive, welcoming tradition, open to all who share our love for the Minoan deities and respect for our fellow human beings.
Laura Perry
Laura Perry is a priestess and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. She's the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne's Tribe, an inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. When she's not busy drawing and writing, you can find her in the garden or giving living history demonstrations at local historic sites.
The days and weeks leading up to the height of the winter holidays are both exciting and sacred to people from many different spiritual traditions. Christians have Advent, for example; Norse Pagans have Sunwait. Liturgical seasons leading up to a sacred day are far older than either of these traditions, and they have an important function: encouraging us to focus not just on the upcoming "special day" but on the way the year hinges around it.
And the Winter Solstice appears to have been the "central peg" on which the sacred calendar turned across much of early Eurasia, with the Sun Goddess as the driving force behind the year. Check out Patricia Monaghan's excellent book O Mother Sun! for some great research about this subject.
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Smash the patriarchy! That's a common cry these days in our efforts to create a more compassionate, egalitarian, inclusive world.
In the Tribe, we've talked about "the patriarchy" for a long time. But eventually we decided that wasn't the most accurate term for the issues we face today.
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Great article! -
Thanks! I thought it was time to spread this phrase beyond our private groups.
Today I'd like to introduce you to a deity you probably haven't heard of before. Her name is Potnia Chromaton, and her name means Lady of the Colors.
We met her serendipitously when we followed the legendary red thread that winds through the Labyrinth in the infamous Greek legend. While that story mis-identifies several Minoan deities as humans, it gave us some tidbits to grab hold of and follow back in time to the Bronze Age via comparative mythology and shared gnosis.
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Lies, damn lies, and statistics - you've heard the saying. But sometimes, we really do have to look at the hard numbers to see what's really there, because our impressions can be incorrect, often wildly so.
Case in point: Minoan art.
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In Ariadne's Tribe, we associate various animals, plants, and objects with our deities: the griffin with Therasia, the staff with Korydallos, geese and white and yellow flowers with Antheia, for instance. These items help us identify the deities in Minoan art. In that sense, they're kind of like name tags or labels.
But there's another collection of attributes that we associate with our deities as well. Like the ones I just mentioned, these can also help us identify the deity or their domain in the art. But more importantly, they indicate a special type of relationship between the deity and the humans who work in certain occupations or who raise certain food crops.
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I've shared readings from my other novels on YouTube, so I figured I should do likewise for my latest work of fiction, Leap! A Love Story. It's my first foray into romance, and of course it has a Minoan theme. It's set in Phaistos, the second-largest Minoan city (after Knossos) in about the year 1650 BCE, a generation or two before the Thera eruption.
The main character is Adelphos, the Cattle Master of Phaistos. He's in charge of the temple's herds, including the bulls that are trained for leaping. Which puts him in regular contact with the bull leapers, one of whom catches his eye.
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