Ariadne and Me – The .5% by Arianne MacBean

When I travelled to Crete on a Goddess Pilgrimage last year, we were asked to introduce ourselves by our matrilineal lines. I am Arianne, daughter of Bernadette, granddaughter of Helen and a long line of women, known and unknown, stretching back to Africa. Many of the women in the group were able to intone long lists of names in their matrilineal lines. I was not able to go further than my Grandmother, Helen. No one in my mother’s large Polish family could remember my Great Grandmother’s name.

My journey toward Ariadne has been as circuitous as the labyrinth itself. In many ways, I have been searching for her since those first bedtime stories my father used to tell me as a child, when Theseus was the main character and Ariadne, merely a stop on his road. I longed for her, even then, to have her own heroine’s journey. I tried to imagine what that might look like but, without models, could not conjure anything beyond holding the red thread so others could triumph. Later, I began a more conscious search for Ariadne as I became curious about the connections between her choices, feelings, expressions and my own longings, betrayals, and outbursts. Since then, there have been moments when I let myself fantasize about being connected to her in some real way, beyond being named after her, or feeling and acting as she may have. In these fleeting moments when I imagine we are bonded, I am awash in an intense sense of belonging, something I never felt as an only child of divorced parents. But then in a flash, my mind takes a sharp turn, as in a labyrinth, and I negate those feelings with logic. You want to be connected to Her, so you are finding ways to make it true.

One of the female archeologists who led a tour of the antiquities in the Heraklion Archeological Museum told me that the name Ariadne means, the purest, and the one who is next in line. It is also thought that because of its ending sequence “dn” (δν), rare in Indo-European languages, the name is pre-Greek, most likely Minoan from Crete. According to Greek myth Ariadne came from royal Cretan lineage, daughter of a powerful Priestess (Queen Pasiphae) and half-mortal-half-God (King Minos). Ariadne herself was said to have intelligences beyond the norm as a Princess. I, in contrast, was raised without religion or regality of any kind. I was brought up with the inverse of spiritual belief. Our family mantra if there was one, would have been: What happens, happens. That’s it and nothing more. One of my mother’s oft repeated retorts was, Shit happens and then you die. It was said as a joke but also as a reminder. My father still eschews the notion of any kind of universal force, calling it all mumbo jumbo. My mother, although she hesitated when confronted with the choice to receive last rites on her death bed, ultimately chose not to. To the end, she cut herself off from the strict Catholicism in which she was raised, although I could sense her ambivalence. Allowing myself the notion that there could be some kind of larger force in this world went against everything I was taught, and yet, every cell in my body called out to the unknown. I wanted to know more, be more.

On impulse, I did a DNA test to find out more about my heritage. I was not surprised to find I was 49.5% Polish on my mother’s side. I also carry 49.9% Northwest European heritage from my father. And then, at the bottom of the list, I discovered that I was .5% Cypriot, something totally unexpected. I have returned many times to look at that number. .5%. Half of a whole.

The island of Cyprus is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the meeting place for many of the world’s great civilizations. One version of Ariadne’s story according to the Hellenistic mythographer Paeon of Amathus, later retold by Plutarch tells of Ariadne, pregnant with Theseus’ child, landing in Cyprus during a storm. The Cypriot women cared for Ariadne who died in childbirth and was memorialized in a shrine. According to Cypriot legend, Ariadne’s tomb is located within the sacred grove of the later built Aphrodite sanctuary. Over time, the two figures merged where Ariadne’s role as a love and fertility Goddess became intertwined with Aphrodite’s association with beauty and desire. My parents are no King and Queen – just Berkeley hippie intellectuals railing against their own restrictive upbringings. And I am no Princess, just an LA mom driving carpools in the smog. But it is something, isn’t it, that .5%? It’s not a whole, but it’s something! Did Ariadne give birth and die on Cypress? Could I be a distant offspring of that child of hers? No. Impossible. But?

The day I began writing this essay, I pulled a card from my Goddess deck, something I rarely do, both because it feels powerfully sacred, and because the cynic in me echoes my father’s voice saying, mumbo jumbo. I pulled Oshun, the Yoruba Orisha of love, negotiation, and diplomacy. The quote by Audre Lorde at the top of the card read, “Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.” I cannot say I am a Goddess. I am Arianne, daughter of Bernadette, granddaughter of Helen, great granddaughter of Mary and a long line of women, known and unknown, stretching back to Africa. (Yes, thanks to 23andMe I can now name one more generation in my matrilineal line and know that my Cypriot blood comes from that line as well.) Although, my parent’s diminishment of spirituality lives in my body, so does a small but consistent harmonious flame. It may be a flame of .5%. But it’s there. My mantra becomes What happens, happens. That’s it, and everything more.

BIO: Arianne MacBean is a writer, educator, and Artistic Director of The Big Show Co. – an LA-based dance-theater group. She recently graduated with an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and currently works as a Somatic Psychotherapist as a registered Associate Marriage & Family Therapist (License #139718) in Los Angeles, CA employed by Here Counseling and supervised by Connor McClenahan, PsyD. You can find more of Arianne’s writing at her Blog Write Big.