There's a lot of argument in the Pagan community about what constitutes a "valid" tradition. Some people are only comfortable with reconstructionist traditions that can provide an ancient text reference for every portion of their spiritual practice. Others only want to participate in traditions that can claim to have unbroken practices going back generations, even centuries.

Ariadne's Tribe is neither.

We are not a reconstructionist tradition. We have no Minoan-era religious texts to draw on, and post-Minoan-era texts are unreliable. We are a revivalist tradition, bringing the Minoan deities into the modern world rather than trying to rebuild ancient Minoan religion in the 21st century.

And obviously, this is not an unbroken tradition at all. Minoan culture itself was lost for millennia after the Bronze Age collapse, and the major Minoan cities only began to be excavated just over a century ago.

Back when Ariadne's Tribe began discussing how we wanted to go about building our tradition, we had some decisions to make. We decided that our personal relationship with our family of deities, and our ability to make those connections with the divine in the modern world, was our most important, most sacred goal.

We use a combination of techniques, from comparative mythology to dance ethnology to examination of artifacts. No single method informs any particular addition to our tradition. There are always multiple research inputs, multiple methods of gathering information and making decisions. Then we throw in a huge dose of shared gnosis, with new developments only being added to our tradition if the group as a whole agrees on them after we've connected with the deities in ritual and meditation and checked our experiences with them.

If we're honest, footnotes would be problematic anyway. We have no Minoan sacred texts to draw on. Linear A has not been deciphered, and the Linear B tablets are accounting records kept by the Mycenaeans during their (probably hostile) occupation of Knossos. So they're not sacred texts, and they may or may not record any information that's accurate for what the Minoans themselves believed or practiced.

What we're left to rely on are the artifacts and building remains from Minoan sites. If you want to footnote those, what you'll actually be footnoting is the interpretation by an archaeologist or historian who is probably not Pagan and doesn't understand the worldview behind Paganism or the practicalities of that sort of spiritual practice. So that's problematic as well.

What we do is not a scholarly method. It's not meant to be. It's very messy, much like the actual practice of religion in connection with the deities.

There are no footnotes. No ancient texts to point to so we can "prove we're right."

This isn't about proving we're right.

It's about being in right relationship with the deities of our pantheon, as they present themselves to us in the contemporary world. It's about listening to the deities and following through on what we hear.

We're also not looking to recruit thousands of people to join us. We're only looking for people for whom our methods and practices are a good fit. People for whom what we are doing feels right for them.

If we're not a good fit for you, that's all right. There are plenty of other traditions to choose from. Or you could go your own way as a solitary. Or even start your own tradition.

But if we're what you've been looking for, you are very welcome, regardless of who you are or where you come from.

Together we are joy!