Minoan Myths Sneak Peek: The Blooming Time

A very special season indeed

I’m sharing some of the stories from my upcoming book of modern Minoan myths, Tales from the Labyrinth, in the runup to the book’s release at Summer Solstice, 21 June 2025. These are retellings of the tales of the Minoan people and their deities, from the perspective of modern inclusive Minoan spirituality as we experience it in Ariadne’s Tribe. You can find all the preview chapters here.

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The Minoan sacred calendar that we use in Ariadne’s Tribe contains both single-day festivals and sacred seasons. The Blooming Time is one such season. Before I can share the story about it, I need to explain the season itself.

We’ve identified three distinct cultural groups in Bronze Age Crete: farmers, sailors, and goat-herders. Each group probably had their own calendar based on the yearly cycle of their activities. But they would have overlapped in many ways, since they were all based in the same set of seasonal cycles.

In a Mediterranean climate area like Crete, the Summer is the "dead time," the dry season. No rain, incredible heat, and everything turns crispy brown. The Winter is the rainy season, when everything turns green and grows.

What happens in these two seasons?

The beginning of Summer marked the start of the sailing season, when ships put to sea. For farmers who grew field crops like grain and vegetables, it was the fallow season. The fields lay bare since it was too hot and dry for anything to grow, and the ground was too dry and hard to plow. For herders, it was the time to take their herds up to the summer pastures high in the mountains, where the springs and snowmelt-fed streams still supported some fresh green growth that the animals could eat.

As Summer ended and the rainy season began, everyone's lives shifted into Winter season mode. The farmers rejoiced when the rain softened the ground so they could plow the soil and plant their crops. For them, Winter was the growing season. For the sailors, this time of year heralded a change in the winds, making it no longer safe to put to sea. So they returned home to enjoy a season of rest. And the herders brought their goats down from the mountains to the freshly green lowlands where they could enjoy lush grazing all Winter.

Summer and Winter were long. Each one took up nearly half the year. Though the exact dates would have varied among the different subcultures and from year to year, generally speaking, Summer lasted from May through September or October. And Winter lasted from September or October to March.

That leaves a small portion of the year, the "short season" of late March, April, and early May. In Ariadne’s Tribe we call it the Blooming Time, because even though flowers of one sort or another bloom at various times of the year on Crete, huge swaths of blooming wildflowers in the lowlands and hills of Crete are a major feature of this short season. This profusion of color lends power and emotion to the Blooming Time and helps underscore it as a season in which life and death combine.

The Blooming Time was a busy season in ancient Crete. The sailing people spent that time preparing their ships to sail. The farmers harvested their grain crops. And the herders had the difficult task of culling their herds, since the high summer pastures weren't as lush as the lowland winter pastures.

So the Blooming Time was a season of life and death, of vigorous spring growth as well as harvest and slaughter. It was a concentrated, focused pivot on which the larger seasons of Summer and Winter hinged.

So here is the story of the Blooming Time:

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The process of harvesting, threshing, and winnowing the grain took many days during the time of year when the wildflowers bloomed wildly in huge swaths of bright colors across the hillsides of Crete. It was during this season, the Blooming Time, that the farmers finished the labor of the harvest, finally storing the grain for the upcoming year. At the same time, the sailors prepared their ships for the sailing season that would soon begin. And the goat-herders culled their herds, since only the strongest and healthiest animals could make the climb to the high summer pastures in the island’s mountains.

For all the people, it was a time of celebration, but also of reflection, of vigorous spring growth as well as harvest and slaughter. A time of doorways and decisions. Sometimes the doorway is a single moment, like the sunrise on Winter Solstice morning. And sometimes the doorway is a whole season: the Blooming Time, a time of life and death together, for they are two sides of the same coin. And a time of flowers, oh so many flowers!

Flowers for the people, to celebrate the springtime. Flowers for the ancestors, their fragrance calling the spirits of the Beloved Dead, offering them blessings. Flowers for Zagreus, the bull-god who comes wreathed in blossoms in the Blooming Time.

Zagreus, who is a face of our beloved god Tauros Asterion, comes not to stay with us, but to be the willing sacrifice every year during the Blooming time. He arrives only to die, and descends to the Underworld to remind us that there is no straight line in life that ends once and for all in death, but instead a cycle that repeats endlessly and is full of joy.

So the people danced in this season of flowers and life and death. They danced in circles, a reminder of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. And they told stories. At night, they looked up at the stars and saw the stories of their deities in the patterns of tiny sparkling lights.

Up in the night sky they saw the Great Starry Bull, who is Tauros Asterion as well as the Minotaur and Zagreus, with his red eye twinkling and winking at them. And they saw the Divine Twins, the ones who stand in front of the Great Bull in the night sky, ready to grab his horns and leap, the way the human bull-leapers did in the arenas on festival days. Today we call this constellation Gemini. These two, the Great Bull and the Divine Twins, stood on either side of the Milky Way, at one of the gateways to the Underworld, the place in the north where the line of constellations crosses the beautiful spirit-road in the sky. This crossroads in the sky is a doorway through which the human soul arrives in this world at birth and leaves it at death.

Of course, everyone knew that the Divine Twins were really a triplicity of deities named Thaena, Sydaili, and Eshuumna, with Thaena and Sydaili as the visible twins and Eshuumna as the Unseen Rainbow, invisible in the darkness between them. The fact that there are really three rather than two is a reminder that the apparent dualities in life are often misleading and untrue. Just as there is more to the Twins than we can see at first glance, there is also more to the apparent duality of life and death than a simple pairing of opposites. Life and death are two sides of the same coin, inextricably intertwined in a never-ending cycle, like the two snakes the Serpent Mother holds, the red-and-gold serpent of life and destruction and the black-and-silver one of death and regeneration.

The Twins had a special connection with bull-leaping and the story about human life and death. It was a tale people told especially at this time of year, the season of life-in-death and death-in-life. It goes like this:

When we watch the bull-leaping at a festival, the athletes making their graceful jumps over the running bulls, we are seeing the story of life and death and what lies beyond, laid out for us in the form of a ritual. At birth, the soul comes through the starry doorway, leaving the Great Mothers’ arms and moving into this life, just as the leaper moves forward toward the bull, gripping its horns and jumping so their feet leave the ground. We move through this life just as the leaper arches ever so gracefully through the air over the bull. Life is but a Great Leap. Then, just as the leaper lands safely and securely on the ground behind the bull, at the end of our lives we pass back through the starry doorway again, safely and securely back in the Great Mothers’ arms.

So it is with all life; there is no end, only renewal. And in the Blooming Time, we celebrate these cycles and the love that pervades them, never ending, encompassing us always, for we are the Great Mothers’ children.

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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.