School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemThe Sacred Life of Trees: What trees say about people in the prehistoric Aegean and Near East(Monash University, 2012)The realistic nature of the glyptic idiom of Minoan Crete, as expressed in images of tree cult, has resulted in the general assumption that such illustrations depict real places within the Cretan landscape. Variously termed ‘rural sanctuaries’, ‘sacred enclosures’ or ‘open-air shrines’, glyptic iconography is the main source of evidence for this category of cult site and its supposed characteristics, thought to range from the architecturally elaborate to the ephemeral.1 This paper argues that, as a result of the miniaturisation process involved in the creation of glyptic motifs, it is more likely that images of tree cult are not scenes, but signs, comparable with more minimalist Cypriot and Israelite examples. In order to support this contention, the paper will initially contextualise the images chronologically and spatially.
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ItemThalassocratic charms: trees, boats, women and the sea in Minoan glyptic art(Society of Cretan Historical Studies, 2018-12-14)This paper argues that four Minoan glyptic images which combine trees, human figures, boats and the sea represent the combination of native Minoan with Canaanite religious ideas concerning a tree goddess who also had power over the sea. Each image is a glyph of the protective power of the Minoan tree deity over maritime voyaging within the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. The empowerment of seafaring expeditions through supernatural patronage emphasises Minoan land-based power over the sea and extends the Cretan landscape outward to incorporate the seascape. It is further proposed that the images functioned in a protective talismanic capacity and that the containment of the iconographic motifs within the confines of gold rings and a stone seal linked the Minoan elites who owned these objects with the exotic aura of transculturality and power associated with overseas trade.
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ItemWalk like an Egyptian: Egypt as authority in Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law(Equinox Publishing, 2010-12-01)This article investigates the story of Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt, in 1904, focusing on the question of why it occurred in Egypt. The article contends that Crowley created this foundation narrative, which involved specifically incorporating an Egyptian antiquity from a museum, the 'Stele of Revealing,' in Egypt because he was working within a conceptual structure that privileged Egypt as a source of Hermetic authority. Crowley synthesized the romantic and scholarly constructions of Egypt, inherited from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as the uses that two prominent members of the order made of Egyptological collections within museums. The article concludes that these provided Crowley with both a conceptual structure within which to legitimise his reformation of Golden Dawn ritual and cosmology, and a model of how to do so.
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ItemResearching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions(Equinox Publishing, 2011-01-01)Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a response by practitioner Pagans to academic research on the history of Pagan religions.
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ItemHousehold and Family Religion in Antiquity(Equinox Publishing, 2014-01-01)Book review on John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan, eds., Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 346 pp., $50.95 (paper).
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ItemDropping Ecstasy? Minoan Cult and the Tropes of Shamanism(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2015-04-03)Cult scenes illustrated in miniature on administrative stone seals and metal signet rings from Late Bronze Age Minoan Crete are commonly interpreted as “Epiphany Scenes” and have been called “shamanic”. “Universal shamanism” is a catch-all anthropological term coined to describe certain inferred ritual behaviors across widely dispersed cultures and through time. This study re-examines evidence for Minoan cultic practices in light of key tropes of “universal shamanism”, including consumption of psychoactive drugs, adoption of special body postures, trance, spirit possession, communication with supernatural beings, metamorphosis, and the journey to other-worlds. It is argued that while existing characterizations of Minoan cult as “shamanic” are based on partial, reductionist and primitivist assumptions informed by neo-evolutionary comparative ethnologies, shamanism provides a dynamic framework for expanding understandings of Minoan cult. It is of course understood that while this study is a careful, informed analysis of the evidence, it is but one interpretation among others.
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ItemVirtual Reality: Tree Cult and Epiphanic Ritual in Aegean Glyptic Iconography.(Astroms forlag - Astrom Editions, 2016)For the first half of the twentieth century and even up until quite recently Minoan religion has been interpreted through an evolutionist lens. Glyptic iconography depicting ritual activity inconjunction with trees and stones has been considered evidence for the evolutionary trajectoryof Minoan religion from an earlier “primitive” phase, characterised by aniconism, to a moresophisticated stage signied by anthropomorphism. In contrast, this article proposes thatMinoan religion was simultaneously physiomorphic, theriomorphic and anthropomorphic.Through examination of the Minoan imagery of epiphany set within natural landscapes, inconjunction with comparative ethnographic analysis of cult activity and religious symbolismfrom the Levant and Egypt, it is determined that Minoan religion was a “nature” religion thatwas experienced through the mediation of elite human performance.
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ItemInka Human Sacrifice and Mountain Worship: Strategies for Empire Unification(Equinox Publishing, 2017-01-01)Book review of Thomas Besom, Inka Human Sacrifice and Mountain Worship: Strategies for Empire Unification (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013), 309 pp., $65 (hardcover).
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ItemThe Artifice of Daidalos: Modern Minoica as Religious Focus in Contemporary Paganism(Equinox Publishing, 2017)This paper examines the representation of Minoan Crete within the feminist Goddess Movement, separatist, feminist, Dianic Witchcraft, and the male only Minoan Brotherhood. Analysis and critique of the matriarchalist understanding of Minoan material culture by these groups demonstrates that it is interpreted in a highly ideological manner that has little to do with actual Minoan religion.
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ItemIntroduction to the Special Issue of The Pomegranate on Paganism, Art, and Fashion(Equinox Publishing, 2019)This is the introduction to the special issue on Paganism Art and Fashion.