Just like a lot of people, toward the end of December I like to look back over the previous year and review all that has happened. Part of that process involves looking at my blog posts here to see what turned out to be popular and what didn't. That helps me know what people are interested in and where I should put my energy when I'm writing future blog posts. So here's my 2020 Top Ten List.
It's no surprise that my most popular blog post this year is the one that lists the full Tribe pantheon. Popular culture leads a lot of people to think that Minoan spirituality is just about the Snake Goddess (those fabulous figurines!) or Ariadne and the Minotaur. But really, there's so much more, and I'm thrilled that folx are checking out all the deities in our pantheon.
This is one in a series of blog posts about our pantheon. Find the list of the whole series here.
Ariadne: most people have heard of her, with her ball of string, helping Theseus find his way out of the Labyrinth. If you've been reading this blog for long, you know the Minotaur-and-Labyrinth story is Greek, not Minoan, created centuries after the fall of Minoan civilization. Theseus was a Greek culture hero, not a part of the Minoan pantheon. Ariadne, though, is another story. She's a Minoan goddess. So where can we find her in the art of ancient Crete?
As we develop a spiritual practice in Ariadne's Tribe, one of the sources we look to for inspiration is Minoan art. After all, we have dozens of beautiful frescoes that tell us so much about the world of Bronze Age Crete.
Or do they? It turns out, an awful lot of what we think we know is guesswork, often of the worst kind.
The Minoans revered the sea, and that makes perfect sense. After all, they lived on an island just south of Greece. Granted, it's a fairly large one as islands go: about 260 km (160 miles) long and 60 km (37 miles) wide.
Still, the weather on Crete has always been mediated by the sea. And the Minoans plied their trade, becoming the wealthiest merchants of their time, by sailing large ships around the Mediterranean and probably even out the Straits of Gibraltar, up the Atlantic coast of Europe.
In my last article, I put forth the notion that we humans have had the need to create art encoded into our DNA. Along with the need to create images, humans have had the need to “make special,” to “make sacred,” and art can fulfill this need. By bringing art into a space, humans make the space special. When the art reflects beliefs about the divine, the art that inhabits that space makes it sacred. I spoke at length about cave paintings in my last entry, and I believe that those paintings could in fact have been making ancient caves into sacred spaces.
As humans moved from a hunter gatherer existence into something more settled, areas where they settled often included sacred places where their relationships with the divine could unfold – temples. When I was in graduate school, I strove to understand what installations were and what “site specific” art, as installations are more commonly called these days, were and where they fit into art history. Temples themselves are “site specific,” created to meet the needs of a particular people in a particular place. In this article, I will look at some pre-historic peoples and their need for the creation of permanent sacred space.
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...
