The Minoan Goddess Posidaeja

Grandmother Ocean is with us!

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 previously posted over on the Minoan Path blog at the Witches & Pagans website. All my new Minoan Path blog posts can be found here.

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The island of Crete rises up out of the living water, born from the sea, if you will. Its weather and all the life on the island are directly influenced by the Mediterranean Sea that surrounds it. If you spend a lot of time on board boats and ships, like the Minoans did when they went fishing or traveled across the waves to trade, the ocean becomes a powerful focus for your safety and livelihood.

Minoan merchants made their living on the sea, and throughout the many centuries of Minoan civilization, the people relied on the sea as a source of food. But I think the Minoans also appreciated the beauty of the marine world, with its varied and fascinating plant and animal inhabitants.

You can tell how important the sea was to the Minoans from its presence in their art, like the Dolphin fresco from Knossos shown above, and their sacred spaces, which were full of seashells (real and human-made) and ceramics decorated with marine themes.

So it's no surprise the Minoans had a goddess of the sea, the sacred embodiment of the waters that were their world.

We call this goddess Posidaeja, a name that first appears in written form on Linear B tablets written during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete, almost 3500 years ago. We don't know for certain that Posidaeja is what the Minoans called her, but when we use the name, she answers. Many of us in Ariadne’s Tribe simply call her Grandmother Ocean.

Posidaeja is one of the the Three Mothers, the Minoan goddesses of land, sky, and sea — the three realms that embody the sacred within the material world. Grandmother Ocean rules the tides: the currents and eddies and motion of water on Earth, and in our bodies as well, since our tissues and bloodstreams are also full of water.

She is the World Ocean that encircles the globe, not just the Mediterranean Sea where the Minoans made their home. I've easily connected with her in the Atlantic Ocean, on the eastern coast of North America, and I suspect it's possible to reach her on any seashore as well as out on the open ocean.

But she isn’t just the salt-water oceans; all water is hers. She is the Water-Mother, the goddess of the entire water cycle on Earth. Without water, there would be no life on this planet.

How did the Minoans view Grandmother Ocean? There’s one seal impression that may be an image of her. Found in the temple complex at Knossos, it shows a female figure floating on the waves:

The sea and its inhabitants show up repeatedly in Minoan art, from the infamous (and adorable) octopuses found on Minoan marine ware ceramics:

…to the fish that formed such a major part of the Minoan diet:

…to the festivals the Minoans held in celebration of their relationship with the sea:

…to the painstakingly detailed copies of seashells they carved from stone to use in ritual:

Grandmother Ocean wove her way through the Minoans’ lives, in their jobs and their food and their religion. Now she winds her way through our lives as well, here in the modern world.

To me, Posidaeja is ancient and wise. I often see her as a sea turtle, swimming slowly in the depths, blinking her kind, dark eyes at me. The fact that all life on Earth came from the oceans tells me how old she is, and how she rules not just the ocean waves but also the strands of DNA that swirl and turn and float in the fluid of our cells. The threads of our ancestry wind backwards from the land to the sea. Posidaeja is the ultimate womb of every living thing on Earth.

Grandmother Ocean is with us!

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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, which will be released Summer Solstice 2025. I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator.