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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in deities

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Pagan Prayer, Ariadne's Tribe Style

A lot of Pagans are hesitant to use the word prayer since it's so strongly connected with Christianity in modern western culture. But really, one of the things many of us do in our spiritual practice is pray. Prayer has been around a lot longer than Christianity has.

What is prayer? At its most basic, it's a conversation with a deity. In Ariadne's Tribe, we pray a lot, although often we simply call it talking with deity.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Minoan Deities as Benefactors

In Ariadne's Tribe, we associate various animals, plants, and objects with our deities: the griffin with Therasia, the staff with Korydallos, geese and white and yellow flowers with Antheia, for instance. These items help us identify the deities in Minoan art. In that sense, they're kind of like name tags or labels.

But there's another collection of attributes that we associate with our deities as well. Like the ones I just mentioned, these can also help us identify the deity or their domain in the art. But more importantly, they indicate a special type of relationship between the deity and the humans who work in certain occupations or who raise certain food crops.

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Discovering More Minoan Deities: Between wisdom and joy lies the rainbow

Some of the deities we have relationships with in Ariadne’s Tribe were easy to find because they were still well known not just in classical times but all the way up to the present – Rhea, for instance, and Dionysus, and Eileithyia. Others were a bit harder to identify, but our research led them to us eventually. Therasia is one of those.

But some deities were even more hidden and took us longer to find. I want to talk about three of those today and introduce them to you.

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Virtues, Values, and Modern Folklore in Ariadne's Tribe

A member of Ariadne's Tribe recently asked what our main virtues and values might be, and that got me thinking. We don't have a formalized list of virtues and values the way, for instance, modern Norse Pagan groups often do. But the values that matrilineal societies have traditionally supported are a big part of the attraction of Minoan spirituality.

The Minoans appear to have valued egalitarianism, inclusion, interdependence, and an animistic reverence for nature. Those are among the major values we espouse in Ariadne's Tribe. They inform our spiritual practice and our daily lives. They're enshrined in our Official Policies. We do our best to be living examples of these values as we interact with the Big World.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Individuation Is Problematic

Individuation is problematic. That's the unofficial Ariadne's Tribe motto.

It's sort of a joke, a witty response to difficult questions about divinity. But it's also very serious.

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New-Old Minoan Deities: The Discovery of Joy

One of the more exciting aspects of revivalist spirituality is the discovery of new-to-us deities. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, we do a little happy dance!

In this case, a happy dance is especially appropriate. Allow me to introduce you to a new deity pair: Thumia and Kaulo.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
The trouble with Minoan deity names

You may have noted that in these blog posts I use phrases like "the god we call Korydallos" or "the goddess we call Therasia." That's because we have an interesting conundrum with some of the Minoan deities: we don't know what the Minoans called them.

Some deity names survived the Late Bronze Age collapse intact, eventually being subsumed into the Hellenic pantheon: Rhea, Eileithyia, and Dionysus are well-known examples. Others were "demoted" to human characters in myth and legend (Minos, for example, and Ariadne). But we still know their names - that part of them was not lost over time, even if their characteristics changed due to cultural pressure as the Greeks came to power and the Minoans disappeared from view.

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