Ariadne's Suffering

Ariadne in Naxos by Evelyn de Morgan

Although strongly linked to love and ecstasy, what first drew me to Ariadne was the myths of her suffering.

Originally worshiped as the Great Goddess in Crete, her legend was absorbed by the patriarchal Greeks who reduced her to a princess that betrays her country and is ultimately betrayed herself. Another story says she died in childbirth after being abandoned on the island of Cyprus, where a shrine was built for her in the sacred grove of Aphrodite Ariadne.

I connected immediately to the stories of the Goddess suffering in childbirth, an experience no god could ever know.

As the labyrinth symbolizes the womb of the Goddess, so the journey through it can be as painful as childbirth. To know oneself, to be re-united to the Goddess, also requires a death, or surrender, so that one can be re-born.