One of the projects I'm working on these days is a book of modern Minoan myths, tales to bridge the gap between the Bronze Age and our times as we learn to live in relationship with the Minoan deities. The working title is Tales from the Labyrinth. The book will be illustrated, but before I can start on the art, I have to complete the stories.
Today I'm sharing one of them with you - a very important story, the the first one in the book. It's just a little taste of the whole collection of tales. I hope you enjoy it.
The labyrinth: that winding, twisting, single-path maze that takes you surely into the center and out again. Ariadne, the Lady of the Labyrinth, leads us onward and inward, to our own shadow self where the Minotaur helps us face our inner darkness. The labyrinth is a place of exploration and discovery, full of shadows and strange turnings. Let's see where the labyrinth of mythos takes us today.
As we approach the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, darkness is very much on my mind, as is the labyrinth. In a sense, the labyrinth is a kind of cave. Caves were important sacred sites to the ancient Minoans, and they're important symbols in Modern Minoan Paganism.
If this were a cinematic moment, there would be a scene where the wind blows the weathervane round to signify a huge change in direction. Do you feel it, too? Ever since February (well, for me Imbolc, but for some friends a bit later on) it feels as if the huge 'stuckness' of 2018 was unclogged.Whoosh! And that whoosh! is the wind shifting the weathervane round.
These times of paradigm shifts are very liminal. Partly, we are responding to the celestial energies of Uranus and other planets stationing on the critical degrees of 29 and 0. Endings and beginnings. We have had a very potent New Moon in Picses to inspire visions and dream new realities. But somehow, I sense there is more than just an astrological explanation. There is such a powerful pulse of interconnectedness that I am sensing in the air, even as sleet and hail, thunder and lightening visit the landscape I inhabit along with tulips and hellebores, badgers and birds of numeous species. In a time where there is much to worry a body and soul, I feel as if we have been through a great clearing of energy. Now we have more power to perform acts of kindness, love and wisdom in the world. We are the channels. And there is more space for us to fill.
The Internet is a great source of information, but it turns out that it's also a repository of out-of-date and incorrect ideas that keep getting passed around again and again simply because they're floating around in cyberspace. Believe it or not, the Minoans are the subject of quite a few of these bits of misinformation.
In the interest of efficiency, here's the list of Minoan-related concepts that I find myself having to explain most often. Don't panic; I believed many of them myself at one time. But it's a good idea to set the record straight. Plus, this way I have a link to point people to instead of having to constantly repeat myself. :-)
The labyrinth. Everyone has heard of it. It's one of the first things people think of when I mention that my spiritual practice has a Minoan focus. They might think of the beautiful labyrinth set into the floor at Chartres cathedral, or the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, or modern projects like the Pulse Memorial in Orlando, Florida (USA).
It's interesting, then, that no one has ever found an actual labyrinth at a Minoan site. There are lots of almost-but-not-quite-labyrinth meander patterns in Minoan art. And the labyrinth does show up on Cretan coins, but not until many centuries after Minoan civilization was gone. There's one single labyrinth image in a doodle on the back of a Mycenaean Linear B tablet from Pylos, but it dates to the time after the Minoan cities were destroyed. So it's a bit of a conundrum.
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 blogging here for three and a half years now, and I've just been looking back through all my blog posts as the year nears its end. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to discover that my five most popular posts aren't necessarily the ones I was hoping people would pick up and run with, and they're certainly not the ones I expected. But it is interesting to see what draws people, so maybe I can take the hint and provide more of what you lovely folks might like to read.
My most popular blog post? Tying a Sacred Knot - The various types of sacred knots are pretty well known, especially the tet of Isis, which appears to have a counterpart in Minoan Crete. But there's another object that Sir Arthur Evans conflated with this type of sacred knot, and this second object is obviously a piece of fabric, not a cord. I've written about this second object, which we've come to call the sacral scarf, in this blog post. The sacral scarf has its own place in Ariadne's Tribe spiritual practice and is, as far as we can tell, unique in the ancient world.
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