A lot of people ask me how I got into inclusive Minoan spirituality and why I'm inspired to write the books and create the art that goes along with that spiritual path. If I'm honest, the Minoan deities have been stalking me since I was a teenager, and it just took me a while to pick up on their intent. Sometimes I'm slow that way. But once I finally got started, all enthusiastic and rarin' to go, I hit a roadblock: There were virtually no resources out there.
Bear in mind, I'm old enough that when I first started researching the Minoans, I had to resort to actual ink-and-paper encyclopedias and history books. And none of those ever had more than a paragraph or two about the Minoans, usually as a sort of side note before the text started talking about the Greeks.
But even once I had access to the Internet, there just wasn't a whole lot out there, and there still isn't, though the resource base is slowly growing. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that Ariadne's Tribe is at about the place where Druidry was three or four decades ago: a small, niche path within the larger Pagan community.
So when I went looking for resources and couldn't find them, I did what a lot of Pagans have done over time: I created them.
That's how I ended up writing my two books about Minoan spirituality, Ariadne's Thread and Labrys & Horns. In the first case, I collected up the rituals I wrote for my second degree work and turned them into a book. In the second case, the lovely folks in Ariadne's Tribe asked me for a collection of the common symbols, deities, and practices of our tradition, so I went to work to create it for them.
And then I wanted a Minoan Tarot deck. When I went searching, I couldn't find anything at all. Ellen Lorenzi-Prince hadn't published her Minoan Tarot deck yet, so there was exactly nothing out there. Having no idea what was involved in creating a whole deck, I leaped right in. If I had realized what I was getting myself into, I would probably have run screaming in the opposite direction, so I guess naiveté has its virtues! LOL
Three years and loads of blood, sweat, and tears later, I had created and published my Minoan Tarot deck. It was exactly what I wanted, a deck that looked like it had been made by an ancient Minoan artist. No, I'm not likely ever to take on this kind of enormous project again! But I'm very glad I did this one. It was a huge, multi-year-long act of devotion for me and it changed the way I view both Tarot and the Minoans.
Then there was the time I wanted a Minoan-themed coloring book. You can guess what happened when I went looking for one: nothing. Nada. Zilch. So I made one, with the incredibly inventive title of The Minoan Coloring Book. And yes, I have actually colored the pages in my own coloring book. There's one hanging over my desk as I write this post.
So the simple answer to why I do all these things is that I have to, because no one else has, and these are things I want, things I need for my spiritual path. It turns out, other people want them as well, which is gratifying. I don't feel nearly as alone as I did when I first started turning my attention to the Minoan deities. I love the community that we've built up and the fact that we're all walking this path together, but each in our own way. To me, that's what it's really all about.