The worldview displayed in the remains and artwork of the Minoan civilization (6000-1340 BCE) depicts one of moon mind and transpermeable consciousness. Similar to La Señora de Cao from the Mochi people of Peru, there is a clear reverence for life in all its forms and a view of “nature,” not as something removed from us but of something we are deeply embedded within.
The Minoan Goddess stands on mountaintops or sits in front of trees. There are poppies and crocuses, dolphins and octopi, snakes and butterflies, goats and bulls, dogs, lions, birds and bees, all honored and displayed in equal measure to human. The Goddess and the lifeforce and lifeforms she has generated and protects are omnipresent. There is a strong oracular presence.
Ring seal of the “Mountaintop Goddess” of Minoan Crete
In The Amazon Pattern, part 1, I wrote:
When I first encountered this culture through the works of Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler, I felt that I was looking at a culture that had a completely different way of interacting with the natural world. There was an aesthetic in the artwork that was so gentle and elegant and sophisticated in its appreciation of beauty, balance, and abundance. There was a oneness with all communicated through the remains of these people. Who were these people who created a culture that felt so safe and honoring of all that had been given to them? Who was this female deity they worshipped? How had they managed to create and sustain such elegance of living for so long? I had to know more. I had to know what it would have felt like to grow up in this culture, from a girl into a woman who felt safe and valued and powerful. So it was I came to write my Crete novels. (36).
The Minoan’s “love” for nature is frequently remarked upon. This worldview emerged from the place itself, the ecosystems of the Island of Crete, and the long traditions brought there from its inhabitants.
Follow along with these blog posts as I research and write Part 2 of my book, The Amazon Pattern: A Message from Ancient Women Diviners of Trees and Time.The Goddess of the Minoans was a deity of the earth, from whom all the gifts of nature flowed, as evidenced by the celebration of nature contained in Minoan art—detailing the exquisite grace of the dolphin, the delicate lily, the perfect symmetry of the shell—and in forms of Minoan worship that began in caves and on mountaintops and culminated in the spatial orientation of the palaces”(Streep 132).
Yet it is not a “love of nature” as we are used to understanding it, it is an appreciation of oneness with nature we see in these images left behind for us to decipher. Oneness with all. As with La Señora de Cao, the deity is a multitudinous web of connectivity and communion.
I have come to understand this as the wild, and worship of the wild with the snake at its core. Like Angitia, the Minoan Snake Goddess and her priestesses are protectors of life and the life force—the wild.
See my previous post : Lucas Angitiae: The Grove of the Wild Snake Goddess of the Abruzzo
In The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler writes:
“And in the mythical images of Crete—the Goddess as Mother of the universe, and humans, animals, plants, water, and sky as her manifestations here on earth—we find the recognition of our oneness with nature, a theme that is today also reemerging as a prerequisite for ecological survival”(36).
Early Snake Goddess sculpture from Crete Circa 5800 BCE
In later classical scholarship of early Greeks, deities surrounded by animals and plants, “multi-specied,” are often called Potnia, the Mistress of Animals or Mistress of Nature. The word Potnia comes from the Mycenaeans, a culture from mainland Greece that flourished after the Minoans. The word Potnia literally means ‘Mistress” or “Lady” and it is guessed that this was a common way to address the Goddess. The Lady of Cao and the Mountaintop Goddess of Minoans could be classified as the Mistress of Animals or Nature. Her image is found globally over millennia. I would now adjust her title to Mistress or Lady of the Wild.
Marija Gimbutas defines the Mistress of Nature as:
“A manifestation of life-giving and life-destroying energies of nature. Her pattern is cosmic—the endlessly repeated cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, corresponding to the phases of the moon and to spring, summer and winter. She was worshiped in nature—on mountain tops, in caves, at wells, brooks and streams—in tombs and temples as a Regeneratrix” (Gimbutas 342).
Whereas she differentiates the Snake and Bird Goddesses into a separate category: Goddesses as Symbols of Perpetual Life.
“The Bird and Snake Goddesses are incarnations of life energy and a link between the ancestors and living members of the family. These house and temple goddesses developed from the beginning of agriculture and settled life into protectresses of the family and hearth”(Gimbutas 342).
On Crete in and in many cultures there were both articulations. They are interrelated and overlap for sure, but the delineation is interesting for many reasons we will explore later. The cultures of the Goddess of Old Europe were a continuous tradition that lasted millennia.
Minoan Crete in the Bronze Age
At the height of its articulation in the Bronze Age (2000-1450 BCE), the civilization of Minoan Crete rose to be the leader of a time of peak culture in the Aegean, heralding major technological advances and cultural landmarks including the first written language in Europe, innovations in textile production, maritime and metallurgical achievements, grand buildings and public works.
Women held high position with a matriarchal priestesshood that honored the Goddess in temples and temple centers, in caves and peak sanctuaries on mountaintops, in sacred groves, in personal household shrines, in art and dance, with music and sacred ritual.
Dolphin Fresco from Minoan Crete
It’s important to rearticulate here that Crete was doubtlessly women led. We must not look at the achievements of Minoan Crete and assume they were all accomplished by men. As well as the culturally spiritual Goddess attributes, women most likely created the written scripts, the architecture and advances in engineering, textiles and more. There is a habit in academic texts to affirm the presence of a Goddess and high positioned women but then return to the male default, using use words like priest and King (not priestess or Queen) about the same culture, leading reader’s minds to attribute innovations and advances of said culture to men as well.
This is not to say men did not contribute to high achievements of Minoan Crete alongside the women, but it is wise to remember that where there is a culture centered around a Goddess, we can assume female leadership and women holding high positions in all fields as well.
Priestesses or “council of women” depicted in a fresco of Minoan Crete
Gimbutas points to evidence in the archaeological remains of groups or councils of women, often snakelike in form, found in the context of cultures centered around the Goddess. The Goddess often had groups of priestesses around her, both oracular and prophetic as well as holding positions of power under her domain.
“At Knossos in Crete, the throne room was adjoined by a smaller room with a series of low benches around the walls which would seat nine people. In view of the sanctity attached to the number nine, it is quite possible that this was where the council of women conferred, where decisions were made”(Gimbutas 343).
In huge frescoes painted onto the walls of the palace centers in Crete we find depictions of large processions and community celebrations, altars both indoors and outdoors, and images of humans approaching the Goddess in postures of adoration and epiphanic trance.
We now know one of the names of the Goddess on Crete to be Ja-sa-sa-ra.
Ja-sa-sa-ra.
Say her name.
In the 1990s I spent a lot of time reading researching and writing about Crete, her Goddess and her priestesses, imagining into the life of a Snake Priestess in 1600 BCE, from which arose the novels Ode to Minoa and Stories They Told Me.
But I had not heard the name Ja-sa-sa-ra until this year, 2025.
Ring seal from Minoan Crete with priestesses and small fairy-like beings, trees, poppies, sun and moon.
Crete is often called the last holdout of the Goddess cultures that populated Old Europe from Paleolithic through the Neolithic. In the Bronze Age they began to be overtaken by patriarchal and warring cultures from the north. But Crete held steady until 1450 BCE when there was a large natural disaster, most probably a tsunami from a volcanic eruption on the island of Thera to the north and subsequent earthquake on Crete itself which devastated the island. These devastating events allowed for the overtaking of its administrative systems and eventual demise of the worldview of the Goddess. This was a very profound disturbance.
Thus the movement of peoples at this time in Europe, and therefore one explanation of how the Minoans came to be in central Italy at this time.
Literate Minoan Crete
Crete had a series of written languages: Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A, and Linear B. Linear B was deciphered in 1952 and proved to be an early form of Greek but Linear A remains undeciphered. Marija Gimbutas classifies Linear A and the Cretan Hieroglyphic with the earlier script found in Old Europe.
“This Old European Script was, undoubtedly, non-Indo-European, as are the Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A, Cypro-Minoan Scripts that still remain undeciphered for the same reason” (Gimbutas 308).
In The Civilization of the Goddess, Gimbutas documents a written script from 8,000 years ago in east-central Europe, having arisen from a previous more symbolic script.
“Although the Sumerians are generally thought to be the inventors of written language, a script in east-central Europe appeared some two thousand years earlier than any other that has yet been found. Unlike Sumerian script, the writing of the Old Europeans was not devised for economic, legal, or administrative purposes. It was developed instead, from a long use of graphic symbolic signs found only within the context of an increasingly sophisticated worship of the Goddess. Inscriptions appear on religious items only, indicating that these signs were intended to be read as sacred hieroglyphs”(Gimbutas 308).
Linear A is yet undeciphered and some argue that it is Indo-European. We will not know until it is deciphered. In The Civilization of the Goddess, Gimbutas details the similarities between the script of Old Europe and Linear A.
“Analogies between Old European characters and those of Linear A of the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. are intriguing. These suggest that Old European script, devised some four thousand years before Minoan hieroglyphic and Linear A on Crete, was a related script developed by ancestral non-Indo-European speakers”(civ of goddess 320).
Linear A
As far as I can deduce, Jasasara is written in Linear A but pronounced using Linear B sounds. The name or word Ja-sa-sa-ra was inscribed on many items left at places of worship, such as clay seals and spindle whorls along with prayers and petitions and also on the classic Minoan tripartite offering tray.
To the extent that it moves things inside my body when I read and speak the name Ja-sa-sa-ra, I feel an authenticity here. I feel it is the name of the Snake Goddess. We can hear the snake while speaking the name. Ja ssaaa sssaaaa ra.
I feel the same about Angitia. An-ji-shaaa.
The Minoan Snake Goddess
“Most important, however, was the goddess Ja-sa-sa-ra, the object of offerings at the peak sanctuaries, as she is also found in seal impressions and on seals related to the places. It is thus clear, that among the most important deities identified as being worshipped in the peak sanctuaries was the same one known in the palaces. Ja-sa-sa-ra is the most prominent goddess and she is probably to be associated with the figurines (depicting either she herself or her priestesses)” (HR 113).
The figurines referred to above are the famous Snake Goddess figurines from the temple repositories of the “palace” at Knossos.
Minoan Snake Goddess figurines found in the Temple Repositories of the “palace” center at Knossos (Ashmolean Museum)
In the repositories in the palace center in Knossos the famous Snake Goddess or priestess figurines were found with other items of worship. There were other figurines and statues of the Snake Goddess or priestesses from earlier levels of the Minoan culture and from the earlier layers of Neolithic Europe. The snake and Snake Goddess are a continual and powerful force throughout cultures of the Goddess worldwide.
Stay tuned for “My Meet-Up with the Goddess Angitia” and “The Snake as ch’i or life force.”
©Theresa C. Dintino 2025
Word Cited
Bredholt et al. The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe. Acumen, 2013.
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice & the Blade. Harper & Row. 1988.
Gimbutas, Marija. The Civilization of the Goddess. HarperCollins, 1991.
Streep, Peg. Sanctuaries of the Goddess. Bullfinch Press, 1994.
