PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
There's a lot of argument in the Pagan community about what constitutes a "valid" tradition. Some people are only comfortable with reconstructionist traditions that can provide an ancient text reference for every portion of their spiritual practice. Others only want to participate in traditions that can claim to have unbroken practices going back generations, even centuries.
Ariadne's Tribe is neither.
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One of the reasons we call Modern Minoan Paganism a revivalist tradition instead of a reconstructionist one is that, unlike many reconstructionist Pagan traditions, we don't have any ancient texts to work from. Yes, the ancient Minoans were a literate society, but so far all of their scripts and writing systems are untranslated.
Take, for instance, the cup pictured at the top of this post. This is a photo from Sir Arthur Evans' monumental multi-volume work Palace of Minos, a record of his excavations at Knossos (now in the public domain). The artifact in the photo is a terracotta cup with writing on the interior in what may very well be squid ink. That writing is in the script rather unimaginatively known as Linear A, and it's still undeciphered.
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I spend a lot of time telling people that Ariadne's Tribe isn't a reconstructionist tradition. But the issue is actually a little more complicated than that.
When I was at Mystic South this past summer, one of the other presenters attended my workshop about our spiritual tradition. He came up to me afterward and pointed out that even though I had said we aren't a reconstructionist tradition, we use reconstructionist methods extensively. And that's quite true.
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Frequently Asked Question: Why do some people say Asatru is a religion and some say it's a folkway? What's the difference and who is right?
My answer: There are heathens who practice only the religion, heathens who practice only the folkway, and heathens who practice both. There are also xians and secular communities who practice various of the folkways we heathens claim as heathen, and some pagans who practice them too, for example maypole customs. Whichever way you want to do your heathenry is fine.
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15 years ago I found myself walking down the streets of downtown Chicago on my way home from an English class. It was my first week of classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and I was experiencing the culture shock of moving from small town Iowa to downtown Chicago. On that afternoon, I'd finally gotten to the point of being comfortable enough to talk to a young man I'd spent the nights before listening debate philosophy with a few others. I was so paralyzed by social anxiety in those days that I was certain I was developing an ulcer, and later another friend had expressed shock over me not actually being mute as he believed when he first met me. However, this was the first time I'd had a chance to sit and listen to philosophy and political discussions between my peers that didn't involve Christianity or the Matrix. Like many college freshman, this sudden arrival of discussing thought was a whole new world ripe with possibilities. We were adults.
