Many Greek myths and not a few of their gods start in Minoan Crete. Zeus spent his childhood here hidden from his Titan father by his mother( Earth Goddess), Rhea. He was the young prince destined to fertilize the earth and be discarded; however Zeus had other plans. He killed his father after forcing him to vomit up all of the other children he had swallowed at birth to protect against assassination. Zeus either married or raped all the goddesses who could be a threat to his ascendency including his sisters. Both of his brothers also had connections to Crete: Hades(ruler of the earth underground) stayed on as the consort to Persephone, daughter of Demeter (Great Mother goddess) and Poseidon(ruler of the ocean) married Atlantis whose home was on a mountain in the middle of an island where there was an abundance of everything: enough gold for a full-sized bull which was worshipped in the center of the island, magnificent palaces, many buildings, roads, canals and bridges. Does any of this sound familiar? Everything went well until the kings became tyrannical and tried to conquer the world. The island sank into the ocean. The Egyptians told Solon who told Plato this story about Atlantis. Take a look at the map showing what is left of the Minoan island that was blown out of the water. There is a legend that appears as a mythical representation of the volcano: Crete had a bronze robot named Talos who guarded the island by hurling enormous stones and burning intruders with his embrace having become red hot from a fire

Over a period of about 600 years Zeus became the sun diety of a new, patriarchal religion but the older, earth religion did not go away. It went underground(pun intented). The chthonic religion went dark, as it were, and was given over to the females who held rites in secret with no male allowed under penalty of death. Athena became the primary descendent of the Great Goddess and a virgin rival of the male patriarchy. To establish his primacy Zeus, tried to kill her in the womb by swallowing her mother. Hephaestus then split open the skull of Zeus with a double axe and Athena sprang forth, fully formed. Now the primacy of a male lineage was established for her. Gradually she was turned into a warrior but never lost her underlying chthonic heritage. She lived with a snake named Erichthonius who was born out of Hephaestus' sperm running off her thigh onto the the earth. She introduced the olive tree, was patroness of household activites practiced by women, a bull was sacrificed and a new peplos woven for her statue in a yearly ritual at the Parthenon. Other goddesses of the patriarchy took on aspects of the Cretan goddesses such as Britomartis who developed into Artemis, a huntress very fond of her solitude,eschewing male company, prefering wild animals and Hestia, guardian of the hearth associated with the snake as protector of the home. These three Greek goddesses tracing their roots to Crete were the only virgins in the olympic pantheon.

Both the Minotaur and the Knossos Labyrinth are unique. The Minotaur because it is the only monster I can find in Greek mythology that has the body of a man with the head of an animal; all the others have an animal body with a human head. The myth of its origin is only unique in that Pasiphae is an Earth Goddess who seduces the virility symbol of the patriarchal god, Poseidon. Having coitus with a bull resulted in the birth of a beast with the body of a human and the head (hence the mind and emotions) of a animal. Is this beast a symbol of the consequences of joining the matriarchal with the patriarchal religion? Or a symbol of retribution for trying to overcome an already established patriarchy? The labyrinth is unique because it is exactly not a maze; you couldn't get lost in it if you tried. No-one could be held prisoner in it, certainly not a dangerous, human-eating monster. The Minotaur's labyrinth was probably the Palace of Knossos which looked like an inescapable maze to the later Greeks whereas the Knossos Labyrinth was more likely a symbol of penetration into the female and the rhythmic motion used to reach orgasm. Trace the back and forth path to the labyrinth. Note how the entrance lines up with the inner destination.

According to myth, Daedalus, the Leonardo deVinci of his time, designed the robot, Talos, the phony cow Pasiphae used to seduce the bull; the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur and gave Ariadne the floor plans to guide Theseus who killed the beast. Afterwards, when a pissed-off Minos threw Daedalus in prison, he escaped to Italy using the sails he had invented. He has been credited with being the architect of Knossos and by extension all the other Palaces of Crete.