
PHAISTOS DISK MAZE OF DAEDALUS
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Phaistos Disk, Side 2

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Phaistos Disk Tracing Side 2, Color Coded Overlay, Drag on top of the disk above
ASTRONOMER-PRIESTS
Top is an artist's representation of Disks and Figure 8
Shields in Palace of Minos, Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age (The Palace of Minos, Sir Arthur Evans).
The Phaistos Disk (above), a small and mysterious two-sided pottery art masterpiece, the sides of which
I have overlaid at the connecting line segments, seems to be a fold-out miniturization of the mysterious
Figure 8 Shield. Above, right, is my drawing of the Phaistos Disk with its pictographs removed to show
the overlay at the connecting line segments that reveals a Minoan wave spiral. The disk overlaid and
its pictographs and concealed geometric images help explain the shield, which may be a depiction of the
world as perceived by the Minoans. The shield helps explain the disk, which may be a disk of the world
depicting the Minoan world-view, perhaps including the Minoan Eruption and Tsunami as acts of Goddess.
I would like to explore this possibility.
I would also like to explore the possibility that the Phaistos Disk is in fact the
legendary Maze of Daedalus. Palace of Minos, the focus of Evan's archaeological exploration, is also
most reknown in mythology as the location of the legendary Maze of Daedalus, which may be preserved in
miniature on the Phaistos Disk, or the Phaistos Disk may be the Maze of Daedalus. Some of the pictographs
on the disk may represent the inventions of Daedalus, if such a person ever existed. The pictographs on the
disk may be a telescope, an astronomer-priest, a pyramid, a volcano, a tsunami wave, a mother goddess,
binoculars (astronomy glasses), and some constellations.
The Phaistos Disk is like much of the pottery from this civilization in that it too has a geometric orientation (left, Minoan polychrome pot, Knossos).
Geometric images concealed on the disk and revealed by connecting identical pictographs, reveal an exterior view and an interior view of a
pyramid, the constellation Argo, a star inside seven planets (pentagram inside heptagon), and an inward spiraling cave (where telescope
lenses were found in Crete). Because of these findings and suppositions, this presentation is entitled:
PHAISTOS DISK MAZE OF DAEDALUS
MINOAN ASTRONOMER-PRIESTS WITH TELESCOPES
may have believed They Offended the Mother Goddess
with their Astronomy and Caused Her Minoan Eruption
and Tsunami

This could be the Great Flood Artifact of the Antediluvian World It may be an Artifact of Archaeoastronomy,
ca. 1600 BCE Conclusions and Illustrations by Claire Grace Watson, B.A., M.S.T.

How do you derive something so specific (and fantastical?) as
that title above from something that seems so chaotic as this disk? Geometry is the answer. It is a universal
language that organizes chaos, not just the chaos on this disk but also the lost history that surrounds it.
Click to see larger images of both sides of this 6.25" diameter,
fire hardened, clay disk (ca. 1600 BCE) found in 1908 in the charred ruins of the palace at Phaistos, Crete, and my two
exact tracings of this pottery art masterpiece of miniaturization. The pictographs arranged in a spiral on the disk
were made with tiny clay stamps, most of them repeated. These hidden images below are revealed by connecting with lines
the same identical pictographs on the disk.
Image 1 - The sacred cave where
telescope lenses were discovered; Image 2 - A perfect image of the
Constellation Argo; Image 3 -
The star Sirius in the center of the seven planets. Image 4 - The Great Pyramid
where Minoans practiced astronomy. This pyramid is the unconnected dot in Image 3. Image 5 - Below left, Star Sirius in the center of the seven
planets, all dots connected. Image 6 - Interior of the Pyramid.
Image 7 - Trapdoor inside the Pyramid.

PHAISTOS DISK - PICTOGRAPHS IN A SPIRALThe 60 Line Segments Removed

PHAISTOS DISK - WAVE SPIRALThe 240 Pictographs Removed
I found the figure 8
wave spiral by tracing both sides of the Phaistos Disk, minus the pictographs
(identical pictographs color coded), and then placing them side by side. I overlayed the bottom half of the maze image
(Side B) onto the top half (Side A) at the adjoining line segments.

Drag the bottom disk onto the top at the matching line segments to see a Minoan wave spiral. |
Click to see Minoan wave spiral ceiling design with flower at the center
(as seen on Side 1 of the Phaistos Disk).
PHAISTOS DISK PICTOGRAPHS - UNIQUE RAISED STAMPS
Including Pictograph Drawings by ARTHUR J. EVANS, M.A., F.S.A.
Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, and Hon. Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford
Sir Arthur Evans makes the case for Cretan pictographs in his book Cretan Pictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script.
The pictographs below are exact tracings by me of the pictographs
on the Phaistos Disk, and apparently I am the only person to ever do this. Before I began working on the
disk I traced each pictograph because the only other pictograph images I could find were Sir Arthur Evans'
freehand drawings of the pictographs, which obviously he did in a hurry. But Evans did not have the advantage
of a copy machine and I did. I duplicated each pictograph tracing the number of times it appeared on the
Phaistos Disk, and then I taped each one onto my tracing of the disk spirals, to pinpoint their exact locations.
Because each repeated pictograph on the Phaistos Disk was (supposedly) made by a clay stamp and is exactly identical,
the only way to exactly duplicate the disk is by using a copy machine to duplicate each pictograph.
I include Evans' pictographs drawings below, to the left of each one that I traced.
Exact Tracings With Suggested Definitions
Including Their Number of Occurrences and their Positions on the Phaistos Disk
Position = location of the sign on the disk
Segment = the line segment in which the sign occurs Both are relative to the center of the disk spiraling
out, A = Side 1, B = Side 2 Click the text links to see the Argotypes (Arktypes, Ships of the Sky, Constellations)
4Flower Island of Crete
Heliacal rising of Sirius
8-petal flower at center of wave spiral on ceiling (see link above) 8-petal Flower of Life guarded by goddess
Mut, Egyptian limestone relief 3 Side A
Positions - 1, 13, 76 Segments - A1, 4, 19 1 Side B Position - 72 Segment - B19
As Above, So Below Watch the geometry flip The hood of the initiate looks up, then down |
2Man with Shaved Head Daedalus, Icarus
Astronomer-Priest 2 Side A Positions - 2, 14 Segments - A1, 4 0 Side B Points connected by a line |
4 Oar of the Argo
 3 Stars in Argo that make the Oar,
Aspidiske and Markeb 4 Side A Positions - 3, 15, 46, 71 Segments - A1, 4, 11, 18
0 Side B
Wings of Icarus |
11
Evans gave his runner a little something extra.Constellation Herakles/Hercules
 Runner Mural, Knossos 6 Side A
Positions - 4, 19, 41, 66, 84, 118 Segments - A2, 6, 10, 17, 20, 30 5 Side B Position - 51, 60, 71, 88, 94
Segment - B14, 16, 19, 23, 24
Constellation Taurus |
6
Evans really modified this pictograph.
Spindle 3 Side A Positions - 5, 20, 119 Segments - A2, 6, 30 3 Side B
Position - 44, 89, 95 Segment - B12, 23, 24
Acute Triangle
Isosceles Triangle |
2
Evans may have pointed this pictograph in the direction that made sense to him.As Above, So Below
House of the God Ja-Wa 2 Side A Positions - 6, 56 Segments - A3, 15 0 Side B
Points connected by a line |
4
Evans must have thought this
pictograph was a papyrus.Thistle or Thyrsi 2 Side A Positions - 7, 57 Segments - A3, 15
Diameter 2 Side B Position - 85, 109 Segment - B22, 28
Points connected by a line |
11
Five-Branched Tree 5 Side A Positions - 8, 16, 57, 85, 90 Segments - A3, 5, 15, 21, 22
Envelop 6 Side B Positions - 9, 29, 58, 66, 79, 111 Segments - B3, 8, 15, 18, 21, 29
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15
Golden Fleece 10 Side A
Positions - 9, 10, 30, 34, 47, 58, 59, 72, 99, 103 Segments - A3, 3, 9, 9, 12, 15, 15, 19, 24, 25
The Inner Plane 5 Side B Positions - 35, 52, 74, 104, 114 Segments - B9, 14, 19, 27, 29 |
17
Evans did not orient the shield to
the hexagonal pattern.Shield of the 7 Planets 15 Side A
Positions - 11, 21, 23, 35, 39, 51, 60, 64, 79, 88, 95, 100, 106, 114, 120
Segments - A3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30
Star Sirius with 7 Planets and the Moon 2 Side B Positions - 100, 118 Segments - B26, 30
Points connected by a line |
19
Minyae Crested Dancer 14 Side A
Positions - 12, 22, 36, 40, 48, 52, 61, 65, 73, 80, 89, 96, 107, 121 Segments - A3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 30
Cave of Zeus
Spinning World-Disk
5 Side B Positions - 11, 54, 78, 110, 119 Segments - B3, 14, 20, 28, 30
Octahedron |
3
Evans may have seen this as the intersection of a road.
Adjacent Angle 3 Side A Positions - 17, 26, 86 Segments - A5, 9, 21
Obtuse Triangle |
9
Telescope 5 Side A Positions - 18, 44, 53, 69, 77
Segments - A5, 12, 14, 18, 19
In and Out
4 Side B Positions - 4, 24, 98, 108 Segments - B2, 6, 25, 26
Illusion |
6
Constellation Capricorn Horn
5 Side A Positions - 24, 37, 49, 62, 91 Segments - A7, 10, 13, 16, 22
Flip it 1 Side B Positions - 77 Segments - B20 |
5
Constellation Aquila Winged Disk, Vulture
5 Side A Positions - 25, 38, 50, 63, 92 Segments - A7, 10, 13, 16, 22
Flip it again 0 Side B |
1
Did Evans think this is a UFO?A Star 1 Side A Positions - 27
Segments - A8 0 Side B |
12
Evans may have used a straight edge to
draw this pictograph.Pyramid 6 Side A Positions - 28, 31, 43, 68, 93, 117 Segments - A8, 9, 12, 18, 23, 30
Palace in the Desert 6 Side B Positions - 13, 23, 30, 63, 87, 97 Segments - 4, 6, 8, 17, 23, 25
Where We Study Stars |
4
Goddess Rhea 2 Side A
Positions - 29, 94 Segments - A8, 23 2 Side B Positions - 10, 59 Segments - B3, 15
Rise Above It |
3
Constellation Corvus 2 Side A Positions - 32, 78
Segments - A9, 19 Points connected by a line 1 Side B Positions - 57 Segments - B15 |
2
A yoke at the least, but it seems
Evans saw breasts.Astronomy Glasses Binoculars 1 Side A Positions - 33 Segments - A9 1 Side B
Positions - 64 Segments - B17
Winged Disk |
2
Evans perhaps recognized it as a bull's foot but drew it facing the wrong way. Constellation Taurus
Bull's Foot 2 Side A Positions - 42, 67 Segments - A11, 17 Points connected by a line |
7
Constellation Argo
 2 Side A Positions - 46, 71 Segments - A12, 18 5 Side B
Positions - 3, 32, 73, 83, 105 Segments - B2, 9, 19, 22, 27
Open and Shut |
6
Evans drew this as a Sawfish.
Constellation Pisces Sharp-Snout Fish 2 Side A Positions - 54, 90 Segments - A14, 26 4 Side B
Positions - 55, 61, 92, 103 Segments - B15, 16, 24, 26
Sharp-Snout Fish |
1
Evans apparently
identified this pictograph as a bow.Constellation Cancer Nile Crab 1 Side A Positions - 74
Segments - B18 0 Side B |
4
Evans modified this pictograph to a type of trident.
Grass 1 Side A Positions - 75 Segments - B18 3 Side B Positions - 14, 56, 93 Segments - B4, 15, 24
Scalene Triangle |
18
Pomegranate/Star Starseed
Evans perhaps saw this pictograph as a woman's breast. 3 Side A
Positions - 79, 87, 97 Segments - A20, 25, 28
Acute Triangle 15 Side B Positions - 1, 7, 12, 18, 25, 26, 28, 31, 37, 41, 48, 82, 90, 112, 115
Segments - B1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 21, 23, 29, 30
Constellation Argos |
6
Daedalus Wings of Icarus 3 Side A
Positions - 97 Segments - A24
Right Triangle 3 Side B Positions - 75, 80, 118 Segments - B20, 21, 30
Obtuse Triangle |
2
Roll-Up 2 Side A Positions - 81, 85
Segments - A20, 21 Points connected by a line 0 Side B |
5
Dactyloi 1 Side A Positions - 97
Segments - A24 4 Side B Positions - 17, 36, 45, 47 Segments - B5, 10, 12, 12, 13
Cone |
1
Stylized Pig, A Star 1 Side A
Positions - 98 Segments - A24 0 Side B |
6
Tsunami Wave 2 Side A
Positions - 102, 112 Segments - A25, 28 4 Side B Positions - 2, 27, 42, 113 Segments - B1, 7, 11, 29
Volume |
1
Evans removed the shield this warrior is holding and portrayed him as a captive instead.Very early concept of Zeus
Constellation Orion Could be the signature of the artist of the disk, whose name might mean "Hand Shield," like King Pacal
of the Maya 1 Side A Positions - 106 Segments - A26 0 Side B |
1 Evans omitted this pictograph.Constellaton Canis Major
Dog Scratching 1 Side A Positions - 108 Segments - A27 0 Side B |
10
Constellation Leo Lion, Goddess
2 Side A Positions - 109, 112 Segments - A27, 28 8 Side B Positions - 6, 20, 39, 43, 46, 50, 62, 70
Segments - B2, 5, 10, 11,12,13, 16, 18 |
1 Evans did not distinquish between these two pictographs.Constellation Canis Minor
Dog 1 Side A Positions - 110 Segments - A27 0 Side B |
6 Evans gave the second level four sections instead of three.Palenquin Pasiphae's Bed?
 Minoan Palenquin, Knossos Fresco
1 Side A
Positions - 116 Segments - A29 5 Side B Positions - 22, 68, 69, 81, 102 Segments - B6, 18, 18, 21, 26 |
2
Evans seemed to think this pictograph is a bug.Sacred Ivy
Sacred Ivy from a mural at Knossos 0 Side A 2 Side B Positions - 5, 34 Segments - B2, 9 |
2 Evans omitted this pictograph.
Hoe 0 Side A 2 Side B Positions - 8, 33 Segments - B3, 9 |
1
Evans gave the ram an ear and
omitted the nose.Constellation Aries Ram 0 Side A 1 Side B Positions - 15
Segments - A4
|
2 Sacred Cave Entrance Hoodwink of a Priest's Robe
0 Side A 2 Side B Positions - 16, 53 Segments - B4, 14 |
4 Evans saw this pictograph as an olive branch.Plant 0 Side A 4 Side B
Positions - 19, 38, 49, 76 Segments - B5, 10, 13, 20
Symmetry |
6 Gauge 1 Side A Positions - 33 Segments - A9 5 Side B Positions - 21, 40, 86, 106, 117
Segments - B5, 10, 22, 27, 30
Pyramids |
2
Shell, Trumpet 0 Side A 2 Side B
Positions - 65, 99 Segments - B17, 24 |
2
Constellation Aquarius 0 Side A 2 Side B Positions - 67, 101 Segments - B18, 26 |
1
Evans did not count the 20
inside dots. Milky Way Half Moon 0 Side A 1 Side B Positions - 84 Segments - B22 |
1
Axe Typhon's Hatchet
Labrys or Labyrinth (Maze) also meant "Axe"
0 Side A 1 Side B Positions - 91 Segments - B22 |
1
Evans did not count the 20 dots inside the triangle.Volcano 0 Side A 1 Side B Positions - 96
Segments - B23 |
1
Constellation Gemini Divine Child
0 Side A 1 Side B Positions - 107 Segments - B28 |

CONCLUSIONS
The Phaistos Disk provided me an opportunity to study material outside the realm of English literature but within the realm of my first love, mythology.
This new material included geometry, mathematics, archaeology, astronomy, ancient pictographs, and the antique science of
containment of geometrical arrangements. The Phaistos Disk taught me plane geometry as it
existed before Euclid complicated it, when he got hold of it 1,300 years after the disk was created, and before the Georgia school systems
tried to teach it to me with no success 3,600 years later. Geometry is a universal language providing a portal into this Minoan world so
old that the Greek poet Homer in 800 BCE called it ancient and forgotten.
After 15 years as a student in this phenomenal university, I have completed my studies and am now publishing these conclusions.
On my computer are 2GB's of space dedicated to the disk and to images of it involving geometry, astronomy and mythology, but this website contains
only what seems to me to be the most important information. I have learned something about what is involved in understanding this artifact and
I have offered many different decipherments.
The number of decipherments I explored was an attempt on my part to be as thorough as possible and also it was the result of
having to work backwards through time to arrive at understanding. First I explored, by necessity, popular cultural beliefs that were built up
over time, culture after culture, to our modern times' perspective. And each age I researched had its own popular cultural superstitions and
beliefs, many of which were also explored. This is like running a maze, not knowing which way to turn, which theory to embrace, but always
learning something about myself, my ideas, the way I think, my own belief systems.
The picture of the labyrinth is thus offered to us as emblematic of the whole labour of the Great Work, with its two major
difficulties, one the path which must be taken in order to reach the center-where the bitter combat of the two natures takes place-the other
the way the artist must follow in order to emerge. It is there that the thread of Ariadne becomes necessary for him, if he is not to wander
among the winding paths of the task, unable to extricate himself. (Fulcanelli)
I give up on extricating myself from this work that I love. The way I see it, after all this time and meandering through this maze, only two
decipherments are possible: absolute and relative. Absolute decipherment refers to what is explicit on the Phaistos Disk for anyone to see and
recognize. I am the only one to see something explicit on the disk that everyone else missed, which encourages some reviewers to suggest it
is not really there. My decipherment is absolute in the sense that anyone could have found the hidden images on the disk if they had thought
to do what I did, simply connect with lines the identical pictographs that produce the images. The images though hidden are explicitly there
once someone realizes to connect the identical pictographs with lines just in case something emerges that makes sense. At least one thing is
certain from this method; connect-the-dots has been around since the Phaistos Disk was created.
My definition of absolute decipherment makes me wonder sometimes if the Phaistos Disk is the legendary Philosophers' Stone.
We would point out that this term (Absolum) is close to the Absolute, which is the name by which the ancient alchemists
designated the philosophers' stone. (Walter Lang)
What these hidden images mean, produced from absolute decipherment, is part of relative decipherment, which refers to the
interpretation of what is explicit on the disk. For example, a studied relative decipherment of these four images, derived from this method
of absolute decipherment involving connecting identical pictorgraphs with lines, is that the cave is the Cave of Zeus, the boat is constellation
Argos, the star is Sirius within the seven planets, and the pyramid is the Great Pyramid.
As for the pictographs,
all decipherments of the pictographs are relative decipherments because they must always arise from the decipherer's personal perspective,
cumulative knowledge, and area of research. For example, a linguist deciphers the pictographs as an ancient language, an historian might say the
disk hails from somewhere other than Crete, a board game collector deciphers the disk as an ancient game, an Ancient Egypt enthusiast deciphers the
disk as an Egyptian myth (that one is mine), an admirer of Linear B deciphers the disk as more Linear A, a calendar researcher deciphers the disk as
an ancient calendar (me also), a computer programmer deciphers the disk as an ancient computer disk, and a UFO researcher finds a UFO on the
disk and deciphers the disk as an alien artifact (me again). The number of decipherments possible has a correlation to the number of people
who try to decipher it. How can the Phaistos Disk accommodate so well all the different versions of it? I think I know.
The Phaistos Disk may fit everyone's idea of it simply because it may be a very good small model of the universe - a disk of
the world - and nothing accommodates everyone's point of view so well as the universe. Perhaps this is the whole idea behind the creation
of the disk. If so, it proves itself like a mathematical theorem. If it was intended this way, it certainly is successful. The disk has
more than proved to me that it accommodates whatever decipherment I come up with, and I have come up with quite a few.
As long as you stay within the context of the ancient Aegean world, you can come up with a very good relative decipherment.
But back to the absolute decipherment. By connecting exactly identical pictographs with lines, many images are revealed that would be hard to
imagine are just randomly there on the disk, even when the disk is a small model of the universe. In most cases I connected the dots in all
the ways possible to arrive at the image displayed, by which I mean I didn't just arbitrarily connect this one to that one, without connecting
it to the other one if I could. This method of decipherment produces images recognizable by everyone everywhere. Therefore, I suggest these
images are archetypes or original models or patterns from which copies were made, or out of which later forms developed. The disk may have
been a model or archetype for other disks, none of which survived or which are still undiscovered.
For nearly 100 years now, individuals have attempted to decipher the disk by reading the pictographs as though they were
hieroglyphs, a method that always produces a relative decipherment, and one which the decipherer is absolutely convinced is the one and only
decipherment. But by reading the signs differently - connecting them together with lines - the decipherer produces an absolute decipherment that
speaks for itself, and which is open to interpretation by anyone who sees it, just as the disk is.
In conclusion, the absolute decipherment of the Phaistos Disk is achieved by connecting identical pictographs with lines to
produce easily identifiable images. This also includes joining the two sides together at the matching line segments to produce the images
associated with the Minoan civilization -- the Minoan wave spiral and the Minoan figure 8 shield. For my relative decipherment of the images
and the pictographs, I stay within the context of the Minoan civilization, where the disk was found.
(1) The Phaistos Disk may be the Great Flood artifact of the antediluvian world,
created shortly after the flood/tsunami to record both the event and the explanation for the great catastrophy.
(2) The Minoan inventor Daedalus probably created the Phaistos Disk Maze
of Daedalus, giving us a Wings of Icarus view of his world-view that includes the cosmic calendar he likely invented. If Daedalus never lived,
the name may mean "Inspiration."
(3) Two Minoan astronomer-priests are portrayed on the Phaistos Disk, perhaps Daedalus and his son Icarus, and they
probably represent all the Minoan astronomer-priests during that time.
(4) Daedalus probably invented the telescopes and binoculars used by Minoan astronomer-priests, along with the printing press
technology used to create the disk and even the kiln to fire it, now lost. Alternately, the Phaistos Disk may have been fired in a pottery
factory in Egypt or it may have been "fired" by the fire that burned Phaistos Palace.
"Everywhere in the ruins Evans found signs of uncontrollable fire – charred beams and pillars, blackened walls, and clay tablets
hardened against time's tooth by the conflagration's heat." (Will Durant)
(5) The Phaistos Disk may be an explanatory historical record of the Minoan eruption and tsunami that devastated the northern
coast of Crete and undermined the fabulous Minoan civilization, giving rise to the legend of Atlantis and its destruction.
(6) Daedalus probably lived, whoever he really was, and he was probably the world's greatest inventor. He is not unlike
Shakespeare, the world's greatest writer, in that we do not know Shakespeare's real identity, either. We know he lived because we have his plays
as proof of it. We can accept the Phaistos Disk as proof of the life of Daedalus and his successor, Icarus, and others who followed in that line.
They probably not only invented or discovered everything evidenced by the Phaistos Disk but also taught it to the Minoans.
(7) Two such disks may have once existed, one found at Phaistos, Crete and one or more placed either in the subterranean
chamber of the Great Pyramid for safekeeping or in
Kephren or Mykerinos. Only the one at Phaistos survived, while the pyramid disk may still be there, undiscovered.
(8) The 240 raised pictographs make the disk itself into a two-sided stamp. Perhaps Daedalus and other astronomers pressed each
side into the sand so they could use it as a teaching tool. It displayed such a remarkable maze it came to be known as the Maze of Daedalus.
Disks like this would be easy to carry and use this way by these "world teachers," who perhaps taught this
world soul creation theology.
(9) The Phaistos Disk Maze of Daedalus contains concepts that become, over a period of three millennium, the basis of Greek
Mythology, Hermeticism, Alchemy, historical religions and modern mysticism. These concepts engendered Pythagoras' idea of the cosmos (kosmos)
and Plato's idea of the World Soul. Although the disk itself remained lost for that period of time, the Inspiration (Daedalus) behind it
continued to guide artists and writers throughout the ages. Following are the six main concepts of the theology that seems to be be
recorded on the Phaistos Disk Maze of Daedalus:
A. The disk of the world (universe) has a rational order based upon a comprehensible structure that can be described using the
universal languages of geometry and mathematics.
B. The disk of the world has two harmonious opposites, one part is a reflection of the other one and existing as a mirror image or a spirit twin.
C. The disk of the world is comprised of pre-existant and eternal archetypes that are mirrored in the stars as constellations.
D. The disk of the world and thus the stars that circumnavigate the Pole Star are spinning in an infinite spiral.
E. The spin creates projections of the pre-existantant geometrical forms and these become the impermanent physical world.
(Click the image above to see an example.)
F. The disk of the world is
spinning through the Void inside an octahedron (right).
Inside the octahedron, the top disk rests inside the top pyramid, home of the gods (later on in history the Olympians) and
represents Heaven and Earth while the bottom disk rests inside the pyramid below, the mirror image of above, later on in history described as
home of the Titans - Hades and Tartarus. The Heaven and Earth world is the solar world of light and the daytime; the Hades and Tarturus world
is the lunar world of night and darkness. The disk of the world is surrounded by Oceanus, the cosmic ocean that circumnavigates the universe
and holds everything within it (see above, the wave spiral).
(10) The pictographs on the Phaistos Disk have been found nowhere else in the Minoan civilization. It is possible they were
part of a tattoo language worn by Minoan sailors, who took the language with them
to their graves.
"...in those days [of ancient Egypt] of initiate kings and rulers and sages who occupied themselves with the Sacred Science,
when the clear Aether spake face to face with them without disguise, or holding back aught, in answer to their deep scrutiny of holy things...In those
days so great was their love of the holy mysteries, so high their virtue, that they left the earth below them, and in their deathless souls
became 'heaven-walkers' and knowers of things divine." (Thrice-Greatest Hermes, G.R.S. Mead)
Connect with lines all the Heaven-Walkers on the Phaistos Disk to see them heaven-walking in
Taurus, constellation of the bull.

I recently found this on the internet when searching the web for more references to Minoan astronomy than
those pointing to my website.
We present the results of orientation studies of important Minoan monuments and our interpretations of their
significance for later Greek astronomy. The studies have been made on the hypothesis that the Minoans, via the Mycenaeans, were the source
of the Greek lunisolar calendar and the use of bright stars to signal when
to begin activities of economic importance, e.g., ploughing and sailing. The palace at Knossos is oriented so that the first rays of the sun at the
equinoxes, as they clear the ridge in the east, will strike an usual concave stone in the floor of the corridor immediately adjacent to the pillar
crypt area in the west wing. This area is generally considered to be the most sacred part of the first palace. The palace at Zakros is
oriented so that from the northern-most corridor of the west wing the moon, as it rose at the southern major standstill, would have been
observed to follow the profile of the ridge opposite at the time when the first palace was built (ca 2000 BC). At two peak sanctuaries near
Zakros, there are walls oriented such that they could have been used to facilitate observations of the heliacal rising and setting and also
the acronychal rising and cosmical setting of the bright star Arcturus ca 1800 BC. In the Minoan ruins of the palaces at Ayia Triada and
Mallia, there was constructed a small building of Mycenaean megaron type. Both are oriented to sunset at the summer solstice. We argue
from these results that the Minoans had begun systematic observations of the sun, the moon and the bright star Arcturus by the end of the
Early Minoan Period (ca 2000 BC). The proximity of Crete to Egypt and the Near East and the documented contact among these regions invite
comparison of the calendrical uses of astronomical knowledge in the three areas in the Bronze Age.
Title: Possible Minoan Contributions to Greek Astronomy
Authors: Henriksson, G.; Blomberg, M.
Affiliation: AA(Astronomical Observatory, Box 515, S-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden), AB(Department of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History,
Uppsala University, S:t Erikstorg 5, Uppsala, S-75310 Sweden)
Publication: Joint European and National Astronomical Meeting, JENAM-97. 6th European and 3rd Hellenic Astronomical Conference, held in
Thessaloniki, Greece, 2-5 July, 1997, Meeting Abstract, p. 332.
Publication Date: 00/1997
Origin: AUTHOR
Bibliographic Code: 1997jena.confE.332H
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MAZE OF DAEDALUS
DAEDALUS, CUNNING ARTIFICER
A funny thing happened at the library in 1992. I came across a picture of the Phaistos Disk
in a book, and above the disk in large letters was written, "Who can read the Phaistos Disk?" Discovered a hundred years ago,
it had since that time remained archaeology's most famous undeciphered artifact. Looking closely at the disk, just in case I
happened to be the person who could "read it," I was amazed to see right away two things that I recognized.
On the Phaistos Disk I saw this pictograph
(left) and it reminded me of the ones I had seen on a tile mosaic entitled Maze of Daedalus,
found on a barn floor in Austria in 1815 and dated about 4 C.E. (above) Also on the tile mosaic are side-by-side
disks (right) that are similar to the Phaistos Disk images when both sides of it are placed
side by side.
These similarities may be
only coincidence, but there are other similarities as well. Both appear to be mazes; Maze of Daedalus is a square maze and Phaistos Disk
is a round maze, and both originate in Minoan Crete, one as legend and the other as artifact. (Left, Minoan coin with
square maze and English alphabet.)
The Phaistos Disk, located (in the Herakleion Museum) but not explained, is probably the most famous maze in the world
except for the Maze of Daedalus, explained but not located. In the Phaistos Disk we have the artifact but not the narrative. In the
Maze of Daedalus we have the narrative but not the artifact. In the Maze of Daedalus narrative, the Greek hero Theseus was put into
the maze and then challenged to find his way back out under pressure of being eaten by the Minotaur. Fortunately for him, the Minotaur's
half-sister Ariadne helped him by leaving a thread for him to follow out of the maze after he killed the Minotaur.
As I sat in the library that day I wondered, "Did Daedalus create the Phaistos Disk, and is the disk the Maze of Daedalus?"
It seems possible to me that something found as an artifact today could be so remarkable when it was created that an entire mythology could
grow up around it and endure for thousands of years. The mythology could have passed down to us while the artifact that engendered it was lost.
If the artifact was later found, then it might be possible to connect it to the ancient legend surrounding it. And as it involves Daedalus,
the world's greatest inventor, then it could be possible the Phaistos Disk was his most famous invention from which his legend grew.
Daedalus lived in a culture that rose from a neolithic condition via technology with the smelting of iron, the importation of
metals, the use of bronze and the development of boats and ships that sailed all over the Mediterranean. They apparently traded with various
countries, including Egypt where murals have been discovered recently that depict the Minoans bringing gifts to the pharaoh. The Minoan
culture was replete with brilliant artisans.
Was Daedalus the creator of the Phaistos Disk, or was Daedalus the collective name of the brilliant Bronze Age artisans who
lived and worked back then? Perhaps Daedalus means Inspiration. They were so incredibly creative that it makes me wonder if Crete is the
root word for create. They created palaces, designed mazes, made bronze armor and weapons, painted beautiful murals, made exquisite pottery,
designed drainage systems, built trading ships, paved their roads with shells and rocks and became advanced astronomers. They were very
artistically advanced, with the creation of ceramics and carved ivory, tile mosaics and mazes, and rudimentary hieroglyphic writing.
And they had a fascination with bulls. Not just at Knossos, where the palace roof
tops were trimmed in bull's horns and the walls display images of bull sports, but also other places like Mallia, where the palace is designed
like the head of a bull (left). And then, of course, there is the legend of the Minotaur, a half-bull, half-human creature
contained by Daedalus inside the maze.
As I began my quest for Daedalus and his maze and set my sails for a journey into the past, I tried to heed the advice of
Will Durant, who said of Minoan Crete in his The Life of Greece:
If now we try to restore this buried culture from the relics that remain— playing Cuvier to the scattered bones
of Crete—let us remember that we are engaging upon a hazardous kind of historical television, in which imagination must supply the living
continuity in the gaps of static and fragmentary material artificially moving but long since dead. Crete will remain inwardly unknown
until its secretive tablets find their Champollion.
But no matter
how much hazardous historical television we engage upon, will we ever understand how a civilization can perceive something special about a dog
scratching its fleas? (Left, Phaistos Disk pictograph; Below, Minoan cylinder seals of dogs scratching)
Champollion, who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, would not have been successful with the Phaistos Disk had he taken that approach.
The Phaistos Disk contains pictographs and not a hieroglyphic language, according to Sir Arthur Evans, whom I agree with completely.
Daedalus means "cunning artificer" because he could invent not just the thing itself but the way to
make it, as well. Daedalus was so clever that he is said to have invented images. He was the Leonardo da Vinci of his day and even more so.
Daedalus was inventing during the Mediterranean Bronze Age when, from our perspective, so many inventions seem possible. Everything was
new then, relative to da Vinci's day. For Daedalus it must have been truly a world of opportunities, a wide-open vista of possibilities
for the inventor.
Daedalus (=cunning artificer) was a sort of personified summary of mechanical skill. (H.G. Wells)
It is difficult, however, when
reading all the mythology and legends associated with Daedalus, to state exactly what he invented. A list of his inventions begins with a lurid tale that
Greek adults perhaps told in saunas to pass the time. Poseidon, god of the sea and special god of Plato's Atlantis, presented King Minos
with a white bull and Queen Pasiphae (Persephone) with a problem, which Daedalus solved. The king's wife is supposed to have lusted
after the bull! Pasiphae asked Daedalus, the palace architect, to design a bed (above, left?; Minoan Palenquin, right))
for the mating to take place. Daedalus complied and the result of the mating was the Minotaur, half-bull, half-human (right).
Daedalus also invented the maze in which
innocent young Greeks were fed to the Minotaur wherein they wandered lost until eaten. In another variation of the purpose of his maze,
he built it for King Minos of Crete in order to contain the Minotaur, who was the queen's son. He also is credited with inventing attachable
feathered wings, held together with strings and wax, so that humans could fly (pictograph left). With these wings he
and his son Icarus escaped his own inescapable maze by flying out of it. When Icarus flew too high, the sun melted the wax.
(Right, Minoan Coin with Minotaur and English alphabet)
Centuries passed and the legendary status of Daedalus the inventor grew. The stories surrounding him became unrelated
to his inventions, but beyond inventing a maze, a bedchamber, wings and images, Daedalus cannot be said to have invented anything that
would justify his extraordinary status as the world's greatest inventor. The invention of images, however, would certainly qualify this
inventor for legendary status, but it seems his reputation rests on his most famous invention, the Maze of Daedalus, which is lost in time.
We have only mythology to tell us what his maze was and what its purpose was, but mythology is storytelling of the highest order and not
recorded history at all. We just know he invented an incredible maze in Crete during a period of time before written history.
Had he invented a way of recording a history of his time, so that he could record some of the events and some of his inventions,
that would be very helpful, but he also would have to invent a way to do it and a way to preserve it for thousands of years. If he was truly
worthy of his legendary status as inventor, he would have done that. This cunning artificer could invent not just the thing itself but the way to
make it, as well. The Phaistos Disk could be his greatest invention, the one for which he is best known and which records his other inventions
including how he made it and why he is credited with inventing images.
If the Phaistos Disk is the Maze of Daedalus, then the great inventor deserves his star status and more because the disk may
record his invention of images, telescopes, binoculars, textbooks in clay, calendars, a printing press, a kiln, mazes, an historical record,
geometries, constellations, world-disks, and even a new world-view of an old world. And on this disk invention he may have recorded the second
most cataclysmic event in the last 5,000 years, the Minoan eruption and tsunami. He may also have realized spatial relativity and created an
object to demonstrate it. If so, it has taken nearly 4,000 years for his inventions and ideas to become known because that is about how long
the Phaistos Disk was lost.
The Phaistos Disk may not be the Maze of Daedalus, but nothing will ever come as close to it as this disk. I am also encouraged
to embrace this theory because it is so much easier to talk about the Phaistos Disk if we allow it to be the Maze of Daedalus and if we interpret
the mythology of Daedalus literally and allow that he actually lived in Minoan Crete.

MAZE OF DAEDALUS

This Maze of Daedalus (left, my exact tracing), 15 ft. wide and 18 ft. long,
was discovered in 1815 on the floor of a barn in Austria. This tile mosaic portrays the maze and the ancient Minoan
legend of Theseus and the Minotaur by the use of continuous representation. This ancient narrative device (supposed to have originated in Mesopotamia)
is used by artists to tell a story with their art by the depiction of successive scenes within a single composition.
According to the ancient story, the maze was inescapable, full of paths leading nowhere and very dangerous. The only way to
escape the maze was to put on wings and fly out of it. At the center of this tile mosaic is the Maze of Daedalus, which is also a truncated
pyramid and a pyramid with a interior view. Inside the pyramid and in the center of the maze, Theseus is battling the Minotaur.
(Click the maze for a larger view.)
According to mythology, Theseus (Iasius) was one of the mythical
Argonauts, along with two other Curetes (Cretans), Heracles and Idas. They were three of the original five divine Curetes, including Paeonaeus
and Epimedes, who established the civilization of Crete. They were called Minyae, descendants of King Minyas, from which the word Minos, as in
King Minos, may be derived. (Minoan is the name given the civilization by excavator Sir Arthur Evans.)
With their captain Jason (Aeson) and 43 (or so) other Argonauts, Theseus/Iasius pursued the Golden Fleece (above left)
belonging to the ram (second left) that had been sacrificed to Zeus. (Right, Minoan Bead-seal showing Theseus
battling the Minotaur)
Theseus also appears on the tile
mosiac in the scene, above left, in the couple who are most likely Theseus and Ariadne and who are turning a wheel. To the right on the mosaic is Ariadne,
perhaps sitting and waiting for Theseus to finish his epic battle. Left is my concept of where she might be sitting, on the bottom steps of the
stairs leading to the Royal Apartments in the Palace of Knossos. Below the palace was a labyrinthine plumbing system that many speculate was the
origin for the Maze of Daedalus myth.
Above the pyramid on the mosaic, they are disembarking from a ship, apparently after the battle has ended and they have left
Crete together. The ship may also be the constellation Argo, the boat used by Theseus/Iasius and Jason/Aeson to sail the heaven-ocean in
pursuit of the Golden Fleece. In wordplay, when you combine these two names - Jason and Iasius - you get Jasius, which is
nearly Jesus, son of god or Ja's son (Jason), Jah being the familiar form of Jehovah. This designates them both as immortals.
(What was the Minoan name for god?)
Perhaps the idea portrayed in the tile mosaic is that Theseus/Iasius left the Argo long enough to meet Ariadne and battle the
Minotaur, and his defeat of this bull-being caused the Minoan civilization to blossom and flourish. Not so easy to explain as this Maze of
Daedalus is the Phaistos Disk.
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PALACE OF KNOSSOS
In one popular interpretation of the Maze of Daedalus legend, the maze was thought to be the famous labyrinthine palace at
Knossos that was as big as Buckingham Palace, had 800 rooms and covered 6-1/2 acres. (My tracing, artist unknown)
The Palace of
Knossos was designed around the continuous activities of the Central Court, with the western facade as the focus (right).
Beneath the palace where the Minotaur was supposed to live, in the depths of the labyrinth and roaming a subterranean, labyrinthine plumbing and
drainage system, excavators discovered water channels and conduits for heavy rainfall and huge drains large enough to stand in and walk upright.
The palace was supplied with running water and flushing toilets, the result of the work of the brilliant hydraulic engineers who built this elaborate
plumbing system, another invention of Daedalus perhaps, unique in the Bronze Age.
In the Maze of Daedalus legend,
the Minotaur was fed young Greeks, war tribute paid to King Minos by the king of Greece. The Greeks were put in the maze, where they wandered hopelessly
lost until the Minotaur found them and ate them. One of the Greeks the Minotaur was set to eat was Theseus, the son of the king of Greece, who sailed
to Crete as a member of a sacrificial group but who planned to eliminate the Minotaur. Theseus, the greatest hero of Greece, enlisted the help of Ariadne,
King Minos' daughter and the Minotaur's stepsister, to lead him into the maze. She in turn consulted Daedalus, that mysterious inventor so active
behind these scenes. Daedalus advised Ariadne to take a ball of thread, now known as Ariadne's Thread of Love, to unwind inside the maze for
Theseus to follow back out. (Minoans entering Palace of Knossos, mouse over left image.)
The walls of Knossos are often covered in spirals like a labyrinth,
the word originating as Labrys and also meaning "axe." (left) Accompanying these spirals are the
mysterious "Figure 8 Shields." (below) With the round maze of the Phaistos Disk in mind, the design seems
familiar. (Below, Minoan ceiling design with double axes)
It would appear that before Zeus-Dionysus was depicted in human shape he was worshipped through his symbols
or attributes. Another symbol of the god was the 8-form shield. (Mackenzie)
By these correspondences, if Zeus, or
Father God, is symbolized by the figure 8 shields, then the Phaistos Disk, a kind of fold-out figure 8 shield, is intended to symbolize God.
This would mean the entire universe or disk of the world was conceived of by the astronomer-priests, at least, as God (later Zeus).
They may have conluded that God (Zeus) is so big that it takes something the size of a universe to express Him. They may have also
believed the universe and everything in to be particlized parts of God, so that the disk might be a depiction of the first science of
particle metaphysics. Or perhaps they simply had the idea that the world is the shield the god is holding (left),
and everything on the disk/shield, all the pictographs, represent the composition of the world.

DAEDALUS INVENTS IMAGES
In a modern analogy about the spirit of geometry, let us pretend that the
play "Cinderella" is being produced on a stage constructed by plane geometry, who is like the kind mother (left) of the
wicked stepmother of Cinderella. She does not scold or complain or judge, she never withdraws her support no matter how wicked the stepmother becomes,
and she always gives the stepmother a stage on which to be as wicked as she likes to her stepgranddaughter. As the drama unfolds, Cinderella's
friends put curses on the stepmother while Cinderella prays for help and protection. But the kind grandmother is not affected at all by these
curses or prayers, except to appear as an apparition to Cinderella and comfort her. The kind grandmother just figures this whole thing will
straighten itself out somehow as long as she gives it her support. It may not be the best of plays but at least it is something. Geometry has been
around long enough to know that the play changes, that there is a lot of role reversal going on, and so the play is the thing.
The kind grandmother might like to wait in the wings invisibly. She does not seek the spotlight, but we can convince her to
take the stage anyway so we can see the geometrical arrangements contained by her stage. On the Phaistos Disk we can find the geometry by
connecting identical pictographs with lines like connect-the-dots or like connecting points with lines as in geometry. And suddenly, Daedalus
invents images!
Connect with lines the four
identical hand (Dactyl) signs on side 2 of the disk to reveal the kind grandmother's pointy hat, a cone that was there the whole time.
(Below, left, my exact tracings of the disk, drop shadow and terra cotta color added.)
Connect these 5 Minyae signs on
side 2 to see the kind grandmother has been overeating just a bit and is developing a bulge. (below, second left)
Connect these 4 telescope signs on side 2 to
reveal the reason why. She has been eating too many of her tasty apple tarts. (below, third left)
Connect these 5 Argo signs on side 2 to
reveal exercise as the solution to weight gain. Instead of taking the boat to the mailbox to get her mail, she should just swim.
(below right)
    Well if she does not do something soon, she will become as big as a house, and the universe will experience a
Big Bang and we will have to start over again.
When I studied this whirling chaos on the disk and searched for meaning, I found an ancient world and a universe of knowledge.
The disk is a Minoan wave spiral (left) and Figure 8 Shield on which is depicted the Aegean world of Minoan Crete,
including a cave, a boat, a pyramid, a star, planets, a constellation, geometry, math, calendars, and everyday life in Crete that mirrors the
stars above. We reveal them on the disk just as we revealed the kind grandmother, by connecting identical pictographs with lines.
This is also how the constellations are revealed. We know they are only stars, but to the people of the Aegean world, the stars and planets
were the eyes of the gods watching over them. See the biggest eye of all, the big star Sirius, eye of the great goddess Rhea.
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THRONE ROOM, PALACE OF KNOSSOS
PHAISTOS DISK
| Continuous representation
also seems apparent on the Phaistos Disk, but instead of several successive scenes there are successive pictographs. Recently, various books have
been published treating the pictographs as script to be deciphered, like Egyptian hieroglyphs. But unlike hieroglyphs, these
pictographs are unique to this disk and therefore might not be script but instead would be continuous representation like the
maze mosaic. Where script is a language that can be deciphered and read, a pictograph is a
symbol complete within itself that represents an idea or a thing. Like an ideogram, it represents an object or idea but not a word or a
speech sound.
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These are my identical tracings of side 1 and 2 of the disk which appear to be
round mazes, not surprising since the height of maze development and fascination occurred during the Minoan civilization in Crete.
Obvious on the disk are the spirals. A closer look reveals some parts of the spirals are unconnected. The path of the spiral,
starting from the center and spiraling out, is blocked from continuing along the outside spiral. This development makes it a kind of maze.
The solution of a maze is the uninterrupted path through an intricate pattern of line segments from a starting point to a goal.
Visible on the Phaistos Disk are the 60 line segments. The center of the spiral on one side of the disk is the starting point,
the goal is the center of the spiral on the other side. An uninterrupted path must be found through the line segments, from starting point to goal,
that incorporates all parts of the spiral and provides a solution to the maze.
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The outside spirals circle around the center, while the inside spirals curl in on themselves.
By starting in the center on either side, and spiraling out, no uninterrupted path can be found that incorporates all parts of the spiral.
Just as we are about to navigate the outside spiral we are directed by a connecting line segment to go to the other side. We cross over to
the other side and continue to the center, then turn around and come back, but the inside spiral is always blocked from the outside spiral on
both sides. Alternately, we can start from an outside spiral and go toward the center. But, one side is completely blocked from the inside spiral,
and on neither side is there a crossover via a continuous spiraling path.
The indication is that travel via the connecting line segments, from center to center,
is possible but no uninterrupted path exists that incorporates all of the maze. Until all the paths connect, the maze is not solved. All the
paths connect on this bowl from Phaistos, in which the outside spirals connect and curl in on themselves. These symbolic wave patterns are found
all over Crete.
 Those words I wrote above to describe the problem of the maze, "The outside spirals seem to circle around the center,
while the inside spirals curl in on themselves," also describe the actions of a phi spiral and provide a clue to the solution of the maze. In these
phi spirals, both spirals spin the same direction until you start at the center of one and crossover. Then, the journey to the center of the other
spiral becomes counter the direction of the first. These two phi spirals (left) are also geometry ideograms for
vortex and vertex.
If the Phaistos Disk is the Maze of Daedalus, then the young Greeks cast into it were as doomed as the legend states.
They were told they could avoid being eaten by the Minotaur if they could find their way out, but they would have been hopelessly lost
because the spiral's direction is relative, leading only to dead ends. Their death was inescapable. Only a miracle
could save them. (Maze solution)

PHI SPIRAL
Did the ancient people (1) in Bronze Age Crete know about the phi spiral? Knowing so much about geometry, perhaps they did.
One of the pictographs on the disk is an equilateral triangle. (2) With 20 dots inside, does it mean icosahedron, the platonic solid made of
20 triangles? (3) The shields (4) on the disk each have seven dots in the shape of a hexagram. Does this reference another Platonic solid, the
hexahedron? Other symbols on the disk seem somehow related to geometry. (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) Remembering that the disk comes from a place
with "phi" as part of its name - Phi-stos - (which the Greeks pronounce "fes-tos") the question arises, "Did the people there
study the principles of phi and did they identify Platonic solids 1200 years before the birth of Plato?" I believe they were actively
pursuing knowledge of the sciences of geometry and astronomy and, at the same time, expressing their ideas and discoveries within the context of art.

This vase pictograph, for example, is so similar to this vase excavated at Phaistos. Noticably on the vase is a spiral and a
design resembling the symbol for fthe Greek letter Phi. (Click the vase for a larger view.)

UP IS THE WAY OUT
The word miracle, from the old Latin word miraculum, means something wonderful and involves the
divine intervention of a supernatural being with the power to overturn the ordinary course of events or circumstances dictated by nature.
We usually identify this supernatural being as an angel, a winged being, and it is possible this was always the case. Whenever a miracle occurs,
humanity identifies the power behind it as having wings. This could explain why mythology tells of the invention of wings by Daedalus, and it could
also explain why, in mythology, Daedalus is sometimes elevated to the level of god in association with Dionysis of Crete. But something that
qualified as a miracle in the Mediterranean Bronze Age might be something we take for granted in our own time.
When did humanity first conceive of the four dimensions of length, width, height and time? What about the first three dimensions?
Was there a time in the evolution of human consciousness when the realization of height as the third dimension amounted to a miracle? Perhaps
humanity experienced the third dimension by looking up into the stars and thinking, "Heaven and eternal life are up there and it takes wings to be there."
This all must be in the processing of occurring because even as intellectually advanced as we claim to be in our modern era, it seems when looking at
the two-dimensional image of the Phaistos Disk we unanimously see only the dimension of width. The other dimensions are there but we do not
automatically see them right away.
First question we ask, "How big is it?" We think it must be really big to have all those pictographs on it. No, it is only a
little over six inches wide, the size of a small plate or a little bigger than a CD. "Well, what about the spirals? Do we start in the center
spiraling out or on the outside spiraling in?" It is round so we do not see length as a dimension, but instead our minds go for the spirals and
focus on the pictographs in the spirals. "What do the pictographs say? Is it a language?" Like young Greeks, we cast ourselves into the maze and
become lost in there. If Daedalus does not invent wings for us, we will never escape.
It is not easy to realize that, by our observation of this disk, we bring with us the third dimension of height, and this is
probably because of the missing second dimension of length. It seems our minds need length and width to arrive at height, and perhaps this is the
point of the story of Icarus who escaped the maze by flying out of it. Big thoughts in the Bronze Age might be about the conception of heighth as a
third dimension, thoughts big enough to engender a mythology about the person who "invented" it, big enough to be considered a miracle and the person
who delivered it to be considered a divine being. Have we not, in our own time, elevated Einstein almost to that status on account of his contributions
regarding the fourth dimension? Mythology tells us Daedalus and Icarus were trapped in the maze. They could not escape its length and its width and
so there was nowhere to go but height. There was nowhere to go but up.
After a few days of spiraling around and around this way, trying to travel the maze and read the pictographs like sentences in an
ancient script, I changed to the other way of looking at it, which is looking down onto it. In our modern vernacular, viewing the Phaistos Disk from
inside the spirals is a case of, "You can't see the forest for the trees," and this is the secret to the solution of this maze. You need to fly above
it like Icarus to really see it. This maze is further complicated by the entire disk being on flip sides of the same clay "coin," but this was
ingenious on the part of Daedalus because it kept the two sections intact for 3,600 years. The two sides have to be placed side-by-side to see what
it is all about. Looking down onto it seems better, to me, than running around lost inside it and finding only dead ends. Needing some guidance as to
what to do, I heeded the legend of Icarus, who escaped the maze by flying above it, and by doing so I found the third dimension of height as well as
an image that Daedalus invented.
Distributed in the spirals are 240 pictographs that many linguists insist are an ancient script. These signs were all impressed onto
the clay disk with tiny clay stamps. 48 stamps were used, 37 of which are repeated, 11 are single imprints. With the disk only a little bigger
than a CD, imagine how tiny the 48 stamps were that impressed 240 pictographs (121 one side, 119 the other). 48 just happens to be the number of the
constellations the Greek astronomer Ptolemy lists in the Almagest in the second century C.E., and from the ancient Greeks comes our system of
constellations that they apparently got from the Minoans. But then arises the question, did the Minoans originate this astronomy or was it borrowed
from the Bablylonians and the Sumerians? I believe the Phaistos Disk provides the missing link that proves the Minoans were excellent astronomers
in their own right. So excellent, in fact, that according to their own confession that seems portrayed on the disk, at least whimsically anyway,
they brought about the Minoan eruption and the tsunami with their excellent, but offensive, science and technology.
I started with the pictograph that first
caught my attention (left) and noticed that, depending on how you view the disk, this pictograph appears in an upright
position and looks like a pyramid. It takes up less room on the disk if it is in a vertical position rather than horizontal, and I thought that
perhaps Daedalus was trying to conserve space. Side one of the disk contains 6 of these. I wondered what would happen if I connected them with
lines, like connect-the-dots, since they are all identical. When I did that, I was astonished to find a pyramid.
No longer was the disk just wide, but now I could experience length and height, and my mind soared like Icarus flying above the maze.
Is this what he saw when he flew so high that the sun melted his wings? Maybe this is what Theseus/Iasius saw from the Argo as he sailed the
heaven-ocean to land in Crete and battle the Minotaur, as portrayed in the
Maze of Daedalus tile mosaic. The convergence of those two mazes continues, square Maze of Daedalus and round Phaistos Disk maze, as they now
both portray pyramids, one an interior view and one an exterior view. But the Phaistos Disk conceals a pyramid with an interior view, as well.
The thought occurred to me this could be the Great Pyramid, and I was convinced this disk pyramid was not random coincidence.
With Crete so close to Egypt, and with the world's tallest structure for 4,000 years in Egypt, built nearly 1,000 years before the disk was created,
it does not seem far-fetched to imagine that Daedalus would put Cheops on a clay disk. Our fascination with the Great Pyramid never ends. Nearly
every person who sees it takes a picture of it. Daedalus, lacking a camera but wanting to preserve an image of it for posterity, could have put it
on this clay disk.
I wondered what else Daedalus put on the disk for posterity or for whatever reasons he had for creating it. Perhaps some
cataclysmic event urged him to create this pottery art masterpiece, something catastrophic such as the Minoan eruption and tsunami. This
masterpiece, created with an early printing press technology to record information, is truly remarkable. Like a CD, it allows something very
small to contain a great deal of information, in this case about a "lost" civilization. And if the pictographs on the disk were used like
symbols were once used in antiquity, to represent more than one idea or thing, the information contained on the disk could be extensive even
though the media itself is very small. If the information is really recorded there, I reasoned, then the discovery of it would be the educational
experience of a lifetime. With that in mind, I set out on an educational journey lasting the next 15 years of my life. With a Master of Science
for Teachers degree in English Education and a concentration in myth and saga (1976, Georgia Southern University), I enrolled
in the Phaistos Disk University to continue my education.
From my perspective, to study the Phaistos Disk is to study the universe and humanity's place within it via the perspective of the
first scholarly metaphysicians, the Minoan astronomer-priests. Their studies, much elevated beyond the simple mythologies of the time, were also
beyond the understanding and interest of most of the people of their age, and this is nearly always the case with metaphysics. But on the Phaistos
Disk may be recorded something unique, a cataclysmic event described in terms of metaphysics. The nearest thing we have to this is the Biblical
story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood, and there is some possibility the Minoan eruption and tsunami engendered that story, as well as the
legend of the destruction of Atlantis. The Phaistos Disk might well be the Great Flood artifact and it may also be linked to the Biblical Tower of
Babel story.

WAVE SPIRAL AS THE DIMENSION OF TIME
I found the wave spiral and solved the maze by removing the disk pictographs from the transparencies so that only the
spirals and line segments were visible. Then I placed the two sides together at the matching line segments and merged them by overlaying the perfectly
aligned line segments.
Wave spirals and Figure 8 shields in the art of Minoan Crete.



The two sides of the disk connected create a flowing figure 8 wave spiral that moves uninterrupted from the center of one side of the disk to
the other and back again and incorporates all parts of the spiral. It may also represent the tsunami that behaved in exactly the same way -
it moved in an uninterrupted path to the northern shores of Crete, consumed the life there, and then withdrew following the same path. The
interpretation might have been that the tsunami, brought about by an angry goddess, was patterned on the movement of her eternal heaven-ocean
and spiral of creation.
Try this with your cursor. Start at the center of side one of the disk and follow the spiral to the other side and back again. You will travel
in a figure 8. If you are a Greek caught in the maze and running from the Minotaur, you are also caught in this inescapable Phaistos Disk Maze of
Daedalus, but at least you have some running room, thanks to infinity. If you are Theseus/Iasius, you can escape by flying away in the Argo to sail
upon this eternal heaven-ocean. This symbol of infinity perhaps represents the fourth dimension of time. It is usually drawn this
way (right) but it lacks the inner spirals. It would truly be remarkable if the Phaistos Disk also evidenced the Minoans
concept of four dimensions.
These wave spirals are found throughout the architecture of Minoan Crete, and whatever they represented to the Minoans must have
made the tsunami into something like a prophecy fulfilled. At the very least they gave to
a massive wave an apocalyptic meaning. (left, Minoan vases with wave spirals and figure 8 shields, right, Figure 8 shields on walls in
Palace of Knossos)
 Origins of the Phaistos Disk
This disk comes from Minoan Crete, the ancient civilization famous for the Maze of Daedalus and for naming our
constellations. The disk is only 6-1/4" in diameter and 1" thick. It was found in 1908 at Phaistos, Crete, beside a tablet of Linear A writing of ancient Crete. The disk delivers complex information in a simple way. Based on the Minoan love of mazes and the ancient method of forming constellations by connecting stars with lines, the disk
conceals the constellation Argo and other related images that are revealed when identical pictographs are connected by lines.
Taking a clue from this pictograph (left, man holding a shield with tiny circles in the shape of a hexagram), the connect-the-dots approach of
viewing the disk reveals in total eight significant and complex images, as well as numerous simple geometries, that are concealed on the disk.
Concealed on the disk and revealed by connecting identical pictographs with lines are:
pentagram inside a heptagon (possibly Sirius and seven planets), constellation Argo,
exterior view of a pyramid, interior view of a pyramid, and triangle inside two pentagons
(possibly sacred cave). The Pleiades may also be recorded on this disk.
Tracings of the two sides of the disk placed side-by-side reveal two mazes, one in the shape of a Minoan wave spiral and the other, when the sides are overlaid at the identical connecting line segments, a maze in the shape of a Minoan figure 8 shield.

How the Disk was Made - The God Khnum-Ra
In ancient Egypt the god Khnum, one of the earliest gods, made the Ba or human bodies of children from clay on his potter's wheel. He also placed them in their mother' womb. This accounted for the origin of the human body of an individual, which came from out of this god. He was the consort of Heket, who breathed life into the children at birth. He was also thought of as the creator of other gods, so he became identified as the Ba of Ra, the human counterpart of the higher divine self or Ka. Ba was also the world for Ram (left, Phaistos Disk pictograph). The creator of the Phaistos Disk was perhaps embodying the spirit of Khnum-Ra when at the potter's wheel creating the disk.

As you can see, the pictographs on the disk appear to be identical. As example, the shields (left)
that appear fifteen times on this side of the disk are clearly intended to be identical. The same is true for all the pictographs that are
apparently identical. Therefore, an assumption was made and widely accepted by all who study the disk that the pictographs were made with
tiny stamps pressed into the clay disk. This would also conveniently account for raised pictographs on the disk. As they were stamped into the wet clay, the pictographs were
created raised above the disk, making the disk itself into a kind of stamp.
In many cases the pictographs are both raised above the disk and merged with it. In some cases they appear to be pressed into it.
Still, how else could the pictographs be elevated above the disk in such a way and how else could the pictographs be made to be identical? The answer has
to be use of an early printing press technology in the form of tiny pre-made stamps. But this theory, accepted for so many years by so many people, is incorrect.
Phaistos Disk Tracing, Side 1, Color Coded
The printing press theory of using tiny stamps to the create the disk is incorrect.
Nor did the stamp theory ever explain the presence of the elevated spirals on both sides of
the disk. The pictographs left, cropped from an enlarged bmp image of the disk, show the pictographs were intended by its creater to be
identical but are not absolutely identical because the disk creator lacked the rudimentary printing press technology that has long been ascribed to the creation of the Phaistos Disk.
 As the
disk is only a little larger than a CD, the pictographs on the disk are tiny. When these two pictographs are reduced to a size that might appear on the disk, they do become "identical." But when
they are enlarged they are obviously the same but not identical.
 I cropped all the pictographs on the disk and displayed them so you can see that not a single one of them is identical to another. Obviously, a very good artist created these pictographs and this disk (see the table below). Only a good artist working in the genre of miniature art could create 241 individual pictographs to appear to be identical. It is very likely the artist excelled in the genre of miniature art during the Minoan period where art miniaturization which was so very popular.
 Miniature art in Minoan Crete included statues, figurines, ritual groups (below, left), incense burners, housewares, signet rings, shrine figurines, miniature goddesses, wagons (left), swings (right), shields, dresses, hats, hut urns (below) and much more.
So, the artist created 241 individual miniature pictographs. How did the artist get them onto the disk and why do the pictographs need to be identical? If an artist is making 241
pictographs to go onto a disk, then why would not the artist create unique pictographs? Ten of the pictographs on the disk are unique. Why hand-create 231 pictographs to look exactly like other
pictographs? If the disk was intended to contain a language script, why not etch that script into the disk rather than make so many tiny pictographs? But it seems the artist wanted to make identical miniature pictographs.
If the artist had the idea and the knowledge to create unique stamps, then obviously s/he would have done so, if for no other reason than to make the pictographs truly identical and
also to save a monumental amount of time. Therefore, printing press technology in the form of tiny stamps into clay was not known at this time or, if it was known, this particular artist did not know it.
There is also the possiblity that the stamp technology was known but did not work well impressed into clay.
So how was it made? Here is my theory. The artist of the Phaistos Disk made at least 10 to 20 sketches of the disk designs prior to creating it. Perhaps the sketches were made using
papyrus or perhaps they were simply drawn into sand. Maybe they were created as other Phaistos Disks but did not come out right so were destroyed and the attempts continued until this disk was
finally created satisfactorily to the artist. Below are the four main sketches made the artist prior to creating the Phaistos Disk.
After the artist made the sketches, s/he created the 241 miniature pictographs from clay and set them aside. Then the round disk was created from the same batch of clay and then the artist lightly etched the spiral designs into both sides of the wet clay disk. Next, the artist pressed the pictographs onto one side of the disk in exact locations, following the pre-made sketches. When one side of the disk was finished it was turned over and laid down so those pictographs were pressed into the wet clay as the other side was being completed. Then the disk was turned again to lay on the second side and press those pictographs into the clay. The artist then made fine lines of clay for the spirals and placed them onto the disk one side at a time along the patterns already etched into the disk. (Below, Phaistos Disk with both spirals
removed and only the pictographs showing.)
Alternately, the artist may have created a way to elevate the disk while working on it. Depending on the wetness of the clay disk, the artist had a time frame to create it of probably two to 8 hours. This method of creating the disk also explains why the artist baked it rather than sun dried it, as baking it would ensure the pictographs were permanently merged with the clay disk. In the process of making the disk, many of the pictographs were unevenly merged into the disk and a close inspection of the disk shows smudging, particularly around the outer edges, indicating the disk may have taken some damage during this process or either the method of holding the disk upright left smudges along the edges. This method of making the Phaistos Disk seems very likely to me, especially since I have an idea of why the artist needed the pictographs to seem identical.
The Phaistos Disk is a pottery art masterpiece and is, at the very least, an artist's triumph in the genre of miniaturization. Not only the pictographs are miniatures but also the disk itself is intended, I believe, to be a miniature Figure 8 Shield. Each side of the disk is a face of the shield, upper and lower, and on both faces are more designs so that the Figure 8 Shield itself is a world disk in miniature. The Phaistos Disk may have been intended as a shield design to create a shield. (Left, pictograph of the warrior holding the disk/shield)
 PHAISTOS DISK CLAY PICTOGRAPHS
With Locations on the Disk
Line segments are counted from the center of each side, spiraling out
These images are cropped from the disk. Each set of images are the same in that they are intended to be identical,
but they are not identical. They were not made with tiny stamps but created by an artist so accomplished at minature art that we believed
them to be exactly identical as though made by a printing press technology. The artist needed them to seem identical so the connect-the-dots method of solving the disk puzzle could be accomplished.
4Sun/Flower, Helios, Eight, Vertex, Dodona 3 Side A, Positions - 1, 13, 76, Segments - A1, 4, 19 1 Side B, Position - 72, Segment - B19 |
2
Astronomer-Priest, Argonaut, Sailor, Minyae, Oracle, Divine Curete
2 Side A, Positions - 2, 14, Segments - A1, 4 0 Side B |
4
Oar, Argonauts, Minyae, Minyaens
4 Side A, Positions - 3, 15, 46, 71, Segments - A1, 4, 11, 18 0 Side B |
11

Runner, Olympic Runner, Herakles, Hermes
6 Side A, Positions - 4, 19, 41, 66, 84, 118, Segments - A2, 6, 10, 17, 20, 30
5 Side B, Position - 51, 60, 71, 88, 94, Segment - B14, 16, 19, 23, 24 |
6

Spindle for Cloth
3 Side A, Positions - 5, 20, 119, Segments - A2, 6, 30
3 Side B, Position - 44, 89, 95, Segment - B12, 23, 24 |
2

Maze, Palace, House of the God, Three
2 Side A, Positions - 6, 56, Segments - A3, 15
0 Side B |
4

Thistle, Thyrsoi, Festival, Wand with Pine Cone
2 Side A, Positions - 7, 57, Segments - A3, 15
2 Side B, Position - 85, 109, Segment - B22, 28 |
11

Tree, Sacred Oak, Plant, Five
5 Side A, Positions - 8, 16, 57, 85, 90 , Segments - A3, 5, 15, 21, 22
6 Side B, Positions - 9, 29, 58, 66, 79, 111, Segments - B3, 8, 15, 18, 21, 29 |
15

Golden Fleece
10 Side A, Positions - 9, 10, 30, 34, 47, 58, 59, 72, 99, 103, Segments - A3, 3, 9, 9, 12, 15, 15, 19, 24, 25
5 Side B, Positions - 35, 52, 74, 104, 114, Segments - B9, 14, 19, 27, 29 |
17

Bronze Shield, Hexagram, Hexahedron
15 Side A, Positions - 11, 21, 23, 35, 39, 51, 60, 64, 79, 88, 95, 100, 106, 114, 120,
Segments - A3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30
2 Side B, Positions - 100, 118, Segments - B26, 30 |
19

Minyae, Headdress, Crested Dancer, Armed Dancer
14 Side A, Positions - 12, 22, 36, 40, 48, 52, 61, 65, 73, 80, 89, 96, 107, 121,
Segments - A3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 30
5 Side B, Positions - 11, 54, 78, 110, 119, Segments - B3, 14, 20, 28, 30 |
3

Crossroad, Paved Road, Adjacent Angle
3 Side A, Positions - 17, 26, 86, Segments - A5, 9, 21 |
9

Pillar, Hammer, Awl, Carpentry, Leatherworking
5 Side A, Positions - 18, 44, 53, 69, 77, Segments - A5, 12, 14, 18, 19, 4
Side B, Positions - 4, 24, 98, 108, Segments - B2, 6, 25, 26 |
6

Horn, Serpent, Fire, Rising
5 Side A, Positions - 24, 37, 49, 62, 91 , Segments - A7, 10, 13, 16, 22
1 Side B, Positions - 77, Segments - B20 |
5

Vulture, Icarus
5 Side A, Positions - 25, 38, 50, 63, 92, Segments - A7, 10, 13, 16, 22
0 Side B |
1

Hat, Hill, Pyramid, Mt. Ida
1 Side A, Positions - 27, Segments - A8
0 Side B |
12

Pyramid, Vault, Carpenter's Square
6 Side A, Positions - 28, 31, 43, 68, 93, 117, Segments - A8, 9, 12, 18, 23, 30
6 Side B, Positions - 13, 23, 30, 63, 87, 97, Segments - 4, 6, 8, 17, 23, 25 |
4

Mother, Isis/Rhea, Earth Mother
2 Side A, Positions - 29, 94, Segments - A8, 23
2 Side B, Positions - 10, 59, Segments - B3, 15 |
3

Falcon on the Perch, Bird, Partridge, Dove
2 Side A, Positions - 32, 78, Segments - A9, 19
1 Side B, Positions - 57 , Segments - B15 |
2

Yoke
1 Side A, Positions - 33, Segments - A9
1 Side B, Positions - 64 , Segments - B17 |
2

Hoof, Bull's Foot
2 Side A, Positions - 42, 67, Segments - A11, 17 |
7

Boat, Skiff
2 Side A, Positions - 46, 71, Segments - A12, 18
5 Side B, Positions - 3, 32, 73, 83, 105, Segments - B2, 9, 19, 22, 27 |
6

Sharpsnout Fish
2 Side A, Positions - 54, 90, Segments - A14, 26
4 Side B, Positions - 55, 61, 92, 103, Segments - B15, 16, 24, 26 |
1

Crab
1 Side A, Positions - 74, Segments - B18
0 Side B |
4

Grass, Marshes
1 Side A, Positions - 75, Segments - B18
3 Side B, Positions - 14, 56, 93 , Segments - B4, 15, 24 |
18

Star/Seed, Pomegranate, Fruit, Star
3 Side A, Positions - 79, 87, 97, Segments - A20, 25, 28
15 Side B, Positions - 1, 7, 12, 18, 25, 26, 28, 31, 37, 41, 48, 82, 90, 112, 115,
Segments - B1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 21, 23, 29, 30 |
6


Casket, Coffin Chest
1 Side A, Positions - 82, 105, 115, Segments - A24
3 Side B, Positions - 75, 80, 118 , Segments - B20, 21, 30 |
2

Roll Up, Baby, Rock wrapped as a baby
2 Side A, Positions - 81, 85, Segments - A20, 21
0 Side B |
5

Fingers, Dactyls, 5 Divine Curetes, Hand
1 Side A, Positions - 97, Segments - A24
4 Side B, Positions - 17, 36, 45, 47, Segments - B5, 10, 12, 12, 13 |
1

Stylized Pig, Sow
1 Side A, Positions - 98, Segments - A24
0 Side B |
6

Wave, Water, Aegean Sea
2 Side A, Positions - 102, 112 , Segments - A25, 28
4 Side B, Positions - 2, 27, 42, 113 , Segments - B1, 7, 11, 29 |
1

Father, Warrior, Dactyloi, Orion with the Pleiades hanging from the belt, Ares, Planet Mars
1 Side A, Positions - 106, Segments - A26
0 Side B |
1

Dog Scratching, Big Dog, Canis Major
1 Side A, Positions - 108, Segments - A27
0 Side B |
10

Lioness
2 Side A, Positions - 109, 112, Segments - A27, 28
8 Side B, Positions - 6, 20, 39, 43, 46, 50, 62, 70 , Segments - B2, 5, 10, 11,12,13, 16, 18 |
1

Lion Roar
1 Side A, Positions - 110, Segments - A27
0 Side B |
6

Palenquin, Temple
1 Side A, Positions - 116, Segments - A29
5 Side B, Positions - 22, 68, 69, 81, 102 , Segments - B6, 18, 18, 21, 26 |
2

Ivy, Heart of Dionysis
0 Side A, 2 Side B, Positions - 5, 34, Segments - B2, 9 |
2

Hoe, Scepter
0 Side A, 2 Side B, Positions - 8, 33, Segments - B3, 9 |
1

Ram
0 Side A, 1 Side B, Positions - 15, Segments - A4
|
2

Cave, Mystery, Hood of a Robe
0 Side A, 2 Side B, Positions - 16, 53, Segments - B4, 14 |
4

Plant, Olive Branch
0 Side A, 4 Side B, Positions - 19, 38, 49, 76, Segments - B5, 10, 13, 20 |
5

Gauge, Measuring Device, Fork, Horned Serpent
5 Side B, Positions - 21, 40, 86, 106, 117, Segments - B5, 10, 22, 27, 30 |
2

Shell, Trumpet
0 Side A, 2 Side B, Positions - 65, 99, Segments - B17, 24 |
2

Pitcher, Vase
0 Side A, 2 Side B, Positions - 67, 101, Segments - B18, 26 |
1

Saw
0 Side A
1 Side B, Positions - 84, Segments - B22 |
1

Axe, Labrys
0 Side A, 1 Side B, Positions - 91, Segments - B22 |
1

Pyramid, Equilateral, Triangle
0 Side A, 1 Side B, Positions - 96, Segments - B23 |
1

Young Man, Child, Mythical Creature
0 Side A
1 Side B, Positions - 107, Segments - B28 |
From the Center of Side 1 to the Center of Side 2 With Line Segments Included Drag-able Pictographs

Phaistos Disk Shield of Achilles Prototype
If the Phastos Disk was intended as a brilliant shield design, then I might even suggest it was the prototype
for the legenday Shield of Achilles, used by Achilles when he fought Hector. Below, left is a concept of the Shield of Achilles derived by Malcolm M. Willcock's reading of Homer's description of the shield in The Iliad, Chapter XVIII (see below). At least the Phaistos Disk hints at the idea of a legendary shield as early as 1600 BCE, five or six hundred years before Achilles is supposed to have fought Hector at Troy. The bright spots on the Phaistos Disk (below, right) denote locations of the fifteen shields on this side of the disk.
The two shields have much in common. Both have five circles, with the circles drawn in a wave spiral on the Phaistos Disk as befits a Minoan disk. Earth, sea, sun, moon and stars are indicated on the Phaistos Disk, as are cattle (1), ploughing (2), reaping (3), sheep (4), dance (5), vintage (6) and City at Peace (7) and City at War (8).
First he (Vulcan) shaped the shield so great and strong, adorning it all over and binding it round with a gleaming circuit in three layers; and the baldric was made of silver. He made the shield in five thicknesses, [the five spirals] and with many a wonder did his cunning hand enrich it.
He wrought the earth, [the unconnected shield above, click the image to see it] the heavens, [the large image covering the disk, including all the shields] and the sea; [the Oceanus surrounding the design] the moon [the shields along the outside edge] also at her full and the untiring sun, [the star in the center] with all the signs that glorify the face of heaven- the Pleiads,[the man holding the shield, the Pleiades said to hang on Orion's belt] the Hyads, huge Orion, [the man holding the shield] and the Bear, which men also call the Wain and which turns round ever in one place, facing. Orion, and alone never dips into the stream of Oceanus.
He wrought also two cities, fair to see and busy with the hum of men. In the one were weddings and wedding-feasts, and they were going about the city with brides whom they were escorting by torchlight from their chambers. Loud rose the cry of Hymen, and the youths danced to the music of flute and lyre, [the Crane Dance or Dance of the Labyrinth, see the next chapter] while the women stood each at her house door to see them.
He wrought also a fair fallow field, large and thrice ploughed already. Many men were working at the plough (left) within it, turning their oxen to and fro, furrow after furrow. Each time that they turned on reaching the headland a man would come up to them and give them a cup of wine, and they would go back to their furrows looking forward to the time when they should again reach the headland. The part that they had ploughed was dark behind them, so that the field, though it was of gold, still looked as if it were being ploughed- very curious to behold.
He wrought also a field of harvest corn, and the reapers were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands. Swathe after swathe fell to the ground in a straight line behind them, and the binders bound them in bands of twisted straw. There were three binders, and behind them there were boys who gathered the cut corn in armfuls and kept on bringing them to be bound: among them all the owner of the land stood by in silence and was glad. The servants were getting a meal ready under an oak, for they had sacrificed a great ox, and were busy cutting him up, while the women were making a porridge of much white barley for the labourers' dinner.
  He wrought also a herd of homed cattle. He made the cows of gold and tin, and they lowed as they came full speed out of the yards to go and feed among the waving reeds that grow by the banks of the river. Along with the cattle there went four shepherds, all of them in gold, and their nine fleet dogs The god wrought also a pasture in a fair mountain dell, and large flock of sheep, with a homestead and huts, and sheltered sheepfolds.
Furthermore he wrought a green, like that which Daedalus once made in Cnossus for lovely Ariadne. Hereon there danced youths and maidens whom all would woo, with their hands on one another's wrists. (See the next chapter) The maidens wore robes of light linen, and the youths well woven shirts that were slightly oiled. The girls were crowned with garlands, while the young men had daggers of gold that hung by silver baldrics; sometimes they would dance deftly in a ring with merry twinkling feet, as it were a potter sitting at his work and making trial of his wheel to see whether it will run, and sometimes they would go all in line with one another, and much people was gathered joyously about the green. There was a bard also to sing to them and play his lyre, while two tumblers went about performing in the midst of them when the man struck up with his tune.
All round the outermost rim of the shield he set the mighty stream of the river Oceanus. (The outermost ring of the Phaistos Disk is Oceanus.)
Then when he had fashioned the shield so great and strong, he made a breastplate also that shone brighter than fire. He made helmet, (left) close fitting to the brow, and richly worked, with a golden plume overhanging it; and he made greaves also of beaten tin.
Lastly, when the famed lame god had made all the armour, he took it and set it before the mother of Achilles; whereon she darted like a falcon from the snowy summits of Olympus and bore away the gleaming armour (left) from the house of Vulcan. (Homer)
The pictographs on the disk need to seem identical because the artist intended that they produce additional images than are apparent on the faces of the disk. With the matching pictographs placed strategically to produce the images, many more meaningful designs could be contained on the artifact. Those designs reveal a world of information about the
Minoan and Egyptian civilizations. Over a period of the last 100 years many people have studied the disk
but without ever seeing the additional images contained by the disk, and for a good reason.
In retrospect, the disk is very simple but our presumptions and our distance from this
ancient civilization prevent us from immediately recognizing the patterns on the disk. We do not expect to see a
nearly 4,000 year-old connect the dots maze, so we do not see it, even after 100 years of collectively
looking at it. Had we first seen the disk in the connect the dots section of the Sunday comics of a newspaper,
we would have revealed some of the images before breakfast was over.
|
|
SACRED CAVE ANIMATION
THE MINOAN ERUPTION
TSUNAMI
According to recent conclusions by analyists in this field, the Minoan eruption is the
second most catastrophic volcano of the last 5,000 years. This volcano erupted on the island of Thera, now Santorini, in the Aegean Sea
only 70 miles from Crete. According to researchers, the volcano caused a very violent tsunami to hit the northern coast of Crete, destroying the
ships and the ports. Whether or not the eruption destroyed the Minoan civilization is still in debate, but obviously it undermined it.
What took a thousand years to build cannot be rebuilt in only a few years. In an ongoing debate, researchers date the volcanic eruption
sometime between 1650 and 1500 BCE, although recently the date has narrowed to between 1627 and 1600 BCE. The Phaistos Disk is dated about
1700 to 1650 BCE because of the date it acquired from the Linear A tablet found with it in the charred rubble of Phaistos palace.
We may never know the actual date of the creation of the Phaistos Disk, but because it may be a record of the volcano and the
tsunami we perhaps can use the disk to help date the volcano, and vice versa. The Great Pyramid on the disk might also represent the volcano.
Because of the size of this historic record, only a little over 6" diameter, and because of the times in which it was created, when syncretisms were
in use more than now, this image and the others on the disk can represent two or more things/ideas. In the following two paragraphs, Manfred Lurker
writes about syncretism in reference to ancient Egypt but which can certainly apply to Minoan Crete.
The spiritual world of the ancient Egyptians is not immediately understandable by the western civilizations of the
twentieth century...We may find it ridiculous for artists to represent the sky as a cow, or for a beetle to be venerated as a symbol of the sun
god, but in past ages, among peoples having a mythical view of the world, the formative principle was not of logic but of an outlook governed by
images...The whole symbolic evocation rests upon the supposed, and in the end actual, correspondence of things, on the relationship between
microcosm and macrocosm as intuitively understood by the mind and visually by the eye...The ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians, and to some
extent the Greeks, used images; their view of the world was a comprehensive one.
...A symbol has manifold significance and therefore its origin and purpose cannot often be explained satisfactorily.
Sometimes the symbol seems to contradict itself. There are, in fact, symbols which refer to both poles of existence: life and death, good and
evil. (Introduction, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Egypt, Manfred Lurker, Thames and Hudson, publishers, 1974.)

As example of contradictory symbols, suppose this equilateral triangle is a pictograph of the volcano
(right) filled with 20 pieces of molten rock and ash. It may also represent the icosahedron, later to become one of the
five Platonic solids, an equilateral triangle composed of 20 equilateral triangles. What would be the relationship between the three?
What may have been an obvious relationship to the Minoans would be, for us, as strange as thinking a cow also represents the sky.
But would our world be any less mystifying to the Minoans if they could study us as we study them? Would they not go nuts trying to
comprehend what we intend by all our corporate symbols? Maybe some civilization in the distant future will forget the purpose of
corporations but still raise up a bunch of scholars who claim to decipher the strange symbols and hold endless debates as to their meanings.
If this image (far left and up above) represents an exterior view of both the Great Pyramid and the
great volcano, then by using intuition we can understand it. They look similar, they are both monumental in the Bronze Age, one as a
creation and the other as a goddess-made destruction. It may even be that the Minoans believed that viewing the goddess
(2nd left) with their telescopes (3rd left) from within the pyramid, and climbing to the top of the
pyramid to get nearer to her, unveiled her so extensively that she was offended and she assaulted their world with her tsunami
(the wave pictograph, 4th left, and the spirals on the disk), that emanated from the center of the volcano which is also the
center of the disk (see up above). Perhaps they hypothesized that the Great Pyramid itself was offensive to her.
(Click the pyramid to see a larger image.)
In another pyramid image, an interior
view, also found on the same side of the disk as the other pyramid (above right and right) by connecting all 10 identical
golden fleece signs (5th left), the golden fleece representing perhaps the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, the
goddess is highlighted by a door leading to a lower level. This seems to confirm the idea that their purpose for being at the pyramid was to
get a closer look at her and that she was at the "bottom" of the Minoan eruption, i.e. causing it. The Phaistos Disk was found in a room with a
trap door entrance. This trap door in the pyramid may indicate the astronomer-priests placed another disk in the subterranean chamber of the
Great Pyramid, perhaps for safe keeping, as a record of the Minoan eruption and tsunami and their explanation of why it happened. Alternately,
this second pyramid may be Kephren.
This could be the precursor, even the foundation, of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
In the Bronze Age, the astronomers got too close to the goddess, like Icarus who flew so high that Ra melted his wings. Because she was
displeased with them she made a volcano erupt in a time when no one had ever seen or heard of such a thing. It must have seemed like the
end of the world, brought about by an angry goddess. Later on, perhaps in a Bible transformation, the goddess became god and the Great Pyramid
became the Tower of Babel.
How would such a catastrophy as the Minoan eruption be interpreted by people in the Bronze Age? We have scientists to tell us
about these things and so did the Minoans, but their science was interwoven with their theology, so that an event of this magnitude would be
interpreted as an act of goddess. The ten plagues of Egypt, as example, were interpreted within a theological context but in actuality they
may have been the result of the Minoan eruption. That theory is not widely accepted due to the differences in the dates of the Exodus (1450 BCE)
and the eruption (1628 BCE), but it is normal human behavior to interpret cataclysmic events as apocalyptic. Today our general education and
knowledge about things and the past allows us to reverse some apocalypses. Lately, we have begun to interpret the destruction of Atlantis
within the context of our knowledge of the Minoan eruption. We are assisted in this interpretation by the phenomenal Minoan culture that
seems to us to be too advanced for the times so that it must have been Atlantis.
Now that we have the final piece, the technology of the Minoans, in place it seems quite possible to conclude that the fabled civilization of Atlantis perhaps was Minoan Crete.
In the great legend, Atlantis was destroyed because they
offended the gods with their technology, and here we have on the Phaistos Disk the idea of it, that the Minoan-astronomer priests took
their theology to such heights, literally and figuratively, that they understood completely the creation of the universe and their place within it.
But they understood it via their man-made technology, their telescopes, their
binoculars, their astronomical measuring devices (left), things the goddess did not grant them at birth but that they
acquired on their own, like little gods. The knowledge they gained from these devices was self-derived as they peered into her and measured
her and performed vivisection via astronomy. Is this how they offended her so that she set out to punish them? Like God granting humanity the
favor of punishment, rather than total destruction, in his gift of Noah's Ark, the Goddess granted Minoans salvation through her gift of ships,
symbolized by the Constellation Argo on the disk (right). There we see Jason's ark, loaded with Argonauts (Arkonauts),
Minyae and other life indigenous to Minoan Crete, riding the spiral wave of the tsunami and all around them the people and things swept away by
the tsunami to float in the waters of the Aegean Sea.
If only we could look back in time, back through the stars, we might see the civilization of Minoan Crete and the people arriving at
Knossos Palace before the flood. From the perspective of the ancient Greeks, who spread the Atlantis story so effectively that all the
world knows it, a fabulous civilization did really exist out in the ocean, or under it as the story goes. But that could be because of the
Minoan buildings and upside-down Doric columns swept to the bottom of the sea by the tsunami, to be explored in the aftermath by divers
looking for loot and stories to tell of fishes swimming amongst the ruins of a lost city under the sea. Atlantis, and its human-devised
technology, was destroyed because it overstepped its boundaries into those of the divine, and this could have been the interpretation given to
the tsunami by the Minoans who, lacking the science of Tectonics, had no other methods of understanding it. (Above, viaduct
entrance to the Palace of Knossos.)
For many researchers who study the Minoan civilization, the story of Atlantis must surely be a story about Minoan Crete,
and the Phaistos Disk may well be a story of the Minoan eruption. Fortunately for us, Daedalus may have included on the disk not only the
story of how the goddess attacked them with volcano and tsunami, but also he recorded the knowledge the astronomer-priests acquired via their
offensive technology that so angered her. Part of their interpretation of the volcano and tsunami could be that the goddess was jealous of them
because their civilization was so beautiful that it competed with her own beauty. Later on in Greek mythology we see this theme quite a bit.

MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF CRETE
1. Myth/legend of bull sports and bull-worship
2. Very early myths of the Olympian gods and goddesses
3. Legend of Jason and the Argonauts pursuing the Ram with the Golden Fleece
4. The Sacred Oak of Dodona, Oracle of Dodona, legend of the Argos
5. Langue Argotique or Lost Language of the Argo
6. Legend of Daedalus and the Maze of Daedalus
7. Myth of the god Dionysis and legend of his biennial festivals
8. Legend of the Minotaur, the half-human, half-bull being
9. Legend of Greek dancers and the Crane Dance or Dance of the Labyrinth
10. Myth of Rhea, birth of Zeus in a cave in Crete, and the birthing stone of Zeus
Minoan Crete (ca. 2000 BCE - 1200 BCE)
was a world cultural center, an island in the Aegean Sea, a cultural transmitter. The civilization of Minoan Crete was the epitome of
artistic achievement during the Mediterranean Bronze Age, which came to Crete ca. 2600 BCE. Crete was the first great sea power, easily
accessible with undefended settlements. Little is known, historically, about the Cretan religion, which involved worship in caves, on mountain
tops, and in domestic shrines. The Great Goddess may have been named Rhea, and Zeus might have been called Ja
(my opinion only). There were bull sports and bull sacrifice and a famous legend of the Minotaur - half bull, half human - who roamed the Maze of Daedalus
and ate Greeks. Twinkling in the night skies above were all the constellated gods, including Jason and the Argonauts in their constellated ship, the
Argo, that was made of psychic timber from the oaks of the oldest oracle in history, the Oracle at
Dodona, in the mountains of what is now northern Greece.
Greece had almost forgotten, though the poet [Homer] had not, that the island [Crete] whose wealth seemed to him even
then so great had once been wealthier still; that it had held sway with a powerful fleet over most of the Aegean and part of mainland Greece; and
that it had developed, a thousand years before the siege of Troy, one of the most artistic civilizations in history. Probably it was this Aegean
culture—as ancient to him as he is to us— that Homer recalled when he spoke of a Golden Age in which men had been more civilized, and life more
refined, than in his own disordered time. (Will Durant, Life of Greece)
Out in the deep dark sea there lies a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land, washed by the sea on every side and boasting
ninety cities. One of these cities is called Knossos, and there King Minos ruled and enjoyed the friendship of almighty Zeus.
(Homer)
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Houses and People of Minoan Crete. Put the people in their houses.
(My tracings, color added.)
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ISLE OF CRETE
According to popular legends of this Greek island in the Mediterranean Sea, Crete had many active ports, a powerful and
unchallenged navy, beautiful palaces, superb architects, excellent hydraulic engineers, and people who loved bull sports. But this Bronze
Age prosperity was no defense against the volcano, the earthquakes and the tidal wave that was supposed to have destroyed the Minoan
civilization in just one day and night. The civilization may not have been completely destroyed by the volcano. This legend of the
destruction of Crete by volcano may be the blending of events in history and mythology - the eruption of the volcano, the tsunami,
and the legendary destruction of Atlantis in just one day and night. The phenomenal civilization of Crete was greatly damaged by the
volcano and appparently rebuilt over a 500 year period.
It is not easy for us to conceive of a Bronze Age
civilization creating "modern art." But if you take into consideration that their taste in art and their peaceful lifestyle had been
established for at least 1000 years, you can understand how they became brilliant artists, overreaching even modern art. Give art enough time
to develop uninterrupted, and it will. The Minoans, like the Mayas, enjoyed stylizing nearly everything in art. Even some of the pictographs
on the Phaistos Disk are stylized. This artistic approach makes some of those pictographs hard to identify. For example, left is an interesting
and nearly impossible pictograph to identify from the Phaistos Disk. I called it an amoeba for a long time before I thought to view it upside
down to see if I could identify it. As you can see, it is a stylized pig. It is also a sacred pig.
According to one of the Cretan legends regarding Zeus-Dionysus, as related by
Athenæus, the animal which nourished with its milk the young god of
the cave was a sow. "Wherefore all the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and
will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Præsos perform sacred rites with the
sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice. (Donald Mackenzie, Myths of Crete)
Here is another one that was tough to identify
because it is upside-down and stylized. I called it a trash can for a long time until I decided to see what it might be upside-down.
As you can see, it is most likely a hoof and leg of a bull, or perhaps an ox. The Egyptians had a ancient, sacred ritual involving the
cutting off of the bull's hoof and leg. After that, the bull's leg is presented in ceremony to Osiris (right, Papyrus of Ani).
From our perspective, the advanced Minoan civilization is incompatible with our modern snobbery about the people who lived
thousands of years ago, but perhaps that is because we know so little about it. Minoans invented paved roads, and paved them with shells and rocks.
From all accounts of the people, they lived comfortably in adobe townhomes with rooftop patios and enjoyed plumbing and bathtubs. The queen's
bathroom at Knossos had a flushing toilet. The gay frescos on the walls of the palaces portray the people as wealthy, carefree, sophisticated
and uninhibited. They apparently lived well, had a healthy diet of pork, fowl, fish, crab, grain, fruit, olives and vegetables. And they
enjoyed the companionship of dogs.
Minoans wore various fashionable hats and headgear. Their clothing was very fashionable.
Interactive Fashion show in Minoan Crete. Rearrange the models.
The spindle for cloth was necessary to fashionable Minoan Crete, where the designer of clothes oversaw the creation of the beautiful
gowns worn by the elegant women of Crete.
Just as the Phæacian [Cretan] men are skilled beyond others as mariners, so are the women the most
accomplished at the loom. The goddess Athene has given them much wisdom as
workers, and richest fancy. (Donald Mackenzie, Myths of Crete)
"The Cretans had
advanced into the later stage of Neolithic culture...and, as it is of special interest to note, clay
and stone spindle whorls, indicating that the art of spinning was well
known." (Mackenzie)
MINOAN POTTERY




Crete had four major palace cities,
Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Zakro. The palace at Phaistos (left)
is a long way from a mud hut dwelling we might associate with the Bronze Age. (Why do we think we're so advanced, because we have washing machines,
dishwashers, and cars?) If Phaistos was overshadowed by Knossos alone, it must have been a magnificent palace. Phaistos was:
...a palace only less extensive than that of the Cnossus kings. Phaestus becomes a Cretan Piraeus, in love with commerce
rather than with art. And yet the palace of its prince is a majestic edifice, reached by a flight of steps forty-five feet wide; its halls
and courts compare with those at Cnossus; its central court is a paved quadrangle of ten thousand square feet; its megaron, or reception room,
is three thousand square feet in area, larger even than the great Hall of the Double Ax in the northern capital.
(Durant)
The central court at Phaistos probably was used for dancing and could have accommodated hundreds of dancers.
The Minoans were early Greeks, so it goes without saying they danced. Almost all the artifacts from Crete have spirals, so it goes without
saying they danced in spirals. Greek dancers still dance the pyrrhic, or Armed Dance, sometimes called Kronou Teknophagia,
meaning "Crane Dance" and the "Dance of the Labyrinth." In the tradition of this dance, the movements are performed from
right to left, then left to right, then stationary or slowly before an altar. Homer, in Chapter 18 of The Iliad, gives an account of a
dance floor designed by Daedalus for Ariadne at Knossos, where the dancers would dance in circles and then dance in lines. Mostly likely, the
circles were spirals, and the lines connected the spirals. The tradition of dance in Crete is an historical preservation.
A painting from Cnossus preserves a group of aristocratic ladies, surrounded by their gallants, watching a dance by gaily
petticoated girls in an olive grove; another represents a Dancing Woman with flying tresses and extended arms; others show us rustic
folk dances, or the wild dance of priests, priestesses, and worshipers before an idol or a sacred tree. Homer describes the 'dancing-floor which once,
in broad Cnossus, Daedalus made for Ariadne of the lovely hair; there youths and seductive maidens join hands in the dance.... and a divine bard sets
the time to the sound of the lyre. (Durant)
At Phaestus, about 2000, he builds ten tiers of stone seats, running some eighty feet along a wall overlooking a flagged court.
(Durant)
In Middle Minoan I the earliest palaces occur: the princes of Cnossus, Phaestus, and Mallia build for themselves luxurious
dwellings with countless rooms, spacious storehouses, specialized workshops, altars and temples, and great drainage conduits that startle the
arrogant Occidental eye. (Durant)
CLICK TO SEE THE QUEEN'S BATHROOM

DANCE OF THE LABYRINTH
The central point in the star Sirius, directly beneath which is the island of Crete
represented by the flower at the center of side 1, would be what the Pythagoreans,
later on in history, understood to be the vertex, the zenith or point in the heavens directly overhead. Vortex has a correlation to vertex and means to
turn or rotate, which is one idea behind the spirals on the disk. If you turn or rotate the disk in a clockwise direction, you get an idea of the
concept of vertex-vortex because of the movement of the spiral when the disk is set in motion (below). An illusion is
created of a triangle that seems to spin counterclockwise inside two polygons that spin clockwise. The things chaotically mixed together by the
spin of the universe are organized by this geometry. This is like the stationary pole star and the procession of the other stars around it.
This spinning image is my exact tracing of side 1 of the Phaistos Disk (color inverted).
I dotted each of these identical pictographs (Minyae/Crested Dancers) on side 1 of the Disk and connected them with lines to find a triangle inside
two pentagons. I rotated the design clockwise, using a gif animation tool to make it spin. Like the Greeks in Dance of the Labyrinth, the disk
turns clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. If only Daedalus could see this! It looks like he might have intended the cave design to
help create the idea of setting the disk in motion, and he did a very good job of it. I felt encouraged to give it a whirl to see what developed.
It is not impossible that Daedalus, wanting to demonstrate the principle
of motion relative to the observer, conceived of an optical illusion such as this and, lacking gif animation tools, used his imagination to set the disk
in motion. More likely would be the invention of a dance (left). In the Dance of the Labyrinth - Kronou Teknophagia or
Crane Dance - the dancers start in the center of one spiral and dance around to the center of the other spiral, while the dancers on the other
spiral do the same. A huge Phaistos Disk design like this one below might even have been drawn onto the dance floor!
When the dancers cross from one side to the other, they cross from the 4th layer of one spiral onto the 5th
layer or outer ring on the other spiral. The dancers on the other side do the same, the two groups moving in circles in opposite directions, as
seen on his artifact from Crete. When they cross over they dance along the outside spiral first, and then they move in toward the inner circle.
When the inner circle is reached, they turn and dance in the opposite direction back to the other side. With their dance, the divine Curetes
protect the mother and child and celebrate the birth of a new Olympian.
There, too, the skilful artist's hand had wrought, With curious
workmanship, a mazy dance, Like that which Daedalus in Knossos erst At
fair-hair'd Ariadne's bidding framed. There, laying on each other's
wrist their hand, Bright youths and many suitor'd maidens danced: In fair
white linen these; in tunics those Well woven, shining soft with fragrant
oils . . . Now whirl'd they round with nimble practised feet, Easy, as
when a potter, seated, turns A wheel, new fashioned by his skilful
hand, And spins it round, to prove if true it run: Now featly mov'd in
well-beseeming ranks. A numerous crowd, around, the lovely dance Survey'd,
delighted. (Homer, Iliad, from Mackenzie)
Hereon there danced youths and maidens whom all would woo, with their hands on one another's wrists. The maidens wore robes of
light linen, and the youths well woven shirts that were slightly oiled. The girls were crowned with garlands, while the young men had daggers of
gold that hung by silver baldrics; sometimes they would dance deftly in a ring with merry twinkling feet, as it were a potter sitting at his work
and making trial of his wheel to see whether it will run, and sometimes they would go all in line with one another, and much people was gathered
joyously about the green. (Homer, Iliad)
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STAR SIRIUS
STAR SIRIUS
By connecting all these identical pictographs of shields (7 tiny circles arranged hexagonally inside a circle) found on the same side
of the disk as the two pyramids, we derive a pentagram inside a heptagon. The pentagram is probably the star Sirius, the largest,
brightest star in the sky (its movements tracked by the ancient Egyptians in their sothic calendars to keep accurate time). Also revealed
by this method are probably the 7 planets, including the sun and the moon, on the outside spiral as the points of the heptagon.
During the Bronze Age, the star was
considered to be the goddess, known as Isis in Egypt and Rhea(?) in Crete. Here we see the goddess surrounded by the shields/planets. All the world is
her stage, which she is building with geometry, and she is bringing into the physical world the players, all the unique souls who are emerging from her
in a spiral. But when she is angered this becomes the path of tsunami, so we see she has the power to create and destroy by the same archetypal pattern,
the wave spiral, as expressed in this As Above, So Below (left)
theology.
Above is the
Phaistos Disk image with all but the shield pictographs removed. Connecting the pictographs this way leaves one identical pictograph unconnected. The
unconnected dot can be connected in an alternate way of connecting the shields, which also demonstrates this theology of the star as the
Great Mother in the process of giving birth to the physical world (above right).
When the goddess is creating, she pours into the soul spaces of the vast vortex, into space-time, her children.
But the ancient myth tells us that the babies could not protect themselves from their father Kronos (time), who began to devour them.
When Zeus was born in a cave in Crete among the "Idaean Kuretes, race divine," (Hippolytus, Philosophumena in
Mead's Thrice-Greatest Hermes), Rhea deceived Kronos by giving him a stone wrapped like a baby, which he devoured
instead of the child.


Rhea entrusted the care of Zeus to five immortal Curetes, also called Dactyls, meaning fingers (second left).
There are exactly five Dactyl pictographs on the Phaistos Disk. Rhea (fifth left, the baby Zeus on her lap)
stationed around Zeus nine warriors to protect him (the number of shields above not comprising the points of the star). The warriors were
grandsons of the Dactyls and iron smelters, who beat on their shields to drown the sound of the baby's cries (left).
Thus, Kronos could not hear the child crying and devour him. This image of Rhea (above) bears the influence of the
Isis-Osiris mythology in which Isis, after the death of Osiris, feds the baby Dictys with her finger while with the other hand she beats her
breast in mourning.
Rhea hid the
baby Zeus in a cave on Crete (right) and then invented the Dance of the Labyrinth (Kronou Teknophagia or Crane Dance) to amuse Zeus
and to protect him. The Curetes saved Zeus, thus earning his favor and becoming his chosen people, and Zeus eventually overthrew his hungry
father Kronos. Then, Rhea taught the dance to the Curetes (Cretans), who preserved the tradition and re-enacted the cosmic drama in the
Dance of the Labyrinth.

BIRTHING STONE OF ZEUS
The Phaistos Disk may actually be the legendary Birthing Stone of Zeus.
Let us imagine that a new divine Curete and Olympian is being born to a mother in Crete, and the tradition is to follow in the path of
the story of Rhea and Zeus. The priests are called, the warriors assemble with their shields, and the dancers prepare. But what of the
child's destiny? Which arktype is the child, what soul-stuff is it made of, what soul space is it born into, under what planet and what
ruler, under what star sign, and in which hour of which day of which month? All of these could be determined by the priests of Rhea and
oracles of Dodona, who perhaps could predict precisely the fortune of the baby if they had the Phaistos Disk in hand. The child could not go
astray when a birth horai-scope was cast, when a horai or guide was present,
and when the path was lit by the bright eyes of the goddess and of her son Zeus twinkling above in the sky. The Phaistos Disk Birthing Stone of
Zeus Horai-scope might have worked like this.


Auspiciously born in the first day (first line segment at center of disk, side 1) of the first month of the New Year, at the heliacal
rising of Sirius, the child is born under the protection of Zeus. A baby daughter might take up her place as the queen of a palace and
give birth to more divine Curetes. She will be the flower (1) at the center of the birthing stone, like her mother. And if a son, he may
shave his head and become an astronomer-priest (2) in the service of the goddess. Or, being a true Minyae or Minoan, he may become an Argonaut and
take up his place as another King Minos or sail the Aegean in service to the king. (3)
 Born on the second day of the first
month, under the protection of Poseidon, the divine son may be an Olympian in the tradition of Herakles. (1) Or, if a daughter, she may be a designer of
clothes, overseeing the creation of the beautiful gowns worn by the elegant women of Minoan Crete and teaching the use of the spindle. (2)
Born on the third day, the son may become an architect like Daedalus, builder of palaces. (1)
The daughter may become an oracle at Dodona and carry a thysri, (2) wise in the ways of prophecy and careful to give good instruction to
seekers. Or she may be high priestess of the Sacred Oak. (3) The son has a second vocation, no less important than that of Aeson, seeker
of the golden fleece. (4) And he will have good fortune and find the fleece and return it to Zeus, as prophesied. (5) Whenever the child is
born, the warriors take their places (6) and the dancers assemble (7) so the celebration can begin. The warriors begin banging their shields
to drown the cries of the baby so Kronos cannot hear them and take it. This protects the baby from dying right away, as child death in childbirth
must surely have been a problem in the Bronze Age.


Born on the 4th day, the divine powers expressed in the 1st day now reappear in the 4th, and the birth is
very auspicious. The daughter may become a queen, the son a priest or Minyae king.

 
Born on the 5th day, the child is destined for greatness, yet not so much as being born in the
first two layers of the spiral. Moving into the 3rd layer or firmament, into which Rhea pours her children, this layer of soul-stuff
is further from the goddess and is losing its divine potential. Now, the daughter is the priestess of the Sacred Oak (1) at Dodona, but not the
high priestess, and the son no longer builds palaces but paved roads (2) instead. He may become a carpenter or leatherworker and make use of an awl. (3)
Born on the 6th day, the birth is auspicious.
The son may become an Olympic runner like Herakles, and the daughter again may design clothing and use the spindle.
If the Phaistos Disk functioned as
the Birthing Stone of Zeus, then this design of the starry goddess must surely have been concealed from all but the priests. Its presence explains the
religious philosophy behind the method of augury in the birth of a child and the divination of its probable future. The augury continues in the 4th and
5th layers, where some vocations and professions are not so lofty but still important to the operation of the brilliant civilization of Minoan Crete.

LINEAR "A FOR ANGELIC"?
In the Egyptian sense, it is SIRIUS the Dog-Star, the Star or Isis-Sothis. Around it are the Stars of the
Seven Planets each with its seven-fold counterchanged operation. (Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn)
Regardie, in his commentary above, never saw the image on the Phaistos Disk. He is commenting on these mystery school images
below, which come from much later times in history, their origins considered to be very mysterious. Below left, Keys in the Enochian Language by
John Dee (16th c. CE); 2nd left, Osiris altar, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 20th c.;
3rd left, ceiling of the tomb of Christian Rosenkreuz, 18th c. CE, Roscicrucian; 2nd group, left, floor of the tomb of Christian Rosenkreuz, 18th c. CE,
Roscicrucian; 2nd left, Keys in the Enochian language, geometry design, bottom right, star of the Phaistos Disk.
 I found the mysterious Keys in the Enochian
Language (left, my tracing with color.), a one-off design until I found it on the Phaistos Disk. I used the Keys design as a guide to draw the star image on the disk. The Keys has a fascinating origin. When Queen Mary of England,
Bloody Mary, imprisoned her half-sister Elizabeth in a nice country estate, Elizabeth was never sure that she would live to adulthood. In 1551, she
met the renowned scholar, traveler and astrologer John Dee and asked him for a horoscope. Dee correctly predicted Elizabeth would rise to a high place
in the kingdom and live to old age and that Queen Mary would die childless. When Elizabeth gained the throne of England, she made Dee court astrologer
and a wealthy man.
In 1581, Dee had an experience in which "there suddenly glowed a dazzling light, in the midst of which, in all his glory stood the
great angel, Uriel." I know what that's like. I had a very similar experience with the dazzling light. Uriel told Dee that if he would obtain a "shewstone" (crystal) and gaze into it, he could communicate with otherworldly beings.
Dee complied but he never could see anything, so he hired a series of scryers, all unsuccessful until he hired Edward Kelley, an alchemist and
Hermeticist who wrote Theater of Terrestrial Alchemy. Kelly scryed into a black obsidian disk and said he saw an image in the crystal that
hung there while he made a wax copy of it. He called it "The Keys in the Enochian Language," the image above, left. He said it contained the
language of angels and of the inhabitants of the Garden of Eden (script, below left and right of the tablet). Dee and Kelley
believed it to be a pre-Hebraic language, which they learned to speak. Kelley would look into the crystal and see a "Spiritual Creature, like a
pretty girl of seven or nine years of age." She called herself Madimi, and Dee named one of his daughters after her. The spirit Madimi pointed out to
Kelley letters and symbols on the Keys design, and Kelley relayed the information to Dee.
Similarly,
the Phaistos Disk was found with a Linear A tablet (left, but not the one found with the disk) containing an undecipherable
script that is considered to be the precursor to the Linear B script, which has been deciphered. These scripts evolved into the Greek language alphabet.
That both these pent/hept symbols would involve undecipherable scripts seems to me to be more than coincidence. Resemblances are obvious on comparison
of the symbols on the Keys in the Enochian Language with the symbols of Linear A, although it seems neither advances the other in terms of my understanding
of what they mean. Maybe someone else would have better luck. Certainly, Linear A qualities as a pre-Hebraic language, and Minoan Crete, though
remarkably idyllic, was not the Garden of Eden, although from Dee's perspective it could have seemed that way. Will Linear "A" ever be deciphered?
It is a very mysterious language indeed.
At Phaestus we find a kind of prehistoric printing: the hieroglyphs of a great disk unearthed there from Middle Minoan
III strata are impressed upon the clay by stamps, one for each pictograph; but here, to add to our befuddlement, the characters are apparently not
Cretan but foreign; perhaps the disk is an importation from the East. (Will Durant referencing two writers, G. Glotz,
Aegean Civilization, 1925, and Jas. Baikie, Sea-Kings of Crete, 1926.)
LINEAR A



LINEAR "A FOR ARGOTHIC"?
Is the legendary Argothic Language portrayed on the tablet (above) as Linear A? The Argothic
Language (Langue Argotique, Language of the Argos) is said to be the Secret Language of Jason and the Argonauts. Perhaps there is a
clue here as to the origin of Linear A when wordplaying the name Jason to Jesus.
By those correlations, the language may be the "language of the angels."
Argothic Language, which may have been a type of picture writing, might have involved the Constellation Argos and other
ships of the sky (constellations) that seem to be revolving around the Pole Star and along the ecliptic. As the stars spin overhead, they
create relative positions that were plotted by seafaring Minoans in Crete. Many of these became the constellations we know today. Mariners at
Phaistos, Crete, probably dotted the location of each star and connected the dots with lines. The intersecting lines were an invisible matrix in
space. From this matrix came the constellations and the mariners' ability to predict the movement of the stars.
Perhaps from this matrix came the secret language, a mariners' language based on the movement of stars, star groups, and
constellations, that developed from their special knowledge and that perhaps they wore as skin tattoos. This language, derived from early
nautical methods of keeping time and location while on the Aegean, is a dead language in the most literal sense. It perhaps was written as
skin tattoos worn by Minoan sailors, and when they died, it died with them. This could explain why no archaeological evidence of it can be
found save the Phaistos Disk, on which it was preserved. The same clay stamps used to create the disk could also be applied to the skin with a
special stain, and then the pictographs were etched by tattoo artists into designs or were simply freehanded without the stamps.
But the perishable nature of the materials on which picture-writing, having for most part only a temporary value,
was usually wrought has been fatal to the survival of primitive European pictographs on any large scale. If we had before us the articles of bark
and hide and wood of early man in this quarter of the globe or could still see the TATTOO marks on his skin we should have a very different idea of
the part once played by picture-writing on European soil. As it is, it is right that the imagination should supply the deficiency of existing evidence.
(Sir Arthur Evans, Cretan Pictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script)
Perhaps the Argothic Language was perceived as a gift from the gods who were also perceived to be residents of stars overhead
if not the stars themselves. The language of the stars was divinely given to the Argonauts, but only the mariners could understand it - the
language of the skin tattoos was the language of the stars - and they could, as a result of this great gift, navigate the ocean. They could
also keep track of daytime hours, nighttime hours, and the day and month if they had a version of the Phaistos Disk with them, a clay disk baked so
hard that the spray of salt water could not destroy it.
Therefore, the Argothic Language was not a spoken language, not a
written language, but was perhaps a picture writing language worn on the skin - as in the stars, so on the skin. It was a language that defined the
wearer as an Argonaut, a divine sailor bound to that which is above and that which is below - the ships of the stars on the rolling waves of Oceanus.
Try to learn to read the Argothic Language, by doing the following: Connect the identical dots or pictographs with lines.
This will reveal the star groups and constellations. Read the pictographs in light of what you know about the Minoan Civilization and about
Jason and the Argonauts.

PHAISTOS DISK SKIN TATTOOS - TATTOO LANGUAGE
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NAUTICAL TECHNOLOGY
The rope truss was a unique nautical technology
advancement of the Bronze Age, used to stiffen the beam of the ship (above). No other such use of the truss is
known until the days of modern engineering. Does this pictograph (left) show a sailor with a rope truss tattoo on his cheek?
According to mythology, the original Cretans or "Curetes" were Argonauts (Sailors of the Argo). They were the Minyae who established the Minoan
civilization. Perhaps the rope truss tattoo symbolizes the sailor's lineage as descendant of the Argonauts.
The art of rowing can first be discerned upon the Nile. Boats with oars are represented in the earliest pictorial monuments
of Egypt; and although some crews are paddling with their faces towards the bow, others are rowing with their faces towards the stern.
(H.G. Wells)

Phaistos Disk with pictographs color-coded.

THE WORLD SOUL
The World Soul is a concept in mysticism credited to Plato but that may have originated in Bronze Age Crete as an early triumph in philosophy.
It simply states that behind the physical world lies the spirit world, and further that the physical world emerges from the pre-existant spirit world,
in the way that the individual souls emerge from Rhea. But this ancient concept was derived from an even more archaic source, from Sumer or Persia
perhaps, expressed as the Three Primordial Principles. It was supposed to be part of a widespread number philosphy during the Bronze Age. The Three
Primordial Principles were said to be the cause of the creation of the universe that came into being as a result of the interplay between the two
opposing principles and the intermediate principle of unity (left).
The two opposing principles usually were light and dark but
they also could be male and female. In our world of electromagnetism, this world that seems built on extreme polarity, we can see why we think this way.
It is just the way our minds work. Therefore, any philosophy we come up with as young humanity is bound to be based on this a priori condition.
This image from ancient sumer (right) shows the two opposing principles, the light, human female and the dark, male bullgod, and
the intermediate principle, the palm tree, which we might philosophically say is the Tree of Life.
During the Bronze Age we elaborated on
this realization that it takes not two but three to make the world go round, literally (left), and physics demands it. Given
enough time to develop the idea, several thousand years, we turned it into a field of study. It became pervasive throughout the Aegean world as the
scientific philosophy of the day, and later on in time we called it the Holy Trinity. In the Bronze Age we begin working on the mathematical and
geometrical applications of it and sharing with our neighbors in Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and Crete, by stealing the information back and forth. We needed
thousands of years to do this because we did not have radio, television, telephones, automobiles or internet. But we did have
Dodona in northwestern Greece, developing as the media hub of this ancient world, accessible to all
by the Aegean Sea, and we had many other sanctuaries throughout the Aegean world.
The number philosophy that eventually
developed
from the concept of the Three Primordial Principles and which supposedly was widespread in the Bronze Age, had at the heart of it a religious
science that apparently was shared by the astronomer-priests of the Aegean world. It was built upon early astronomy because the stars were the immortals.
This astronomy, involving the study of the properties of a circle and the geometry of a sphere, comes under the antique study of "containment of
geometrical arrangements." This concept of containment as being sacred is with us still in the legend of the Holy Grail, the cup containing the
water of life.
To the ancient astronomers and geometers, containment was sacred because the goddess created circles and spheres, triangles and
quadrilaterals, all geometrical forms intending both to build us a universe and bring us to knowledge of Her via the construction. Therefore, to
study these sciences is a great privilege because it involves both cosmogony and cosmology. The student becomes a participant in the ongoing
creation of the universe by merging with the process of creation via inspiration, and from this can come a great inventor like Daedalus who reinvents
the world by inventing things and ideas for it. In the Minoan world, this religious philosophy explained the origin of the universe and our place
within it by describing a perfect goddess in terms of Her science. For the students of this religious science, whether in the Bronze Age or the
modern age, that has not changed. Back then it probably was the basis of the widespread number philosophy of the Bronze Age.
In the beginning, this goddess in the higher realms of light began to emanate the world, which flowed out of her, and thus exists
as a reflection of her realm in an as above, so below reality. This goddess, who exists as queen of the heavens, the brightest star, began to spin
the world out of her in a spiral, which is evidenced in the motion of the constellations around her. Later on in time, this concept takes an abstract
form to become Mind and Idea, with the concept that the Creator, who is beginning to be conceived of as male, exists alone in the universe and has the
idea to create a world to keep himself company. But this world he creates is illusory, a reflection of him and existing as his idea. In the Bronze Age,
the goddess emanated the world but it was real, not illusory, and patterned on her reality that contained 60 archetypes (Argotypes), made of 48 soul
types (Oarsmen).
In Emanationism, God had the idea to create a universe and that was
all it took. The universe is the Idea, and it takes something the size of a universe to be a true reflection of God. The universe is set in
motion by God thinking and thus is a moving reflection of the still Mind of God from which it emanated. The Phaistos Disk can be used to demonstrate
this. Connecting the two Thysri pictographs on side 2 creates diameter. From the physical spin of the diameter comes an illusion, something that is
both real and unreal. (My exact tracings of the disk, color inverted, animated gif.)
 One (Mind) |

Two (Idea/Reflection)
|
The animation creates an equal-arms cross,
in which length and width are the same, so that, with the addition of spin, these original two principles, Mind and Idea, produce a third
principle -- That Which Contains/That Which is Contained, the whole concept demonstrated by this Minoan symbol of the Goddess of the Double Axes (Axis?).
(right) From this idea comes the antique science of containment of geometrical arrangements, and perhaps this further
defines the origin and age of the cross as symbol. Much later on in early common era Gnosticism, the cross was Horos-Stauros, Horus Star or
Eye of Horus.
Through this transformation of myth via the ancient sky god Horus, son of the god Osiris, the star Sirius makes its transition
from being a great goddess to being a symbol of the birth of the son of God -- the Star of Bethlehem. Sirius maintains its status as the Eye of
God/dess. Making this transition with the symbol is the associated idea that the son of God has the ability to regenerate the human being to an
eternal Soul or Spirit-Soul. Included here are two images demonstrating these ideas, the first from the papyrus of Amon-M-Sut and the second
from the papyrus of Ta-Shed Khonsu, Cairo Museum.
In the first, Horus is symbolized by an upside-down falcon that is magically regenerating an individual using stars and disks,
the 5-pointed star representing Sirius. Above him is the fount and symbol of his magic, the winged disk in the boat of Ra. In the second image,
the individual is regenerated and now can travel to the higher dimensions, supported by the winged disk and the eyes of Horus.
That the disk is winged only makes sense, given that the supernatural being who intervenes to perform a miracle typically has
wings. The disk as That Which Contains contains all the necessary geometry to perform the regeneration. The idea of the angels as angles is an
old one, derived from this ancient religious science. Geometry is a spiritual component of the physical world because it exists in potentia
and is "invoked" like spirit when we begin connecting points with lines. Knowing these religious sciences as well as he did, Daedalus probably
conceived of a clever way to invent images that were both astounding to those who saw them and
instructive as well. Most likely, he was highly educated in the study of containment of geometrical arrangements, their relationship to
numbers (below), and the development of "method of exhaustion."
Method of exhaustion shows how to 'exhaust' the area of a circle by means of an inscribed polygon; if we successively
double the number of sides in the polygon, we will eventually reduce the difference between the area of the polygon (known) and the area of the
circle (unknown) to the point where it is smaller than any magnitude we choose. This method made it possible to calculate the area of a circle to
any desired degree of accuracy; with a little further development, it could be used to calculate the area within (or under) other curves as well
and to calculate the area bounded by certain spirals, and the surface area and volume of a sphere.
(David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, pp.88, 89)
The method of exhaustion was probably borrowed by Euclid from his predecessor Eudoxus, (Ibid)
(400-355 BCE), a Greek astronomer and mathematician credited with this inventive method of calculating proportion. The Phaistos Disk,
containing the geometry of a pentagram inside a heptagon (the big star Sirius), seems to show exhaustion in use 1200
years before Eudoxus.
The number philosophy, shown in the table below, makes of a circle, in the mystical sense and in terms of mysticism of a
much later period, an alchemical vessel, a Mixing Bowl, in which can be seen and analyzed the alchemical stages in the action of the Absolute
in differentiating Self into a phenomenal universe through geometry. Each alchemical stage is introduced with 1-13 of the 13 precepts of the
Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary alchemical enigma and text puzzle from a much later period in history. Various cultures
claim to have discovered the Emerald Table-Tabula Smaragdina. In one account of discovery, Alexander the Great found the table in the
tomb of Hermes (Thoth). In another account, Sarah the wife of the biblical Abraham, found the entombed Hermes holding in his hands his table.
Alternately, the precepts may have been written in Syriac.
These precepts of Hermes were cherished with a kind of religious fervour by the adepts (of alchemy), who looked
upon them as summarising in a concealed form the fundamental secrets of alchemy and of the Philosopher's Stone.
(John Read, F.R.S., From Alchemy to Chemistry)
In this geometry theology, ultimate reality is numerical, number is the key to the universe, and triangles are the
fundamental building blocks of the cosmos; therefore, geometry is sacred. Included in the table are the precepts of Hermes.

EMERALD TABLE - CONTAINMENT OF GEOMETRICAL ARRANGEMENTS
 The number One The Point within the Circle
"I speak not fictitious things, but that which is certain and true." |
 The number Two Diameter The Cross within the Circle
"What is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that
which is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing." |
 The number Three Triangle The Hearth of the
Universe "And as all things are produced by the one word of one Being, so all
things were produced from this one thing by adaptation." |
 The number Seven Heptagon, heptagram
"Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, acting prudently and
with judgment." |
 The number Eight Octagon, octagrams
"Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then again
descend to the earth, and unite together the powers of things superior and things inferior. Thus you will obtain the glory of the whole world, and
obscurity will fly far away from you." |
The number Nine Enneagon, enneagrams "This has more fortitude than
fortitude itself, because it conquers every subtle thing and can penetrate every solid. |
 The number Ten Dekagon, dekagrams
"Thus was the world formed." |
 The number Eleven Endekagon, endekagrams
"Hence proceed wonders, which are here established." |
The number Twelve Dodekagon, the dodekagrams "Therefore, I am called
Hermes Trismegistus, having three parts of the philosophy of the whole world." |
Precept 13. "That which I had to say concerning the operation of the sun is completed."
Geometry seems to have originated with the study of the vertex-vortex and involved,
pre-eminently, the triangle and its uses in describing the properties of a circle and the geometry of the sphere for use in astronomy. Traditionally, we
attribute this knowledge to the ancient Egyptians and credit them with the early work in geometry that involves this science of containment
of geometrical arrangements. But to attribute all this knowledge to the Egyptians and to say that the Minoans had no knowledge of this, or
were not major contributors to this early geometry, is to deny their brilliance and creative genius, which no right-minded person would do
that took the time to look at the rest of their mighty civilization. The Phaistos Disk proves the Minoan's accomplishments in this science.
The properties of a circle are described efficiently by pi, 3.1416.
The symbol for pi on the Phaistos Disk might be the "Y" sign, repeated 3 times on Side 1. The short line of the symbol is the radius (r) of a
circle and the long line is the diameter (d). The ratio of the circumference of a circle (c) to its diameter (d=2r) is a constant number called pi,
which equals c divided by 2r+3.1416. 2r with a vertex is a triangle = 3. A lingering association with the number 14 of 3.1416 could come from
Egyptian mythology, in which the god Typhon, out pig hunting (2nd left) with his dogs (3rd left),
chopped his brother Osiris into 14 pieces with an axe (4th right).
The Egyptian goddess Isis found all the pieces of Osiris that
Typhon had scattered, except for his "generative member." Unfortunately, it was eaten by the Nile crab and the "sharp-snout" fish.
As a result, the crab and the sharp-snout were venerated by the Egyptian priests and declared taboo to eat, along with the pig that ate some
other pieces of Osiris. The crab appears once on Side 1, the sharp-snout appears four times in Side 2 and twice on Side 1, and the pig once on side 1.
The tsunami also hit the coast of Egypt, which might explain why the crab and the sharp-snout are on seen swirling in the spirals of the Phaistos Disk.
The four sharp-snout fishes on side 1, when connected, produce an image like a "sharp-snout fish triangle" (right), which may be
indicative of the Minoan reinterpretation of the sharp-snout symbol.
In this geometry theology,
the triangle is "sacred" because it represents the "plain of truth," the "hearth of the universe" and thesis-antithesis-synthesis. In mysticism of a
much later time, gnosis (knowledge of holy things) is beyond reach unless one's feet have crossed the "plain of truth," meaning the study of Sacred
Geometry and the triangle, particularly the magic 3-4-5 triangle, the perfect right triangle (left), revealed by connecting
the 3 Daedalus Wings of Icarus pictographs on side 1 of the Phaistos Disk (2nd left).
The sacred 60 is also significant because long before 1600 BCE the 60-system of counting was used by the Mesopotamians, who were
avid astronomers as were the Egyptians. The application of the sexagesimal (60-system) system in astronomy was continued by Greek and Hindu
astronomers until about 500 CE. Since most of the constellation names originated in Crete and Greece, it is safe to say that because of the
symbols on the disk and the knowledge of the use of the 60-system by Greek astronomers much later, the 60-system was employed by the Minoans
in their astronomical calculations. The three 60's--the 60 soul types of the vertex-vortex, the 60 of the 3-4-5 triangle (3x4=12x5=60), and
the 60-system of counting in astronomy--are inseparable syncretisms, in terms of symbolisms found on the disk.
And they (crocodiles of the Nile) lay sixty [eggs] and hatch them out in as many days, and the longest-lived of them
live as many years-which is the first of the measures for those who treat systematically of celestial [phenomena].
(Timaeus of Plato, in Thrice-Greatest Hermes, G.R.S. Mead, Vol.3, p.198)
That is (re: the celestial phenomena), presumably, either the 60 of the Chaldaeans, or the 3x4x5 of the 'most perfect'
triangle of the Mathematici. (Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn)
The most perfect triangle, the right triangle, "has its perpendicular [side] of 'three', its base of 'four,' and its
hypotenuse of 'five...' (The Cosmopolite in Les Mystere des Cathedrales, Fulcanelli;)
And one might conjecture the Egyptians [also revered] the fairest of triangles, likening the nature of the universe
especially to this... (Regardie)
The Egyptians, millennia before Pythagoras, employed the magic 3-4-5 triangle of the Pythagorean Theorem, c2=a2+b2.
The result, 25, was the number of letters in the Egyptian alphabet. (W. Marsham Adams in Mead)
And five makes a square equal to the number of letters among Egyptians, and a period of as many years as the Apis lives.
(Mead)
Again, by the relative position of its (the ibis') legs to one another, and [of those] to its beak, it forms an equilateral triangle...
(Wallace Budge in Mead)
Not only the number 60 but also the number five was sacred because it symbolized the hypotenuse of the "perfect" 3-4-5 triangle,
the right triangle of the Pythagorean Theorem, divinized on the Phaistos Disk 1200 years or so before Pythagoras proved it.
For the 'three' is the first 'odd' and perfect; while the 'four' is square from side 'even' two; and the 'five'
resembles partly its father and partly its mother, being composed of 'three' and 'two.' (Plutarch in Mead, Vol.1, p.234)
We must, accordingly, compare its (right triangle) perpendicular to male, its base to female, and its hypotenuse to the offspring of
both; and [conjecture] Osiris as its source, Isis as receptacle, and Horus as result. (Plutarch in Mead, Vol.1, p.234)
And panta [all] is only a slight variant of pente [five]; and they (the Egyptians) call counting pempasasthai [reckoning by fives].
(Plutarch in Mead, Vol.1, p.234)
|
|
GREAT PYRAMID
CHEOPS, GREAT PYRAMID
And in that day the country that was more pious than all countries will
become impious. No longer will it be full of temples, but it will be full of tombs. Neither will it be full of gods but it will be
full of corpses. Egypt! Egypt will become like the fables. (Asclepius, the Nag Hammadi Papyri)
If the unconnected pictograph/dot is intentional, then it probably represents the great
pyramid Cheops, also invisible on this side of the disk and revealed by connecting the 6 identical pyramid pictographs. (below)
And suddenly we see not just geometrical designs but the Aegean world entire and the known universe - Crete, star Sirius, the 7 planets, the Great
Pyramid, Thera (Santorini), the wave spiral of creation and the tsunami of destruction.
This disk image of star and planets, which before was two-dimensional, now gains the third dimension of height because of the
relative reference point of the Great Pyramid. We are like Icarus flying above the maze looking down on it or like Horus flying with the winged disk.
From a great distance our perspective shifts to Eye of Horus view of the Aegean world, and our new depth perception of the disk is enhanced by the spiral.
With three dimensions suddenly in view, we are lacking only the representation of the fourth
dimension of time, which is included on this artifact.
Here is the same pent/hept
design with the star connected. It seems possible to me that both images are intentional to satisfy syncretism, one with an unconnected pictograph and
one image with the pictograph connected, the idea being that the disk could convey more information if two pent/hept designs were used. One
shows the location of the pyramid, the volcano, and the goddess in relation to the island of Crete, while the other demonstrates emphatically the
idea that both the world and the tsunami are emanating from the goddess Rhea above, who is the star Sirius. From the perspective of the Minoan
astronomer-priests, who were more personally acquainted with the tsunami than they were with the volcano and the ash, the wave of destruction that
emanated from the goddess also mirrored her spiral of creation.
Crete is exactly where it should be in this world-view - right at the center of it. This is an extraordinary way of
identifying the flower pictograph in the center of this side of the disk as the island of Crete, just beneath the center point in star Sirius.
The disk shows a "Crete-centric" universe and thus identifies itself as a Minoan artifact and describes not Egypt but Crete as the "flower" of the
Aegean world. This makes sense because of their theology. If not for the Minoans, the god Zeus would not have lived, would not have destroyed time
and death (Kronos), would not have instituted the Immortals. Therefore, the Minoans were the chosen people of the great goddess, and this may even
be the genesis of the concept of the "chosen people" as included in the Old Testament of the Bible. This theology, of course, has much older
connections in Egypt and involves Isis, Osiris and the god Horus. How these ancient civilizations shared their theologies is demonstrated by this
map of the trade routes during that time (below).
This map shows this correct east-southeast position and distance of the Great Pyramid (unconnected dot) in relation to the island of
Crete (the flower at the center of the spiral, just below the center point in the star). Also in the correct position and distance on the disk is the
location of Thera (red square and the center point in the star) in reference to the island of Crete.
In this respect the spiral represents the tsunami that spread from
Thera as brought about by the goddess directly overhead. In the macrocosm (as above), the spiral represents the motion of creation of the goddess,
but in the microcosm (so below), the spiral is the tsunami, the mirror image reversal of creation which is destruction. This idea is also
demonstrated by the second pent/hept image (above, right) in which the volcano at Thera, the center pictograph/dot of the star, is created by the
goddess and is causing the tsunami to emerge in waves from within her. Perhaps they understood that the goddess caused the volcano, and that the
volcano in turn caused the tsunami. In their world, theology would have preceded science, unlike our world in which the reverse is more often true.
(Left, Minoan vase with flowers at the center of wave spirals; Right, Minoan coin with 8-petaled flower at the center of the maze)

INSIDE THE PYRAMID

Connecting the 10 identical Golden Fleece signs (above) on Side 1 reveals another pyramid, at the bottom of which we see, not Theseus battling the Minotaur, but a view of the goddess (right)
illumined by a door leading to the lower level. The Great Pyramid has an entrance leading to a subterranean chamber. The doorless shed in
which the disk was found in Phaistos was entered through a trap door. Perhaps at one time, another such disk was left in the subterranean
chamber of the Great Pyramid but since has been removed and lost, or perhaps it is still hidden there. (If anyone wants to go look for it, I'm down :)
This view of the goddess seems to support the idea that Minoans were at the pyramid to view the goddess, the big star.
To find the pyramid twice on this disk, one an exterior view and the other an interior view, or to find two different pyramids on the disk,
leads me to conclude that Daedalus and the Minoan astronomers had personal knowledge of the interior of the pyramid and that they viewed the
stars from the interior as well as from the apex of the Great Pyramid, thus angering the goddess portrayed in this image.
Cheops has long been claimed as one of the most famous archaeoastronomical sites, and here we see a record of its use.
This familiarity with the Great Pyramid might also indicate that Daedalus and the Minoan astronomers knew the pharaoh, which could have been any
one of them from Khufu (Cheops) to Merneferre Ai.
The above disk image
may also indicate that the Aegean world and the known universe and all it included -- the star Sirius, the 7 planets, the Great Pyramid, Crete, Thera,
the volcano and tsunami -- was conceived of by them as existing inside a vast cosmic pyramid (right) that had its earthly
counterpart in the Great Pyramid.
The astronomers most likely climbed Cheops to view the night sky from the top of the world's tallest building, which would not have
helped nearly as much as having a telescope, but it does seem to be a good idea to go up there with your telescope. The Fleece (5) pictograph
(the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece) at the apex of this pyramid would seem to indicate a view of the Constellation Argo from the pyramid.
The boat (4) and oar (3) to the left of the fleece (or to the right, see above, apex of the pyramid) seem to confirm this, and to the right of the
fleece (5) might be a Minyae (6), an oarsman of the Argo. To the left of the oar is a symbol that could be a telescope (2), and certainly looks like one,
and to the left of that is the pyramid (1) pictograph. This exact series of identical pictographs in a line segment also occurs at the right base
of the pyramid.
It is tempting, of course, to read these pictographs like a language, but given the four images that appear on crowded side 1
of the disk -- the cave, the two pyramids, and the big star -- we have to allow that the pictographs were placed in their respective places in
order to produce these occulted images and were never a language. Linguists will eventually have to concede this, and even Sir Arthur Evans,
early on, identified the Phaistos Disk signs as pictographs rather than script.
To view and be able to portray a perfect image of the constellation Argo on the Phaistos Disk (right), Daedalus could have made
telescopes, and even binoculars (left), using rock crystals with optical quality for lenses. It seems likely that many of these
pictographs on the Phaistos Disk represent the stars and constellations viewed through those lenses. The Archaeological Museum in Herakleion, Crete has
many such lenses on display, several of them found in a sacred cave on Mt. Ida in Crete (3rd left).
In this cave, King Minos received his instructions directly from Zeus, according to mythology. Perhaps there was a secret cave
cult having to do with astronomy. The hoodwink of a robe pictograph (third left) on the Phaistos Disk also resembles the
entrance to a cave. The hoodwink might also symbolize rituals held inside the cave, where sacred knowledge was shared but kept secret.
The raised pictographs on the disk may be the "so below"
counterpart to the "as above" constellations. The disk is only about 6.25" diameter, a little bigger than a CD, yet contains 240 pictographs (121 one side,
119 the other), made with 48 different stamps that must have been very small. To put 48 constellations on something this small might require that some of
the pictographs that represent them be "abbreviated," which would make these pictographs, already difficult to define, even more challenging.
For example, the entire constellation Taurus might be represented by the bull's foot on the disk (left) or all of
Capricorn could be represented by the horn (left).
If the astronomer-priests used the disk(s)
for teaching, then they only needed a small part of the constellation in order to identify it. A pictograph that made perfect sense to the Minoans and
was immediately recognizable by them might make no sense to us at all. Furthermore, while the number of constellations, 48, remains the same, the Minoans
may have drawn the constellations differently or the constellations may have evolved into something quite different over time.
(Canis Major, right, revealed when the five
identical Boat signs on side 2 are connected with lines.)
Constellation Taurus as it is seen on the Phaistos Disk
(left) and the constellation as it is drawn today (right).
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Connect these identical pictographs with lines to drawn Taurus constellation.
The fact of orientation links up with the fact that there early arose a close association between various gods and
the sun and various fixed stars. Whatever mass of people outside were thinking, the priests of the temples were beginning to link the movements of those
heavenly bodies with the power in the shrine. They were thinking about the gods they served and thinking new meanings into them. They were
brooding upon the mystery of the stars. It was very natural for them to suppose that these shining bodies, so irregularly distributed and
circling so solemnly and silently, must be charged with portents to mankind…This clear evidence of astronomical inquiry and of a development
of astronomical ideas is the most obvious, but only the most obvious evidence of the very considerable intellectual activities that went on
within the temple precincts in ancient times. Outside the temples the world was still a world of blankly illiterate and unspeculative human
beings, living from day to day entirely for themselves. (H.G. Wells, The Outline of History)
VAULT TECHNOLOGY
According to the legend associated with the pyramid at Hawara in Egypt, Daedalus found it so a-maze-ing that he
designed his famous Maze of Daedalus according to this pyramid design. The pyramid suceeded because of the new saddle vault that was used to
stablize it. Did Daedalus design the vault? Is this what the vault sign shows, the current technology of stabilizing a pyramid?

Vault technology in the King's Chamber and Queen's Chamber inside Cheops pyramid.
The Minoans were renown commercial and residential architects and builders. Did they help build the Great Pyramid? If they did not
help in the building of the pyramid, Daedalus certainly knew the location of the door was that leads to the subterranean level.
(Y or Pi(?) sign, left, architecture inside Cheops pyramid, right)
Cheops is compared with Kephren's copycat pyramid (center) that lacks the "Pi" and vault technology.
Inside Cheops at the bottom is an entrance to the underground level where a shaft extends deep below the pyramid. On the Phaistos Disk is an
image that shows the location of this entrance to the lower shaft level, or perhaps Daedalus was just trying to portray the dimension of depth
on the Phaistos Disk. This second pyramid (right) on the Phaistos Disk is revealed when the Golden Fleece signs are connected. This pyramid
may be Kephren (or perhaps Mykerinos) and the first pyramid on the disk (above) may be Cheops.

This pictograph may be the primitive symbol for Pi, 3.1416,
to describe the properties of a circle. The short line of the symbol is the radius (r) of a circle and the long line is the diameter (d).
The ratio of the circumference of a circle (c) to its diameter (d=2r) is a constant number called Pi, which equals c divided by 2r+3.1416.
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CONSTELLATION ARGO
CONSTELLATION ARGO
This overview of the Aegean world provided by the disk makes us like Jason and
the Argonauts sailing across the skies in the constellation Argo in search of the Golden Fleece, or like the Egyptian god Horus, born humbly in a
cave (right) like Zeus after him, sailing the skies in the boat of Ra. With Eye of Horus we magically look back in time now and
see on side 2 of the disk the constellation Argo as it appeared 3,600 years ago, revealed by connecting with lines all 15 of these identical
star/pomegranate pictographs.
 Modern map of the constellation Argo
 Constellation Argo with mooring and oars on the Phaistos Disk Minoa's Ark?
In Egypt it was called the Bark of Osiris and the Ark of Ra. Could it also be the prototype for Noah's Ark of the Bible?
We all know the story. Noah built an ark because god told him a great flood was coming. It could be possible, in another Bible transformation,
that the genesis of this flood story was the tsunami of the Minoan eruption, and the Constellation Argo was the "Arktype" for "Mi"Noah's Ark.
Inside the Argo?
(My exact tracing, color added, of a cylinder seal from Minoan Crete, left). This "ark" has cargo, similar in idea to Noah's Ark.
This futuristic space shuttle "ark" design (right) is the groundplan for the Hagia Triada palace
(1600 BCE), Crete. Da Vinci is famous for his original design of a helicopter, but Daedalus trumps him here! Should we add to the inventions of
Daedalus the original idea for a space shuttle? The palace covered about 5-1/2 acres and apparently had a tail wing with ailerons, a rear end
rocket engine, a rear photon gun, a flight of steps for entering/exiting, and even a luggage tram.

DODONA
In mythology, the Argo was built at Dodona and was made of
sacred oak from the oracle there. This gave the vessel itself some intelligence, which helped the Argonauts sail the heaven-ocean in search of
the golden fleece. Also in Dodona were the Oreiades, (right) divine children of the Dactyloi and cousins of the dancing
Curetes, the founders of Crete. They were nymphs of the mountain oaks and pines. They carried thyrsoi, pine-cone tipped staves or poles.
Thyrsoi were symbolic wands, generally cane-like or knotted like a bamboo, and sometimes wreathed with ivy or vine leaves, with a pine-cone
at the top. (Plutarch)
Perhaps vestiges of Dodona,
the oldest oracle, survive on the Phaistos Disk. Both the Minoan Crete and the Pharoanic Egypt civilizations were preceded and influenced by Dodona,
center of enlightenment in the early Mediterranean Bronze Age. In 4,000 B.C.E., a stadium built in Dodona in northwestern Greece opened like a sunflower
to hold 18,000 people. Dodona also had several temples, a theater, and an acropolis, including a Temple of Heracles.The Sacred Oaks were at Dodona,
the rustling of their leaves interpreted by the oracles as the whisperings of God. In Dodona, Jason and the Argonauts snuck past Humbaba, the portal
keeper with the face of a maze, to cut the Oaks into timber for their constelled ship, the Argo. With psychic timber, the ship could sail and
navigate by itself whenever it needed to.
At Dodona, oracles spoke in symbol language that might have been the mysterious and secret language of Jason and the Argonauts,
called the Argothic Language (Langue Argotique), Language of the Argo. The Phaistos Disk may preserve some of this picture-writing language and
perhaps even the worldview of the Oracles of Dodona. If so, the sailors of the Minoan Period (1600 B.C.E.) might have worn it as tattoos to symbolize
their counterparts above, Jason and the Argonauts in the constellation Argos. We may be looking also at a
tattoo language preserved on the Phaistos Disk.
Influences of Egyptian
theology can be seen on the Phaistos Disk. An identical flower pictograph is seen on this fragment of an Egyptian limestone relief. This Flower of Life
is protected by the goddess Mut, a vulture-version of the goddess Isis, whose image Egyptians placed in tombs to protect the dead in their embryonic
state of re-birth into the afterlife. Above Mut are the stars representing the starlight of Sirius.
 The Sunflower sign likely had several different
but related meanings. This Flower of Life guarded by Mut also corresponds to the flax flower, which plays a part in the ancient Egyptian religious
practices where Egyptian priests with shaved heads "wear linen things on account of the colour which the flax in flower sends forth, resembling the
aetherial radiance that surrounds the cosmos." (Plutarch [46? CE - 120? CE])
.
The sunflower at the center of side 1 may also be a symbol for the sun, personified later in Greek mythology as the sun god Helios,
who drove his chariot of the sun across the sky each day. Helios was married to Rhode, daughter of Poseidon, the god of the sea who gifted a white
bull to King Minos of Crete. As Maat was daughter of the sun god Ra in Egypt, Queen Pasiphae was granddaughter of the sun god Helios in Crete. The
flower sacred to Helios was the Heliotrope because its face always turns toward the sun.
Perhaps side 1 of the Phaistos Disk also represents the Sun and side 2 is the Moon. Perhaps this Heliotrope is a sign of the
initiates of an Amen Ra sun cult in Crete with strong links to Egypt. The Phaistos Disk could be the Minoan version of the Disk of Amen Ra or
perhaps Behutet, Winged Disk of Horus.

MAGIC HORUS - MAGI CHORUS
Out in the deep dark sea there lies a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land,
washed by the sea on every side and boasting ninety cities. One of these cities is called Knossos, and there King Minos ruled and enjoyed the
friendship of almighty Zeus. (Homer)
 The Aegean world at the
probable time of the creation of the Phaistos Disk was dominated by Egypt and their theology, yet the tiny island-country of Crete established itself in
history as perhaps more remarkable than Egypt. (Click image for larger view) Still, they were much influenced, as was all the
Aegean world, by the Egyptian system of gods and goddesses, particularly the god Horus, an ancient Egyptian sky god from the last part of the Stone Age
who had been worshipped since 4,000 years before the Phaistos Disk was created.
In Egyptian mythology, Horus sat on the shoulder of the
pharaohs and imparted to them his genius. Each pharaoh had a "Horus name" as part of the royal title, and it is possible that the Great Pyramid was
dedicated to him. Eventually Horus' identity merged with his father Osiris, whose identity merged with Dionysis of Crete. In this transformation of
myth, Dionysis is occasionally merged with Daedalus. We might conclude that the genius of Daedalus was due in part to Horus, a winged supernatural
being who "sat on his shoulder", i.e., merged with him via an alchemical fusion, as in this image of the Pharaoh Kephren (right).
These correspondences might place the creation of the Phaistos Disk in the time of Kephren. We now know that the Minoan and Egyptian civilizations
were amicable. Most likely they were in agreement as to the identity and nature of this god, especially since he had for so long taken so many
different forms and evolved alongside the people who worshipped him.
In Egyptian mythology, the god
Horus is represented by the golden hawk, who flies nearest the sun, and gazes upon it with unwinking eye.
(G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol I, p.53) The hawk carries in its claw the
Bone of Horus, (Plutarch in Mead, Vol. 1, p.238) the naturally occurring magnet called the lodestone and
bone of the sea-hawk. (Ibid)
She had conceived him while she fluttered in the form of a hawk over the corpse of her dead husband.
The infant was the younger Horus, who in his youth bore the name of Harpocrates, that is, the child Horus.
(Frazer, Chap. 38)
Much later on in Egypt, concurrent with the Phaistos Disk and during the Age of Aries, Horus is the Great
Geometer of the ancient Egyptian world, the god who creates the world-disk and then flies away with it, lifting it into space and making it the Winged Disk.
He is also the magical power of resurrection, capable of flying with a person's Ka or spirit-soul to the higher realms of the afterlife. Horus has eyes to
see the world entire and the geometry underlying its construction, and if we have Eye of Horus we can magically see it too. Daedalus, as a man true to
his times, would most likely be much influenced by the theology associated with the sky god Horus, and we can see this influence on the Phaistos Disk.
The disk exists as a unique record of the world in which Daedalus lived about 1600 BCE. It also is the only pottery artifact
to be found in Crete that was not sun-baked but fire hardened as though fired in a kiln. Most likely Daedalus invented a kiln to bake it but
the kiln no longer exists. Alternately, it could have been fired in Egypt in one of the many pottery factories there. Since its discovery in 1908,
the disk has been studied by many people who have been completely baffled by it, so it symbolizes chaos in this respect. Chaos is also the infinity
of space or formless matter that is said to have preceded the existence of the ordered universe and which the Great Geometer organizes with geometry.
Allow the disk to represent that chaos, so that the disk is the universe or world-disk that the sky god Horus holds in his claws, making of it a
Minoan version of a Winged Disk of Horus.
Today the chorus is singing, "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius," but when the disk was created it was the dawning of the
Age of Aries. The Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts comes from the Age of Aries. It was preceded by the Age of Taurus, supposed to have
been between 4320-2160 BCE (4525-1875, dates vary). An Age, lasting about 2,000 years or so, receives its name from the sign through which the
sun passes year after year as it crosses the equator at the Spring equinox (equal night), when night and day are equal in length all over the world,
each lasting 12 hours on this day.
In the Age of Taurus the bull was worshipped as divine. After
perhaps as many as 25,000 preceding years of bull worship, it is not surprising that the bull figured significantly in the Minoan civilization. A bull's
foot appears twice on the Phaistos Disk (left). Egypt had its Serapis, the sacred Osiris-Apis bull. Baal was widely worshipped,
later on the Israelites had their golden calf Moshe (Moses), and painted on the walls of buildings in ancient Sumer are humans with horns. The horns tell
of their status as gods and goddesses. (Minoan Queen Pasiphae drawn by Picasso, right)
The idea of the bull-god
is foreign to many of us, although it should not be. Even today in India the bull is sacred, and in Spain and Mexico bull sports are still popular, as are
rodeos in the U.S. In Crete, the bull apparently was at the center of both religion and sport. This history of bull-worship clears up some of the mystery
of the Minoan legend of the Minotaur, a bull being at the center of the bull sports and the maze. It clears up some mystery about Zeus, the Greek
god who often appeared as a bull. And it also shines some light on the worship of the bull-born Dionysis. (Left, Bronze Age palace
groundplan at Mallia, Crete compared with bull's head)
Here is the old formula for a son of god in the Bronze Age, when people believed the divinity of a human could be demonstrated by
bull's horns. When the Minotaur - half bull, half human - was born, his parents King Minos and Queen Pasiphae set up the palace at Knossos with
horns along the roof to establish that a divine son of Zeus lived in the palace.
In the Age of Aries the bull-god
gives over to the ram, whose Golden Fleece is the object of the quest of Jason and the Argonauts. They stopped worshipping the bull - in fact, they slayed
the bull in Crete, or Theseus did, in the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. Following the Age of Aries is the Piscean Age in which a divine fish
symbolizes the Son of God as the "fisher of men." As we move into the Age of Aquarius, the cup is the symbol of the divine and holds the Water of Life, and
the Knights of the Round Table quest for the Holy Grail. One way or another, either directly or indirectly, we are influenced by the stars. Are they
really eternal, divine powers moving in a whirl and from whose dominion there is no escape?
During the Mediterranean Bronze Age, the Aegean people were making a transition from the Age of Taurus and old religion of
bull-worship to the Age of Aries. This was no less a transition from a primitive, idolatrous religion to the beginnings of a scientific-philosophic
world-view, their ascendency over the bull dramatized perhaps by the bull sports at the center of their festivities (right).
When the shift comes and the ages change from Taurus to Aries, the worship of the bull is not transferred to the worship of the ram, but becomes
instead a quest for god/dess, who is conceived of in such a way as to be sought after.
Perhaps this seeking after the goddess motivated the development of the astronomy in Minoan Crete, with the idea that if we
invent telescopes and binoculars and astronomical measuring devices, we can seek the goddess through seeing her, getting closer to her and
knowing her well. Perhaps this astronomical questing for the divine led to our recognition of the universal powers of time and infinity and
the higher powers of destiny, conclusions about such things we might have drawn from stargazing. For the Aegean people, these eternal powers
seemed to emanate from the stars, and it stands to reason that the biggest star, Sirius, must be the most powerful. Therefore, from this star,
an eternal and perfect goddess high in the sky, flow all the gifts in heaven and earth.
With this new power come the wealth, ease and abundance that we associate with the Minoan civilization, a phenomenal flower
that blossomed in the middle of the Aegean Sea. The Greek creation myth tells the story of how it came to pass that the people were so blessed.
It was because the goddess gave them a son, who in turn overthrew the old gods. It is not yet the Age of Pisces when the gift is the son of god.
It is the Age of Aries when the gift is the son of goddess.
In Crete there were three outstanding forms of the mother-goddess -- the
snake-goddess, the dove-goddess, and the "lady of wild creatures"...But there can be no doubt that the conception of the Mother was an
essential part of the Cretan faith...The great goddess was depicted wearing a flounced gown suspended from her
slim waist, round which a girdle is clasped. The upper part of the
body is bare, and she has enormous breasts. Sometimes she stands on a mountain
top, guarded by two great lions, and sometimes she is seated beside trees or
plants. In addition to the lions, her wild animals include the wild goat, the horned sheep, the
bull, the red deer, the snake, and the dove; and among the symbols associated
with her are the horns of the bull, the double axe, the sacred pillar, the moon
crescent, and a staff or wand. She was apparently a goddess of death, battle,
fertility, and the chase. Offerings were made to her in a mountain-cave she was
supposed to inhabit. (Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, Donald Mackenzie)

MINOAN CREATION MYTH
Daedalus, to be such an extraordinary inventor, would have been a renaissance man of his own times, knowledgeable not
only in the theology of the people but also in astronomy and geometry, the laws of physics of the ancient world. These sciences involved not
just the stars and constellations but also the positioning and influences of the 7 planets that included the sun and the moon. In Egyptian
mythology, the sun was one Eye of Horus and the moon the other. The study of these integrated sciences is said to have originated in Babylon,
Assyria, and Egypt, but we need to add Crete to that list. This scientific-philosophic view of the universe probably involved a widely accepted
belief system of an "as above, so below" relationship of the stars to the people (left). In this belief system, the people
and everything that happened were under the influence of the stars and planets, who also offered them eternal life.
By looking up into the dome of night, Daedalus and other Minoan astronomers saw the movement of the stars, those great powers
watching over them as they traveled in a whirl. They saw the star Sirius, the goddess of the heavens surrounded by her shields, the planets.
We can understand much more about the Phaistos Disk if we grant that some of this Minoan theology, which we have to reach through Greek mythology to
access, is portrayed on the disk, which therefore describes a universe comprised of two parts, heaven (above, side 1) and
earth (below side 2), both filled with many souls and other things that are moving in a whirl as do the stars. Later on in
time, mystics would say that a Great and Powerful Hand was stirring the cosmos round and round into a whirl, and this is the beginning of making
sense of chaos by separating the individual parts into their proper places or realms via spin. These realms were under the dominion of the
shields or planets, which the Greeks would later call Archons, the planetary rulers and their aeons.
Opposing the Light and Life of Sirius was Tartarus, the realm of the kingdom of Darkness and Death, ruled by Hades. In Egypt,
the Underworld was ruled first by the evil serpent Typhon, who is related to Draco, the constellation of the Dragon, and Tiamat (Draco), whom
Marduk battles in old Babylon. Draco, Tiamat and Leviathan, the dragon of the sea, are early depictions of what became in Biblical times the
serpent in the Garden of Evil.
In the Babylonian religion, its influence perhaps seen on the Phaistos Disk, Earth is the battleground of Good and Evil, as
Marduk and Tiamat struggle for human souls. This is mirrored in Egyptian mythology in the conflict of good-doing Osiris and wicked Typhon,
gods of ancient Egypt. Osiris is like Marduk, the supreme Babylonian god who vanquishes Tiamat and the forces of chaos. Osiris eventually
triumphs over Typhon and comes to reign in his stead in the realms of the underworld. Osiris displaces Typhon so that the dead become the
living once again, either recycled via reincarnation back onto this planet or else passed into eternal life through the portals of Amenti and
into the dawn of Sirius. Although Typhon first rules the underworld realms of Darkness, his plan to murder his brother Osiris eventually
backfires when Osiris becomes ruler of the underworld and becomes the Power over all that is capable of transfiguring a soul from death unto
rebirth. This myth, in which one brother murders another, is mirrored in Chrisitianity in the story of Cain and Abel.
Reigning high above all this earthly and celestial drama of good and evil is the great star Sirius (Isis/Rhea) and her son,
Sirius B or Horus-in-the-Duat, which the Egyptians and the Minoans may have known about. But Sirius itself is more than mere star; it is an Aeon,
a divine being in its divine realm. The star is Great Mother and it also is a god among starry gods, who are themselves vast and divine Aeons.
Within them one can live and continue to learn, even after death. Below the sphere of the divine star revolve the seven rulers, the planets.
From our planet, the planet of the mortals, is given only that we should find a way to somehow come closer to the star Sirius, to admire it and
to worship it, as is given us mortals to do. To accomplish this, perhaps we build a great pyramid so we may sit at the top of it and gaze upon
the star with our telescopes. As we admire Sirius from the vantage point of our pyramid, we also
see the constellation Argo, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, the Boat of Ra, the Bark of Osiris that
sails across the night skies and across the surface of the Phaistos Disk.
The Phaistos Disk also seems to be an ancient representative of angels and angles and their correspondences, bounded by a
circle and alchemically mixed in a whorl. Spinning round and round they take human form, and perhaps this stands as the old definition of
what it means to be human, what it means to be a mixture of spirit and matter all at the same time and bounded by a universe we can never comprehend.
This is consistent with spiritual beliefs of a much later time regarding life as being alchemically bounded and contained either by the circle or
the triangle. This archaic religion, the remaining parts of it known to us now as Hermeticism, recognized other correspondences as well, such as
the relationship of the night skies of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres to the right and left sides of the brain (two sides of the disk).
It recognized correspondences between the spiraling path of star Sirius through the constellations and the spiraling descent of divine starlight
from that star (spirals on the disk). It saw a correspondence in the return of the physical body to ashes and dirt and in the return of the
living soul to its Source in the realms of the star, where there is an eternal dawn. According to this theology, these relationships or
correspondences can be represented by geometry. The entire universe and its drama can be represented by geometry, and this is what makes it
the Sacred Science.
From this Sacred Science arises the legend of the Trismegistus, Thrice Greatest Hermes - all those scholars and seekers who met
the Transcendent when they finally realized "I Am That." This is the heart and soul of the alchemy - the fusion - of the harmonious opposites.
In Greek mythology of a much
later period than the Phaistos Disk, but which we think comes from Minoan mythology, we have the story of the great darkness Chaos, who reigned until it
separated into Earth (side 1 of the disk) and Heaven (side 2 of the disk), who embraced each other (the two sides connected by the line segments). From
this embrace came many children, among them the Titans (the circles or shields containing the 7 tiny circles in hexagonal pattern that represent
the 7 planets, left).
Some of the
Titans were the planets of the known universe but there was strife among them. Chaos reigned again until the Titan Kronos took the throne by force from his
father and then married his sister Rhea, like the way the Egyptian Osiris married his sister Isis. The universe was peaceful and orderly for
many thousands of years until life began to form in Rhea's womb that was a vast vortex and mighty whirlpool. Into the soul spaces of the vast
vortex, Rhea (star Sirius), in Heaven above, began to pour her children into space-time.
Formed in her womb were 5 main
divisions of layers or cosmic stuff (cosmoi), and into these layers or firmaments formed 60 soul spaces made of 60 types of
soul-stuff, comprising 240 individual souls made of 48 different archetypes. The 5 layers are the spirals on both
sides of the disk (right), the pictographs removed to see the spirals better. Each outside spiral has 12
line segments; 8 inside spirals have a combined 36 line segments. The spirals are divided into 60 line segments
(30 Side 1, 30 Side 2). The 60 soul spaces in Rhea's womb are the total number of line segments on the disk, the 240
individual souls she creates is the total number of pictograph impressions, and 48 soul types is the number of unique signs on the disk.
The 48 soul types may also have been imaged as the constellations, in an "as above, so below" relationship. For example, the Minotaur may have
been the "so below" version of the constellation Taurus. These numbers in bold also reveal the mathematics of the times that may have involved
the sexagesimal system of counting, perhaps with calendar applications.
And in these sixty spaces dwell the souls, each one according to its nature, for though they are of one and the
same substance, they are not of the same dignity. (Plutarch)
Many early civilizations created art designed to describe the layout of the universe and humanity's position within it,
and much of it had to do with the spiral. It is as though once the spiral design was discovered and used in art, it began to be perceived as
representing a higher form or archetype upon which all reality was based. The Phaistos Disk, in my opinion, is one of those designs that shows
the spiraling nature of reality, but what sets it apart from all the rest is that it is a very detailed description of the world preserved on a
hardened clay disk and it also exists as an historical record of the great flood that threatened to destroy the superficial world created by humans.
Although the spirals on the disk appear to be flat concentric circles in a two-dimensional plane, the possibility exists they
represent height as well, especially considering the evidence offered by the two pyramids concealed on the artifact. The intention might be for
the spirals to represent something like this ziggurat below.
2100 BCE in Mesopotamia, the ziggurat of Dur Sharukin (below left, my tracing), was built as a
residence for the god during his/her descent to earthly sojourn. Both the ziggurat and the Phaistos Disk show five spirals, with the top of the
pyramid on the Phaistos Disk indicated by the pictograph of the Golden Fleece, belonging to the ram sacrificed to Zeus, that Jason and the
Argonauts pursued. In this respect, the Golden Fleece symbolizes Zeus.
The Minoans seem to have assimilated, through
cultural diffusion, parts of various theologies of the times from Egypt, Mesopotamia and perhaps other local civilizations. For example,
the five-branched tree, the ancient Chaldaean (Mesopotamian) symbol for the human purified, that appears on the Phaistos Disk
(left) may mean practically the same thing to the Minoans. The Golden Fleece (left)
pursued by Jason and the Argonauts may be a Minoan variation of the five-branched symbol, also meaning purification.
In Mesopotamia the god would descend to the
ziggurat and enter the temple on top, marked by an 'E' and meaning House of the God (perhaps like church, synagogue, temple) and
rest upon the bed provided. On the Phaistos Disk, the "E" symbol (left) appears only twice, on side 1, the
same side as the two pyramids. The symbol appears to mean "As above, So Below" and may have been borrowed from the ancient Sumerian symbol
that marks the House of the God, with the Minoan modification to mean, "Purified House of the God As above, So below." Inscribed on "Ring of Minos,"
right, the temple-tomb atop the mound is purified by the five-branched tree at the top.
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MINOAN FASHION SHOW
MINOAN CALENDARS
Long after the Phaistos
Disk was created, the Greeks gave the name Helios to the god of the measurement of time. He had several sister goddesses called Horai.
(right) They were goddesses of the cycles of Time, presiding over the revolution of the circling constellations by
which the year was divided and measured. They were honored by farmers, who would hoe the ground, plant and tend their crops according to
the location of the stars in the skies. (The Horai, right, hold pomegranates/stars, and left on the disk.) The
passing seasons were measured by the position of the stars. Because the Horai surrounded and attended the throne of Helios, this method of
timekeeping is a heliocentric horai-scope or horoscope, meaning to observe time or the seasons.
When all these identical pictographs of pomegranate/stars are connected with lines on side 1 of the Phaistos Disk,
a constellation is revealed, the constellation Argo. This pomegranate/star
pictograph, in association with the Horai, might therefore be a reference to timekeeping as well.
This method of keeping "star" time might point to the Sothic calendar, a wide-spread
Egyptian method of keeping time by tracking the star Sirius instead of the sun. The identical shield pictographs, also on side 1,
(left) when connected with lines reveal a pentagram inside a heptagon, perhaps the star Sirius surrounded by the seven planets.
This might strongly indicate the Minoan use of a Sothic calendar.

MINOAN LUNISOLAR CALENDAR
If the two sides of the Phaistos Disk have application as Minoan integrated calendars, taken together they might be a
Lunisolar calendar with 12 months and, every two years, the periodic intercalation of a 13th month, the interlinking line segments.
Side 1, the solar calendar, keeps track of the three seasons, each of four months duration, along the 12 line segments of the outer edge.
A count of the daylight hours or divisions of each day could also be kept on this side of the disk, counting 12 divisions/hours along the
outside edge with the 12 months and the seasons of the year.
Side 2, the lunar calendar, keeps time in lunar months (moonths), a moonth being the time between each of the four phases of
the moon - new, waxing, full and waning. The lunar calendar has 12 moonths of 30 days for a 360-day year. The first moonth and new year might
begin in the summer on the heliacal rising of star Sirius in 1700 BCE, approximately the equivalent of our July 1. (Alternately, the Minoans may
have had 30 months of 12 days – the 30 line segments each side, 12 of them on the outside spiral. Every two years the 13th month would occur and
it would be only 2 days shorter than the others.)
The combined Lunisolar calendar might have worked this way; one month solar, one month lunar, moving from to side to
side of the disk, until 24 months had passed, at which time the intercalary or 13th month would begin the biennial festival of Dionysis in
Minoan Crete in which the drama of his life was re-enacted.

ZODIAC STELLAR CALENDAR
Side 2 might also contain a zodiac stellar calendar based on star groups. The star groups might be arranged in groups of 12,
along the outer edge in the same location as the lunar months. These might be the 12 constellations we are familiar with today, which come to us from
Greece, and also would include 18 more spiraling out from the center of Side 2, for a total of 36 groups or decans, each one rising above the dawn
horizon for 10 days, totaling 360 days. On Side 2, the star groups spiral into the center as they begin their move into the underworld of Tartarus/Hades
(go below the horizon) for 70 days/signs before they appear again.
With the addition of a 10 day intercalary month every two years, a 365-night stellar year can be accounted for. Observation of the
movement of star groups would let the Minoans tell time at night because the decans would rise 40 minutes later each night. When reckoning time at
night, only 12 decans (and annual divisions) were used (our signs of the zodiac), although 18 were taken into account, those in the center of the
disk, Side 2.
Set all the calendars to the first sighting of Sirius each year to keep them current. The Sothic (Sirius) year lasted from one
sighting of Sirius in the dawn of a new year until the next year on the same day. With these calendars working together, with Oceanus (the wave
spirals below) connecting all these calendars together, and thus all time, in a neverending wave spiral, infinity is accounted for, and this may
account for the infinity symbol created by interlocking both sides of the disk and also may indicate what the Minoan wave spirals in architecture
symbolize.
The integrated calendars may not have worked this way, but if we wanted to keep time in all these different ways we could if we
had the Phaistos Disk. Another calendar possibility would be a Minoan Sothic Calendar with a 366-day year.

MINOAN SOTHIC CALENDAR
Sothic is the Greek word for Sirius, which the Egyptians called Sopdet or Sopdu. A Minoan
calendar/Phaistos Disk would be unique in that it may have solved the problem of keeping accurate time when tracking star Sirius.
Sirius rises with the sun on about the same day every year, July 19th. Just like we add one day in February every leap year to
make our calendar and our sun work in conjunction, the Egyptians added 5 days at the end of their year and tracked the movement of a star
rather than the sun. The star's movement is so close to that of the sun that the star calendar worked the same as a sun calendar. One is a
lunar calendar and the other is a solar calendar. And just like night follows day, the Egyptians and perhaps the Minoans had calendars with
solar months and lunar months.
All Sothic calendars were known to have 12 months of 30 days. Some Sothic calendars may have had 30 months of 12 days.
That presented the timekeepers with a problem -- a year of 360 days -- so they had to add 5 days at the end of the year to have a 365-day year so
that the calendar would work right.
The Egyptians had a whole mythology that went with these 5 extra days, which were festival days in Egypt and perhaps Crete,
when the birth of these gods was celebrated. With the extra 5 days added, the Egyptian Sothic calendar would start again the following year
on or about the same important day -- the heliacal rising of Sirius -- July 19th or 20th, the day the star first rises with the sun. But the S
othic cycle was 1468 years because that is how long it takes for the calendar to recoup that day that was lost every 4 years from having a 365 day year.
How the Phaistos Disk comes into it is this: the Phaistos Disk may be a Sothic calendar that keeps accurate star time, and it
may be the only physical one in existence. There may be something unique about this Sothic calendar. Instead of having 12 months of 30 days, it
may have alternating months of 30 and 31 days, (counting the connecting line segment as a day of the month rather than an intercalary month) more
like our calendar than like the Egyptian calendar. Around the outside edge of the disk are the 12 solar and the 12 lunar months. This is how one
knows which month we are in when using this calendar. The solar months have 31 days and the lunar months have 30 days. The 2-sided disk/calendar
represents a two-year period, at the end of which was held the festival of Dionysis in which is life was celebrated.
This method of keeping time is incredible if you consider what is known about Sothic calendars. It means that the Minoans may
have figured out how to adjust a Sothic calendar so it kept proper star time and avoided the "Sothic cycle" of 1468 years.

MINOAN 366-DAY YEAR
If you look at our calendar you see something odd about it. The months don't alternate 30 and 31 days
every time, and February has only 28 days. Then, every four years we add a day to make up for the fact that our year is really 365 and 1/4 days,
and that ends our cycle. But since our sun rises each and every day and since our calendar is only off by a 1/4 of a day each year, we are
unaffected by that as long as we correct periodically.
The Minoans may have taken exactly the same approach. The difference is, while the Egyptians had years of 360 days and we have years
of 365 days, the Minoans may have had years of 366 days. Rather than add 5 days at the end of the year and then have a calendar that rights itself
every 1468 years, the Minoans had alternate months of 30 and 31 days, and then they subtracted a day at the end of every two years. That kept them
within a 1/2 day of accuracy. The heliacal rising of Sirius would always occur for them on or about July 1. At the end of 4 years they subtracted
2 days, and that ended their cycle. Their lunar months of 30 days followed their solar months of 31 days. Then, instead of adding 5 festival days at the
end of the year, like the Egyptians and their civil calendar, they celebrated them as festival days that occurred for them at the beginning of their
year with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and every 2 years they held the festival of Dionysis.
By this subtraction method of timekeeping, the Minoan calendar was simple and correct. This would have given them a huge
advantage over the rest of the Aegean world and would explain in part their fantastic civilization. Their calendar was always a little ahead
instead of a lot behind. Additional to their world-view might have been this grand idea that when we command the power of Time, we can reinvent
the world.

DIONYSIS AND JAWA - THE NAME OF GOD
The Minotaur, son of Zeus and King Minos and child of Pasiphae, was destroyed by Theseus with the help of his half-sister, Ariadne. Likewise
Dionysis, son of Zeus and the king of Crete and the child of Persephone, was destroyed by Titans with the help of his sister. His mother
had been seduced by Zeus, who appeared to her in the form of a serpent. After his birth and the strange death of his mother (she was burned to a
crisp upon glimpsing Zeus), Dionysis as a fetus was rescued by Zeus from the ashes. Zeus slashed a hole in his thigh and stowed the fetus away
in the wound. This is portrayed on a facted stone of green Jasper from Siteia, Crete, where we see the fetus inside the thigh.
(left, Footnote, Evans, p.21 In nine months a baby was born from the thigh of his father.
Born with horns or bull-born and with his fathers powers, he was invested with the throne right away and he held it when his
father went away on a journey. Now it is Zeus who gives his son into the protection of the guards, rather than Rhea. In this new version of an
old myth, the danger to the child is from the wife of the god rather than the husband of the goddess. But Hera, wife of Zeus, is determined to
destroy Dionysis, who avoids death by changing into a kind of serpent with horns. But when Hera distracted him with a sistrum or rattle, the
guards rushed in and killed him like he was a rattlesnake, cutting him up into pieces.
Every two years the Cretans celebrated the birth
and death of Dionysis. They built a casket, which was supposed to contain his heart. They carried it around in front of them during their celebrations.
They summoned him from the marshes (1) with sea-shell trumpets, (2) calling for the God with the bull's foot (3) to come to them. They sang,
Come hither, Dionysis, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!
The thyrsoi, the long wand topped by a pine cone, was
carried in his festivals. Dionysis was considered a diety of corn. He is supposed to have been the first to yoke oxen to the plough. He was
pictured in the company of dogs. He seems half-human in many ways. He encouraged the love of writing and art and he often appeared as
materialized spirit to those who invoked him. When summoned, he brings with him divine inspiration and the opportunity for work well done
in the service of the goddess.
When Dionysis died, pomegranates (1) sprang from
his blood. They boiled him in herbs and ate him, but his sister, who betrayed him, kept his heart, (2) and Zeus built a temple in his honor. Dionysis
became the 13th Olympian.
According to Will Durant, in Life of Greece the Minoan name for Zeus was Velchanos (Vel-ka-nos), but was it? Whatever name they gave god, it
surely acknowledged the feminine and might have meant movement and infinity. The symbols, left, that preceed the fetus in the thigh are catalogued by
Sir Arthur Evans many times because they recur so often and with so many various or alternate depictions. They look like a comb (Evans originally
called it a fence) and a smoking cucumber. Then the thigh is surrounded by three images, all similar, that appear to be nails but that probably are stars.
Most likely, this grouping indicates a constellation, possibly Taurus, and the comb and smoking cucumber spell out the name of the constellation
which also could be the Minoan names, whatever they were, for Zeus and Dionysis.
We think of the constellation Taurus as a bull, but classical Greeks apparently thought of it as Zeus disguised as a bull.
Perhaps the Minoans thought of the constellation as Dionysis concealed in the thigh of Zeus, who was disguised as a serpent. Suppose this is the
fetus of Dionysis (said to have been called Rhadamanthus by the Minoans) in the thigh of his father Zeus or Velchanos. This picture writing sign
therefore shows something about the merger of these two gods, written in early script as the merger of the comb with the cucumber. In nine months
a baby was born from the thigh of his father, and perhaps the comb and cucumber indicate nine months time, as well. Perhaps this series of pictographs
shows how long one expects to be with child, although it seems pretty remarkable that it has to do with two men, one of them pregnant with the other.
The "comb" in Linear B has been deciphered as Ja. To make the sound,
bring the "fence of the teeth" together to pronouce "Ja." Next, bring the lips together and blow a little, like the smoking cucumber, to say "Wa."
What is produced is the Biblical name of God - Jahwah - or Jehovah. Now we see what perhaps was originally meant by Jahwah - Father-Son or Zeus
(Jah)-Dionysis (Wah) and the beginnings of the patriarchy - the beginning of His-story - both in civilization and in religion. In Crete, therefore,
the patriarchy and His-story is born from the matriarchy and Her-story.
Jawa. Now that we know the name of God perhaps we can escape the maze of life and take our place as immortal Olympians in Mt.
Olympus. We will introduce ourselves as Icarus so the gods will realize that we comprehend the ordeal of our journey and have transcended it.
Flying far away from the maze we arrive in Olympus, where there is always room for one more and where perhaps we will learn the name of the
Mother.
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