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.
One of the more challenging aspects of developing a new spiritual tradition is having to figure out what you need terms for and what those terms should be.
I was in the middle of writing a child blessing ritual for the upcoming second edition of Ariadne's Thread (release date: May 15) and realized I needed a term for Modern Minoan Paganism folx to use, a word for the kind of person Christians call godparents: the close family friend who will have a special place in the life of a child as they grow up.
You may have noticed that the Minoans had something of a breast obsession in their art. This is apparent not just in the many images of topless women, but also in the artwork showing animals suckling their young and in the many teat-shaped conical rhytons (ritual libation pitchers).
What you may not have noticed is that the Minoans put nipples on a lot of their pitchers and jugs, like the one at the top of this post, from Akrotiri. Why the heck would they do that?
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...