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.
Continue reading “Offerings to the Labyrinth on Papoura Hill by Sylvia V. Linsteadt”
Feminism and Religion 