CW: animal sacrifice

Up to now my blog posts here have been mostly about research I've done - information about Minoan deities and spiritual practices, with a few notes from my own practice thrown in for good measure. Today I'm sharing something very different with you. Something very personal.

I've spent a lot of time meditating and doing shamanic journeywork to piece together what I can of Minoan religious practice. Usually I get a few glimpses of rituals they might have performed in the big temples or at the little shrines and altars in their homes. A few days ago I got something I hadn't bargained for - a full-blown vision of an oracular priestess doing her thing. It has taken me some time to process this experience and reach the point that I can comfortably share it with you.

Of course, this vision is the famed Unverified Personal Gnosis. But in Ariadne's Tribe, we incorporate personal gnosis where it works, particularly in terms of corroborated or shared gnosis - a number of people experiencing the same thing. This vision rings people's chimes, so we find it helpful, and I'm sharing.

I've long believed I lived in the town of Malia on Crete toward the end of the Minoan empire. This vision came to me in the first person, so it may be a past life memory. Then again, it may simply be a depiction of a typical Minoan spiritual practice - the gods aren't always terribly clear when they pass on information to us mere mortals.

[UPDATE: I used an expanded version of this vision in my Minoan historical novel The Last Priestess of Malia. Be warned that the novel does not have a happy ending, because neither did the Minoans.]

The vision:

We’re in a pillar crypt on the lower level of the temple-palace at Malia. It’s dark. It could be nighttime or could just be dark because it’s a lower level; I can’t tell whether there are light wells in this room or not. There are lamps lit on several tables around the room, and I think there’s a torch on one wall.

I’m a priestess. I’m dressed in thin linen gauze in a bleached white color, a simple ankle-length tunic that overlaps in the front but leaves my breasts bare, with another piece of fabric – the same gauze but dyed a bright yellow – wrapped around my hips and tied in the front. I’m barefoot. There are several other people in the room but no more than half a dozen total.

There is a calf tied and apparently drugged on a largish table. In my mind I hear that it’s a ‘newborn calf,’ as if that’s the specification for the ritual, but my experience on my grandparents’ farm tells me it could be up to a week or so old. I’m also drugged – I drank some honeyed wine which had poppyseeds boiled in it – and a mixture that I’m pretty sure includes opium is wafting around the room from incense burners.

There is rhythmic rattling, like from a sistrum, in the background, but I can’t see who is doing it. The sound makes me think of a snake hissing. When I’m ready, I pick up the knife – it looks like one of those fancy bronze daggers the Minoans were so famous for – and slit the calf’s throat. It twitches a little but doesn’t fight, and in moments it is dead. The blood pours out and is caught in some sort of basin. I dip the first two fingers of my right hand in the blood and mark my breasts with it, then I pick up a pitcher of wine and pour some of that on my chest as well. I dip some of the calf’s blood from the basin and add it to the pitcher of wine.

It feels like I have trouble breathing, like my chest is tight or there is great pressure, a great weight, on me. Then it feels like I take a step back from myself, as if I’m watching myself do everything now rather than experiencing it firsthand.

I walk (stagger, more like) over to the pillar. It rises out of a small depression in the floor. I lean forward and embrace the pillar, pressing my body against it, and one of the other people in the room pours the rest of the wine-and-blood mixture over my head. It soaks my clothing and trickles down my body, into the ‘sink’ at the base of the pillar. I wait there until the spirits (gods? ancestors?) rise up from the Underworld, through the column, and enter into me. Then I let go of the column. I can barely stand at this point. Two people take hold of my arms and guide me to a seat. I sit there and prophesy, answering the main question that is the reason we are all gathered there, and telling them other things besides.

I’m pretty sure this is a one-off, not a regular festival or other point on the sacred calendar. I think this kind of ritual was performed every now and then when important information was needed. I’m not sure if the same priestess was always consulted or if they took turns, or had specialty subjects or something of that sort.

After the questions are over, two of the people in the room help me get up from my seat and move over to the pillar again. At this point I can’t walk by myself and can hardly stand. I cling to the pillar, the sistrum hisses once again and the spirits that were within me slip back into the Underworld. I let go of the pillar, take a deep breath and everything goes black.