Ancient Crete – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Has the Phaistos Disk Been Cracked?

This was originally posted on November 10, 2014

Recent headlines in the international press announced that the enigmatic language of the ancient Cretan “Phaistos Disk” has been translated—in part—by the Welch-Cretan scholar Gareth Owens. Owens states that the Phaistos Disk records an ancient hymn to a Mother Goddess. More specifically he claims that one side is dedicated to a Pregnant Goddess and the other to a Birth-Giving Goddess.

All of this is very exciting, but is he right?

I have been leading Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete for that past twenty years, in the course of which I have developed an intimate and scholarly knowledge of the religion and culture of ancient Crete. Participants on my tours sent me the news reports about the Phaistos Disk, assuming I would be thrilled to have confirmation of my understanding that the ancient Cretans worshipped the Goddess as the Source of Life, or as Marija Gimbutas says, as the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life.

Reading the news reports, I noted that archaeologist-translator of the disk, Gareth Owens, identified the Goddess of ancient Crete as a “Mother Goddess” and more specifically as a Pregnant Goddess and a Birth Goddess . This raised a red flag for me. The most well-known Goddesses of ancient Crete, the bare-breasted Snake Goddesses, are neither pregnant nor giving birth. Other Goddesses pour liquids from the breasts, but again are not visibly pregnant or giving birth.

Ariadne & Me – daughters of narcissist fathers by Arianne MacBean

Portrait of Minos, king of Crete, from the Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum

As the Ancient Greek myth is told, Ariadne’s father, Minos, is a powerful brute. The offspring of rape by the God Zeus of the Phoenician Princess, Europa, Minos’ violent origins reflect his development as a man, ruler, and father. He conquers and plunders while harboring secrets and wreaking havoc on his family. In the mythic world he is the definition of a victorious king. In today’s world, we call Minos a narcissist.

Half divine and half mortal, Minos moves between sacred and profane spaces to his advantage. He gains his throne as King of Crete with the support of the Sea God, Poseidon. When given a giant white bull as a congratulatory gift, Minos chooses not to sacrifice the bull as he promises Poseidon, but to keep it for himself. It is this choice that reveals Minos’ shadow narcissism. To Minos, the bull is his greatness, not a symbol of it. In a rage, Poseidon punishes Minos for his choice by cursing his wife, Pasiphaë, to become enraptured with the magic bull. While Minos is away from Crete conquering other lands and other women (he fathered several children outside his marriage), Pasiphaë under possession of Poseidon’s spell, convinces the inventor, Daedalus, to build a contraption to lure the bull into her. Ariadne’s half-brother, the Minotaur, is born out of this union.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Was Ariadne the Most Graceful Bull-leaper of All? Deconstructing and Re-visioning Greek Mythology

This post was originally published on March 3rd, 2014.

Sometimes we think of Greek myth as a pre-patriarchal or less patriarchal alternative to the stories of the Bible. After all, Goddesses appear in Greek myths while they are nearly absent from the Bible. Right?

So far so good, but when we look more closely we can see that Greek myth enshrines patriarchal ideology just as surely as the Bible does. We are so dazzled by the stories told by the Greeks that we designate them “the origin” of culture. We also have been taught that Greek myths contain “eternal archetypes” of the psyche. I hope the brief “deconstruction” of the myth of Ariadne which follows will begin to “deconstruct” these views as well.

Ariadne is a pre-Greek word. The “ne” ending is not found in Greek. As the name is attributed to a princess in Greek myth, we might speculate that Ariadne could have been one of the names of the Goddess in ancient Crete. But in Greek myth Ariadne is cast in a drama in which she is a decidedly unattractive heroine.

In the story told by the Greeks, Ariadne falls in love with Theseus, a handsome young man who was sent with 11 other Greek young people to be fed to a monster (who is half man, half bull) known as the Minotuar. The Minotuar is Ariadne’s half brother (see below). Because of her “love” for Theseus, Ariadne helps him to murder her brother. She then flees with Theseus on his boat.

However, this “love story” does not have a “happy ending” as Theseus abandons Ariadne on a nearby island–long before he arrives home in Athens. Theseus is ever after celebrated as a hero who killed a monster, while Ariadne is just another cast-off female. Whose story is this? Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Was Ariadne the Most Graceful Bull-leaper of All? Deconstructing and Re-visioning Greek Mythology”

Offerings to the Labyrinth on Papoura Hill, excerpt from the novel by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Sylvia’s discussion of Papoura Hill was posted yesterday; read it here.

I have so many words I want to pour out of my vessel of milk and honey upon Papoura Hill, on the big scar in Crete’s earth where the airport is being carved, on all the places slated for the construction of electricity pylons, and into so many other scars left by millennia of conquest and occupation, but for today what follows is just one song to her. These words are not full of fighting rage or defiance, but of praise, and softness, and memory. Of motherlines that cannot die, and fatherlines almost lost, but not quite. These words come from the beginning of a novel that I began writing during my first season living in Crete almost seven years ago now, a novel that has metamorphosed with me across these many years, shedding skins and growing new ones— both me, and the novel. The book is still in process, close to being born, but here is one of her many skins, laid at the center of the labyrinth on Papoura Hill with my love.

Moonrise Over Old Crete
an excerpt

The earth tilted toward dusk.
Along the shores of Crete, the Aegean turned for a moment to gold.

Women flocked down to the sea like dark birds to pour jugs of oil and wine into the water. Amphitrite of the cockle crown, they murmured, Aphrodite mother of vessels, mother of the foam and deep, bring our men home safe. The sun lowered under the edge of the world, leaving the last light along the coast. Threads of it pooled in sea-caves and in the inlets where fishermen kept their summer boats. The old storytellers said that in lost times, when the queen was called the Ariadne and her king the Bull, the women of Crete could gather up the last light from the sea onto their distaffs and take it home to spin golden thread for their skirt hems and finest vests.

Offerings to the Labyrinth on Papoura Hill by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Rhea, mother of Demeter, is coming down upon the seven mountain ranges of her Crete. Ariadne, granddaughter of Rhea, is coming up from her ten thousand perfect caverns inside those mountains with clear water in her arms. They have been quiet a long time, but they are not quiet now. Between them comes Demeter across the wide plateaus where her stones and soil are being stripped for profit, where her bees are dying from pesticide use in their hives, where her grain and oil are sold out from under her, the farmers who grew them cheated by countries with fatter economies and shinier marketing schemes.

They are gathering on Mt. Juktas and Mt. Dikti and Mt. Ida and on Papoura Hill, on all the old holy mountain places where nereids and kouretes were born, where midwives danced, and the dead were buried, and the priests and queens held night-long vigils to take divinations from the procession of the stars. From those divinations they turned the wheel of Crete’s festivals so that they continued year by year as precisely as Earth turned around her axis, so that Earth knew that she and her gifts were respectfully received, and truly loved.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: A New Glossary for Crete: The Power of Naming and the Study of History

This was originally posted on Sept. 2, 2013

The words we use affect our thinking. In the case of ancient Crete the repetition of the terms “Palace,” “Palace of Knossos,” “King Minos,” “Minoan,” “Priest-King,” and “Prince of the Lilies” shape the way we understand history–even when we ourselves know these terms are incorrect. We must engage in “new naming.”

Ariadne. May have been a name of the Goddess of pre-patriarchal Crete. The ending “ne” signifies that Ariadne is not of Greek or Indo-European origin and thus predates the later Greek myths.

Ariadnian. The name I have given to the Old European pre-patriarchal culture of Crete, from arrival of the Neolithic settlers from Anatolia c.7000 BCE to the Mycenaean invasion c.1450 BCE. Arthur Evans named the Bronze Age (c.3000-1450 BCE) culture of Crete “Minoan” after King Minos of Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Europa, husband of Pasiphae, father of Ariadne, whose gift of the secret of the labyrinth to Theseus led to the downfall of her culture. Evans assumed that Minoan Crete was ruled by a King.

This image I call “Ariadne Dancing” could become the new “icon” of Ariadnian Crete.

Snake Priestesses of Crete as Earthquake Oracles? by Laura Shannon

Knossos Throne Room showing edge of lustral basin at left. Photo: Laura Shannon

A few weeks ago I was on Crete, having coffee with an archaeologist friend. She happened to mention something strange. Crete has always been a seismic zone, with lots of earthquakes, yet remarkably, in Minoan times, no one was killed in collapsing buildings; they were never taken by surprise.

We pondered this – it seems astounding. They must have had some means of warning. Perhaps the serpents sacred to them could have given them some sign?

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Was Ariadne the Most Graceful Bull-leaper of All? Deconstructing and Re-visioning Greek Mythology

This was originally posted on March 3, 2014

bull leaping ring before 2000 bc phourni

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Dance of the Bees: Reading the Language of the Goddess

This blog was originally posted on December 1, 2014

The image from an ancient Cretan bowl (c.1700 BCE) from the Sacred Center of Phaistos pictured here has often been interpreted as an early depiction of Persephone’s descent or rising. But are clues from later Greek mythology pointing in the right direction in this case?

Recently, my colleague Mika Scott posted the Phaistos bowl image on our Goddess Pilgrimage Facebook site in conjunction with the bee pendant from Mallia. This juxtaposition led me to think again about the importance of bees and pollination in agricultural societies and to offer an alternative reading of the symbolism on the bowl.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: Of Birds, Angels, and Tidings of Great Joy

Moderator’s Note: We here at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died in July this year from cancer. To honor her legacy as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted December 23, 2013. You can read it long with its original comments here

A link to a video of a Crow Uses Plastic Lid to Sled Down Roof Over and Over Again on a mayonnaise-lid sled appeared on my Facebook timeline a few days ago. {moderator’s note: I believe this is the same video that Carol originally posted. The link has been updated since 2013 } For me this crow expresses the “spirit of the season” as aptly as anything I can think of. She brings a smile to my face on a grey and cold morning. She makes me want to climb up on the rooftop and slide down with her. She reminds me that we humans are not alone–we share the world with a vast multitude of other intelligent creatures. She tells me that there is nothing more sacred than the joy of life.