The shallow blue Aegean sea between Greece and Modern Turkey is a basin of ancient civilizations, where east meets west and the cultures that first sprang from ancient Mesopotamia mix. To the south of that sea, when the Aegean borders the deeper waters of the Mediterranean lays an island that birthed a culture older than Greek legends. A thousand years older than the Greece of Aristotle and Plato. Older even than the Mycenaean Greeks who predated the Classical culture and inform so many Greek myths. The island is Crete, but once more than 3500 years ago, it was home to the Minoans, arguably the first great European culture.

In actuality to call the Minoans themselves Europeans is something of a stretch, the best guess historians can offer is the people that first settled Minos migrated there from Anatolia, either due to drought, or population pressures. Coming to Crete they brought much of their culture with them but once isolated on the island that culture quickly evolved. Their myths and stories evolved too, from those of the upper reached of Mesopotamia, into something distinct, different and culturally based around the islands climate, as well as their own journey to become Minoans.

Now I could write a lot more about the Minoans and their culture, history and ascendance but frankly if I did I would probably get a lot of it wrong, there is every chance some of the above is wrong, so if you want to know more about it you should go and read Labrys & Horns: An Introduction to Modern Minoan Paganism By Laura Perry, which I reviewed back in June as is all the primer you will ever need, and has a great list of other books you can go on to read if you fall in love with the Minoan culture.

The reason I am talking about the Minoans today is because of one of Laura’s other books, one which came out in may this year, and is just a special kind of wonderful.

Tales from the Labyrinth: Modern Minoan Myths

Tales from the labyrinth derives it name, to an extent, from one of the most well-known myths about the island culture. A myth that comes down to us through the Greeks, the myth of the labyrinth of King Minos and the creature that dwelled within it it, the Minotaur. Though that myth is just one of the many fragments of Minoan mythology that comes to us through the Aegean cultures that came after. The problem is that many of them are just that mere fragments form a culture who had writing but not in a from we can now interpret, there has never been a Rosetta Stone for the Minoan language. Linear A as it is called, is similar in some to early cruciform script but only to a degree, and is unique to Crete.

What Laura has done is take the foundations of what is known about Minoan mythology and built upon it to create a modern interpretation of those myths and the mythology as a whole. Given them structure and a thread, tied them as all mythology is, to the culture itself, the island of Crete and the seasons of the eastern Mediterranean. In Crete the growing seasons is the winter of northern Europe, You plant around Halloween and harvest around easter. The summers are hot and dry, a dead time when nothing grows.

The fragments of mythology you might recognize from later cultures where the growing season is summer are turned on the head a little. Also Laura is entirely open about much of her work been educated guesses. Highly researched, well informed, guesses. But none of that matters. What she has put together is a beautifully complex interweaving of the known and the unknow to produce what is as close as we can get to a mythological cycle for a culture so distant from our own. But it is a culture that may be distant but one that informs our own even across the chasm of years between us.

This cycle of myths has also been beautifully illustrated by Laura in her own Minion inspired style, based on the art of the island found in mosaic, on pottery and else where. The art is just that, beautiful, which is why while it would be worth buying this book on kindle for the words alone, the art makes it worth buying in paperback, or hardback even. This book is just a beautiful thing, I am sorely tempted to by a second copy, just to cut out a few examples of the full page art and frame it for the walls in my study*

*no of course I don’t really have a study, I just call my front room my study. One of the advantages of bachelorhood in later life is you can choose what your rooms are for…

The complex mythology is a wonder, a walk through our collective cultural past. The art is beautiful in both simplicity of complexity. In all this is a joy to read, and reread, and to just look at.

But, there is also more to it than simply that, it is a window on humanity soul, our pagan past, and the mythology that is the seed from which we grew. Yes these are modern interpretations and yes the are based on mere fragments, but even so these stories remind us of who we once were, of a common past. Something we all need once in a while.