Bronze Age ritual in the modern world

One of the issues with being a modern-world Pagan in relationship with deities from ancient cultures is that we often don’t know what ancient people did, in practical terms, to celebrate their connection with the divine.

We know a fair bit about the classical era, thanks to the literate Greeks and Romans. But go back beyond that, and you have a lot of blanks to fill in.

The Minoans were a Bronze Age people whose writing we can’t read. Not yet, anyway. As archaeologists slowly discover more Linear A tablets, we inch toward the minimum amount of text that’s required for a decipherment. We can read the Linear B script on the tablets that the Mycenaeans used to keep records during their occupation of Knossos. But those tablets contain accounting records, not mythology or rituals.

So it took us (and by us, I mean Ariadne’s Tribe) some time to piece together the way a Bronze Age religious practice might look. A combination of archaeology and comparative religion from other Bronze Age cultures of the eastern Mediterranean gave us a basic framework. Then we asked the deities to guide us to fill in the blanks.

We ended up with a six-part ritual format that I feel does a great job of connecting us, as modern Pagans, both with the Minoan deities as they present themselves in the modern world and with Minoan culture and religion as we think it existed in the Bronze Age.

For those who are interested, I’ve written a short description of the ritual format on the Minoan Path blog after leading a lovely ritual at Mystic South last weekend:

Minoan Ritual: Entering the Temple

If you really want to plunge in, you can read the full description on the Tribe website. This is the same ritual format that you’ll find in my books Labrys & Horns and Ariadne’s Thread.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about our ritual format and ritual/ceremony in general.