The order of divine generation that puts Gaia, earth and mother, first and then Ouranus, heaven and father, would seem to reproduce in broad strokes the historical succession from a matriarchal to a patriarchal order in the eurasian territory. Among the rituals and mythologemes of the remote past that were adopted and reproduced by patriarchal cultures we find a particular type of circular dance on the islands of Crete and Delos which imitated the mating ritual of the crane and “represented the winding path of Theseus and his companions through the labyrinth.”¹ This helicoidal dance must have been originally dedicated to the moon but when it was assimilated by the patriarchal cultures it became a ritual to help the sun in its celestial journey.

Over time this ritual became a cosmic drama that described the elliptical path of the sun between the summer and the winter solstices in septentrional latitudes. The labyrinth, understood as an ascending and descending spiral, along which the sun hides and reappears, is the basic figure behind these myths (0.5). Thus, the center of the labyrinth became the prison of the sun, from which it was to be liberated by a hero like Theseus. This solar prison was also, at the microcosmic level, a prison of consciousness and the place where its brightness originates. Leaving the labyrinth involved not only freeing the sun but also awakening a new way of perceiving the world. “Overcoming tests such as the confrontation with monsters or the descent into the underworld,” says Hella Haasse,

was an important part of these forms of sun worship. In the so-called Aryan regions, this rite included, next to the spiral or circular symbol of the sun, the figure of the hero who, after coming out victorious in the battle, became an exemplary leader for all.²

A leader who upon his exit from the solar labyrinth acquired the traits of a king. The idea of a warrior who attains sovereignty not by birthright but by his heroic feats would seem confirmed by the nuptial customs of early Rome in which young foreigners fought for the position of king, which entailed the right to marry the local princess and priestess; it was her who transmitted the right to the throne to her daughters. Of course, this matrilineal custom did not last long. By the fifth century BC, upon the death of Tarquinius Priscus, fifth king of Rome, his wife granted sovereignity to the husband of her daughter, Servius Tullius, without need of a fight with other suitors to the throne. The idea of a androcentric lineage was beginning to consolidate.

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1. Hella Haasse, Los jardines de Bomarzo, 13. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 15.  ↩︎