This is one in a series about our pantheon. Find the other posts here.
Today, we're focusing on Tauros Asterion. He's one of three gods who are sons of our mother goddesses. As you might guess from his name, he has both earthly and cosmic aspects. In Ariadne's Tribe, we consider the Minotaur and Zagreus to be two of his faces. But for now we're focusing specifically on Tauros Asterion, whom we consider to be the son of our Earth Mother goddess Rhea as well as having a connection with our cosmic mother goddess Ourania.
As I've mentioned before, the Minoan pantheon doesn't parse out neatly into a human-style family tree. Most of the time, it looks more like a carnival fun house full of mirrors. But still, we do view some of the deities as being mothers or offspring. That helps us, as humans, get something of a handle on the more-than-human beings with whom we have a sacred relationship.
As Tauros Asterion's name tells us, the bull is one of his major symbols, and bulls abound in Minoan art. Take, for instance, the famous Bull Leaper fresco that's pictured at the top of this post. We don't know for sure which deity or deities the bull leaping honored in ancient Crete, but Tauros Asterion is our bull god, so in MMP we see him in images like this fresco.
We also see him in beautiful works of art like this carved stone rhyton from the so-called Little Palace at Knossos:
Image CC BY 1.0 (Public Domain) via Wikimedia Commons
Now, bear in mind that we have cow goddesses as well as bull gods in the Minoan pantheon. Make sure you can tell the difference between a bull and a cow when you're looking at the art. This lovely ceramic rhyton from Pseira is definitely a bull:
Image CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
So is this one, a 3-D fresco of a running bull from the north portico of the Knossos temple complex:
Image CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
I'll get to some more specific types of bull (or bull-and-human) images when we talk about the Minotaur and Zagreus. But when you see a bull just being a bull in Minoan art, you can think of Tauros Asterion.
In the name of the bee,
And of the butterfly,
And of the breeze, amen.