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I've been thinking about roads the past couple of days. The Minoans were famous for their paved roads, an unusual feature of Bronze Age cities. Archaeologists think they had roads (not all of them paved) running all around the coastline of Crete and crisscrossing the island.

These are Rhea's Roads, since Rhea is the Minoan Earth Mother. It's her soil we walk on, especially on Crete, even if there's pavement on top of it.

All those topless women in Minoan art played a major role in the popularity of Minoan archaeology during the early 20th century, when the cities of Bronze Age Crete were being uncovered for the first time in over 3,000 years. They were quite racy for the Edwardian era, being considered almost pornographic back then.

But to the Minoans, they were sacred.

“Umm Allah!”

As a general rule, I think it's sound policy to be respectful of other people's gods, but, after all, a story's a story, and history's history. As an Anishinabe elder once told Minnesota storyteller Kevin Kling, with a story and a sense of self, you can survive anything.

In the Arabic-speaking world, it's customary to refer to people in day-to-day conversation not by their personal names, but by the name of their oldest child: hence Umm (“mother of”) or Abu (“father of”) Whomever. So prevalent a custom is this that (I'm told) those without children will often be assigned a fictitious child as namesake.

(A pagan mom once explained to me the logic of this. In a given community, you may or may not know the parent, but—the kid-pack being a free-wheeling entity of its own that goes pretty much everywhere—everybody knows all the kids.)

Even so, there's something about the phrase Umm Allah (roughly: OOM aw-LAW) that strikes the Muslim ear as deeply disturbing, if not downright blasphemous. (I would really recommend against using it while walking down the street in Kabul these days.)

Arabic-speaking Christians do use the phrase, of course. By the internal logic of Christian thought, it makes perfect sense: if Jesus is God, then the mother of Jesus must be the mother of God. Christians being Christians, of course, people have, down the centuries, killed one another by the thousands over this phrase.

Naturally, the pagan story is different. (With a story and a sense of self, you can survive anything.) Though no proponent of bumpersticker theology, I will admit that seeing My Goddess Gave Birth to Your God on the back of someone's car brings a smile to my lips every time.

Well, the Great Mother is Mother of All the Gods, even ones (I won't mention any names) that don't exist, or—to be, perhaps, slightly more nuanced about it—exist only in other people's heads.

This is the first in a series of posts about our pantheon. Find the full list of the whole series here.

Last time, I shared the full pantheon that we've developed for Ariadne's Tribe. Now it's time to explore the deities one at a time and discover where we can find their iconography in Minoan art.

You know the feeling: the words leap up off the page and seize you with such force that you know you're never going to forget them.

Years ago, I was reading an article about German Expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907).

“The only god worth worshiping is the Great Mother, Source of all Life,” she was quoted as saying.

(I should mention that I've since tried to track down this quotation, so far unsuccessfully; but since her words smote themselves into my heart at the time, I'm willing to trust my memory on this one.)

To look at her paintings, you could certainly believe that she would say such a thing. Her secular madonnas, many of them self-portraits, radiate a serene and luminous sanctity of their own.

***

The wand beeps over my breastbone. With a jerk of his head, the TSA guy indicates: Show.

By her chain, I pull the little silver goddess up out of my shirt.

“Who's that?” he asks, surprised.

(Interesting: not "what?" but "who?")

“The Great Mother, Source of All Life,” I tell him. Then I hear myself adding: “I have it on good authority that She's the only god worth worshiping.”

As I think on the meaning of Mother's Day I am drawn to both the commercialism and the potential for deepening my relationship with the creative feminine. 

I have been richly blessed to be a mother of five children. This being birthed from a space of thought that firmly believed I did not want marriage or children; only a career as a professional ballerina. The marriage came at the age of 21 after less than a year of dating my husband and I did not question that decision, simply knowing it was right. Last year we celebrated our 40th anniversary, so I guess I was correct in following my instincts. 

The night is warm and I stand facing the lingering light, thick and strong in its final hold. I think on all that has brought me to this point of the Great Wheel and call to myself the memories of lessons learned and places filled with burgeoning light that I have nurtured and cultivated as my Inner Sun waxed to fullness. Each memory is illuminated from within and I feel the heat of my Inner Sun flaring out from center’s core; extending light filled streams of connection to each treasured sensation and image so that all may see the product of my efforts.