This is one in a series of posts about finding our deities in Minoan art. Find the full list of blog posts in this series here.
Today we're looking for the bull-god Zagreus in Minoan art. We consider him to be an aspect of our god Tauros Asterion. So obviously, we're going to look for images of bulls. But what kinds of images? When we go looking for Tauros Asterion in Minoan art, we seek out naturalistic/realistic images of bulls. When we're in search of the Minotaur (another aspect of Tauros Asterion), we look for shape-shifting depictions of half-man, half-bull creatures. So how do we know when we've found Zagreus?
This is one in a series about finding our deities in Minoan art. Find the list of the full series here.
The Snake Goddess is perhaps the most iconic representative of Minoan culture and religion. Show a person a Snake Goddess figurine, and it's a pretty sure bet they'll think of the Minoans. But did you know that there are only a handful of these figurines, and no other representations of the Snake Goddess in the frescoes or the seals?
This is one in a series about the deities in our pantheon. You can find the full list of posts in this series here.
Today we're going to focus on the Horned Ones: the Minoan gods and goddesses who take the form of horned animals - cattle, goats, and deer - and where we can find them in Minoan art. They come in god/goddess pairs: the Minotaur and Europa, the Minocapros and Amalthea, the Minelathos and Britomartis.
[Content Warning: This post contains a photo of human skeletal remains.]
When we talk about funerals, many of us think of the deceased being either cremated or buried in a grave, and that's the end of the process. But for the ancient Minoans, it was only the beginning.
One of the reasons we call Modern Minoan Paganism a revivalist tradition instead of a reconstructionist one is that, unlike many reconstructionist Pagan traditions, we don't have any ancient texts to work from. Yes, the ancient Minoans were a literate society, but so far all of their scripts and writing systems are untranslated.
Take, for instance, the cup pictured at the top of this post. This is a photo from Sir Arthur Evans' monumental multi-volume work Palace of Minos, a record of his excavations at Knossos (now in the public domain). The artifact in the photo is a terracotta cup with writing on the interior in what may very well be squid ink. That writing is in the script rather unimaginatively known as Linear A, and it's still undeciphered.
This is one in a series about the deities in our pantheon. You can find the full list of posts in this series here.
Today we're focusing on a well-known god, Dionysus, and the places we can find him in Minoan art and artifacts. The ecstatic god that many people know from classical times (a millennium after the destruction of the Minoan cities) is actually a syncretic deity, a combination of the Minoan god (or at least, whatever remained of him after the Bronze Age collapse) with a similar ecstatic god from Phrygia.
This is one in a series about our pantheon. Find the other posts here.
In this post, we'll have a look at Korydallos, one of the gods who are the sons of our three Mother Goddesses. Korydallos (or The Lark, as we sometimes call him) is a new name for an old god. We discovered him via dance ethnography, Mediterranean folklore, and a close look at some of the interesting details of Minoan art and artifacts. In Ariadne's Tribe, we consider him to be the son of our Sun goddess Therasia, though there is a sense in which all the son and daughter deities are children of all the Mothers - more about that in a bit.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...