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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Ancient Crete

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Toilet Snobs and other Modern Problems

There's a certain kind of mindset that says that we, the current oh-so-modern inhabitants of the world, are the epitome of social and biological evolution, that we're a massive improvement over everything and everyone who has come before us.

This concept was very popular in Victorian times thanks to Social Darwinism, a misapplication of the concept of evolution to social and cultural contexts. It was simply an easy way for well-off white westerners to feel superior to People of Color and pretty much every single culture that had come before them.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Equality for Minoan Men!

It can be hard for us modern folks who have always lived in a patriarchal society to envision any other kind of culture. As Riane Eisler perceptively noted in her book The Chalice and the Blade, we come from a dominance hierarchy type society, so we tend to assume that any other kind of society from history or prehistory must be similar.

In other words, if the men aren’t in charge and disproportionately powerful compared to the women in a culture, then the reverse must be true: the women must hold all the power while the men are largely powerless and oppressed.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Thesseli
    Thesseli says #
    This article makes me think of this story -- http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=197390707 -- an in par
  • Laura Perry
    Laura Perry says #
    That's kind of disturbing, but I guess it's a reminder that what we think we see isn't necessarily the same as what's really there

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Big Ritual for Solitaries

The Minoans had a lot of opportunities for what I like to call Big Ritual.

The clergy of the temples at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and the other cities put on mystery plays for the public, enacting stories from Minoan mythology at the solstices and equinoxes as well as at other festival dates.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
The Secret Identity of the Labrys

When I tell people I follow a Minoan spiritual path, one comment that regularly comes up involves “those massive double-axe weapons.” Sometimes Wiccans will compare the labrys to the athame or the coven sword – a strong, sharp weapon that’s meant to signify the practitioner’s will, strength, passion and so on.

But that’s not an accurate comparison. Yes, there have been cultures that used double-bladed axes as weapons, and very effective ones at that. And we know the Minoans made all sorts of bronze weapons for export.

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Ariadne was just a girl and other urban legends of antiquity

We like to think of the deities as having always existed, time out of mind. In one sense they're timeless, of course, but in another sense they're closely linked to the cultures and societies of specific times and places. It’s important to know when each deity ‘showed up’ and in what culture they did so, in order to understand which versions of the myths are the original ones and which are later alterations.

That’s right, later cultures came along and changed the earlier versions of myths - in most cases because they were taking over a society and wanted to downplay or even demonize its deities in favor of their own.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Thanksgiving - Minoan Style

Thursday is the holiday of Thanksgiving where I live in the U.S. As these things go, it’s a relatively modern one, instituted in the nineteenth century to help bring the nation back together after the Civil War (and please, let’s set aside the horrid historical revisionism about the Pilgrims and the native North American nations for the moment – I’m aware that many people choose not to celebrate Thanksgiving because of this issue, and that's fair).

But the concepts on which Thanksgiving is founded are ancient. Essentially, it's the American harvest festival. And some of us find sacredness in that fact.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Equal Time for Minoan Gods and Men

I was recently asked, over in Ariadne’s Tribe, about the apparent predominance of women and goddesses in ancient Minoan religion. After all, the labrys and the Snake Goddess figurines have been hallmarks of the feminist movement for decades.

But Minoan spirituality wasn't nearly as overwhelmingly female-centric as it might appear. Instead, it's more balanced.

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