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I gave a presentation about Ariadne's Tribe last weekend at WitchCon, and one of the attendees asked me the question:

How is Ariadne's Tribe different from the Minoan Brotherhood?

I feel like I didn't answer it very thoroughly, so I asked the Tribe to help me craft a more comprehensive response. Why would I need to ask them for help? Because not only am I (obviously) not qualified to join the Minoan Brotherhood, but I've never really investigated it.

A lot of Pagans are hesitant to use the word prayer since it's so strongly connected with Christianity in modern western culture. But really, one of the things many of us do in our spiritual practice is pray. Prayer has been around a lot longer than Christianity has.

What is prayer? At its most basic, it's a conversation with a deity. In Ariadne's Tribe, we pray a lot, although often we simply call it talking with deity.

If you look closely at the Ariadne's Tribe logo above, you might see something different about it compared with earlier versions (besides the addition of some lovely lilies from a fresco found in the Minoan villa at Amnisos, that is).

The difference? We're now just Ariadne's Tribe - we're no longer using the phrase "Modern Minoan Paganism."

I'm often asked to explain the different between my two non-fiction books about inclusive 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 is now in its second edition. It's based on about 20 years of spiritual work I did 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.