Similarly, there are also groups for lesbians, like certain forms of Dianic Wicca and the Minoan Sisterhood.

* Short biography of Lady Rhea, co-founder of the Minoan Sisterhood

Python was the good daemon ( αγαθός δαίμων ) of the temple as it appears in Minoan religion, but she was represented as a dragon, as often happens in Northern European folklore as well as in the East.

Apollo's sister Artemis, who was the Greek goddess of hunting, is identified with Britomartis ( Diktynna ), the Minoan " Mistress of the animals ".

This kind of art goes back to the Minoan period, when its main theme was the representation of motion in a specific moment.

It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshiped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis.

Crete was the centre of the Minoan civilization (), the earliest civilization in Europe, comprising the first palaces in Europe.

The island is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari dating from the 18th century BC, repeated later in Neo-Assyrian records and the Bible ( Caphtor ) It was also known in ancient Egyptian as Keftiu, strongly suggesting some form similar to both was the Minoan name for the island.

Early Cycladic culture evolved in three phases, between ca 3300-2000 BCE, when it was increasingly swamped in the rising influence of Minoan Crete.

For Pasiphaë, as Greek mythologers interpreted it, Daedalus also built a wooden cow so she could mate with the bull, for the Greeks imagined the Minoan bull of the sun to be an actual, earthly bull, Daedalus was so envious of his nephew's accomplishments that he took an opportunity.

In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals.

* There was a lack of direct contacts between Hitto-Luwians and Minoan Crete ; the latter was never mentioned in Hitto-Luwian inscriptions.

This was a continuation of attempts by Cyrus Gordon in finding connections between Minoan and West Semitic languages.

Labyrinth is a word of pre-Greek ( Minoan ) origin absorbed by Classical Greek and is perhaps related to the Lydian labrys (" double-edged axe ", a symbol of royal power, which fits with the theory that the labyrinth was originally the royal Minoan palace on Crete and meant " palace of the double-axe "), with-inthos meaning " place " ( as in Corinth ).

An especially interesting discovery was a seal ring from the Late Minoan period ( 1500-1400 BCE ), which could indicate some interaction between Mt.

Once continental Greece was free from Crete's dominance, the myth of the Minotaur worked to distance the forming religious consciousness of the Hellene poleis from Minoan beliefs.

The Minoan Brotherhood was founded in 1977 in New York by Edmund Buczynski, an elder in the Gardnerian, WICA and New York Welsh Traditions, in order to create a Craft tradition for gay and bisexual men — one that would celebrate and explore the distinctive mysteries unique to men who love men.

The Sumerian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Indian, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Persian and Arab Empires all made widespread use of opium, which was the most potent form of pain relief then available, allowing ancient surgeons to perform prolonged surgical procedures.

Similar cults of resurrected gods appear in the Orient in the cults of Attis, Adonis and Osiris, In Minoan Crete, the " divine child " was related with the female vegetation divinity Ariadne who died every year.

The Minoan vegetation goddess Ariadne was closely connected with the cult of the divine child, and with the " cult of the tree ".

Despoina and " Hagne " were probably euphimistic surnames of Persephone, therefore he theorizes that the cult of Persephone was the continuation of the worship of a Minoan Great goddess.

It seems that the Minoan vegetation goddess Ariadne was absorbed by more powerful divinities.

Margot Adler noted how there were many pagan groups whose practices revolved around the inclusion and celebration of male homosexuality, such as the Minoan Brotherhood, a Wiccan group that combines the iconography from ancient Minoan religion with a Wiccan theology and an emphasis on " men-loving-men ", and the eclectic pagan group known as the Radical Faeries.

He continued Schliemann's concept of Mycenaean civilization but soon found that he needed to distinguish another civilization, the Minoan.

The island is served by ferries mostly from Athens by ferry companies such as Minoan Lines and ANEK Lines.

The Minoan goddess represented in seals and other remains, whom Greeks called Potnia Thēron ' Mistress of Animals ', many of whose attributes were later also absorbed by Artemis, seems to have been a mother goddess type, for in some representations she suckles the animals that she holds.

Various Achaean kingdoms developed in Greece, most notably that of Mycenae, and by the 15th century BC were dominant over the older Minoan cities.

This language has been dubbed Minoan and corresponds to a period in Cretan history prior to a series of invasions by Mycenaean Greeks around 1450 BC.

goddesses, or Greek goddesses in their Cretan form, influenced by the Minoan goddess ".

This overturned Evans ' theories of Minoan history by establishing that Cretan civilization, at least in the later periods associated with the Linear B tablets, had been part of Mycenean Greece.

The slaying of the Minotaur by Theseus in that case indicates the breaking of Athenian tributary relations with Minoan Crete.

The Minoan civilization of Crete has been named after him by the archaeologist Arthur Evans.

An earlier agrarian procession leaded by a priest, is depicted on a Minoan vase from the end of the New-Palace period.

The goddess is bordered by snake lines which give her a vegetable like appearance and also recall the arrangement of snake tubes which have been found in Minoan and Mycenean sunctuaries.

The ritual copulation in Minoan Crete was related with moon-goddesses like Europa and Pasiphae, but this cult was almost forgotten by the Greeks.

The Minoan pottery was characterized by elaborate painted decoration with natural themes.

The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, to the south, through a gigantic tsunami.

The northern part of the caldera was refilled by the volcano, then collapsing once more during the Minoan eruption.

The typographical principle, that is the creation of a complete text by reusing identical characters, was first realized in the Phaistos Disc, an enigmatic Minoan print item from Crete, Greece, which dates between 1850 and 1600 BC.

From the history traced by Nilsson and Guthrie the Mycenean pantheon consisted of Minoan deities, but also of gods and goddesses who appear under different names with similar functions in East and West.

Later in some cults Zeus is united with the Aegean Great Goddess, who is represented by Hera, in a " holy wedding " ( hieros gamos ). At some point in their cultural history, the Myceneans adopted some Minoan goddesses like Aphaea, Britomartis, Diktynna and associated them with their sky-god.

It might have been caused by the Minoan eruption of Thera or the Avellino eruption of Mount Vesuvius.