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When we learn history in school, we're given pictures of maps with clear lines drawn to separate the different empires, cultures, and nations. We're taught that one set of people lived within this little box on the map and another set of people lived within the next box over. But history isn't that neat and tidy.

Take the Minoans, for instance. Their culture centered on the island of Crete, just south of Greece, during the Bronze Age. They were a pre-Indo-European people (they weren't Greek) who became quite wealthy by importing raw materials and exporting fancy finished goods like bronze blades and dyed woolen cloth. But in order to do all that trading, they had to move around.

It was while I lived in Jerusalem, Israel, in the winter of 1992, and previous to becoming a metaphysician and fire priestess, that I began a surprising although insightful journey. Having spent days curled up on my couch glued to a Mary Summer Rain book titled, Dreamwalker, a book I found in Tel Aviv, I was hooked. I could not put that book down, it held me spellbound. Having noted the name Silver Eagle, Dreamwalker, a bell went off in my psyche. When I read that one could support this Tennessee US Native Dreamwalker by purchasing his hand made earrings consisting of beads, wood and or feathers, I determined to write to him. Dreamwalkers are individuals who can use dreams to visit people, or teleport themselves and read ones energy vibration, offering help and assistance.

Different people approach spiritual practice in different ways. Some people like detailed rules for how to set up their altar, prepare for ritual, perform ritual, and clean up afterward. Others prefer a more open approach, following general guidelines but allowing their intuition to guide them for much of what they do.

Some spiritual traditions fall squarely in that first category as well, practices such as Hellenic and Roman Paganism, simply because we have extensive texts from those cultures telling us exactly how those people practiced their religion: What was allowed, what was required, what was forbidden. But for many ancient religions, we have few to no written sources to tell us how it was done. The religion practiced by the Minoans of Bronze Age Crete is one of those.

I'm often asked to explain the different between my two books about Minoan spirituality: Ariadne's Thread and Labrys & Horns. So often, in fact, that I figured a blog post about the subject would be a good idea.

Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives was released in 2013 but it was based on about 20 years of spiritual work I had done before then. Back in the 1990s, when I was working on my second degree in the Wiccan coven I belonged to at the time, I was given an assignment: Pick a pantheon and write a year's worth of seasonal rituals and a lifetime's worth of rites of passage using that pantheon. I'd like to say I picked the Minoan pantheon, but it's more like it picked me. I'm sure you know how that goes.

If you look at one of the amazingly detailed Minoan gold seal rings, you might see a tiny human figure hovering as if it's descending from the heavens. These are usually interpreted as a god or goddess coming down to their worshipers: an epiphany scene. But what about all the other strange shapes that float in the air on the seal rings?

Given the Minoans' focus (obsession, maybe) with astronomy, there's a strong possibility that those floating objects represent constellations. One clue is that they always show up in the same position relative to each other, no matter how many or few of them are on the ring.

In my early 20s, I experienced a spontaneous awakening that fully opened up my world to the life of a mystic. Years later nothing quite cements the phrase “spiritual emergence” than the exact moment when the energetic point at my heart broke open.

There were a few problems with the journey I was about to begin. One, I didn't have a community, and the network of support I did have hadn't experienced anything like I was describing. I didn't have any local teachers. The greatest hurdle, though, was the fact that I'm bipolar with the diagnosis now of Bipolar Type II.

"And they painted on cardboard, because it was new, cheap, and affordable. But they didn't know it wasn't archival, so very little of that work remains intact."  -The words of one of my art history professors, talking about a group of abstract expressionists or similar genre of artists from the 40's-50's. 

It sounded like some sort of moral failing - that these artists had abandoned expensive, time-tested techniques of canvas or wood panels to try something they could afford and was plentiful.  

Having been in art school for a good chunk of my life, as well as a professional high-end picture framer, I have come to see how much museum-culture of the last 300 hundred years has had an effect on the modern art-making process.  That we must work with archival materials, watch out for UV light and dampness, preserve, preserve, preserve.  Think about the future of your work.

The other week while finishing up my book tour, we stopped at Mt. Rushmore, as well as watched the 15-minute film about the making of it. I believe it was in part of a speech from FDR where he talked about the world 10,000 years from now, and what future generations of Americans may think when they see the monument, worn by the weather and time.  In that moment I was thinking two things: if there are even human beings on this planet then - and the condition of the giant sphinx in Egypt.