Ariadne Institute – Feminism and Religion

Ariadne’s Dancing Floor by Arianne MacBean

As the story was told to me, my parents were listening to composer Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna when my name was decided. I would be called Arianne, after mythical Ariadne’s melancholy refrain, sung to the heavens after being abandoned on a deserted island by her lover, Theseus. Raised on the Greek myths as bedtime stories, my father regaled me nightly with tales of gods, goddesses, and mortals twirling in the maelstrom of life. I was in awe of Cyclops and Sirens, but it was the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur that I requested most often.

The Road Back Home, part 2 by Terry Folks

Stage Twelve – Return with the Elixir – Surfacing/ReEntry – Personal Symbols

How would I share my newfound knowledge with my community, tribe, clan, sisterhood or family upon my return? From my vision quest on Crete, there will be much to share over time, but I will start with these three pieces as my Heroine’s return gifts to you.

The heroine needs time and space to surface, and to gently manage re-entry.

Why? When you have immersed yourself in the matriarchal culture (Ariadnian or Minoan), in the peaceful personal rightness of this culture that existed 3000 to 5000 years ago, it is very difficult to suddenly be plopped back into the patriarchy we live in, in 2023. It’s startling for body, mind and spirit. I offer the teaching of self compassion as you adjust to reality. My leave-taking from the bosom of Mount Ida and from Her gentle ministrations during my convalescence was paradoxically heart-wrenching.

Carol P. Christ and the Pilgrimage to the Goddess: Online Memorial Gathering, December 20, 2023

Dear FAR community,

Two and a half years ago, our beloved friend and mentor Carol P. Christ passed to the realm of the ancestors. It’s been wonderful to read her archive posts every week as well as so many posts remembering and referencing her brilliant work. The FAR community was so important to her: as Carol herself pointed out, she not only offered her own posts each Monday, she also read and responded to every post, every day. I also cherish the daily connection to our FAR ‘family’, and find profound comfort for the loss of such a tremendous presence through this daily connection with others who knew her and miss her as as I do.

My Pilgrimage to Crete – September 2023, Part 1 by Terry Folks

Carol Christ’s Legacy honored by Laura Shannon, and the Ariadne Institute

Adventure by Autumn Skye with permission of artist

When I teach the Heroine’s Journey in my Sophia Women’s Wisdom Group, I draw on Joseph Campbell’s idea of the mono-myth, an archetypal story that resonates with every human across time: The Hero’s Journey. I combine Campbell’s ideas with pieces of feminist Maureen Murdock’s heroine’s journey to recognize the unique pathway of the feminine. I call this my hybrid heroic journey. If you are not familiar with Maureen Murdock’s work, I invite you to see how she brought her feminist eye to Campbell’s iconic Hero’s Journey in her book The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. After her conversation with Joseph Campbell six years prior to his transition, Murdock felt he missed “that the focus of female spiritual development was to heal the internal split between woman and her feminine nature” (p. 2). In my hybrid heroic journey, that split in the early stages is internalized negative masculinity. The rejection of our feminine nature may appear differently in each woman’s life but it is often characterized by treating ourselves how we imagine men perceive us.

My recent Pilgrimage to Crete was astonishing; my epiphany, gradual. As I share my adventure, imagine stages of your own heroine’s journey wherever you are in that cycle. I hope that by sharing this series, you will experience a real life example of Dion Fortune’s definition of magic: ‘The art of changing consciousness at will’. Starhawk, Truth or Dare, 1988.

Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete – Reborn! by Laura Shannon

Thirty years ago, Carol P. Christ founded her Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, which she wrote about in her book A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess (original 1995 title Odyssey with the Goddess) and in numerous posts on this site over the years. She led over 40 groups of women Pilgrims to encounter the history and sacred sites of the peaceful, egalitarian civilisation of Bronze Age Crete.

Here, the Goddess-honouring culture of Old Europe survived the longest, when patriarchal Indo-Europeans were taking over in the ‘Kurgan waves’ Marija Gimbutas has described. The sophisticated artworks of ‘Minoan’ Crete show women in positions of honour and authority, and do not depict violence, slavery, or war. People celebrated at ceremonial centres, made offerings at cave and mountain shrines, and worshipped the Goddess in sacred trees and stones.

Snake Goddess, Knossos, Crete, ca. 1600 BCE [photo: Heraklion Archaeological Museum]

As many readers know, before Carol passed away, she asked me to take on the leadership of her Goddess Pilgrimage, and to serve as her literary executor and the director of her Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual. Deeply moved by her trust in me, and guided by very clear dreams I received around the time of her death, I accepted Carol’s request. In October 2022, after a three-year delay due to the pandemic, the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete was reborn.