Exploring The Minoan Pantheon

Meet the Ariadne's Tribe Family of Deities

This is one of a long-term series of posts about Ariadne’s Tribe style inclusive Minoan spirituality. Some of these posts, including this one, are revised and updated versions of older articles that I wrote over on the Minoan Path blog. I’m moving the content over here in an effort to consolidate my writing on a single platform. All my new Minoan Path blog posts can be found here.

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We celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of Ariadne’s Tribe last year, and I’m still boggling a bit at the fact that we’ve been around that long. What started out as my attempt to find a handful of kindred spirits has turned into a full-fledged spiritual tradition.

It’s not what I had intended, but apparently the deities had their own plans in mind!

Those deities are the central focus of the Tribe’s spiritual practice. But finding them wasn’t easy. Linear A, the script the Minoans used to write their own language, is still undeciphered (don’t believe any headlines you read to the contrary). So instead, we sifted through the Linear B tablets (written by the Mycenaeans, who weren’t necessarily always friendly to the Minoans) and the garbled fragments of Minoan myth that survived into Hellenic times. To that we added research from the fields of archaeology, archaeoastronomy, dance ethnology, and comparative mythology — along with a heavy dose of shared gnosis, since our aim as modern pagans is to be in relationship with these deities in whatever way they want us to do in the 21st century.

What we ended up with doesn’t look very much like the tidy human-family-tree style pantheons that many people are familiar with from Greek and Roman mythology. We do have mother goddesses who preside over the rest of the pantheon, but beyond that, it becomes a complex, beautiful tapestry of relationships that are sometimes hard to define.

Individuation is problematic, as we say in the Tribe.

We honestly can’t say whether or not this is the way the Minoans viewed the pantheon and arranged the deities. What we can say is that this arrangement works for us in Ariadne’s Tribe as modern pagans in relationship with these deities.

So let’s explore this amazing family of deities and meet them!

We have five mother goddesses altogether, but three of them — a trio we call the Great Mothers — have a special place as the matriarchs of the pantheon. They represent the three sacred realms of Land, Sky, and Sea.

Rhea: The Minoan Earth Mother Goddess, the island of Crete itself and the representative of the sacred realm of Land. Rhea is the name most people know her by, but some of us call her Ida (pronounced ee-DAH), another of her ancient names, as well as the Mountain Mother; there are several mountain peaks on Crete that are sacred to her. Find out more about her here.

Therasia: The very ancient but new-to-us Minoan Sun Goddess. She represents the sacred realm of Sky and was probably the original harbinger of the seasons and apportioner of the solar year. As well as the Sun, volcanoes and hot springs are hers. Find out more about her here.

Posidaeja: Grandmother Ocean, out of whose waters the beautiful island of Crete rises. Representative of the sacred realm of Sea. She was very important to the Minoans, who relied on the Mediterranean Sea both for food and as a means of travel and trade. Find out more about her here.

The other two mother goddesses have realms that are a little less material but no less beautiful:

The Serpent Mother: This enigmatic figure is an Underworld or Otherworld goddess. She moves between the spaces of material reality. The Snake Goddess figurines that we sometimes use to represent her are iconic of Minoan art and religion.

Ourania: Great Cosmic Mother-of-All. She is the starry night sky, the fabric of the universe itself. If you're into quantum physics, she's the quantum foam. Some of us experience her as a great black vulture, a representation that may go back as far as the home of the Minoans' ancestors in Neolithic Anatolia.

The Mothers have children, of course. All the Minoan deities are their children — and so, in a sense, are all of us who have sacred relationships with them. But specifically, the Three Mothers each have a Daughter and a Son. Here are the Daughters:

Ariadne: Who hasn't heard of Ariadne and her ball of thread? But the Greeks got her story wrong (perhaps on purpose). She wasn't a human girl, but a goddess. Her Labyrinth wasn't a cage for a monster, but a sacred ritual dance and a path for spiritual growth along with the Minotaur, who turns out to have been a god after all (he's on this list a little farther down, among his fellow Horned Ones). Ariadne also plays a major role in the Minoan version of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Instead of Demeter and Persephone, the Minoan version tells the story of Rhea and Ariadne, with no abduction involved. So yes, Ariadne is Rhea's daughter.

Arachne: This Spinner of Fate was "demoted" to the status of mere mortal in the tale the Greeks told, but we know her as a fate goddess, daughter of our Sun Goddess Therasia. As you might guess, the ancient skills of spinning and weaving are sacred to her. It's her thread that Ariadne famously uses in the Labyrinth.

Antheia: The Star of the Sea is Posidaeja's daughter as well as the Minoan face of Aphrodite, an ancient goddess who pre-dates the Greeks. Though Aphrodite herself hails from Cyprus, she appears to have been imported to Crete in Minoan times. She helps us find beauty in the everyday world, especially in places we don’t expect to find it. She is also the Divine Lighthouse, protecting ships from danger along the seashore, the liminal area that is her realm.

And the Sons:

Tauros Asterion: The starry bull is an ancient god, son of the Earth Mother. We connect him with the constellation Taurus. Zagreus and the Minotaur are two of his faces from Minoan times, but we approach him as Tauros Asterion when we want to build a relationship with this earthy-starry being who embodies "as above, so below."

Korydallos: The Lark, son of the Sun goddess, was a surprise discovery via research into the folk dances of the ancient Mediterranean. He's a joyous god with a sense of humor, sometimes a rather trickstery one. We associate him with culture, craftsmanship, and word play — and also with Daedalus (see below).

Dionysus: So much more than just a party god, he’s the source of sacred intoxication, the god of fermentation and other kinds of magical transformations. Long after the Bronze Age, the Minoan Dionysus was combined with a similar ecstatic god from Phrygia to create the syncretic deity many people are familiar with from the Hellenic pantheon. But during Minoan times he was very much the god of the vine and, eventually, of the solar year. He is the Divine Child born to Rhea in her sacred cave at Midwinter. In Ariadne's Tribe we also consider him to be Posidaeja's son, the psychopomp for sailors and others who die at sea; the dolphin is his animal.

The Horned Ones are a unique group of deities; you’ve probably heard of some of them:

The Horned Ones: We have three pairs of horned animal deities whom we collectively call the Horned Ones. Though the cow/bull pair is the most famous, they're probably also the most recent. There was a time when there were no cattle on Crete. We think that the original Horned Ones from very early times were goat, deer, and ibex deities. In keeping with the pre-Indo-European layer of Eurasian mythos that the Minoan deities come from, in which the Sun is a goddess and the Moon is a god, it's possible to approach the Horned Ones as Sun-Moon pairs, with the female of the pair being the Sun Goddess and the male being the Moon God. For more information about this aspect of the older mythos, I recommend Patricia Monaghan's excellent book O Mother Sun!

Minotaur: The Moon-Bull, the most famous of all the Minoan Horned Ones because the Greeks turned him into a monster in their stories. He does dwell in the Labyrinth, but not as a monster, I promise. He is the divine guardian of those who traverse the sacred paths of the Labyrinth. He's one of Tauros Asterion's faces, and we also call him Lugoso. He and Europa are a pair.

Europa: Cow-goddess; she and Pasiphaë are twins and may originally have been the same deity, a horned Sun Goddess not unlike the Egyptian goddess Hathor. A spurt of Europa's milk created the Milky Way, or maybe a spurt of Rhea's milk did it, or maybe Europa is a face of Rhea — individuation is problematic!

Minocapros: The Moon-Goat who capers through Minoan art with long, curving horns and a mischievous nature. He belongs especially to the goat-herding subculture of ancient Crete, whose descendants still tend their herds in the mountains in the center of the island. We also call him Vikaro. The Minocapros is paired with the goddess Amalthea.

Amalthea: The goat-goddess who gave us the sacred cornucopia from which all good things flow; it’s a variant of the bottomless bowl, vase, or cauldron that is found in many mythologies. She fed the infant Dionysus with her sweet milk and is sometimes described as Rhea's sister or twin.

Minelathos: The Moon-Stag is found in Minoan frescoes and seal stone art, often in the form of a fallow deer stag. He belongs to the wild spaces of Crete, since deer have not been domesticated, and is a reminder of the sacred wildness within us all. We also call him Divono. He's paired with the goddess Britomartis.

Britomartis: This deer goddess is the Divine Huntress. She is associated with the sacred Mt. Dikte in Crete and as such, is sometimes also called Diktynna. Her later connections with the sea are due to some linguistic confusion; she was originally a mountain and land/nature goddess. Dance ethnography research shows that, like Artemis, Britomartis was originally a Sun Goddess whose associations were changed later on, probably to make way for the Indo-European Sun/Sky God(s).

And now for the rest of our beloved family of deities:

Daedalus: Inventor/smith god, creator of the Labyrinth and Ariadne's dancing floor. Some of us know him as Talos, and we consider him to be a face of our god Korydallos. The Minoans were a Bronze Age people, so Daedalus would have been in charge of bronze smithing as well as the creation of metal objects of gold, silver, and copper.

Daktyls and Hekaterides: Demi-deities who arose out of Rhea's fingermarks in the Earth. Because of their origin story, we call them Hands of Great Skill. The Daktyls are masculine and the Hekaterides are feminine. We associate the Daktyls with bronze-smithing and the Hekaterides with pottery-making.

Eileithyia: Midwife goddess who protects women in labor and childbirth. She also delivers the soul of the newborn infant into its body and helps the soul of the deceased make its transition to the Underworld. She is Ariadne's torch-bearer during the time Ariadne resides in the Underworld, and we consider Eileithyia to be the Underworld or dark face of our Sun Goddess Therasia.

Hygeia and Paean: You may be familiar with the names of these healer deities from other pantheons. In the Tribe family of deities, Hygeia is a face of our Sun Goddess Therasia, and Paean is her son. Both of them are associated with healing, but Hygeia is more about maintaining good health and vigor while Paean, who is similar to the later Greek god Asclepius, is connected more with healing illness and injury.

The Melissae: Ancestral bee-goddesses or spirits associated with the Underworld, the harvest, and ecstatic trance states. Ariadne is the Queen Bee, the head of the Melissae in her role as guardian of the spirits of the dead.

Minos: Underworld judge of the dead, probably originally a lunar god. He has many faces and aspects. Like Ariadne and the Melissae, he protects the souls of the dead in the Underworld.

Potnia Chromaton: The Lady of the Colors is exactly what she sounds like. Painting and dyeing are her domain, and we're pretty sure many colors had sacred meaning in Minoan religion. Potnia Chromaton is closely tied to both Arachne and Arachne's mother, Therasia.

Thaena, Sydaili, and Eshuumna: Together, these three form the Unseen Rainbow. They are the Serpent Mother's children, deities of perception, helping us to see the world in different ways. Thaena and Sydaili are the Divine Twins, and between them stands Eshuumna. Regarding these deities, we say, "Between wisdom and joy lies the rainbow."

Thumia and Kaulo: These two deities are "specialists" who have, as their focus, the pleasure and joy of physical existence. They help us stay in touch with our inner child and find joy in everyday life.

Zagreus: His name means something like "the dismembered one," which is pretty clearly a shamanic image — dismemberment is a common method of transformation in shamanic work. A face of Tauros Asterion, he's a bull-god who comes wreathed in flowers in the spring.

So there you have it, the Ariadne’s Tribe family of deities. I’ll share individual posts about each of them as time goes on, for a more in-depth look at their characteristics.

I’m grateful for their presence in my life and for their role in gathering together the community that is Ariadne’s Tribe.

Together we are joy!

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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 across several different subjects and genres. My Minoan entry in the Moon Books Pantheons series is now available for pre-order and will be released on 26 August 2025. While that process percolates along, I’m working on an illustrated book of modern Minoan myths. I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator.