Orient-Minoan Crete
In the Near eastern myth of the primitive agricultural societies, every year the fertility goddess bore the "god of the new year", who then became her lover, and died immediately in order to be reborn and face the same destiny. 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 religion had its own characteristics. The cult was aniconic, the principal deities were female, and they appeared in epiphany called chiefly by ecstatic sacral dances, by tree–shaking and by baetylic rites.
The daemons were a part of the religious system. They were considered divine, and they were connected with gods or goddesses of hunting. In the Minoan seals or jewelery, are depicted animal-headed daemons or hybrid-creatures. Some of these depictions seem similar with Oriental depictions, especially with the well-known Babylonian daemons. A young Minotaur is depicted on a seal from Knossos. Depictions of daemons between lions, of men between daemons, and processions of daemons, appear also in Mycenean seals and jewelery, and in Phigalia of Arcadia.
.
The most peculiar feature of the Minoan belief for the divine, is the appearance of the goddess from above in the dance. Dancing floors have been discovered besides "vaulted tombs", and it seems that the dance was ecstatic. Homer keeps in memory the dancing floor which Daedalus built for Ariadne in the remote past. On the gold ring from Isopata, four women in a festal attire are performing a dance between blossoming flowers. Above a much smaller and differently dressed figure floating in the air seems to be the goddess herself, appearing amid the whirling dance. An image plate from the first palace of Phaistos, seems to be very close to the mythical image of the Anodos (ascent) of Persephone. Two girls dance between blossoming flowers, on other side of a similar but armless and legless figure which seems to grow out of the ground. 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. She has a large stylized flower turned over her head, and the resemblance with the flower picking Persephone and her companions is compelling The depiction of the goddess is similar with later images of "Anodos of Pherephata". On the Dresden vase Persephone is growing out of the ground, and she is surrounded by the animal-tailed agricultural gods Silenoi. It seems that in Crete there were festivals designated in a way corresponding to the later Greek types of festival names. An agrarian procession is depicted on the "Harversters Vase" or Vase of the Winnowers' from the last phase of the New-palace period, (LM II), which was found in Hagia Triada. Men are walking by two with their tools-rods on their shoulders. The leader is probably a priest with long hair carrying a stick, and dressed in a priestly robe with a fringe. A group of musicians participate singing, and one of them holds the Egyptian instrument sistrum.
The Minoan vegetation goddess Ariadne was closely connected with the cult of the divine child, and with the "cult of the tree". This was an exstatic and orgiastic cult, which seems to be similar with the relative in the Syrian cult of Adonis,. Kerenyi suggests that the name Ariadne (derived from ἁγνή, hagne, "pure"), was an euphemistical name given by the Greeks to the nameless "Mistress of the labyrinth" who appears in a Mycenean Greek inscription from Knossos in Crete. The Greeks used to give friendly names to the deities of the underworld. Cthonic Zeus was called Eubuleus, "the good councelor", and the ferryman of the river of the underworld Charon, "glad" . 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. The labyrinth was both a winding dance-ground and in the Greek view a prison with the dreaded Minotaur at its centre. It is possible that some religious practices, especially the mysteries were transferred from a Cretan priesthood to Eleusis, where Demeter brought the poppy from Crete. Besides these similarities, Burkert notifies that up to now we don’t know to what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenean religion. It seems that the Minoan vegetation goddess Ariadne was absorbed by more powerful divinities. She survived in Greek folklore as the consort of Dionysos, with whom she was worshiped in some local cults. In the Anthesteria Dionysos is the "divine child".
In the historical times the Minoan "cult of the tree", was almost forgotten. It existed in some local cults like the cult of the vegetation goddess Helena Dendritēs (dendron, "tree") in Rhodes, and a cult of Artemis in Peloponnese. In this cult Artemis is hanged from a tree, just like Ariadne in Greek mythology, who was hanged from a tree when she was abandoned by Theseus.
Read more about this topic: Persephone, Origins of The Cult