Minoan Crete - a blueprint for our future

I've been asked by people at last Sunday's Eisteddfod to write down my spoken story. As this is a theme that I feel passionate about, I'm posting it as today's blog. (The photos of Minoan art I took a couple of years ago at the Iraklion museum and Knossos).

A Minoan grandmother tells her story

"It was from the east my ancestors came, the place known as Anatolia. Spirit had spoken and so the mothers decided. They asked fathers and sons to build strong ships and all set sail until they came to a land of mountains and fertile plateaux, a land of olives and honey. This island of Crete.

Here we settled and built our sacred centres of community as places of beauty - and oh, we knew such joy! Our lives were lived in happy co-operation, in harmony with the rhythm of nature, for we understood that all life, like Mother Earth herself, is imbued with spirit and we were grateful for her bounty.

We had no fear of death, knowing all that dies shall be reborn. Our rituals were held deep in caves like a womb, the vessel of regeneration, and everywhere we placed artistic symbols of new life - the snake that sheds her skin, the butterfly that emerges from her chrysalis.

Our people were all held equal. We understood the sacred power of women as bearers of life and women held authority alongside men. Everyone was respected, whether a farmer or craftsperson, a musician, a mother or a person of learning. Nobody dominated or had ranking over another, nobody went hungry and  nobody amassed goods through greed.

And we lived in peace. There was no aggression between people, no war or battles, no man given glory for killing. You see, we understood that what you do to another you do to yourself, so why harm any other being?

I believe that a great reason for the peace among our people is that we expressed our natural sexuality and physical desire openly and with joy, so nobody felt hatred for themselves. We also released our energies through sport, drama, dance and music – especially our bull leaping and our circle dances, connecting with each other and deep into Mother Earth.

Every woman and man had a chance to fulfil their creative urge. Such beautiful buildings we made, such wonderful art and artefacts. You only have to look at them to see how we celebrated the wonder of nature and our sheer joy of living.

Our practical skills were great and we valued learning. Our men built comfortable houses, drains, roads and ships, our women taught architecture, mathematics and astronomy. Ours was indeed a thriving, happy world.

And then it was as though a madness descended on the earth. Warrior people came from the north and all around us there was war and battle, slavery and domination – of men over women and one race over another.

Our knowledge of spirit through the Earth Mother goddess was turned into tales of a family of warring sky gods – and eventually a single, judgemental sky god, with no recognition of the loving, sacred female. Women became demonised, especially for their sexuality, and conflict was considered normal human behaviour.

In our land of Crete, earthquakes and floods wrought massive destruction, our people died and our beautiful home and way of life was buried to sight and almost lost to memory. I passed into spirit at that time and have watched in sorrow as the world has embraced this madness.

Then, around a hundred years ago, there came an Englishman, Arthur Evans, who uncovered our temple at Knossos and so much of the beauty of our way of life. As a man of status, blinkered by the now all-pervading assumptions about humanity, he declared Knossos to be a palace and our people to have been ruled over by a male king.

But later have come women of brilliant brain and inspiration who have better understood the truth. They saw that our way of living in equality, peace, joy and harmony with the earth just three and half millennia before their time proves that domination, conflict, self-hatred and hunger are not the way that humans have always been.

Our beautiful truths have been warped and twisted but now we, the grandmothers, will stand it no longer. The lies must stop. We see that people, so naturally beautiful and full of love, are hungry for a better way. So let our Minoan world on the island of Crete be a shining beacon of hope and light - a blueprint for the future of humanity."