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I'm delighted to share with you that the newly revised and expanded second edition of Ariadne's Thread is now available!
The first edition, published 10 years ago (wow, has it really been that long?) was the inspiration for the creation of the Facebook group that evolved into the beautiful community that is Ariadne's Tribe.
...The very first book I ever published about Minoan spirituality is Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives. That was back in 2013, before I started the Ariadne's Tribe Facebook group and before Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP) had even begun to form in anyone's thoughts.
Ariadne's Thread is based on the set of Minoan-themed rituals I wrote for my second degree in a Wiccan coven back in the 1990s - a year's worth of seasonal rituals and a lifetime's worth of rites of passage. The coven I belonged to at the time helped me "road test" a lot of the rituals, which was very helpful. Then I added a large section about Minoan culture and religion and a mini-encyclopedia of deities and symbols to complete the book.
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You've probably heard the story of Persephone's abduction to the Underworld by Hades and her mother Demeter's frantic search for her afterward.
But what if the original story was a little different from that?
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This is one in a series of blog posts about our pantheon. Find the list of the whole series here.
Ariadne: most people have heard of her, with her ball of string, helping Theseus find his way out of the Labyrinth. If you've been reading this blog for long, you know the Minotaur-and-Labyrinth story is Greek, not Minoan, created centuries after the fall of Minoan civilization. Theseus was a Greek culture hero, not a part of the Minoan pantheon. Ariadne, though, is another story. She's a Minoan goddess. So where can we find her in the art of ancient Crete?
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I hadn't intended to review Jane Meredith's book Aspecting the Goddess on this blog. But then I read her tale of Ariadne, and I just had to.
The book is both a how-to manual of methods for connecting with the divine and a recounting of her own experiences using those methods. Her writing is poetic, touching, and inspiring - and just to be clear, the methods can be used to develop relationships with deities, land spirits, and other non-human beings.
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The labyrinth. Everyone has heard of it. It's one of the first things people think of when I mention that my spiritual practice has a Minoan focus. They might think of the beautiful labyrinth set into the floor at Chartres cathedral, or the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, or modern projects like the Pulse Memorial in Orlando, Florida (USA).
It's interesting, then, that no one has ever found an actual labyrinth at a Minoan site. There are lots of almost-but-not-quite-labyrinth meander patterns in Minoan art. And the labyrinth does show up on Cretan coins, but not until many centuries after Minoan civilization was gone. There's one single labyrinth image in a doodle on the back of a Mycenaean Linear B tablet from Pylos, but it dates to the time after the Minoan cities were destroyed. So it's a bit of a conundrum.
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Devotionals are a common practice for many Pagans: short prayers or meditations to help us connect with the divine. In my book Labrys and Horns I included devotionals for many of the Minoan deities.
Now I've made a video with some of those devotionals, an easy way for you to listen and focus on some of the deities: Ariadne, Dionysus, Rhea, the Horned Ones, the Melissae, Ourania, and Posidaeja. Here you go:
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