The Minoan Mysteries

[sdi]

I can't believe I missed this one!

• Minos and Pasiphae [πᾶς-φάος, "all-illuminating"] are the Intellect.
• The snow-white bull is matter.
• Daedalus [from δαιδάλλω, "to work cunningly"] is the demiurge.
• The labyrinth is the Earth.
• The minotaur is (bestial) man, trapped in the labyrinth.
• The Athenian youths are normal, sleep-walking souls constantly progressing into incarnation, most of which never return from the labyrinth.
• Theseus is an enlightened soul who consciously incarnates in order to save others, like the Buddha, or Jesus, or Pythagoras, etc.
• Ariadne [ἀρι-ἀδνός, "most holy"] is Wisdom, and her Clue is philosophy.
• Theseus enters the labyrinth (incarnates), slays the minotaur (overcomes man's bestial tendencies), and shows the Athenian youths the way out with the Clue (teaches others in order to enlighten them).
• Theseus abandoning Ariadne only for Dionysus to marry her represents a passing of the torch from the Minoan Mysteries to the Dionysian Mysteries (which tell the same story in a different way) as the years and cultures involved roll on.

Comments

[jprussell]

Wow, fascinating, and certainly worth meditating on!

A blogger I enjoy teaches Latin in high school and wrote a short story (rather loose) retelling of the minotaur myth you might find interesting, part I is here: https://librarianofcelaeno.substack.com/p/laburinthos

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

Thank you for the link!

[k_a_nitz]

Excellent!

And the red thread is?

[sdi]

That's the clue—that is, philosophy. (Presumably, in this case, the Mysteries themselves.)

[sdi]

Thinking about this a bit further, Pasiphae is probably the World Soul and the wooden cow she climbs into is the physical cosmos (hence why it is made by Daedalus, the demiurge). (This would be at variance with the later Platonists, who would consider the World Soul itself to be the Demiurge.)