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The longest single event in the Modern Minoan Paganism sacred calendar is the Mysteries. This ten-day-long festival, running from September 1 to September 10, is our revival of what may have been the Minoan precursor or cousin of the Eleusinian Mysteries in mainland Greece.
A number of different groups have recreated some of the rituals from the festival in mainland Greece that lasted into classical times. But those recreations aren't based on Minoan mythology.
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Forged artifacts are a fact of life in the archaeological community. How should we, as Pagans who rely on archaeology for our religion, relate to these objects?
I've written before about the problems with the large numbers of forged Minoan artifacts that are still in circulation, many of them in museums. Thankfully, the museums are now recognizing the lack of authenticity and provenance of many of these forgeries and sharing that information with the public.
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I'd like to point at the title above and say, "That's it; that's the post." But I know I'm going to have to explain.
No one owns the gods: That means that no one can tell you how to interact with them, how to experience them, what to believe about them. Your spiritual experience is your own, filtered through your psyche as a part of your personal life.
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I'm so very glad we have the internet as a venue for sharing about spirituality - the community grows as the web widens. But there are some pitfalls and obstacles that limit the extent to which we can really communicate about spirituality online, or on any other platform that involves writing. I grapple with these issues almost every time I write a blog post here.
The nature of blogging, or writing articles for Pagan magazines, or posting in spiritual groups on social media, or even writing books is that of words: we write down what we want to share, and other people read it.
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Back in 2015, I responded to a request from some members of Ariadne's Tribe by creating an online course in Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP). Thus, Into the Labyrinth was born. The course wends its way through the basics of the MMP sacred calendar. I've taught it every year since then, and even though I wrote the course, I learn something new every time I teach it - that's one of the perks of being a teacher whose students are really interested in the subject.
As soon as that first class was over, those students asked for a second course that delves deeper into some of the deities and practices of MMP. So I dug into our pantheon and our calendar and created Deeper Into the Labyrinth. And once again, I discovered that my students often had as much to teach me as the other way around.
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When I mention "Minoan," most people think of the famous Snake Goddess figurines. And many people think those figurines represent "the Minoan goddess," as if there were only one of them. But there are many Minoan goddesses, not just one.
In fact, there's a whole pantheon.
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I had a marvelous time at Mystic South last weekend. I saw some old friends and met some new ones. I also gave a workshop about Modern Minoan Paganism. I never know what to expect when I'm doing public events, but I was happily surprised that so many people were interested - we had to rustle up extra chairs so everyone would have a place to sit (thank you to the Mystic South volunteers and organizers for being so helpful with this!).
Though there were a lot of attendees at the conference, there are also a lot of people who didn't get to come. With that in mind, we recorded the workshop to share online. A big thank you to my daughter, who patiently babysat the equipment while I gave the presentation.
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