I was recently inspired to write a chant that's designed for labyrinth walking. It invokes the Lady of the Labyrinth, a goddess some people identify with Ariadne or with the Serpent Mother (snake goddess) from Minoan Crete. The name that works for me is Basilissa.
Please feel free to use this chant in your rituals and your labyrinth walking, and let me know how it goes.
I've been thinking a lot about Fate lately, what with all the crazy things going on in the Big World. Fate has always been a focal point for people's thoughts, and the Fate goddesses of the ancient pantheons have a lot to teach us. There is, of course, a Minoan Fate goddess. In the Tribe, we call her Arachne.
But over time some of her traits shifted to another deity: Ariadne.
The lovely young lady in the image above is picking the stigmas and styles of the saffron crocus, also called the autumn crocus, to give as an offering to the Sun Goddess.
This is one part of a story that plays out in a series of frescoes from Akrotiri, the Bronze Age town on the Mediterranean island of Santorini. Saffron crocus blooms float like a wallpaper design across these frescoes, Minoan artists' way of showing us that behind the human figures was a spreading field of crocuses.
Although we still can't read Linear A, the script the Minoans used to write their native language, we can read Linear B. It's the script that the Mycenaeans, or their Minoan scribes, used to record Mycenaean, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans borrowed so much of Minoan religion and culture that the Linear B tablets give us some information about Minoan religion, even if most of the tablets are just inventory lists of donations to temples.
The Linear B tablets include the names of deities, some of whom are manifestly Minoan and some of whom look to be a part of the blended Minoan-Mycenaean culture that developed during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete.
Mystery plays were a big part of life in the ancient world, when people’s seasonal work was punctuated throughout the year by sacred festivals of all sorts. What on earth is a mystery play? It’s not a whodunit, like a modern murder mystery. In the case of mystery plays, the word takes on an older meaning.
My dictionary defines it as ‘a religious truth that one can know by revelation alone,’ in other words, something you have to experience yourself instead of just being told about it. And that’s what mystery plays are all about: letting you have the experience of the deities, the myths, the sacred, right there in your own life.
One of the aspects of archaeology that continues to amaze me is our ability to dissolve tiny bits of residue out of ancient containers and figure out exactly what those containers held thousands of years ago. With this technique, we’ve been able to determine what the ancient Minoans ate and drank and even what kinds of cosmetics they used.
Most people picture the people of the ancient world drinking wine, and they certainly did that, but the Minoans also drank mead. You might think of this alcoholic beverage, brewed from honey rather than grapes, in connection with the Norse and the fabulous feasts at Valhalla, but mead was actually a popular drink all over the ancient world.
One of the issues we face when reviving ancient spiritual practices is that we often don’t know exactly what the original people called their deities. In the case of the Minoans, we don’t even know what language they spoke, and their deity names have come down to us only through the Greeks.
Today I’m going to toss out some thoughts about some of the deity names from ancient Crete. Maybe, if we put enough ideas into the pot, we can brew up some useful bits for our spiritual practice. Let’s start with Rhea, the Minoan Earth Mother Goddess.
Thesseli
You should post on Substack too, where you won't have to worry about being deplatformed or kicked off the site for your views. (Also, I've archived th...
David Dashifen Kees
I feel it necessary to state, unequivocally, that anti-trans points of view are not an essential part of Paganism. As a trans Pagan myself who helps ...