Tag Archives: Minoans

The Bull

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The date for the release of In the Shadow of the Bull is now July 4 for the UK. No word on the release date in the US yet.

In an attempt to reveal what we know of this ancient culture, I thought I would begin with the bull. Bulls were sacred. I’ve read varying explanations. Is it because the Bull represented the male principle, even in a society with a Supreme Goddess? Is it because of the connection with Poseidon. also a God in this culture. (I have mentioned previously how much the Classical Greeks borrowed from the Minoans).

Whatever the reason, the mosaics, the statuary, the rites practiced were all centered around the Bull.

One of the practices was bull dancing or bull leaping. This is a feature of the Theseus myth. Since it was written by the occupying Greeks, it has a negative spin. In the myth, Minos, the ruler of Knossos, requires tribute from the mainland: 7 young women and 7 young men, to face the fearsome Minotaur in the labyrinth. (The creation of the Minotaur is another myth, a rather creepy one.) Theseus volunteers to be one of the tributes. Minos’ daughter Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of string and he is able to kill the Minotaur and lead the other tributes to safety.

Frescoes from Knossos show young men and women (probably teenagers) leaping over a charging bull. The bull dancer grasped the horns and flipped over the bull’s back. Another member of the team caught and steadied him as he landed. There seems to be no doubt that these performances occurred.

Remnants of mazes pictured in mosaics have also been found. But labyrinth, a synonym for a maze, is actually from the word labyrs, a sacred two headed axe used in religious rituals.

A stylized version of the bull’s horns, called the Horns of Consecration, were used everywhere. Examples have survived in Knossos.

In the Shadow of the Bull Cover

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So excited to show the cover for the first book of the new series of mysteries .

It really conveys the ancient era I think. And the bull, which was sacred to this culture, is as important as the people.

The Magnificent Horse Part 2

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he new God-centered religion and the status of women intersected.

Patriarchy went with these mounted warriors and the status of women took a nosedive. This culture worshipped male Gods and was stratified with warriors at the top, priests next, and craftsmen below. Warriors were buried with their weapons and sometimes their horses.

Take the Mycenaeans, for example. The Acheans were one of the first waves to hit Greece. In my previous blogs about Helen of Troy, I talked about her status. She was a princess, semi-divine, wealthy and the heir to the throne. Not her brothers – her. So the transformation of a women’s status was gradual. However, she could not choose her husband and her life was marked by rape and violence. At least the Mycenaeans were influenced by the earlier Bronze Age culture. As successive, and more warlike, waves of invaders came down eventually even Crete was breached and its cities sacked and burned.

We all know that the Jews are credited with the first monotheistic faith. Not so fast. According to Elinor W. Gadon, the very early Jews also worshipped a Goddess – the Queen of Heaven. In Jeremiah the prophet speaks out against her, saying that the Hebrews were exiled from Judea because of their neglect of Yahweh. (When they were exiled they went to Babylon which was at that time transitioning from Goddess worship to God worship. (Maria Gimbutas – The Living Goddesses.) But I digress, Anyway, according to the Bible, the people retorted that Judea fell because the rituals to the Goddess had been neglected after they’d been forbidden by the Deuteronomic reforms. (Jeremiah 44: 15-19).

By the time of the Classical Greeks and Romans, the status of women was in the cellar. Women were no longer permitted to leave the courtyards of father or husband except on certain religious festival days. In Greece homosexuality and pederasty were institutionalized. It makes a sort of sense if women were so devalued, their only value that of producing heirs, how could they possibly deserve love? In Rome women had no names but that of, first their fathers, and then their husbands.

The situation certainly did not improve with the advent of Christianity. Augustinian uses urine and feces to describe childbirth and refers to women as all that is vile, lowly and corruptible. We know one result of such passionate misogyny: the witch trials of the 1600s. According to Gabon (The Once and Future Goddess) thousands and thousands of women were burned at the stake. Estimates range from 100,000 to 9,000,000 (including women who died in prison). In some villages there were no women left alive.

Because patriarchy has lasted so long we now think of it as ‘normal’. But gradually everything is changing. I started my research with Arthur Evans, the archaeologist who first excavated Knossos. As I read through his writings I found his prejudices on open display. One example: despite all the frescos featuring women, he insisted they must all be of Goddesses. (And a lot of them are.) But his rationale was that there had to be a king, women could not possibly hold the power and the importance demonstrated by the art. And that is why the Bronze Age Civilization has been called the Minoan civilization, after Minos the King referred to in the Theseus myth. (This is not even historically accurate. If there were such a king, he would have probably been a Mycaenaen.)

The agrarian societies were pretty peaceful. That certainly has not been true of all that has come after, up to and including today. War and conquest has continued pretty much unabated for millennia.

Well, I have gone pretty far afield from my study of horses. Would patriarchy have conquered all without the nomadic horde? Maybe. Maybe not. After all, many of the American Indian tribes still take counsel from their ‘Grandmothers’. But I think it is pretty clear that the domestication of horses changed everything.

Bull-leaping and Theseus

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Bull leaping is probably one of the most well-known -if not the most well-known – image of the Minoan civilization. Most people believe the account written in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. It is important to remember the Greeks (the Mycenae and forward) borrowed a lot from other cultures. The civilization on Crete was very important. With that said, the Minoan civilization was Goddess centered while the Mycenae were patriarchal and that made a huge difference in how the invaders viewed the rites and rituals they saw.

In the Theseus myth, Minos exacts a tribute from Athens of 7 young men and 7 maidens to face the bull and perform bull-leaping. Minos’s daughter Ariadne falls in love with Theseus and gives him a ball of string to find his way through the labyrinth under the city and kill the Minotaur, (The creation of this beast is another story). Theseus does so, thereby freeing himself and the other tributes from Crete. He takes Ariadne with him but abandons her on another island. Great guy.

While tributes may have been pressed into service as bull-leapers, the bull-leaping was an integral part of the religious ceremonies. The bull was a sacred animal and the Cretan youth performed. Secondly, there are no labyrinths underneath Knossos and it is thought the pattern of building residences – all interlinked and connecting rooms – gave rise to the myth of a labyrinth.

And although labyrinth now means maze, the labys (the root of the word) was the iconic Cretan double axe. It had nothing to do with mazes.

Lastly, there is a lot of speculation about Minos. Was he a king? Perhaps after the Mycenae arrived, a kingship was established. Was he a consort of the High Priestess who, it is now thought, was the earthly representative of the Goddess. The Priestess chose a – or many – consorts. There is now some thought that he or other men served as a wanax and kept the wheels of the government running.