Blood of God: The Legacy of the Golden Cretan Son

27.11.2023 - 09:53 / traveldailynews.com

Crete needs to return to this kind of pursuit. Stelios Kanakis has the vision to accomplish this, and he is not alone. All that the Cretans know of their sacred olive culture, needs to be documented, revised, homogenized, instilled, and standardized for export to the world. 

Why isn’t there a University of Olive Oil on Crete? Spain has several, and the trees in Spain came from Greece! Who remembers that the Minoans traded in liquid gold when Italy and Spain were the backwaters of the world? How is it that the home of the world’s finest olive oil is no longer the center of everything about olive trees? Well, it should be. And Stelios Kanakis’ dream is to remake the Minoan tradition, the methods, and the rituals of excellence. 

The story you are about to read may seem unbelievable. Tales of gods, myths, and ancient practices brought forth are often discounted, in an age of information overload. But a pandemic will serve to change all that. Here on Crete, a land resonating with countless myths, legends, and famous traditions, there’s a priceless lesson to relearn.

A Minoan Rutal Feast
Sir Arthur Evans, the famous excavator of the Knossos Minoan “temple”, believed that the Minoans practiced a form of animism or the belief that God exists in everything. Famous artifacts depict a kind of frenzied ritual, priestesses and worshippers practicing tree or stone worship, in which participants summon or are ordained by a central deity. In one such “scene” a priestess shakes a sacred tree is shaken, in much the same way olive tree rakers shake off the olives to this day. But, archaeologist Dr. Nanno Marinatos in her article “The Character of Minoan Epiphanies”, argues that these were not cults, but instead the means for mortals to communicate with the gods.

The archaeology and study of such things is too deep a subject for this story, but the point is that a peaceful empire thrived once, based largely on “methods” that enlivened a society. This is something that is utterly missing today on Crete, and everywhere else on Earth. This brings me to point out the “place” central to the story of any great society. In this case, a Minoan center II termed the “Lost Palace of Galatas” in a story at The Epoch Times. What I failed to mention in this report on the recently discovered “temple” in the center of the Heraklion Prefecture, is the fact that this special place was, in part, dedicated to agriculture and feasting. And I mean feasting on a level of festival only Marti Gras goers can imagine. So, a fantastic palace (temple) on a high hill overlooking a vast agricultural Eden, the site of ritual feasting and ceremony on an epic level, seems like a good vision for introducing my friend Stelios Kanakis.

The Son Also Shines
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