PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com 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.
The Minoan family of deities includes a variety of what you might call job descriptions. Each deity has unique connections with certain facets of human life and the material world. But it's not always as clear-cut as you might think, since many of our deities appear to be reflections of each other.
Individuation is problematic, as we say in Ariadne's Tribe.
...
It's autumn in the northern hemisphere. For many of us, this is the end of the growing season and the beginning of the turn toward winter. But in the Mediterranean, it's the end of the hot, dry, rainless (and lately, wildfire-laden) summer. In the Mediterranean climate, the summer, not the winter, is the "dead season" when nothing grows.
But when the rainy season begins in the autumn, it's like the world is born anew.
...
One of the interesting aspects of imagining or recreating Minoan daily life - including religious practice - is that we don't have any textiles to speak of: no altar cloths, no curtains, no rugs or baskets. The damp Mediterranean Sea air tends to rot organic materials pretty swiftly. So we only have a few tiny fragments of the real thing, plus pictures of them in Minoan art.
But we have an interesting reflection of soft materials in some creative ceramics the Minoan potters made. Minoan pottery was pretty imaginative all round, including loads of 3d decorations and other fun details. But this particular class of ceramic vessels is unique: They all look like they're made of soft materials.
...
I've written about Daedalus before, describing his connection with the Minoan demi-deities the Daktyls and Hekaterides. But as with so many of the members of the Minoan family of deities, he has more than one set of connections.
These clusters of connected deities are called micropantheons and are a great way to focus on one particular portion of the mythos, since a whole pantheon can be pretty intimidating. Besides, most of us have our favorites that we prefer to spend most of our time with. Micropantheons were so popular that they continued to be how most people approached religion in the eastern Mediterranean all the way into the classical era (and even later, really, with the local cults of certain Christian saints).
...
One fun-but-also-challenging aspect of revivalist Pagan spirituality is figuring out how to do things in the modern world when it's clear we can't do the same thing the ancient culture did.
The Minoans had huge temples in all the major cities of Bronze Age Crete, staffed with full-time clergy, part-time clergy, administrators, artisans, cooks, housekeepers and other people to keep the huge institution running on a day-to-day basis. This would have been a hierarchical organization with bureaucracy as well as religious activities - a far cry from the solitary and small-group Paganism most of us practice in the modern world.
...
Lilies abound in Minoan art. They're such a common feature of the frescoes and ceramics that I wrote a whole blog post about them.
Lilies have long been a symbol of the Divine Feminine. In Ariadne's Tribe, we connect them with the goddesses Rhea and Ariadne.
...
The Serpent Mother is an enigmatic yet ever-present figure in Minoan spirituality. She's a sort of "out of the corner of your eye" kind of character, difficult to define or pin down, yet most people intuitively understand her on some level.
Today I'm going to attempt, not to corral her into a concrete definition, but to describe the way we honor her in our spiritual practice in Ariadne's Tribe. I'll talk around her, and by that means, we can begin to see the outline of who and what she is.
...
