This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

Email providers may cut my posts short. To access the full article, tap/click on the title and read it in your browser or the Substack app.

You’ve probably already heard about how the names of the days of the week are associated with deities: Norse deities for the English-language day names, for instance, and Greco-Roman deities for the day names in Romance languages. Many people use the deity/day connections to guide their spiritual practice, choosing a particular deity’s day for activities that focus on them.

We thought it would be useful if we could do something similar for the Minoan pantheon.

To be clear, it’s unlikely the Minoans had a seven-day week like we do. The earliest seven-day week was apparently a single seven-day festival in ancient Mesopotamia. The seven-day week as a year-round method of counting time appears to date to the Iron Age, many centuries after the end of Minoan civilization.

But we modern Pagans live in a world organized around the seven-day week. So we’ve come up with a system that arranges the deities of the Minoan pantheon into a weekly format:

Sunday: Therasia
Monday: Rhea
Tuesday: Posidaeja
Wednesday: the Daughters (Ariadne, Arachne, Antheia)**
Thursday: the Sons (Tauros Asterion, Korydallos, Dionysus)
Friday: Minos
Saturday: the Whole Family

So we have a week-long flow that moves through the Mothers to the Daughters then the Sons then Minos (the Underworld face of the Sons) to the rest of the pantheon, then back again in a circle.

In this system, you can fit the other deities in on Saturday, which is a sort of catch-all day. But you can also choose one of the other days where the associated deity has a connection with the goddess or god you want to reach out to. Refer back to the post about the full pantheon or to the pantheon listings in any of my books about Minoan spirituality if you want more details about any of the deities that aren’t linked here.

Let’s see how we might go about choosing a day for making offerings, meditating to connect with a particular deity, or performing any other kind of sacred activity with a specific goddess or god in mind.

If you want to focus on the Melissae, for instance, you could do that on a Wednesday, which is the Daughters’ day. Ariadne is one of the Daughters, but she’s also the Queen Bee, the head of the Melissae while she’s in the Underworld during the fallow season of the year. Or you could choose Friday, Minos’s day, because he’s a full-time resident of the Underworld, where the Melissae abide.

The male Horned Ones (the Minotaur, Vikaro, and Divono) would fit nicely on Thursday because they’re faces of the Sons. The female Horned Ones (Europa, Amalthea, and Britomartis) are associated with Rhea, so you could focus on them on a Monday.

Daedalus and Talos are faces of Korydallos, so you could choose to work with them on a Thursday, the Sons’ day. Thumia is a face of Therasia, and Kaulo is a face of Dionysus, so you could choose Sunday and/or Thursday, respectively, for those two.

As you can see, there are lots of connections within the pantheon and lots of reflections from one deity to another, individually and in groups. As we like to say, individuation is problematic. So there’s a fair amount of flexibility as you choose days for honoring and connecting with any of them.

Listening to your inner voice and the voices of the deities will guide you to the days that will work best for your individual needs and purposes.

You may have noticed that our arrangement of days with deities conflicts a bit with the five-day work week / two-day weekend setup that has become the assumed standard in modern capitalist culture. That‘s on purpose, both because we would rather not reinforce industrial capitalist energy structures, and also because an awful lot of people simply don’t work nine-to-five Monday-to-Friday jobs, despite the cultural assumption that it’s the standard.

Many retail employees, health care workers, emergency responders, foodservice workers and other people who don’t have sit-down office jobs typically work odd schedules that don’t fit into the nine-to-five framework. And they are truly the backbone of society and the economy.

Not to mention all the people who are full-time caregivers for children, the disabled, and the elderly, whose work schedule is constant and around-the-clock. This more fluid setup acknowledges that people’s lives and schedules are as varied as their spiritual experiences.

So the next time you want to honor the Minoan deities and refresh your connection with them, think about which day you’ll do it on, and let that choice add to the energy and the magic.

**Adding the links here has served to remind me that I owe you lovely people some posts about Arachne and Antheia.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. If you’re looking for resources about inclusive Minoan spirituality, here are some quick links for you:

Labrys & Horns: An Introduction to Modern Minoan Paganism

Ariadne’s Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives

Pantheon: The Minoans

Tales from the Labyrinth: Modern Minoan Myths

I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Lord of Labryses: This card represents a person who behaves in a decisive way and who may be impatient with others who are not as resolute. This person holds strong opinions, is knowledgeable about the reasons behind their opinions, and often tries to persuade others to agree with them. These strong opinions may change frequently as the person picks up new information and adds it into their thought process. This person is not deceitful – they honestly believe in what they’re selling, whether it’s a product, a belief system, or their own opinion. Just be aware they may not always be right, no matter how convinced they are of their own good judgment.

Maid of Daggers: The Maid of Daggers represents creativity and imagination unfettered by in-the-box thinking. This card represents not so much a set of actions as an attitude and worldview, especially that of refusing to accept traditional forms and boundaries in any creative endeavor, whether it be artwork, writing, marketing, or any other type of expression that requires imagination. This card depicts a person who has not yet internalized the restrictions society puts on each person’s creative vision. This may be due to the simple innocence of youth or to a purposeful rejection of any set of rules imposed from outside.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

CW: Discussion of animal sacrifice

This week’s cards offer some helpful advice and perhaps a warning to avoid some of our more troublesome tendencies. The world these days is in a pretty volatile state, and that energy tends to trickle down into our daily lives, whether we like it or not. Being mindful to avoid encouraging those volatile energies can make life a little easier.

Let’s have a look at our first card, the Lord of Labryses. This is the one that will help us make it through the week, no matter what life throws at us. The artwork on this card is inspired by a seal impression from the Minoan site of Hagia Triada, a small settlement that may have been a religious community. Here’s what the seal impression looks like:

I realize it’s not as impressive as the colorful Minoan frescoes. But if you know a little about Minoan religion, it’s kind of hard-hitting. It depicts two differently-dressed people carrying labryses. The figure on the left wears the long skirt typical of Minoan women. The figure on the right wears an animal hide skirt, identifiable on this tiny seal impression (roughly 3-4 cm wide) by its curved hem.

In Minoan art and religion, animal hide skirts are associated with animal sacrifice. That’s right, the famed peaceful Minoans practiced animal sacrifice - just like everyone else in the eastern Mediterranean in the Bronze Age. They were not outliers in this regard. They were just like their neighbors.

Just to be clear, the labryses themselves were NOT used to perform the sacrifices. The artwork shows us that the Minoans used knives and swords for that purpose.

If you’d like a little dive into labryses, what they really were, how they were used, and what we think their specific meanings might have been, have a look at this post:

Here’s the thing: Labryses show up repeatedly in the context of both animal sacrifice and human funerals in a way that suggests they represent resurrection and/or reincarnation. So the Minoans thought they were doing a good thing when they were performing animal sacrifice.

That’s the Lord of Labryses for you: This person, regardless of their gender, is certain they’re doing the right thing.

We’ve all been there: absolutely sure we’ve made the right choice, stubbornly sticking with it because we’ve already put so much effort into it, being even more stubborn if we’ve had to shift our opinions over time to get to the point we’re at now. We think we’re being rational and clear-headed, but that may not actually be the case.

This card is a warning against digging in your heels.

Hold your point of view loosely this week. Don’t push it on others. Allow some space for opposing ideas in your mind and your life, and your days will flow more smoothly.

Now let’s have a look at our second card, the Maid of Daggers. Can she help us find joy in these Interesting Times?

She’s all about opening yourself to out-of-the-box ideas and allowing your creativity to flow unfettered. That’s almost the opposite of the Lord of Labryses.

Which makes it especially interesting that the figures on the two cards, as laid out in today’s reading, are facing away from each other.

Of course, we need a certain amount of balance in our lives, a harmony between those ideas we hold firmly and those parts of our lives where we’re a bit more free-wheeling.

This week’s cards suggest that finding that harmony is paramount to having a good week.

Where will you hold fast to views you’ve thought out carefully over time, and where will you let go and allow new, exciting ideas to flow?

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. If you’re looking for resources about inclusive Minoan spirituality, here are some quick links for you:

Labrys & Horns: An Introduction to Modern Minoan Paganism

Ariadne’s Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives

Pantheon: The Minoans

Tales from the Labyrinth: Modern Minoan Myths

I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

Email providers may cut my posts short. To access the full article, tap/click on the title and read it in your browser or the Substack app.

When I talk about flowers in Minoan art, most people immediately think of lilies before I can even identify a specific variety.

Yes, the saffron crocus was very important to the Minoans - in their religion, their art, and their economy - but somehow lilies have taken the spotlight in the modern mind. They’re delightfully sprinkled throughout Minoan art, and they have deep sacred meaning as well as beauty.

The photo above shows one wall of the Spring fresco, a wall painting that covered three walls in a private home in the Minoan town of Akrotiri on the island of Thera (modern name = Santorini). The fresco depicts a springtime scene of red lilies blooming in rocky terrain and swallows returning from their winter migration to Africa. The flowers here are probably wild Turk’s cap lilies (Lilium martagon) which are native to the Mediterranean.

When they’re shown in color, lilies appear as one of two colors in Minoan art: red, like the ones above, and white. The white ones may very well be Lilium candidum, known today as Madonna lily and also native to the Mediterranean.

Minoan artists typically painted white lilies on a dark red background, like in this fresco from a Minoan villa in Amnisos, a port city on the north coast of Crete:

Like the Spring fresco up top, this is a naturalistic depiction of lilies. In fact, it’s meant to make the room look like it’s a garden even though it’s indoors.

Minoan artists didn’t limit lilies just to frescoes. These lovely flowers also appear on ceramics and seal rings and stones.

Sometimes, lilies were depicted in a stylized manner, such as the allover horizontally-oriented design on this lovely pithos from Akrotiri, another example of light-on-dark artwork:

Or the very schematized border design on the lid of this strainer from Stavromenos:

You many have noticed that Minoan artists tended to depict lilies in silhouette, with a prominent double-curl to the petals. It’s probably no coincidence that the double-curl looks a bit like breasts, especially given the prominence of breasts in Minoan art.

In Ariadne’s Tribe, we associate breast imagery with our Mother Goddesses, especially Rhea, Therasia, and Posidaeja. Flowers, including lilies, are always good choices for offerings to the Great Mothers.

We also connect the lily with the goddess Ariadne. The red and white colors of the lilies in Minoan art point to the two halves of Ariadne’s yearly cycle.

The story of the Minoan Mysteries reflects her yearly activities: She spends the summer (the “dead time” in the Mediterranean) in the Underworld then returns to the World Above - our world - when the rains begin in the autumn and the first green sprouts spring up in the fields.

So Ariadne has two faces, the Underworld and the World Above. We associate red lilies with her Underworld face, red being the color of the dead. And we associate white lilies with her time in the World Above. White is the color of light but also of the grain crop that Ariadne embodies as our “Jane Barleycorn,” a great gift to us from her mother Rhea.

Lilies come in a wide variety of colors these days, and may have done so in the ancient Mediterranean as well. But the red and white ones have a special place in Minoan art and spirituality.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Three of Rhytons: This card represents your connection with a group of people such as your extended family, your circle of friends, a spiritual or religious group, a volunteer organization, or your co-workers. The Three of Rhytons also suggests the successful beginning of a project or relationship involving multiple people. This is a card of celebration and emotional growth, and possibly emotional healing as well. The relationships represented by this card are loving, and the people involved are able to trust each other.

Six of Rhytons: This card stands for memories and the past. This can mean comparing current difficulties with similar situations you’ve been in before or recalling past happy times. Perhaps a person or situation from your past has popped up in your life again; depending on surrounding cards, this can be a positive or a negative experience. The important point to remember is that you are no longer in that past situation, and you and all the other people involved are different now.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

For the fourth week in a row, the cards are pointing us toward our connections with each other. That’s probably not just coincidence. In Interesting Times like these, it’s our relationships that sustain us - in our homes, our workplaces, our communities.

Both our cards this week are from the suit of Rhytons. This is the Water suit, the realm of emotion, intuition, and relationship. In my Minoan Tarot deck, as in the Waite-Smith and other familiar decks, this suit has a feminine flavor. This is because, in our culture, we associate emotions and intuition with women and the feminine aspects of society.

The thing is, everybody has emotions. Everyone feels a connection with others. We all have it within us to view the world from a heart-centered perspective.

The chaos in the Big World can make life feel precarious. That can push a lot of us to shut down, to choose being closed off rather than open to heart-connection with our fellow human beings. That’s understandable, but it’s not necessarily helpful. There’s an old saying: A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

Our first card this week, the Three of Rhytons, assures us that reaching out and making those connections is a good thing to do right now. This is a very positive card, one that offers a vision not just of relationship but also of celebration and possibly even healing.

You might think of this week as a “safe space” in which you can build new connections and strengthen existing ones.

When I was designing the artwork on this card, the thought I had in mind was, We fill each other’s cups. Who can fill your cup this week, and in the weeks to come? Whose cup can you fill?

Our second card for this week continues the Rhytons theme, but from a slightly different angle.

The Six of Rhytons is all about the past. We’ve all had times when a person we hadn’t seen in ages shows up in our sphere of activity, or when we get a strong jolt of déjà vu from a situation we find ourselves in.

Our connections with others don’t just exist in the here-and-now; they weave their way back into the past as well.

The thing is, in these Interesting Times, it’s tempting to pine for the past and to view it through rose-colored glasses.

Difficult times can also keep us on edge enough that when we encounter a situation that’s similar to a negative one from the past, we fall quickly into the assumption that the bad things are going to happen all over again.

Both of those reactions are completely understandable, but neither is helpful.

You’re not the same person you were back then. Nobody in the situation is.

What can you learn from that past situation that can help you deal with the current one in a healthy way?

How can you stay present in the now while also acknowledging the experience that past you had?

We are multi-faceted beings who exist within a web of connections with others. This week, let those connections warm and strengthen you as you view the world in a heartfelt way.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

Email providers may cut my posts short. To access the full article, tap/click on the title and read it in your browser or the Substack app.

As promised in a previous post, today I’m exploring a series of frescoes found in a building in the Minoan town of Akrotiri on the island of Thera (modern name = Santorini). Archaeologists have identified the building, called Xeste 3, as the site of Minoan coming-of-age rites.

Rites of passage like this are a subject that’s experiencing renewed interest in recent times. Many of us are looking to fill in the empty spaces that were left when these kinds of rituals fell out of common usage. [Please forgive a moment of blatant self-promo: My book Ariadne’s Thread includes Minoan-themed coming-of-age rites for girls, boys, and nonbinary youth, if you’re looking for something along those lines.]

Back to our set of ancient Minoan frescoes: A lot of Minoan art includes ritual scenes that are what you might call “snapshots” of their spiritual practice. This gives us a look into Minoan religion, both its practical activities and, to some extent, the beliefs and worldview behind the rites. The fact that they performed coming-of-age rites tells us right off the bat that they found this particular life passage not just important but also sacred.

Let’s have a look at the frescoes in Xeste 3 on what people in the US call the first and second floors, and what people elsewhere typically call the ground floor and first floor. For tidier writing, I’ll use the American terms from here on out (I live in the US) so just be aware that you might need to translate in your head if you normally use the other set of terms.

Let’s start by looking at the frescoes in the main room of the second floor. These include the one at the top of this post, which I’ll reproduce here so you don’t have to scroll back up. FYI all the images in this post are from Wikimedia Commons, which is a great resource for photos of actual Minoan art and artifacts (as opposed to all the mislabeled art and Minoan-themed AI slop that circulates online). You can click on any image in this post to get to the original Wikimedia Commons entry for it.

This fresco, which covers a whole wall, is called the Saffron Gatherers fresco, because that’s what these two girls are doing. They’re climbing the rocky hillside and plucking the blood-red stigmas and styles from the centers of blooming saffron crocuses. The upper part of the fresco is “wallpapered” with paintings of saffron crocus plants, their blossoms now faded after so many thousands of years. Still, you get the idea that the girls are surrounded by an expansive field of the flowers.

We can identify these figures as girls, and not women, from both their physiology (they’re flat-chested) and their hairstyles. Like other Bronze Age cultures in the eastern Mediterranean (Egypt and Mesopotamia, for instance) the Minoans tended to shave children’s heads. This cut down on problems with lice - and probably also relieved parents of arguments about combing tangled hair!

When a young person came of age, they stopped having their head shaved and grew their hair out. Presumably by that point they were able to take care of their own hair. In the fresco above, we see that the girl on the right has a shaved head, with a single ponytail lock and a tiny forelock. You can even see lines of stubble detailed in the blue area that represents the shaved scalp.

A brief aside about that blue on her head: It’s not a cap. We don’t know why, but Minoan artists chose to use blue paint to depict grey surfaces like shaved scalps and monkey fur. This may have been a wealth display; blue pigments like Egyptian blue and powdered lapis lazuli were ridiculously expensive. Or it may have had sacred significance. Or both.

Back to the fresco. The girl on the left has short, curly hair that has been growing out for a little while, but it’s not long yet, except for the ponytail lock. So we can tell that she has recently come of age. She’s just a little older than the girl on the right and is perhaps showing her the ropes for the saffron harvest.

To the left of this fresco is a narrow panel that’s often left out of discussions about these frescoes. It shows a third girl carrying a full basket of saffron away from the field and toward another scene. She, too, has short hair, suggesting that she has recently come of age.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, saffron was as expensive in ancient times as it is today because it has to be carefully harvested by hand (yes, even now). But to the Minoans, it was also sacred, the emblem of the Sun Goddess; in Ariadne’s Tribe, we call her Therasia. One interesting aspect that connects saffron to coming-of-age rites for girls is that, in addition to being used as a dye and a culinary spice, saffron is an herbal remedy for menstrual cramps.

First the girls gather the saffron (above), then they bring it as an offering to the goddess, as we see in the Goddess and Griffin fresco, which is on the adjacent wall to the left of the Saffron Gatherers fresco. We can tell the goddess is Therasia because she has a griffin with her, one of her symbolic animals. And, of course, saffron is her sacred substance. Here, a girl who has recently come of age pours saffron into a large basket while a grey vervet monkey presents a handful of the saffron threads to the goddess.

This series of images covers two adjacent walls on the second floor. Directly below these two walls, on the first floor, are some other frescoes that have a connection with these. Let’s start with the one directly beneath the scene with the goddess. It’s called the Adorants fresco:

Here we see three figures, two grown women with long hair (they’ve had years to grow their hair out from the shaved head of childhood) and one girl with a shaved head and a few individual long locks. The woman on the left is wearing a sheer top with now-faded saffron crocus blossoms painted all over it and a necklace of fresh red flowers. She holds out a strand of beads, perhaps as an offering.

I’ve seen some sources insist that her necklace has 28 beads and is therefore a menstrual calendar. I think these sources must have been relying on secondhand drawings of the fresco and not photographs of the actual artwork. If you click through from the image above to the Wikimedia Commons page with the original photo, you can look at a high-resolution image and count the beads for yourself. I think you’ll find, as I did, that there are 37 of them.

But that doesn’t negate the menarche connotations of the scene, and indeed of the whole series of frescoes. The central figure in this painting is seated on a boulder, cradling her injured foot, which appears to be bleeding. Interestingly, beneath her blood-streaked foot we can see a cluster of saffron threads, thus connecting the idea of blood and bleeding with these blood-red threads.

The young girl on the right is fully veiled, head to toe, and may be dancing. Her veil is dyed saffron yellow with blood-red spots, the two colors of the Sun Goddess as well as of saffron. Note that she has her head turned to the right, drawing our attention to whatever lies in that direction.

What lies in that direction is an altar painted on the adjacent wall, directly beneath the Saffron Gatherers fresco on the floor above. The fresco the veiled girl is looking at is a depiction of a shrine in front of a stone wall, with a leaning olive tree behind it. The shrine itself is topped by a pair of sacred horns that are dripping with blood.

Blood is a theme that makes sense if this is a coming-of-age ritual for Minoan girls. It appears that the Sun Goddess was central to this rite, given her presence in the Goddess and Griffin fresco and the repetition of both her sacred saffron and her two sacred colors throughout the series of frescoes.

What we don’t know is exactly how these frescoes were used. Are they depictions of the coming-of-age rites? Did the girls actually journey into the countryside to pick saffron? Or do these images illustrate a story, perhaps a myth or legend that was told to the girls as part of their initiation into womanhood while they were in the building? Or maybe both? It’s fun to imagine how these rites might have been performed.

There’s a tendency to focus on girls and women in connection with Minoan society, but boys and men had a role to play, too (and nonbinary people as well, but that’s a subject for a separate article). That’s one of the lovely things about partnership cultures: everyone is cherished.

One interesting aspect of that sense of value and care for everyone is that boys also had coming-of-age rites. How do we know that? Because they’re depicted in the same building as the frescoes we’ve just been looking at. Their frescoes just aren’t as well known as the ones in the Saffron Gatherers series.

On the walls of one of the rooms on the first floor, we find these scenes:

Let’s have a closer look at the individual panels:

We don’t know for certain what the boys’ rites entailed, any more than we know the details about the girls’ rituals. But given these frescoes, it looks like personal hygiene may have played a role in the boys’ coming of age activities.

Again here, you can see age differences in the images. In the first panel we see a boy, perhaps a toddler, with a shaved head. He accompanies a young teenager who also has a shaved head. The figure in the second panel has black hair put up in a bun, suggesting that he’s older, having had time to grow his hair out. And the young man in the third panel has short, curly hair that still appears to be shaved around the edges, perhaps only just beginning to grow in.

There are two more frescoes from a nearby room that also depict young men, but I haven’t been able to find public domain or Creative Commons licensed images of them, so I’ll just have to describe them for you. Both of them show young men, perhaps older teenagers, with short hair that has only just begun to grow out. They’re all wearing short kilts. One panel shows two of them holding a spotted bull - not a very large one, perhaps a yearling - by ropes attached to its horns. The second panel depicts two young men holding a rearing billy goat by its long horns.

There’s some powerful symbolism here, for sure: two male animals, both with large horns that play a central role in the action. I also find it interesting that in both cases, a pair of young men are working together to achieve their goal. Cooperation is an important value in partnership cultures. The lone wolf figure of Big Man culture (what many people call “the patriarchy”) is not something men aspire to in partnership societies.

If you’ve stayed with me this far, you may be thinking what I am: that Xeste 3 is a whole building that was dedicated to coming-of-age rites for the young people of the Akrotiri community. Isn’t that beautiful? Maybe it’s something to aim for today.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

The Empress: The feminine force in Nature and within each person, regardless of sex or gender. The Empress stands for empathy, compassion, interdependence, and a strong sense of interconnection, including acceptance of your commitment to others. The Empress also reminds you of your patience, the capacity to wait for the right time, and the ability to see things from others’ perspectives. This way you can joyfully receive and appreciate the abundance and bounty in life, both material and non-material, but you can also accept the ‘messiness’ and chaos that inevitably occur. The energy of the Empress allows you to accept the fact that many facets of life aren’t tidy or easily categorized or labeled.

Nine of Daggers: This is the card of steadfastness in the face of opposition. It represents the strength you didn’t realize you had and the ability to defend yourself when you thought there was no hope. This also includes being able to sense danger before it reveals itself and prepare a defense ahead of time. It encourages you to keep on until you succeed, reassuring you that you have the stamina, endurance, and strength of character to reach your goals no matter what obstacles may lie in your way.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

Right on schedule, we have yet another Major-Arcana-plus-Minor-Arcana card pair for the third week in a row.

I find it interesting that we’re being directed to look at the major arcs of our lives right now, given that the world is in such turmoil. It’s in eras like this one that we find both the greatest challenges and the greatest opportunities for personal growth. (Yes, I know, I’d rather live in totally uninteresting times, but here we are.)

So let’s dive right in.

Our first card this week is The Empress. My personal keyphrase for this one is the Goddess within.

The Empress is all about characteristics like empathy and compassion, that help us connect with each other (and with the divine within us, for those of us who are so inclined). Regardless of your sex or gender, you have these aspects within you.

So once again we’re being reminded about connection, but from a slightly different angle.

The Empress is all about nurturing - ourselves and others. While we often connect the idea of nurturing with mothers and mother figures, it’s something we can all do to build relationships and support each other. It’s something the world needs more of right now, I think.

More than anything, to me the Empress is about opening your heart and finding patience with yourself and the people around you in the chaos and messiness that is real, ordinary life.

We’re all having a tough time right now. It’s easy to feel isolated, to feel like you’re all out of patience and everyone is getting on your last nerve.

The Empress is a reminder that the parts of ourselves that our culture often defines as “soft” are actually our great strength: compassion, connection, empathy. Lean on them to help you get through the next few days.

This dovetails nicely with our second card this week, which is all about strength.

Have a look at the image on the Nine of Daggers. The hand is holding a single dagger, and there are eight more sharp blades in reserve, waiting to be used.

You have what it takes.

It may not feel like it sometimes, or even all the time. But this card is telling us that we can make it through. Not only that: Due to its position in this reading, it’s telling us that we have what we need to find joy in these Interesting Times.

One of the aspects of the Tarot that I really enjoy is the reflections and connections between the cards, especially between the Minor and Major Arcana. One of the connections that this card has is with a particular one of the Major Arcana:

Sometimes life really does feel like we’ve grabbed a charging bull by the horns. But these cards - the Nine of Daggers and Strength - both remind us that we have what it takes to deal with the situation, no matter how daunting it may seem at the moment.

The bull leaper has the training; the hand on the Nine of Daggers card has the necessary tools (or weapons, depending on how you look at it, though I will note that archaeological studies show that many of the Minoan blades that are labeled as daggers turn out to have been used largely as kitchen knives).

The key is to believe in yourself and keep on keepin’ on. Or, to paraphrase Bob the Builder: Can we do it? Yes, we can!

I wish you a week full of beautiful connection and the strength to believe in yourself and keep going until you get to where you want to be.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

I review books on magical, pagan, mythical, and polytheist subjects, both fiction and non-fiction. You can find all my book reviews here.

I’m delighted to be reviewing Imelda Almqvist’s new book, Portals, Patterns, and Pathways. This is a unique view of the runes from an author (and friend) who is also a dedicated Northern Tradition spirit worker. To me, the two make perfect sense together, since the runes are also a way of looking beyond the “ordinary” physical world.

For the record, I’ve been working with runes for several decades and consider myself pretty adept with them. That said, this book opened up a lot of exciting new territory for me and has given me some fresh ideas for exploration.

The first thing that struck me while I was reading is Imelda’s choice to view the runes as a circular set rather than a linear one. This opens up a huge range of possibilities, since in a circle, you can start anywhere, while a line offers only a single option for where to begin. For those of us who view the universe as cyclical rather than linear, this is a refreshing and perhaps more intuitive way of interacting with the runes.

If you’re new to the runes or need a refresher, the book offers a set of standard meanings and some basic instruction. But where it stands out is the journey beyond these basics, both in terms of the circularity and the relationship between the runes and the Norse deities.

The exploration of the aettir - the three sets of eight runes within the 24 Elder Futhark signs - is eye-opening when undertaken using the author’s Uthark sequence (beginning with Uruz, the second rune in the traditional lineup) instead of the traditional Futhark sequence that begins with Fehu. This simple shift changes the energy of the aettir from masculine to feminine. Throughout the book, there’s an emphasis on the divine feminine within the runes, which is a nice balance to the often-masculine-dominated Norse mythos.

In Imelda’s view, the runes are in relationship with each other both via the aettir and within the circle. Clusters and groups of runes can then be viewed in connection, as partners or even subsets of each other. This is the Web of Wyrd made manifest. It’s especially striking if you start drawing connecting lines between the runes in a circle - you get a spiderweb! Even the spaces between the runes become meaningful in this system.

Ultimately, the author offers an animist view of the runes, honoring the indwelling spirit of each rune as well as the connection between the runes and specific deities. This viewpoint really resonates with me; maybe it will with you, too.

Some of the topics covered in the book include connections with Norse mythology as well as mythos from other cultures; a fascinating analysis of the runes in modern context via astrology and astronomy; the runes in connection with Norse concepts of the anatomy of the soul as well as their uses in magic and healing.

The one constant thread throughout the book is the Norse deities and their connection to the runes. This relationship demonstrates that the runes are so much more than just a divination technique: they have many layers and much depth to explore.

Many of the chapters in the book have detailed activities to help you increase your experience with the runes. Of course, the discussion itself inspires me to pick up the runes and start exploring with them. But it’s nice to have specific suggestions as well, since these point directly to the ideas the author is trying to get across. The author doesn’t insist that her analysis is the only feasible one and encourages the reader to work through the possibilities themselves.

I’m sure I’ll return to this book again and again for information and inspiration. I bet you will, too.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Justice: This card stands for cause and effect in your life. Its scope includes decision-making based on probable consequences and the responsibility for your own actions. Justice means shaping your life as a reflection of the underlying divine order by making the right choices and accepting that you alone are accountable for those choices. This includes correcting past wrongs and deciding what the best choice truly is in a given situation. This card emphasizes openness and honesty; the best decisions are those made in full view of all involved, even if not everyone is happy with the outcome.

Priestess of Rhytons: This card represents the embodiment of the qualities of Water in the life of a mature person. This includes a strong sense of empathy, a nurturing style, and a keen intuition about others’ feelings and problems. This person always takes other people’s feelings seriously and doesn’t ridicule others for experiencing emotions. While the Priest of Rhytons focuses on people’s relationships with each other, the Priestess of Rhytons focuses on people’s relationships with themselves. This person’s inner steadiness and warm acceptance of all aspects of human nature provide a safe environment in which to nurture their fellow human beings.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

We’ve got another Major-Arcana-plus-Rhytons pair of cards today, though this week’s pair doesn’t look quite as tumultuous as last week’s.

Our cards for this week are a not-so-subtle reminder that we’re all connected, no matter how much society might try to push the “lone wolf” or “cowboy individualist” paradigms on us.

No one is an island, as they say.

The artwork on the Justice card was inspired by a delightful little figurine from the Minoan tombs at Kamilari. It’s called the Kamilari Dancers because archaeologists initially thought it represented people doing a circle dance. But the fact that they’re standing knee-deep in some kind of large vat has shifted the perspective, so it’s now thought they’re treading on grapes, which makes more sense to me. Here’s a photo of the figurine, via Wikimedia Commons:

It’s a bit worse for wear after 3500 years, but you can still see what the artist intended. Those four people standing with their arms interlinked are a great visual demonstration of how our individual actions affect those around us.

Every decision we make has repercussions in the lives of those around us.

Pretending that’s not the case doesn’t let us off the hook.

So when it’s time to make a decision, look at what you might call the “downstream effects.” Who will be affected by your choices, and how?

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to please everyone. Far from it. That’s an impossible task. Please don’t try.

What it does mean is that you have to be aware of the consequences of your choices and be prepared to live with them. Going into a decision with your eyes wide open will help you navigate the after-effects with honesty and fairness. And that’s better for all concerned.

Our second card for the week, the one that will help us find joy in these Interesting Times, echoes the first one in some ways but also expands beyond it.

Like all the Priestess cards in this deck, the Priestess of Rhytons represents the idea of embodying the qualities of the suit’s element. Embodying the qualities of Water means learning to sit with your own feelings while also acknowledging and respecting the feelings of others.

Empathy is vital to the human experience, though it’s becoming rare in some spheres of interaction these days. <coughsocialmediacough>

Recognizing that we all have a constant cascade of emotions, and that these emotions color our interactions with each other, is so important. We’re not robots. We are feeling beings.

Allowing space for both our own feelings and those of other people can go a long way toward making our interactions and our decisions more comfortable for everyone.

The first step in that process is honestly acknowledging your own emotions and accepting them. That can be a challenge if you’ve been taught it’s not OK to have certain emotions, much less express them. So many of us have been told that some of our feelings aren’t acceptable, perhaps based on our gender, sexual orientation, career choice, or socioeconomic status.

But the Priestess of Rhytons tells us that it is OK. See that pitcher she’s holding? It’s one of those magical, “bottomless” ones, and it has room for every single emotion that it’s possible to experience.

So give yourself the space to sit with whatever you’re feeling, and give other people the space for their own emotions as well. We’re all in this together, and we’ll make it through, heart to heart.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

The lovely young lady in the image above is picking the stigmas and styles of the saffron crocus to give as an offering to the Sun Goddess. This image is one part of a story that plays out in a series of frescoes from a building called Xeste 3 in Akrotiri, a Bronze Age Minoan town on the Mediterranean island of Thera (modern name = Santorini).

Here’s the full fresco, showing two girls gathering saffron on a rocky hillside. (All the images in this post are via Wikimedia Commons.)

To their left on the wall is a third girl who is carrying a basket full of saffron on her shoulder. Interestingly, she has red hair - a surprising sight given that the vast majority of Minoan art shows humans with black hair. It’s possible that her hair color is symbolic in connection with saffron, whose threads are dark red. (You can’t dye hair red with saffron; it produces a yellow dye. More about that below.)

She’s facing another scene that shows a fourth girl pouring her gathered saffron into a large basket while a monkey presents some to a female figure.

Let’s “read” the iconography of this image, shall we? In Minoan art, a lone seated female figure is a goddess (or perhaps a human priestess embodying a goddess in ritual). The presence of saffron and a griffin tell us that this particular goddess is the Minoan Sun Goddess, whom we call Therasia. Both saffron and griffins are sacred symbols belonging to sun goddesses.

Saffron crocus plants float like a wallpaper design across all three of these frescoes. This was Minoan artists’ way of showing us that behind the human figures was a spreading field of crocuses. That must have been quite a sight when they were in full bloom! Here’s a closeup of a blooming saffron crocus plant. The leaves look kind of like clumps of grass, and the flowers glow lavender against the green.

You can see the long, dark red saffron threads (the stigmas and styles of the blooms) clearly in this photo. Each flower has at most three threads, so it takes an enormous number of flowers to produce any quantity of saffron. To this day, those threads still have to be picked by hand, which is why saffron is so expensive.

You may have noticed that while saffron crocus flowers are bright lavender, there’s not much lavender color in the frescoes above. This is because of the paint pigments the Minoan artists chose to use for the different colors. Most of their colors came from mineral pigments like red and yellow ochre, charcoal, and Egyptian blue. But for shades of purple in the frescoes, they used the famed murex dye. There‘s evidence of extensive Minoan murex dyeworks at least as early as 1600 BCE. I promise I’ll write up a separate article about the murex dye soon.

The thing is, murex dye is an organic compound made from the secretions of certain kinds of sea snails. That means it’s easily biodegradable. So while the mineral pigments in the Minoan frescoes have remained fairly stable, the murex dye has decomposed significantly. Here’s a closeup of one of the saffron crocus plants from the fresco above with the two girls picking saffron on the hillside. You can see that the flower has faded until it’s almost invisible, though the bright red threads still remain.

You’ll just have to imagine bright lavender flowers in each of the plants pictured above.

Saffron was an important herbal remedy, spice, and sacred substance to the ancient Minoans. It has long been used around the Mediterranean (and more recently, around the world) to season food and drinks, as a natural dye, and to ease menstrual cramps. Botanists think the Minoans may actually be the ones who domesticated saffron.

Saffron’s colors are magic, too. The threads are dark red, one of Therasia’s sacred colors. But when you soak them in a liquid, they turn a deep, sunshine yellow - a spectacular transformation. It’s no coincidence that red and yellow are the Sun Goddess’s two sacred colors.

The use of saffron as an herbal remedy for menstrual cramps gives us a hint as to the nature of the frescoes above as well as others in the same building. I don’t have the space to go into it in depth here - I’ll do a separate writeup with all the details another time - but the frescoes in Xeste 3 appear to be associated with Minoan coming-of-age rites. Both boys and girls are represented in different places in the building, but only the girls are shown with saffron.

We don’t know for certain how the Minoans used saffron in their religious practice, except as an offering. Like other offered substances (wine, honey, olive oil, grain) saffron also had its practical uses in everyday life, as I mentioned above.

In Ariadne’s Tribe, we use saffron in our spiritual practice in several different ways. We give it to Therasia as an offering, either by itself or in other forms such as mixed in wine or baked into bread. I love to drop a few saffron threads into white wine and watch the red threads exude their deep golden color that wafts throughout the liquid.

Incense that includes saffron as an ingredient also makes an excellent offering to the Sun Goddess. In Ariadne’s Tribe, we don’t use incense (or any other kind of smoke) for purification, but only as an offering.

Do you use saffron in some way, either in your everyday life or your spiritual practice (or both)?

Even if I’m just adding it to a recipe, I find myself turning the process into a little ritual, given how precious this spice has been for thousands of years. Holding those threads in my hand helps me feel connected with the ancient Minoans and with Therasia, who is still very much “alive” in the modern world.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

The Tower: This card represents the collapse of delusion in the form of upheaval, crisis, ego destruction, and revelation. This collapse hits suddenly, like a dam bursting. All the masks and walls you’ve built to help you pretend that life is something besides what it really is are now tumbling down. This is a sudden change that creates an emotional or physical upheaval (or both) in your life. Though it may be frightening, it’s a good thing because it’s sweeping falsehood and delusion away, allowing you to move forward with a fresh vision. Do your best to see the opportunity and the healing in this situation and you’ll weather the change well.

Five of Rhytons: This is a card of loss and regret, especially regarding relationships. There is loss, perhaps from a death, the ending of a relationship, or a significant change in a relationship, but this card suggests you’re focusing entirely on the negative aspects of the situation when there are, in fact, some positive aspects you should take into account, lessons you learned or positive changes in your life. While it’s necessary and healthy to acknowledge the negative energy that occasionally intrudes into our lives and to recognize that grieving is a natural process, this card suggests the time has come to stop wallowing and start healing and getting on with your life.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

We’ve got quite the pair of cards this week, but don’t panic - this is just how life works out sometimes. We’ll get through it all right.

One of the aspects of Tarot that I find fascinating is the way different cards mirror each other, displaying different nuances of similar meanings. We’ve got a pair that do that this week.

The Tower and the Five of Rhytons are both cards of loss, especially if it’s sudden, shocking, or upsetting.

When I drew these cards this morning, the first thing I thought was: it’s graduation time right now. We’re coming up on the end of the school year, and the end of a life arc for a lot of people.

Parents are watching their children finish high school or college, ready to set out on new adventures on their own. Some of us are finishing our own education, getting ready to leave one way of life behind and begin a new one.

This energy of change often bleeds into other parts of life, with relationships shifting, life goals being rewritten, priorities changing.

All of this might feel especially daunting given the feeling of instability and chaos in these Interesting Times.

What this week’s cards are telling us is that, despite how unsettling or even downright scary it might feel, these changes are inevitable and necessary.

That doesn’t mean it will magically be easy, unfortunately. So let’s see what each card has to offer in terms of advice for dealing with the changes life throws at us.

The Tower tends to freak people out when it shows up in a reading. But don’t panic: It’s just a message letting you know that you’re fighting against some kind of change that’s pushing into your life.

In other words, it’s life change in the face of your resistance to it. The problem isn’t the change itself; the problem is fighting against it.

Let’s face it, few among us enjoy major shifts in our lives. We get used to the way things are, the comfortable status quo, even if that’s not what’s best for us.

For me, for instance, I dislike having to move through the mess of change from the now to the end result. It’s like moving house: I want to magically be in the new place, with all my stuff where it belongs, neat and tidy. I don’t want to deal with the hassle and chaos of packing up, traveling to the new location, and unpacking: the process of change itself.

The Tower urges us to do our best to roll with the change and stop fighting it, because it’s going to happen no matter what we do.

Have a look at the artwork on the Tower card above. Instead of lightning striking the building, I chose to depict a tsunami engulfing it, which is exactly what happened to the coastal cities of Crete in about 1600 BCE when the volcanic caldera beneath the island of Thera (modern Santorini) erupted.

There was nothing the Minoans could have done to stop that eruption or the ensuing tidal wave. All they could do was withstand it and rebuild it. And rebuild they did. Don’t be misled by the outdated info that circulates online. Recent archaeology tells us that the eruption happened earlier than people originally thought. The Minoans rebuilt and continued on for several centuries afterward.

What I’m saying is: the tsunami didn’t destroy them. It was horrible, but they survived. That’s what the Tower card is all about.

As the Offspring once said, sometimes you just have to let the Tower fall.

Our second card for this week, the Five of Rhytons, points us to a different aspect of how we deal with change - or don’t deal with it, as the case may be.

There’s an old saying: all change is loss.

Major change (even positive change like graduation) tends to engender grief, and that can trigger us to fight against that change, as the Tower card points out, or pretend it isn’t happening (that’s the Five of Rhytons talking) even if we understand that ultimately, what’s on the other side of it will be better.

The Five of Rhytons points specifically to how we tend to hold onto situations and relationships after their time is past.

It can be hard to let go, whether you’re a parent watching a child graduate and leave home or admitting that a relationship (personal, professional, or otherwise) is over.

The artwork on the Five of Rhytons gives us a hint about how to deal with this kind of situation.

Those broken pitchers in the foreground really grab your attention, don’t they? (A rhyton is a kind of sacred pitcher used for ritual libations, that is, poured offerings.)

But look at what’s sitting quietly in the background, waiting for you to notice: Three more perfectly good pitchers. There are more intact ones than broken ones.

This card suggests that it’s time to switch focus, from what is gone (or soon will be) to what still remains.

Allowing your focus to shift so you notice the good things can help you loosen your grip a little and begin to move on.

Change is scary: I get it. But it’s also inevitable. Let’s do our best to be honest with ourselves and support each other as we move through the changes life presents us with.

I wish you a week filled with beautiful discoveries and open hands to receive them with.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

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This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

We often joke about archaeologists calling artifacts “ritual objects” as a sort of throwaway answer when they don’t know how an item was used. But it’s possible to know that an artifact really is a ritual object while still not fully understanding its place in religious practice.

Case in point: the enigmatic “frying pans” from the early Bronze Age Aegean.

These are not cooking vessels, but funerary objects found in graves and tombs on several Cycladic islands as well as Crete and a few coastal sites in mainland Greece. The shape of these artifacts reminded early archaeologists of frying pans, hence the name.

These objects show no sign of ever having been used for cooking. Besides, what kind of artisan would put such a beautiful, complex design on the underside of a frying pan, only to have it scorched and scraped during use?

First let’s explore some examples of these fascinating artifacts, then we’ll talk about what their symbolism might mean and how they might have been used.

All the photos below are from Wikimedia Commons. If you want a deeper dive into this subject, go to the website and search “Cycladic frying pan.” You’ll find hundreds of images.

Here’s a photo of the one in the drawing just above. It’s from the island of Syros and dates to 2800-2300 BCE. Its design is very similar to the one up top, with the addition of a boat in the middle of the circular area, with a fish stuck on the top of the stern.

Though it’s worn off now after all these thousands of years, many of these objects had white kaolin rubbed into the grooves of the incised decorations, setting them off brightly against the darker ceramic.

You may have noticed that these two examples have vulvar triangles near the narrow end. Some of these artifacts have that feature, but many don’t. Archaeologists have attempted to divide them into “female” and “male” categories based on this difference, even though these designations don’t appear linked to the gender of the person whose burial each object was found in.

While a lot of the “frying pans” have sides with the flared shape shown in the drawing above, many others are more drum-shaped, like this one from Paros (2800-2700 BCE):

And this one from Pano Koufonisi (2800-2300 BCE):

The backs of these are open, just like on the flared ones that have more of a frying pan shape.

Although the vast majority of these artifacts are ceramic, a few carved stone ones have also been found. Here’s a beautiful one from the island of Naxos, its intricate design carved from chlorite schist. It dates to 3200-2300 BCE.

Cycladic “frying pans” have also been found on Crete. Here are a couple of examples from Agia Fotia, both dated 3000-2500 BCE:

All of these fascinating objects date to the Early Bronze Age, the centuries before the Minoans built their first big temples. There was no large institutionalized religion yet. Even so, the tradition of including these items in burials spread across a fairly large area: Crete, the Cycladic islands, and coastal areas of southern mainland Greece. That suggests that they were deeply meaningful for the people who used them.

Although these artifacts display a wide variety of artistry, the symbol set is pretty narrow: star/sun, spirals, concentric circles, boats, and fish. The spirals and concentric circles are often joined together, either as a circular border or in a sort of overall pattern.

The boats and fish aren’t surprising, given that these objects are from burials in island and coastal communities. But what about the other iconography?

Let’s look at how these objects were used. They were found in burials - graves and tombs. As far as I’m aware, no examples have been found outside of burials. So these are not everyday objects that were buried with their owners. They were specially-made funerary objects. They would have been used during the funeral rites and then interred with the deceased. Their shape suggests the possibility that they may have held some object or substance, maybe a liquid, at some point during the proceedings.

We know a little about how the Cycladic cultures viewed death due to some beautiful marble figurines carved in a particular ecstatic posture. Archaeologists think these figurines represented human spirit workers whose job it was to ensure the deceased made a safe journey to the Underworld.

So guiding the spirit of the deceased to their ultimate destination was part of the funerary process. Perhaps that’s what the “frying pans” are all about, too.

What I’m about to describe is purely hypothetical, based on discussion, meditation, and shared gnosis from within Ariadne’s Tribe. But it’s a possible interpretation of this fascinating artifact, its meaning and use in the Bronze Age Aegean.

What if all those stars, spirals, and concentric circles are the stars as they appear in the Underworld? Many cultures have the idea that the Underworld slides up above us at night, with the field of stars we see in the night sky (or used to see, before the advent of light pollution) being a reflection of the deep beauty of the Underworld.

There is, of course, a path through those stars to the soul’s resting place among the ancestors. But you have to know the way. You need a map, perhaps one inscribed on the surface of an object that’s interred in your grave alongside your body.

If you’re part of an island culture, you might believe in a boat that takes you to that final destination in the afterlife. Maybe it’s a boat that looks very much like the ones you traveled in while you were alive.

And maybe you need a key to reach your destination. Not a payment, since our sacred relationships with the deities and ancestors aren’t transactional - they’re not vending machines. But a reminder that generosity and sharing are the basis of our relationships with each other, living or dead, human or divine. And what would an island fisherfolk think to share, but the very fish that sustain them day in and day out, the gift from Grandmother Ocean, the bounty of the ancestors…

Imagine you’re at the funeral of a beloved family member. During the proceedings, the “frying pan” is turned with its decorated side down and filled with pure water. Once the water stills, the spirit worker enters a trance state and peers at its surface, looking through the physical water into the non-material realm.

They see the way the deceased’s spirit must journey in order to find a peaceful resting place in the Underworld among the ancestors. They communicate this information to the spirit of the deceased. Then they empty out the water, turn the “frying pan” over, and trace the journey with their finger on the design of the vessel’s decorated face, imbuing the energy of that astral map into the funerary object.

At this point, the “frying pan” is added to the grave, a physical reminder of the soul’s journey, a map to the destination so they cannot lose their way, so they will find that safe place among the ancestors and the deities.

What a beautiful way to send a beloved family member off on the next portion of their journey of existence.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Eight of Labryses: You may feel powerless, like you’re between a rock and a hard place. It may feel like the only choices you have are bad ones, but that’s not actually the case. Your anxiety about the situation is clouding your thinking so you can’t see the options clearly. Maybe one of the choices that you think is bad would actually work well for you. You may have overlooked some possibilities entirely because you’re not thinking clearly. The trick here is to figure out the real source of your anxiety, acknowledge it, and let it go so your mind can clear and you can reason your way to solutions.

Seven of Daggers: It may appear that you’re being pressed from outside by other people who are competing against you, when really, you’re being challenged to find new levels of creativity and conviction within yourself. You have all the qualities you need to succeed. It’s your belief in yourself that’s being tested here, and your willingness to fight for what you want. Draw on your inner strength to find the courage and perseverance to get to where you want to go.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

This week’s cards draw our attention to our internal worlds: the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how our lives work. Specifically, both of these cards point us to the possibility that we might be misreading our situations, our resources, and even our own judgments of ourselves.

Thankfully, both cards suggest positive outcomes if we take the time and make the effort to see what’s really there.

It can be hard to tell when we’re understanding our life situations clearly and when we’re clinging to inaccurate ideas. We create internal stories about who and how we are based on past experience, both positive and negative. Sometimes these stories are helpful, but sometimes they’re not.

Either way, they color our lives, filtering the outside world and influencing our decisions.

Divination - such as a Tarot reading - is one way to help identify when we’re not telling ourselves accurate stories.

Our first card, the one that will help us get through whatever the week throws at us, is the Eight of Labryses. This is a card of restriction and limitation, specifically limitation of our ability to think clearly and accurately judge whatever situations we’re faced with.

Labryses is the Air suit, the suit of mental activity: thought, analysis, the mind as a tool to help us move through life. But it’s a problem if your own mind is showing you an inaccurate view of your situation.

Look at the card image up top. Those eight labryses are bound with rope - but if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s not fastened at the end. It’s hanging loose. So those labryses are actually available to be used, if you examine the situation closely.

We’ve all been there: A problem crops up, and anxiety bubbles up fast and furious, clouding your ability to reason.

Anxiety can literally make it hard to think straight.

Sometimes, anxiety is warning us about a real danger. But the Eight of Labryses suggests that this week, we’re also faced with the possibility that anxiety is telling us a false story about our options.

So take the time to dig down into that anxiety, questioning its source. Are you reflexively responding to this situation based on something bad that happened to you in the past? Based on preconceived notions from other people’s experience? It happens to us all from time to time.

Find the source of the anxiety, acknowledge it, then do your best to look past it at what’s really there. You may find that you have more options than you thought.

This week’s second card, the one that will help us find joy in these Interesting Times, is the Seven of Daggers. This is also a card about the false stories we sometimes tell ourselves.

Specifically, the Seven of Daggers is a card of competition, rivalry, and challenge, but not really from the outside.

Daggers is the Fire suit, the suit of passion and creativity, the forces that drive us forward and “fire up” our lives. Sometimes that Fire can make us a little rough around the edges, feeling like others are pushing against us, threatening our path.

This card points us to our internal landscapes, suggesting that the real conflict is inside, not outside.

Look at the Seven of Daggers card up top. Those hands are holding seven sharp blades. Not juggling them, just holding them. This is not, in fact, an impossible feat - but it takes patience and perseverance, and a clear view of what you’re actually doing, to do it without cutting yourself or dropping any of the daggers.

This card suggests that the story about “other people are hindering me” is incorrect. It’s possible that you’re being challenged to really step into your Fire and believe in yourself, telling yourself the new story that you have what it takes and you deserve what you’re aiming for.

Sometimes, the biggest challenges in our lives come from within us rather than from outside forces.

I’m not saying the Big World is all hunky-dory right now. But this week’s cards point more to our inner struggles than outer ones, and suggest that if we can resolve some of those internal challenges, the outer world will fall into place a little more easily.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

I review books on magical, pagan, mythical, and polytheist subjects, both fiction and non-fiction. You can find all my book reviews here.

You may already know that I wrote Pantheon: The Minoans and that it’s one of seven, and counting, books in this great series published by Moon Books.

I’m reviewing Pantheon: The Egyptians by Robin Herne this time because so many of you are interested in Egyptian mythology and modern Egyptian polytheism. Who among us hasn’t been fascinated, at one time or another, by the deities of the ancient culture along the Nile?

Like all the books in this series, this one is organized into chapters that address the history of the people and the culture, their cosmology and worldview, their deities, other spirit beings, mythology, rituals, and magical practice. It all wraps up with ways to bring the Egyptian deities and spiritual practice into your own life in ways that are authentic to ancient Egyptian religion (as opposed to, say, invoking an Egyptian deity within a Wiccan circle, which is a modern practice).

As Herne writes in the Foreword, “The book interweaves history with theology, philosophy, ethics, a little mysticism, and some practical advice on how to engage with the deities and spirits of the ancient land.”

I’m something of an ancient history nerd, so I really enjoyed the chapter about the history and culture of ancient Egypt. Right off the bat, the author points out that it can be a challenge to disentangle actual history from mythology, since people in the ancient world didn’t view the two as separate. That’s an important thought when we’re looking at any ancient culture, be it the Egyptians, the Minoans, or even the classical Greeks or Romans.

In the same way that history and mythology intertwine, the information in the different chapters is also linked, all one big web. For instance, the history chapter talks about the calendar and how the sacred festivals were connected with the natural cycles of the land around the Nile. The chapter ends with descriptions of modern spiritual traditions based on the religion and culture of ancient Egypt. None of the information is stand-alone, and it’s all fascinating.

Herne’s background as a storyteller really shines in the mythology chapter as he shares the interwoven tapestry of tales of the Egyptian deities. Ancient Egyptian mythos was not a monolith. It coalesced out of a collection of local deities from all up and down the Nile river and the delta region. Herne manages to work his way through the layers with the finesse of an experienced bard.

I especially enjoyed the exploration of creation myths and their connection with how the ancient Egyptians viewed the concept of magic. Ideas like magic are ultimately rooted in the cosmology of a culture, and it’s interesting to see not only how that worked for the ancient Egyptians but how those sorts of ideas continue to influence us today and how they might be incorporated into our modern spiritual paths.

Herne does an excellent job of translating what was a large, institutionalized, public religion in ancient Egypt into a set of inspirational possibilities for modern Pagans in their personal spiritual practice, whether it be solitary or group-based. The ritual format that he offers is both authentic and approachable.

The discussions of ethics, philosophy, and magic tie the ancient and modern worlds together, offering related examples from other cultures and always directing the reader to examine their own values and beliefs. The chapter on the Netjeru (the deities) provides in-depth information about the best-known ones, including more tidbits of mythos to expand on the stories in the mythology chapter. I found the chapter on other spirit beings especially interesting, since these are the kinds of folkloric beliefs that the common people would have incorporated in their daily lives.

The book wraps up with discussions about how the reader can bring these ideas out into their own life. Herne encourages the reader to really think about what they’re doing, take it slow, and be respectful of these ancient powers. In this age of TikTok witches and Instagram “spiritual influencers,” this is excellent advice.

Pantheon: The Minoans is not a dry academic text, but a storyteller’s exploration of ancient Egyptian spirituality. It’s an enjoyable read and an even more enjoyable resource for spiritual exploration.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Maid of Horns: Stay grounded. View the world from a down-to-earth, practical perspective, using the rational facts to make your decisions. Friendships, more than romantic inclinations, provide you with the connections you need to stay grounded this week. Do your best not to get bogged down in details, and of course take other people’s feelings seriously. But practicality trumps wishful thinking by a long shot, so stick to material-world analysis when deciding which way to go.

Two of Horns: Life shifts from day to day, whether we like it or not. Expect short-term changes in fortune or in the material arrangement of life. There will be gains to offset any losses, either literal or figurative. But change and motion are real, and this card calls on you to join in the dance, skip along with the parade, go with the flow. The changes are for the good, even if the upheaval is hard to handle at the moment. Be flexible, focus on the positive, and you’ll make it through this time before you know it.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

We have a very earthy pair of cards this week, an exhortation to ground ourselves in material life to help us stay steady as the world rocks-and-rolls around us.

Let’s start with the top-of-the-deck card that offers suggestions for how to deal with whatever the week throws at us. This time, we have the Maid of Horns, one of the Earth suit face cards.

As a reminder, the face cards in The Minoan Tarot don’t necessarily represent individual people (of a particular gender and/or appearance) in our lives. Instead, they point toward personality traits that any person of any gender might have - or might aspire to.

The Maid of Horns, one half of the young Youth/Maid pair of face cards, points us toward a simple, straightforward, practical perspective on daily life.

This doesn’t mean naivete, but rather, setting aside the inclination to make things more complicated than they need to be. (That’s me saying ouch in the background! lol)

The Maid of Horns suggests that staying grounded, both literally and figuratively, will give us the stability to move through the week’s challenges with patience and, hopefully, grace.

I also wanted to share with you the artwork that inspired the image on this card. It gives us some more insight into the card’s meaning.

It’s a fresco from the Minoan city of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini (the island was called Thera in the ancient world). This is a single figure from a multi-panel fresco that takes up two whole walls in a large room. Here she is:

She’s outdoors in a field of blooming saffron crocuses, toting a basket on her shoulder. In other words, she’s doing physical work. And she is literally grounded, barefoot on the soil.

I realize that not everyone has the physical capacity (or freedom from pain) to carry baskets of produce, but we can all stay present in our bodies as we go through the day. Paying attention to touch, taste, the smells and sounds around us - these actions not only keep us grounded but can also hold anxiety at bay. And that’s definitely a helpful thing in these Interesting Times.

Speaking of Interesting Times… our old Stalker Card friend has turned up again today. The Two of Horns has appeared regularly over the past several years as I’ve done these weekly readings. I really think that’s a sign of the times.

Fortunately, it’s not bad news. In fact, it’s a reminder of how to find joy despite <gestures vaguely at everything>.

Life is change. There’s no escaping that fact. And some eras offer more change than others, on both a large and small scale.

Change can be unsettling. It knocks us out of our groove, out of our daily rhythm, our comforting structure. That can be a challenge to deal with.

The Two of Horns exhorts us to find our sea legs as the ship rolls with the waves.

In other words, don’t hold on so tightly. Allow enough room for some shifts and changes, with the expectation that it will work out all right in the end.

It can be tricky to believe that everything will balance out once the dust settles. I’d like to offer a metaphor that might help.

Many years ago, I was a ballet dancer, before a couple of serious injuries made me rethink that choice. One thing I learned to do was a move called a pirouette, which involves spinning in a circle while balancing on one foot (usually without a muscly dude in tights to help hold you up, despite the nifty gif in the Wikipedia article).

It’s a really effective way to get dizzy and fall over if you don’t learn to focus on a spot in the distance to hold your gaze steady as you turn.

What do you focus on to hold yourself steady as the world spins around you?

Not literally, of course, but figuratively: Where’s your steady center?

For me, it’s my deities and ancestors. For some people, it might be friends, family, a connection with the land, perhaps a meaningful hobby, or maybe even your chosen career, if it has value and purpose in your life.

Find that connection, that focal point, and let it steady you.

Let it help you find joy.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Please note that Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

I recently wrote about the challenges of reconciling the Mediterranean seasonal cycle with the four-season northern temperate zone where I, and many of you, live.

One of the big differences is the harvest season. In most of North America, those “ripe fields of grain” and other field-grown crops, like vegetables, are harvested in the autumn. But in most of the Mediterranean, they’re harvested in the spring after having grown throughout the mild, rainy winter - because the summer is simply too hot and dry for crops to grow.

So in the Ariadne’s Tribe sacred calendar, we set our harvest festival at the Spring Equinox, an appropriate time for the island of Crete and the other parts of the eastern Mediterranean where the Minoans had a presence.

As is often the case with sacred calendars, though, it’s not that simple.

The springtime harvest of grain (the wheat, barley, and rye that the entire population relied on as staple foods) was likely the Minoans’ biggest harvest festival, hence the reason we enshrined it in our sacred calendar as The Harvest.

The Minoans would have done many things that we typically think of as ancient harvest time activities: reaping the grain by hand with bronze sickles; stomping it on the circular threshing floors, a practice that eventually evolved into circle dances to celebrate the harvest; grinding the first grain and baking the first bread from the new grain; and performing rituals to honor the ancestors who had gifted the people with such bounty.

But field crops aren’t the only kind of harvest there is. Today, just like in Minoan times, there are other harvests that happen at other points during the year all around the Mediterranean.

Why is that? It’s an annuals vs. perennials thing. I apologize for going all botanist on you here for a moment. Bear with me - it will be worth it.

Field crops like wheat and beans are annuals: They sprout, grow, and die all in the same year, so they have to be planted during a time when they can grow quickly and easily, with plenty of rain. Annuals are more susceptible to drought than perennials because of their short, vigorous growth cycles. In the Mediterranean, annual field crops are usually grown during the rainy season (autumn through spring).

But grapevines and orchard trees are perennials; they live for many years. Their life cycles are governed more by the amount of sunlight they get at any given time of year than by the amount of rain that’s falling. In other words, their cycles are inextricably tied to the length of the day as it changes over the course of the year.

So no matter how scorching the summer is, or how mild and rainy the winter might be, fruit and nut trees and grapevines blossom and grow their fruit as the days lengthen from spring into summer, and that fruit becomes ripe and ready to pick as the days shorten in late summer and autumn.

How do grapevines and fruit trees survive the hot, dry summers in the Mediterranean?

We have fancy modern irrigation these days, but back in the Bronze Age, the Minoans dug canals to bring water to their orchards and vineyards. Archaeologists continue to discover more and more of the extensive canal networks the Minoans used to bring snow melt-water from the mountains, and local water from rivers, to their farms.

So there’s actually a succession of fruit and nut harvests in the Mediterranean that run from late summer to late autumn, even into early winter in some years; exact harvest dates vary from year to year depending on weather and rainfall.

Each of these probably had its own individual festival in Bronze Age Crete, dedicated to the deity or deities associated with the specific type of fruit. Let’s look at them in chronological order, the way they typically occur over the course of the summer and autumn.

The earliest fruit harvest is usually the grapes, from late August to early September. In the Tribe sacred calendar, we celebrate this as the Feast of Grapes, dedicated to Dionysus.

Next come the tree fruits and nuts in September and October: dates, figs, quinces, acorns, almonds, chestnuts, pistachios, and pomegranates. Apples hadn’t yet reached the Mediterranean back in Minoan times, but today, the apple harvest falls in among the other tree fruits.

We consider dates to be sacred to our Sun Goddess Therasia, and we think the Minoans associated figs with the goat-goddess Amalthea. Pomegranates are the stereotypical Underworld fruit, so we associate them with Ariadne during her time in the Underworld as well as with the ancestors and spirits of the dead. Quinces are connected with Eileithyia, the midwife-goddess who is also the Underworld face of the Sun Goddess.

We still don’t have a solid connection between any type of tree nuts and any particular deity. Revivalist spirituality is, of necessity, a constant work in progress.

Last of all come the olives. Though the rains typically start in September, it takes many weeks for the olive trees to absorb the water and plump up the fruit. So the olive harvest doesn’t usually take place until November, and some years it’s even as late as December, depending on the weather and the condition of the olives themselves.

We connect olives with two closely-related deities. The leaves of the olive tree are medicinal; we associate them with Therasia, and particularly with her healer-goddess face Hygeia. We associate the fruit with Therasia’s son, the god Korydallos.

Eventually, we’ll have festivals on the sacred calendar to celebrate each of these. For now, we make offerings and perform rituals as we feel moved to do so during the appropriate time of year.

So really, instead of a single harvest, there are lots of harvests in Mediterranean climates. But you could group them into two main phases: field harvests in the spring and orchard harvests in the autumn.

Wherever you live, and whenever the harvest happens near your home, I wish you abundance and blessings and the joy of harvest time!

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Nine of Horns: This is the card of honest success through self-reliance and self-discipline. You have learned to buckle down and do what needs doing, and this self-control and dedication has brought you material rewards. You may not have reached all your goals, but you are well on your way thanks to your excellent work ethic. You can now begin to enjoy much of what life has to offer.

The Adept: The Adept embodies balance and harmony among all forces. The Adept has both the background and the experience to move along his or her chosen path, using both outward and inward tools for spiritual development. This card speaks of finding the deity within, learning all you can, and following a spiritual path. The Adept is willing to do the work to advance along that path, recognizing that nothing of value comes without effort. The Adept also accepts that all traditions and institutions were created by human beings and are therefore flawed to some extent, but the careful student can find the value within all teachings and use them for spiritual growth.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

We have a couple of positive, supportive cards this week - what a relief!

First up is our card from the top of the deck to help us navigate the week: the Nine of Horns. This is a card of material success. Not necessarily great riches, but a certain amount of security and comfort.

It doesn’t materialize by magic, though. It comes because you have worked for it.

In today’s complicated capitalist world, sadly, we can’t always rely on a solid connection between effort put in and success reaped. That’s frustrating, especially given that so many of us grew up on the fairy tale that simply doing the work will get you where you want to go.

Thankfully, the Nine of Horns suggests that in some way, you actually have tapped into that story, that connection, and your work has yielded rewards (or will do so later this week).

It’s probably not coincidental that we’re coming up on the end of the school year and the time for graduation soon. Even though most of us are no longer in school (or college/uni), we spent many years steeped in those seasonal rhythms. And those rhythms tend to stick, even if they’re just shadows of what they were when we were younger.

So consider allowing yourself to float on the energy surrounding all those people, young and old, who will graduate in the upcoming weeks. Think on what you’ve achieved - personally, professionally - in the past year. And celebrate it. You’ve earned it!

This week’s second card, the one that will help us find joy in these Interesting Times, is the Adept. That’s the Hierophant in the Waite-Smith deck. This card points to spirituality, especially an in-depth dedication to a spiritual path.

The Adept doesn’t appear often in these readings, and when it does, it tends to show up in clusters. In fact, in the two-and-a-half years that I’ve been doing these weekly card draws, the Adept has appeared only five times: three times in a cluster in late 2024, and then two more times recently: three weeks ago and today. Another cluster. Whether this card will choose to appear a third time in this cluster remains to be seen.

The Adept isn’t talking about just rote performance of religion, but actually leaning into your spirituality as a way of deepening the meaningfulness of your life. Relying on your spiritual practice as a steady center in your life no matter how messy and chaotic everything around you becomes. Digging deep into your inner life and finding the Divine Within. Developing your inner self as a way to move through the world with serenity and confidence, no matter what the Big World looks like.

This card is special to me, and not just because the Snake Goddess figurine it’s based on is so iconic of Minoan civilization.

It’s also the flagship card of this deck. Although it’s not the first card I designed, it’s the first one I actually painted - beginning the work of creating this deck with the Serpent Mother made manifest.

I didn’t tell the designer, at the deck’s publisher, that this was the flagship card for the deck. But he intuitively understood that fact and put it front and center on the deck’s box and companion book:

So when this card turns up in readings, I pay attention.

This week, I’ll celebrate how far I’ve come in the outer world, and I’ll rededicate myself to my path through the inner world as well. That feels like a good kind of balance, an antidote to an unbalanced Big World.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Please note that Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

If you ask a random person to think of an animal associated with Minoan society, they’re liable to suggest a bull. That makes sense, given the presence of bulls (and cows as well - please be careful to distinguish between the two!) in Minoan art.

As you might have guessed, we have deities connected with both cows and bulls. Today I’d like to focus on one of our gods who has a profound connection with bulls: Tauros Asterion.

Although we knew early on that he was part of our pantheon, it took a while to tease out the details of his characteristics and his connections with the other deities.

There are brief references to a character called Asterion in the writings of a few Greek authors: Pausanias, Pseudo-Apollodorus, and Diodorus Siculus. All three lived between the second century BCE and the second century CE, more than a thousand years after the destruction of the Minoan cities and the fall of Minoan civilization. So they were working with garbled fragments of old, old stories that had been passed down to their era.

Each of these writers connected Asterion with Crete in one way or another, but all three of them offered differing views about who he was and who he was related to.

Then of course there are all the bull images in Minoan art, many of them in sacred or ritual settings of one kind or another. That’s the Tauros part of his name.

So who is Tauros Asterion?

He’s a bull-god, the son of our Earth Mother Goddess Rhea, and his starry aspect is connected with our Cosmic Mother Goddess Ourania. We associate him with both the constellation Taurus and the earthly animal, the bull. And we consider the Minotaur and Zagreus to be two of his faces (I’ll do separate write-ups about them eventually).

As I’ve mentioned before, the Minoan pantheon doesn’t parse neatly into a human-style family tree. To be honest, a lot of the time, it feels more like a carnival fun house full of mirrors.

Individuation is problematic, as we say in Ariadne’s Tribe.

But still, we do view some of the deities as being in human-style relation with each other (mothers and sons, for instance). That helps us, as humans, get a handle on the more-than-human beings with whom we have a sacred relationship.

So Tauros Asterion is Rhea’s son. His brothers, so to speak, are the gods Korydallos and Dionysus, who are the sons of the mother goddesses Therasia and Posidaeja, respectively.

Tauros Asterion is a very earthy god, which means (among other things) that he understands material existence surprisingly well. He doesn’t need a lot of explanation if you come to him with issues about your physical life. He also encourages us to enjoy our physicality, especially our physical strength, in whatever form and level it presents in our bodies.

He enjoys offerings of dark red wine, especially the kind called “bull’s blood.” He also appreciates offerings of physical labor, particularly your sweaty labor to make the material world a better place: cleaning up parks, planting trees, that sort of thing.

As Tauros Asterion’s name tells us, the bull is one of his major symbols, and bulls abound in Minoan art. Have a look, for instance, at the powerful image of a bull in the fresco at the top of this post. The ancient Minoan artist made the fresco even more dynamic by building up parts of the bull and the rocky ground into 3D relief. Though this one is usually described as a charging bull, having grown up around cattle, I’d like to suggest that this might also just be a bull running around, having fun outdoors. Believe it or not, cattle do frolic (with their tongues hanging out)!

We also see Tauros Asterion in beautiful works of art like this carved stone rhyton from the so-called Little Palace at Knossos. A rhyton is a pitcher used to make libations (poured liquid offerings) in ritual. This one has a hole in the back of the head for filling, and a hole in the mouth where the liquid poured out.

There’s also this lovely ceramic rhyton from Pseira:

I suspect many of you are now thinking about the famous bull leaping fresco from Knossos, but we’ll have to save that one for our discussion of the god Zagreus, one of Tauros Asterion’s faces.

In the meantime, if you see a bull just… being a bull… in Minoan art, think of Tauros Asterion.

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Three of Horns: Lean into cooperation and teamwork to get where you want to go, figuratively or literally, this week. Many life goals are too big for a single person to accomplish alone. Ask for help when you need it, and look to experts - those who know more than you do - when your own knowledge falls short. Allow yourself to compromise when necessary, and practice your people skills as you make or strengthen connections with others.

Youth of Rhytons: Let your love show! Be honest about how much you care about others around you, without judgment. Let them know; don’t be shy. Being open-hearted helps reinforce your connections with others. It also strengthens you from within, since you have to value yourself in order to send love outward to others.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

This week’s cards direct our attention to each other. In Interesting Times like these, human connection is so very important! We ground and stabilize each other, and we hold each other up when the going gets tough.

The “lone wolf” paradigm is often lauded, especially in US society, but it’s not a healthy way to deal with life’s challenges. Look to each other to both give and receive, in community.

This week’s first card, that one that can help us get through the nitty-gritty of the days to come, is the Three of Horns. This is the card of cooperation and teamwork.

In today’s fragmented society, it can be hard to remember that calling on each other for help is something we can do.

See those people on the Tarot card? That’s a big, heavy pair of sacred horns: too much for just one person to carry. So they’re sharing the load, literally.

No matter what you need to do - accomplish a goal at work or at home, deepen your spiritual practice, or just get through the day - the Three of Horns suggests leaning on others for assistance.

This may mean compromising, to some extent, because that’s a part of being in relationship with others. You can’t just bulldoze your way through. You have to be aware of the other person’s needs and abilities, too.

They may have more expertise than you do, so you need to really listen to what they have to say. Or their time may be limited, so you need to take that into account when asking for help. Treat them as you would wish to be treated, of course, and offer your honest gratitude for their assistance. Relationship should always be a two-way street.

It’s in relationship with others that we often find our joy. That’s the focus of this week’s second card, the Youth of Rhytons.

You may not wear your heart on your sleeve the way the Youth of Rhytons does, but expressing your affection for others can go a long way toward strengthening your connections in this world.

Allowing yourself to express your genuine fondness for others also feeds your own inner being, since it’s from our inner sense of self-love and self-esteem that we are able to send those feelings of affection out into the world.

The world can be a harsh place these days. We all need to know there are others around us who love and support us.

This week’s cards are a reminder that love and support are things we can both ask for and give to others. So don’t be shy. Gather up your courage and make those connections.

We are living beings in relationship with each other, in a beautiful ebb and flow.

Together we are joy!

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my content has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe inclusive Minoan spirituality. All my Minoan spirituality blog posts can be found here.

Please note that Ariadne’s Tribe is a living spiritual tradition of modern people in relationship with the Minoan deities in the here and now. We begin with research about the ancient world, but we fill in the blanks and move forward with our lived spiritual experience with these deities. We are not a reconstructionist tradition.

You may be familiar with the tyet, or knot of Isis, from Egyptian mythology. Some older references call it a sacred knot or sacral knot. There are a few instances of modified versions of the tyet in Minoan art, which isn’t surprising, given that the Egyptians were close trading partners with the Minoans. (I’ll have a post about those soon!)

However, there’s another “sacred knot” found in Minoan art that’s very different from the tyet and that isn’t really a knot in the same way the tyet is - hence the quotation marks around the words. For some reason, Sir Arthur Evans decided to lump both of them in together and refer to both of them as sacral knots.

But we’re going to untangle this knotty terminology so we can appreciate the difference.

While the tyet is made from cord, the other (Minoan) version is made from a length of woven fabric that’s fringed on the ends and, in most cases, loosely looped and knotted, though there are images where it’s just folded over into a long, narrow, drapey piece of fabric.

In Ariadne’s Tribe, we’ve taken to calling this object the sacral scarf to differentiate it from the sacred knots made of cord or rope. And also because, well, that’s what it looks like: a scarf, just like in the image up top, which is a fresco from the Minoan site of Nirou Khani.

Let’s have a look at some more examples.

This sacral scarf of carved ivory, found at the Southeast House near the main temple complex at Knossos, has the same knotted, looped form as the fresco above, as well as some lovely fringe:

Sacral scarves are found on Minoan seals in a variety of settings. Here’s one on a gold seal ring from Archanes Phourni. The sacral scarf is on the far left, hovering near a bull leaper who’s making a pretty amazing move:

And here are two sacral scarves on a seal impression from Knossos, hovering above a stag:

People also carry sacral scarves in scenes that suggest possible ritual settings. Here’s a female figure carrying both a sacral scarf and a labrys.

This female figure is carrying a sacral scarf on a long pole, which may connect with another image below.

While we were trying to figure out the significance of the sacral scarf in ancient Minoan religion and in our modern spiritual practice, one of our folks pointed out that the sacral scarf is also depicted hanging from some kind of stand, in this case a typical Minoan-style column flanked by a pair of lions (yes, those are lions - the Minoans took a bit of artistic license with animals that didn’t actually live on Crete).

Our shared gnosis suggests that these pieces of fabric may have been garments the Minoan priestesses wore during ritual and hence were sacred. The art suggests that Minoan religion involved trance possession, the clergy member being ‘ridden’ by the deity during ritual and hence becoming the deity incarnate.

It makes sense, then, that the Minoans would have considered the garments a priestess wore during ritual to be sacred, since they had been touched by the goddess she embodied during that ritual.

There are several frescoes depicting priestesses being dressed or undressed and quite a few seal stones showing priestesses carrying garments. Some of us have had visions of people approaching the garments as they were hung on the stands, touching them for healing and blessings.

It’s also possible that the same thing was done with garments worn by priests embodying gods, though we haven’t yet found any artwork to support that idea.

How does this translate to modern spiritual practice?

While some of us do practice trance possession, it’s not a requirement in Ariadne’s Tribe ritual. And since full-on possession is such a heavy-duty activity, it’s not something we do often. As far as I’m aware, no one has yet offered up their garments for use as a sacral scarf after a trance possession ritual, but that’s certainly a possibility in the future. It will be interesting to discover people’s experiences with the “charged” sacral scarf when that happens.

In the meantime, we use scarves and pieces of fabric and artwork as symbolic sacral scarves on our altars and in our ritual spaces. They’re a reminder that the deities are not ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ somewhere but right here, in our lives, touching us in so many ways. Sometimes we forget that, in this fragmented, mechanistic culture we live in. It’s good to be reminded.

Deities and humans, right here alongside each other: Together we are joy!

My Substack is free, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the lovely folks who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find my books here and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant activity from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. My two latest books, Pantheon: The Minoans and Tales from the Labyrinth, are now available. You can read an excerpt from Pantheon: The Minoans here. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).

This week’s Minoan Tarot cards. This deck is my creation, made the old-fashioned way (ink on paper) and available at bookstores everywhere.

Priest of Labryses: Let your inner Air guide your outer actions. Lean on your intellect and take the time to analyze any issues that arise, working out strategies that will achieve your desired goals. Always refer to your ethics so your decisions will be fair and just, and be willing to take needed actions without waiting for others to act first or give you permission.

Ten of Rhytons: Lean on the strong, steady relationships in your life since they are a source of happiness and emotional fulfillment. Let your connections with others engender joy and give you a sense of steadiness. Heart-centered relationship is a source of emotional nourishment; value it and celebrate it.

For those who are new to these card draws, each week I pull one card from the top of the deck and a second card from the bottom. The top-of-the-deck card (the first one, on the left) gives us some helpful hints about how to navigate our week. The bottom-of-the-deck card (the second one, on the right) is the “secret treasure” that can help us find joy in these Interesting Times.

This week’s cards look very similar to the cards I drew two weeks ago, with one small change: this week we have the Ten of Rhytons instead of the Two - a bigger circle of connections, so to speak.

This week’s cards are yet another reminder that balancing mind and heart is a helpful way to move through these Interesting Times.

Our modern western world is almost painfully mind-centered. We’re expected to make all our life decisions based on hard data - the bottom line - without reference to those messy emotions and without leaning on anything like intuition or the dreaded gut feeling. Entire fields of study <cougheconomicscough> are built around the idea that this is exactly how people move through life, entirely in our heads all the time.

But it’s not true, is it?

We’re feeling beings as well as thinking beings. We need that balance to be healthy and sane. At least, as sane as anyone can be these days given <gestures vaguely at everything>.

Even within our mind-centered Air suit card this week, there’s a balance. The Priest of Labryses represents acting on your inner Air in a mature, nuanced way: not just looking at how you want the situation to work out in your favor, but always keeping in mind the ethics and values you now to be true and right.

Even if you’re viewing a situation through an analytical lens, there’s more to it than just the black-and-white bottom line. There’s the human element, the knowledge that our actions have consequences not just for us for others as well. And ultimately, on a large scale, our actions have consequences for the entire planet and all its inhabitants, human and otherwise.

That’s the connection between these two cards: the balance between heart and mind, the knowledge that you need both to make wise decisions.

It’s heart that reminds us that we’re connected to others, that we’re part of multiple expanding circles of community that eventually reach to embrace the whole of humanity. For polytheists and spirit workers, this might also include relationships with the divine, the ancestors, and other spirit kin. And for animists, it encompasses the whole world, including all its non-human beings.

The Ten of Rhytons is a celebration of this community, these connections that feed our souls and keep us going day in and day out, no matter what the Big World throws at us.

It’s these connections that bring us joy.

So celebrate your community - your larger family, however you conceive of it - this week. Lean on those connections when you need support, and offer your support to others when you can.

And remember those relationships when you’re working through the possible responses to the situations that arise this week. That way, the decisions you make will be ones you’re proud of.

I’m not planning to paywall my Substack, but if my work has meaning and value for you, please consider dropping a little something in my tip jar at Ko-Fi. Thank you to all the generous people who have contributed - I appreciate you!

You can find the Minoan Tarot here, my books here, and my art here and here. I do apologize, but due to unpleasant behavior from trolls, I’ve had to limit comments to subscribers only. I hope you understand.

About Laura Perry

I’m the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I’m also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write Pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction. I do more than just write and make art: I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator (heritage interpreter).