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Title: American Witch

The majority of sea snakes live in the warm seas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.  Most of the species are found in the Coral Triangle region of Southeast Asia, with Australia a close second. Built for marine life, sea snakes have rounded bodies and flat tails.  Furthermore as they swim, small flaps cover their noses to keep the sea water out.

 The families of sea snakes differ in their need for land and fresh water.  The Hydrophiinae like the yellow-bellied sea snake spend their entire lives at sea.  They have glands under their tongues to discharge salt.  Also, the powerful lung of these snakes allows them to dive deeply, and stay underwater for a long time.  Great numbers of these sea snakes can be found floating out in the open ocean in a giant raft (“slick”).

If you live on an island, even a big one like Crete, the ocean is a constant presence. And if you spend a lot of time in boats and ships, like the Minoans did when they went fishing or traveled across the waves to trade, the ocean becomes a powerful focus for your safety and livelihood. So it's no surprise that the Minoans had a goddess of the sea, the sacred embodiment of the womb-ocean that their island rises up out of. Her name is Posidaeja.

Posidaeja's name shows up in the Linear B tablets, which record the Mycenaean Greek language. We don't know for sure that Posidaeja is what the Minoans called her, but when we use the name, she answers, so at the very least she's agreeable to it. Many of us who practice Modern Minoan Paganism simply call her Grandmother Ocean.

Tethys Speaks

Tethys:

The Waters Below

Okeanos’s Story

The Triple Goddess is a major component of modern Paganism, but the Maiden-Mother-Crone triplicity doesn't appear in ancient Crete. The closest we can come to that kind of "life phases" division is a Younger and Elder Goddess, exemplified by Rhea (the Great Mother) and Ariadne (the daughter). This mother-daughter duo is the possible origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whose sacred pair of Demeter and Persephone are well known in the modern Pagan world (check out Charlene Spretnak's inspired book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece for more on this subject). I like to think of this twofold goddess as Maiden and Matriarch, the two stages of womanhood in a society in which women's ability to birth children for men wasn't their primary function in life.

But there is a Minoan triplicity associated with the Goddess. It doesn't have to do with the life stages and fertility functions of women, but with the world around us and how the Sacred Feminine manifests in it. It's the ancient threefold division of Land/Sea/Sky. This triplicity unfolds around each and every one of us every day of our lives.