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.

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Individuation Is Problematic

Individuation is problematic. That's the unofficial Ariadne's Tribe motto.

It's sort of a joke, a witty response to difficult questions about divinity. But it's also very serious.

The joke part is a reminder not to take ourselves, our egos, our sense of separateness from each other and from the divine too seriously. Because we're an integral part of all-that-is, from the subatomic particles and the worms to the heffalumps and woozles to the supernovas, nebulas, and galaxies. 

But it's also a description of our difficulty, as apparently separate and individual humans, trying to understand a pantheon full of deities who are interwoven with each other in ways we may not understand and often, in ways we can't even perceive.

As I've mentioned before, the Tribe family of deities doesn't parse out neatly into a human-style family tree the way you might expect given other pantheons such as the Hellenic and Roman ones. Most of the time, I feel like it's more of a carnival fun-house full of mirrors. Some deities may be twins or alter-egos of each other: Rhea and Amalthea, for instance, or Europa and Pasiphae.

Our deities also don't fit neatly into pigeonholes. By that I mean, they don't seem to like hard labels. So we don't have a single goddess of luck and good fortune, for instance, and we have more than one deity who could reasonably qualify as a trickster. Minos is a Moon god, but so are all the Horned Ones, even though Britomartis and Europa may originally have been Sun goddesses.

Even the deities who do consent to labels insist on a certain amount of leeway. Rhea is the Grain Mother, sure, but Ariadne is the embodiment of the grain crops as they grow in the fields. She returns from her yearly sojourn in the Underworld in the form of the green sprouts that push their way up from the soil. I guess you could say she's our Jane Barleycorn!

And don't even get me started with the Serpent Mother. She's enigmatic, one and many - maybe infinitely many. There may be a Serpent version of each of the Three Mothers and possibly the other deities as well.

Then there are the deities who are only visible between two other deities: the Unseen Rainbow. These three are Serpent deities, so the wiggliness makes sense, I suppose.

To say that we've been humbled when working to understand the Minoan pantheon is an understatement.

We're only human.

And that fact colors our interpretation of the divine, our ability to understand who they are and how they exist.

And of course, I haven't even addressed the concept of the divine within us, that spark that's inside not just every human being but every inspirited thing in the universe. And then there are some of us who practice trance possession, and a few who have taken on that kind of burden as a life-long sacred task. Where is the line between us and Them?

So sometimes, the answer to a question about our pantheon and our spiritual practice is, "Individuation is problematic." We laugh a little when we say it. But we mean it very seriously indeed.

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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.

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