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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Modern Minoan Paganism
In sickness and in health: Plague thinking in Minoan Crete

The coronavirus pandemic seems to weasel its way into every conversation these days. So I've been thinking about how the ancient Minoans might have dealt with something like this. Communicable disease was a big problem in the ancient world, partly because they didn't have the drugs and medical care that we do, and partly because they didn't always understand how disease spread.

The Minoans were apparently well known for their medical knowledge. The London Medical Papyrus, an Egyptian document, includes two Minoan incantations against disease. These would have been combined with herbal or other therapy, since illness was considered to have a magical or spiritual component as well as a physical one.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Minoan Historical Fiction for Storytime

If you follow my Youtube channel, you'll know that one of my projects is a series of storytime videos - reading aloud from my own books and some of my longtime favorites by other authors. This time, I'm reading from my most recent novel, The Last Priestess of Malia, a work of historical fiction set in Minoan Crete.

The story centers around a young woman who dedicates herself to the temple and the gods in a time of great chaos and upheaval at the end of Minoan civilization. Though the later parts of the book get into some really heavy stuff that's also unfortunately relevant to our current world (sexism, racism, greed, conquest, xenophobia, colonialism), the earlier parts are largely about the main character's struggle to be "a real priestess" - whatever that means. If you've ever wondered when you're going to feel like you know what you're doing, you'll be able to relate. ;-)

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
The Perils of Writing about Spirituality

I'm so very glad we have the internet as a venue for sharing about spirituality - the community grows as the web widens. But there are some pitfalls and obstacles that limit the extent to which we can really communicate about spirituality online, or on any other platform that involves writing. I grapple with these issues almost every time I write a blog post here.

The nature of blogging, or writing articles for Pagan magazines, or posting in spiritual groups on social media, or even writing books is that of words: we write down what we want to share, and other people read it.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Labrys & Horns: A second go-round

At the beginning of this year I looked back over 2019 in Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP), musing about how far we've come over such a short time. Writing that post, of course, led me to look back over the years before that, and some things I need to update.

I started Ariadne's Tribe in 2014 because I was looking for other people who were interested in Minoan spirituality. By late 2015, to my utter astonishment, we had a sizable number of members, a pantheon, a sacred calendar, and a set of common practices. At that point, people started asking me to write it all down in a book so they would have a single resource to draw from.

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Red and White: The clues in the colors of Minoan art

For a long time, I wondered what on Earth possessed the Minoans to paint women as white (not Caucasian-toned, but the color of a sheet of paper) and men as dark-dark red. After all, DNA evidence shows that, like their ancestors in Neolithic Anatolia, the Minoans all had skin in various shades of brown. So why the weirdness in the art, like the Bull Leaper fresco above?

Then I began to learn about Mediterranean folk dance. Dance ethnology isn't a field I ever really thought about much before, to be honest. Then a talented dance ethnologist who happens to be a member of the Ariadne's Tribe Board of Directors began to share her insights with us, and a lot of things began to make sense.

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    My copy of "The Ancient & Martial Dances" arrived in the mail today. It looks intriguing. Thank you for mentioning it.

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
A Midwinter Labyrinth Journey

The labyrinth: that winding, twisting, single-path maze that takes you surely into the center and out again. Ariadne, the Lady of the Labyrinth, leads us onward and inward, to our own shadow self where the Minotaur helps us face our inner darkness. The labyrinth is a place of exploration and discovery, full of shadows and strange turnings. Let's see where the labyrinth of mythos takes us today.

As we approach the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, darkness is very much on my mind, as is the labyrinth. In a sense, the labyrinth is a kind of cave. Caves were important sacred sites to the ancient Minoans, and they're important symbols in Modern Minoan Paganism.

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A Mother's Love, Minoan Style

Whenever I check on my blog statistics, I always find that the post I wrote about topless Minoan women is the number one in terms of hits. The female breast is such a source of titillation (ha!) in modern society, it's hard to wrap our minds around the idea that exposed breasts might have represented something other than sexual innuendo to the ancient Minoans. But we're pretty sure they did.

In addition to the frescoes and figurines that show women with exposed breasts, Minoan art also includes quite a few representations of animals suckling their young. The image at the top of this blog is a drawing of a faience plaque found at Knossos. It shows a mama goat suckling a kid. There's a similar plaque with a cow and her calf. Images of mother animals suckling their young - cattle, goats, sheep, even deer - appear on a number of Minoan seals.

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