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CHAPTER 1

The Myth of Ariadne and her Thread

The story of Ariadne and her Thread opens on what is today the northern coast of the Island of Crete in what is now the municipality of Heraklion. You can go there if you want to. In Ariadne's time, the island was ruled by her father, Old King Minos, and she lived in what came to be known as the famous Palace of Knossos. Ariadne was very much her father's daughter, and a princess. In the story as it has been told to us, there is no mention of a Queen at the side of Old King Minos, or a Mother for Ariadne.

Under the vast and exquisite expanse of cool marble floors in what came to be known as the Palace of Knossos, deep beneath the surface, there stretched a vast, dark Labyrinth. At the very centre of the Labyrinth was the lair of a fearsome creature, half man and half bull, known as The Minotaur. The Minotaur inhabited the Labyrinth, and anyone who entered his convoluted domain just below the surface of everyday life never came out. Many tried, but they all lost their way and once disoriented in the terrifying darkness and complexity of the Labyrinth they were slain and devoured by the monstrous Minotaur. Ariadne lived her life above the Labyrinth on the surface of this invisible but ever-present force each and every day.

Ariadne grew up in the palace with the terrorizing force of The Minotaur below her every step. She slept above it, ate above it and played above it each and every day of her life. It was just the way things were and Ariadne never questioned the norms of her father's kingdom. Over the years Ariadne the girl became a young woman, and one day as Ariadne watched the familiar comings and goings of daily life in her father's kingdom, she noticed the arrival of a ship from Athens. Ariadne's attention remained on the ship as it docked in the port. Before long, a handsome young man called Theseus stepped off his swift sailing ship and as he set foot on the island, something dramatic shifted in Ariadne. She was on the threshold of change.

Theseus was the son of the King of Athens, and had come across the sea from his father's kingdom as part of an annual ritual. Each and every year for all the years of her life, Ariadne had witnessed a procession of the seven most promising youths from Athens arriving on Crete in order to challenge the Minotaur. The strongest, most beautiful, athletic and intelligent youths were selected and sent to Crete from Athens. If, as always happened, they failed to slay the fearsome Minotaur, their lives served as sacrifice in the Labyrinth to appease the dark forces within it. Ariadne grew up in her father's kingdom on Crete watching this pattern repeat. Year after year youth, beauty, strength, vitality, virility and intelligence were sacrificed. It was simply the way things were.

The young princess Ariadne gazed out at Theseus. She was taken both by what she saw physically and by his stated determination to slay the Minotaur. But Ariadne had seen all this before; she knew how the ritual unfolded each and every year. And as she watched the pattern repeat again, something flickered in Ariadne. This year, somehow, it felt different. Deep in Ariadne was a sense of something she felt compelled to pay attention to, and as she followed her intuition, a plan emerged in her thinking of how she could save Theseus and get something she began to realise she wanted for herself.

Ariadne came up with a very simple strategy and proposed a deal to Theseus; it was a pact between them. Ariadne offered to help Theseus slay the Minotaur and find his way safely back out of the terrifying Labyrinth if he in turn would promise to take her with him, when he sailed away from her father's kingdom in his ship. Theseus agreed.

On the appointed day of the "ritual" sacrifice of the seven youths from Athens, Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread. She explained to him carefully and precisely how to unravel the thread as he walked into the Labyrinth. She promised she would hold tight to the other end so that as he journeyed deeper and deeper through the absolute darkness, Ariadne's Thread would remain securely in place to ensure Theseus was oriented in a safe, secure connection to her out in the lighted world. He was to slay the Minotaur and then follow Ariadne's Thread back out. This is exactly what happened. Theseus went into the Labyrinth, triumphed over the fearsome Minotaur and followed Ariadne's Thread back out to safety.

Defying her father, the Old King Minos, Ariadne and Theseus fled together on his swift Athenian sailing ship over the water and away from all that Ariadne had known. Ariadne left her father's house behind her. The two young royals sailed towards an island called Naxos where the ship weighed anchor and they spent the night on the shores of the island. The next morning when Ariadne woke up on Naxos, she found Theseus had gone. She saw him and his ship in the distance sailing off, vanishing over the sea. Ariadne was alone on the beach; she had brought nothing with her and stood in everything she possessed. She was alone in territory that was alien to her.

The story as it is told today portrays Ariadne as isolated and griefstricken, feeling abandoned and her trust in the promise Theseus had made to her betrayed. Ariadne was left standing on unknown ground. The past was gone and the future she may have begun to imagine for herself had sailed off without her. What happens next in the story is dramatic. As Ariadne waved and wept, hoping it was all a mistake and trying to catch the attention of the retreating Theseus and as his ship vanished over the horizon, she sensed something behind her. Ariadne turned her head and as she did so, not from the sea or the direction from which she had come, but from inland, from an unknown landscape she hadn't been aware of, or paid any attention to, a chariot arrived. Out of the chariot leaped the Greek god, Dionysus.

While Theseus may have been the son of the King of Athens, and royal, he was still a mere mortal. Dionysus, however, was a god. This part of the story, as it has been told down through the ages, concludes with Dionysus and Ariadne falling in love. He crowns her with a circlet of stars and, mutually devoted, they marry, establish an eternal loving bond allowing them, as the story goes, to live happily ever after.

Deconstructing the Myth

The myth of "happily ever after" lives on, but the shattered truth behind the myth remains, for the most part, lost. Scattered pieces lie, like a broken plate, all around. To begin to see the whole undistorted picture, we'll need to pick up one piece at time and be willing to hold it up to the light. Any piece of this story, reflected on with courage, has the potential to reveal what we sense must surely be there.

I am not a Jungian analyst or an anthropologist, I have no relevant academic credentials; I am not a recognised "expert". In this patriarchal culture, feminine authority gained in the trenches of life experience doesn't come with credentials, qualifications, public recognition or money. However, that is no indication of value or worth. The willingness to act without the need for validation or permission from current mainstream definitions of authority and success is a profoundly needed feminine stance. So here I am with my twenty-first century version of taking action (as Ariadne did) in the kingdom ruled by Old King Minos. You will have your own. It's not that qualifications and academic credentials don't have their place. They certainly do. But this is a story about the Feminine authority of experiential knowing, of gnosis.

Each time I begin to write this section, I float off and drift. My sails empty of even the slightest breeze. No movement. My powerful initial sense of direction and purposeful excitement deflates, and my attention wanes. This may be familiar to you and happens to many of us when we have something creative to birth that is uniquely our own. And this is the point of this story; I must stay true and follow my Thread. As I take each next step my inner Ariadne is empowered and my inner Theseus is enlisted for his sailing skills and tools. He will get me from here to the new ground I can't see yet, a finished manuscript. Slowly Theseus learns to act in support of my work, my projects, and my talent. This is very different to his training and previous job description in the kingdom of Old King Minos. In the "old kingdom", Theseus is accustomed to acting to get something rather than supporting Ariadne to birth something.

In this way, Theseus and Ariadne must learn to work together as I make my way in the dark and reclaim the Labyrinth. As I write, my inner King Minos regularly suggests I am not qualified and have nothing to write about. If I listen, my creativity is thrown to the Minotaur. Like Ariadne, holding on to my Thread each day, I make a simple plan and keep moving with this story, her story and mine. Word by word my journey with this writing is no different than Ariadne's. Holding on to her Thread, I am assured I will emerge safely and the Minotaur has no predatory power over my "entelechant" action as I write.

I made up the word "entelechant" from the word entelechy which I understand to mean the innate energy in each of us that wants to pull us towards our own fruition. Every seed has entelechy and is why a hyacinth grows to be a hyacinth not a daffodil. It's why you are you and I am me. It's also true that where a daffodil is planted and the care it receives (biography) make a difference to its ability to become fully itself. But biologically, it can only become a daffodil.

"Entelechant" action is Feminine action and the story of Ariadne is about taking action in ways that enable women to come into their own, as fully as the reality of their circumstances allow. If a woman pays attention to her inner Ariadne and holds on to her Thread, Theseus is enlisted and takes "entelechant" action on behalf of a future they mature into together. But each has their own journey. We know much more about the Hero's Journey. Ariadne's story is the Heroine's Journey and is more pilgrimage than adventure.

Ariadne's Thread connects Theseus and Ariadne and they remain connected. Even as their work to mature differentiates and takes Theseus on his own journey while Ariadne remains on Naxos, in this myth Ariadne remains a conscious participant. In the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, the princess sleeps through the whole story. The prince is maturing and on a journey but Sleeping Beauty wakes up as unconscious and immature as she was at the start of the story. Not so Ariadne. She is a full participant and not only engages in her own journey, she initiates it.

Ways to describe The Feminine might include: a life-giving environment, a birthplace and the matrix of Creation. Without embodied grounding in The Feminine nothing new can be birthed. Having children is a very limited interpretation of this. The ability to birth new ideas, ways of seeing and thinking and taking action from a connected, whole perspective that brings and supports life-flow is included in what is intended here as The Feminine.

There are four principal phases in the story of Ariadne and her Thread. In the myth, these phases take place neatly one after the other. However, in human life, the phases in Ariadne's story usually don't happen sequentially, or in one neat sweep. Ariadne's story spirals through each age and stage of women's lives. The invitation here is to listen for what's true for you. Think of the four phases as signposts, an outline that's not quite yet a map of territory we all navigate in unique ways. We are exploring this together and no one is an expert. Your or my experience can't be wrong, it's just partial. Keep going. Our personal strengths develop as a result of experience gained moving through this landscape.

In time, our shared experiences will reveal what's been there all along. During shattering cycles when everything seems lost, we're left with what we've always had. The simple bones of the Myth are clear and shining. But we have to find them through the tangle we've got into with the Thread of connection and relationship in the current cultural context. Deeply personal threads of sacrifice, loss, betrayal and abandonment in outer relationship have to be untangled to form a sturdy, secure connection and an inner unique marriage of Masculine and Feminine in each of us.

Phase One

Sensing and following inner guidance

Ariadne is a young adult as her story opens on Crete. She's gone through adolescence and the biological upheaval we each go through as girls stepping into the fertility cycle. During that time our brains develop capacity to reason and make informed choices alongside the deep connection to hormones and instincts. Ariadne's sexual identity is emerging; she has "come of age" and is no longer a child.

Ariadne recognised she was in an environment that wasn't safe for a girl stepping on to the fertility cycle and into her emerging sexuality (more about that later). So she came up with a plan and proposed it to Theseus. Many women can point to an external Theseus, a real life person during a tender time with whom a deal was made, a promise, that ended in an experience of betrayal and abandonment. But what if Theseus represents not only an outer real life experience we've factually had, but also an inner archetype of the immature Masculine with a truth to gift us? He invites us to reflect; how have we lived up to promises and commitments we have made to our inner Ariadne, our as yet immature Feminine archetype of "Maiden"? If the arrival of Theseus represents a life stage in the inner world of all young women who are waking to the stirring of future calling, how faithful have we been to that calling? How supported have we felt by our inner culture to stay connected and faithful to our own calling?

For Ariadne then, just as it is today, this is an "unsafe" and extremely risky time. Sadly, not much has changed since Ariadne's times. Young women awakening to their sexual nature continue to be in danger. In this biological time of upheaval and transition, Ariadne looks around her needing something she cannot find. Psychologist and author Janet Surrey calls what Ariadne is looking for "relationship authenticity". Ideally young women experience relationship authenticity with their mothers and also find it in other respected role models of the mature "Mother" archetype in their cultures. It is this authentic connection that builds self-esteem and self-worth in young women. But Ariadne's mother is missing.

Looking about her, Ariadne sees no role models of sexually mature, healthy, authentic women (we'll come to Ariadne's Mother, Pasiphae, later). And to make things even more terrifying, each year the most vital and beautiful youths are sacrificed to the Minotaur. What would become of Ariadne if she stepped into everything she knows in her heart she is? She senses correctly, this is not a safe environment in which to come into her own. She senses she will not survive if she stays in the environment that she is, in part, a product of. Ariadne listens to her instincts and follows inner guidance to get away.

In many myths, "mother" is missing for one reason or another. The myth of Ariadne can be seen as the struggle of all women in our culture to connect with an authentic relationship with The Feminine. While our culture places value on certain aspects of motherhood, it excludes others. It can be challenging for women to be authentic about the experience of being a mother.

"Relationship authenticity" doesn't mean a woman providing authenticity has to be perfect. It means she has to be meaningfully connected to the "sound of the genuine" and what is authentic for herself. She can make mistakes, she can get things wrong. An authentic woman dealing with the consequences of her choices cleanly provides an example of womanhood that sets girls free to find out what works for them. It gives young girls the confidence to follow the sound of what is authentic and genuine in themselves and permission to make their own mistakes. While things may not be easy, they will be meaningful and fulfilling.

Louann Brizendine in her book The Female Brain notes during puberty a hormone-driven shift to a major interest in sexual attractiveness. Down through recorded history, this has regularly been a perilous time and it was true for Ariadne. According to a major survey of 14-year-olds carried out for the Department for Education, depression and anxiety have risen among teenage girls in England. The report highlights the prevalence of smartphone ownership and social networking, and their impact on young women's developing sexuality. There are new issues for this generation that intensify dynamics that have historically been present at this age for young women. For teenage girls in present day culture dealing with "sexting", pornography and relationship platforms such as Tinder are an everyday reality. The Minotaur is alive and well in 2017.

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Excerpted from "Ariadne's Thread and the Myth of Happily Ever After"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Sarah-Jane Menato.
Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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