For some time now, Ariadne's Tribe has been developing our own counterpart to the hieros gamos as it's known from ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, and Buddhist traditions and that's expressed in modern Paganism via acts such as the Wiccan Great Rite.
We wanted a concept and a practice that we could use in our rituals that would encompass the idea of communion with deity as well as connection with each other and with the non-human beings whose spirits also fill our world. And we wanted it to be inclusive, avoiding any kind of gender binary.
When someone says "papyrus," most people think of Egypt - specifically, ancient Egypt with papyrus plants growing along the banks of the Nile and being made into sheets of material to write on.
People don't often think of the Minoans in connection with papyrus. But papyrus appears in Minoan art more than you might think. And we're still not quite sure what it means.
The very first book I ever published about Minoan spirituality is Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives. That was back in 2013, before I started the Ariadne's Tribe Facebook group and before Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP) had even begun to form in anyone's thoughts.
Ariadne's Thread is based on the set of Minoan-themed rituals I wrote for my second degree in a Wiccan coven back in the 1990s - a year's worth of seasonal rituals and a lifetime's worth of rites of passage. The coven I belonged to at the time helped me "road test" a lot of the rituals, which was very helpful. Then I added a large section about Minoan culture and religion and a mini-encyclopedia of deities and symbols to complete the book.
Last week I looked at the top five blog posts of 2021, a couple of which surprised me. Then I decided I wanted to look back over the seven years (time flies!) that I've been writing this blog and see which posts have been most popular over the long term. In this case, four out of the top five surprised me - and one didn't. At all.
Herewith, the top five Minoan Path posts since I began this blog in 2014, from least popular to most popular. Have you read them all?
Every January, I like to look back over my blog posts of the past year and see which ones were the most popular. I usually find the results a little surprising, and this year is no different.
For 2021, my top five blog posts, beginning with the most popular:
I hope your religion has plenty of roses and lots of sunrises. I hope your faith is full of smiles and alive with joy. I hope your spirituality tastes good, smells sweet, and holds you kindly.
I recently finished reading a book called The Spirituality of Imperfection. (Side note: it doesn’t indicate it clearly in the title or book jacket that it has a significant emphasis on AA, but the assumption seems to be that the people who are reading it will be AA members, which I am not.)
I was recently asked a question during an interview, and I've been thinking about it ever since. The question: What kinds of people seek out Modern Minoan Paganism, and why?
The first part of that question spans the gamut of not just the modern Pagan world but the modern population in general: Wiccans, Hellenic Pagans, Druids, former Christians seeking polytheistic spirituality, former atheists and agnostics who have felt the call of the deities...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...
Victoria
I would say as neopagans we are constructing our futures rather than reconstructing THE future. I'm not sure if we are in the process of becoming a tr...
Steven Posch
Not so sure about "culty," though.Many--if not most--peoples with a collective sense of identity have a term for the "not-us people": barbaroi (non-He...
ty!