What can be gleaned from an ancient story about a bull-headed man beast, the immense Labyrinth built to imprison and appease him, and the failure of kings to do the bidding of the gods? Much - I believe we live in it.
The king of Crete was a power hungry man by the name of Minos. His ascent to the throne was legitimized by his claim to the gods’ favor, which was proven when, per Minos’ request, Poseidon produced a magnificent, snow-white sacrificial bull the likes of which had never been seen. It was to be offered as a tribute to the gods, but the king, upon seeing the bull’s splendor, relented and sacrificed a different one instead - he wanted the bull for himself. Poseidon, however, is a vengeful god, not to be slighted by the hubris of man.
In retaliation, Poseidon (with the help of Aphrodite in some versions of the story) cursed the queen Pasiphae, instilling in her a lecherous passion for the bull. Out of this passion a scheme was hatched: the queen climbed inside an artificial cow fashioned by none other than Daedalus, the legendary craftsman, in order to deceive the horned apple of her eye. A hybrid beast was born of the unholy union. He would come to be known as the Minotaur, or the bull of Minos, and as the monster grew he developed a taste for human flesh - no bueno. In order to hide the bestial affair of his wife and contain the bovine bastard, Minos was advised by an Oracle to have a gargantuan maze-like structure built under the island of Crete. At the king’s command, Daedalus got to work at once on the Minotaur’s home.
A number of years later, Androgeos, son of the Cretan king and queen, was killed at the hands of the Athenians for his skill in the Panathenic games. Minos, enraged, demanded that the city offer up seven young men and seven young women every nine years to be sent into the Labyrinth. The Minotaur needed feeding, and who would make better bull fodder than the treacherous Athenians?
On the third of these fateful years the unjust order would be upset; among the hapless fourteen was a valorous chap named Theseus. Rightful heir to the throne of Athens and skilled with a sword, he took it upon himself to put an end to the beast that dwelt in the maze.
Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and decided to help - his death would be unbearable. After begging Daedalus for an idea as to how to make it out of his Labyrinth, she raced to Theseus to divulge what she had learned. Ariadne offered him a ball of thread that had been spun by the architect; one end was to be tied to the entrance to the Labyrinth and once the dreadful deed was done, he was to follow the string back to safety.
Theseus was triumphant, of course. He managed to slay the Minotaur and thanks to Ariadne’s gift, he and the other Athenian youths navigated their way back out to the light. Minos’ reign of terror over Athens had ended.
The unsung heroine of the story got the short end of the stick (string?). On his voyage back, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on an island and took her sister back to Athens instead. Rough. She would be alright, however: none other than the god Dionysus discovered her there, and they were wed.
Much has been said concerning the pertinence of myth and the universal truths to be found within its tales. It has proven, in my view, to be the most effective and enduring way to make the patterns of human reality salient and communicable. Ever applicable and wonderfully mysterious, narrative leaves the implicit intact: to abstract the lessons therein and make them explicit is to somehow reduce their efficacy.
In light of this fact, my endeavor here is not to present some essential interpretation at the core of the story of the Minotaur, but to apply the pattern to a set of circumstances we find ourselves in today.
First, a little history. For kicks and giggles.
Minoan Marvels
The Minoans (named for King Minos) of Crete founded a thriving civilization stretching as far back as 3500 BC, after having settled there at least 4000 years previously when they formed a society based on livestock and wheat-based agriculture. It was the first major Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean region, and by the 15th century BC was a prime center of culture and commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Through their art we are given a vivid view into their religion, values, and relationship with the world around them. It is colorful and varied. There’s a striking style and dynamism present in their vision of nature.
Showcased in a huge portion of their creations is the centrality of bulls in their cultural life. Depicted in the fresco above, Minoans engage in a bull-leaping festival or rite of passage. It is not the only piece of bull-leaping related art.
This kind of reverence usually entailed sacrificial ritual in the pagan world, and the Minoans and their cattle were no exception. This is evident not only in the story of the Minotaur and his father whom Minos spared, but their art as well.
*Note: Checking out the full scope of Minoan artistic endeavor is highly recommended. Beautiful stuff.
A Sacrifice Is Spared
The Minoan zeitgeist was typical for the time. Our knee-jerk reaction as enlightened moderns is to recoil at the thought of killing an animal purely for the sake of antiquated superstition. To people of the time, however, it was not only normal but vital. The stability of the natural world and their place within it depended in a very real way on whether or not the proper tributes had been made. The gods were not superheroes. They were the very forces of nature that reality was consisted of, and keeping society in proper alignment with them was everything.
Presumably, the natural order had been maintained and all was well before the ego of the king came in like a wrecking ball and obliterated it by putting his own selfish desires ahead of that which Poseidon demanded. The altar had been repurposed. Minos might as well have vied directly for the throne of the sea.
As a result of his sin, the wrath of Poseidon was unleashed in the form of the home-wrecking bestial attraction that Pasiphae had “incepted”.
A Beast Is Born
Discord begets discord: the domino effect that had begun with Minos’ greed resulted in the birth of a monstrous, bloodthirsty creature, unfit for broader society and a danger to the people. By putting himself before natural law, the king had made manifest the basest, cruelest, and most primal elements of human nature.
A Labyrinth Is Built
The Minotaur debacle could have been nipped in the bud. Rather, committed to their mistakes and that which their beastly son represented, Minos and Pasiphae conspired with Daedalus, the embodiment of the inventive, technological, and artistic impulses of man to build a structure and impose an oppressive order on the people of Athens to not only keep Bull Boy fed, but to get revenge on the people of Athens.
A mammoth-sized (infra)structure was built solely for the purposes of isolating and sacrificing the promising young population in order to satiate and engorge the baser animal within - all because the king disrupted Nature by ignoring that which it demanded and paying tribute to himself.
If the parallels aren’t obvious now, they will be sooner or later.
Laying a Thread
I have long felt the need to externalize my thoughts and bring some degree of rigor and clarity to the ideas I like to investigate in my spare time.
Since I was at least seven years old and probably earlier, I’ve been absolutely taken with history and the people that lived there, and as an extension the multitude of cultures and rich ways of life found across the globe. We live in a vast garden, where the flowerbeds have root systems that reach down millennia. This love translated to a years-long desire to be an archaeologist when I grew up and pursue the fabulous vocation of digging in the dirt. That evolved into an interest in anthropology in middle school, then some form of rejectionist vagabondism later in high school. It was all downhill, baby.
Starting this “publication” is my way of doing justice to that former self that dreamed of running off and immersing himself in the foreign and archaic. I may not be able to travel to far-flung archaeological digs or backpack around storied streets of the world’s old cities, but I can pore through the (limited) information we have access to today to glean some insights and gain a more fully realized picture of the past.
It is my belief that the perils our civilization is fraught with have come about in large part as a result of the short-sighted endeavor to extricate ourselves from history as well as from nature. We are very much in the business of breaking the chain - often inadvertently - but rather than being freed from a weighty ball on the other end, we are taking bolt cutters to the very lifeline that supports us. We have been approaching a breaking point, at which we are bound to enter freefall. Some, myself included, would argue that gravity has had its way with us already.
At the bottom of the pit lies the labyrinth. Its construction has spanned centuries and its nature is duplicitous. It surrounds us both in time and space, and is so dense and persuasive that it can scarcely be recognized for what it is, let alone navigated. Somewhere within lies a half-man, half-beast; it is hungry.
Luckily, the story of the Labyrinth offers a way out. The very skill, knowledge, and craftiness that allowed for the creation of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur himself can be used to eradicate the beastly tyrant once and for all, and escape the maze. Speaking of Daedalus, Joseph Campbell, in the introduction of his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, says this:
“And so now we may turn to him, as did Ariadne. The flax for the linen of his thread he has gathered from the fields of the human imagination. Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn.”
Ariadne, motivated by love, delivered the tools necessary to the courageous hero willing enough to confront the terrible forces within humanity and the structures that were built to feed them. Competence, love, courage. So banal, but all so essential.
The goal going forward is to avoid getting lost in vague big-picture ideas, and do my best to ground them in the ‘real’ world. By doing so I hope to gradually paint a coherent picture of this labyrinth we find ourselves in and give some touchpoints to that which we’ve lost. Vague concepts and dreamy notions of bygone eras do little to change the present. Heaven and earth must be joined.
I’m under no illusions of grandeur. By no means do I fancy myself an expert or sage. This is a project of self-education as much as a means of communication. While I highly doubt I have anything groundbreaking or unique on offer (original thought is oh-so rare) this will be a place where some new connections are made, assuming all goes as planned.
It will be meandering and recursive. It will take many a side street and back alley, possibly even the odd jaunt out of town. Over time though, through lines will become clear, and like Ariadne’s thread, we’ll be able to look back and recognize the telos leading out of the labyrinth.
That was beautifully written, I loved the parallels you drew. (Infra)structure. Looking forward to reading every word you publish, brother!
Beautifully well done, masterfully articulated and knowing you, your personality and sense of humor still shine through. I'm anticipating any and all writings from you going forward!