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NIKOLAY SIVKOV: Crete has been the link between cultures of the East and West from times immemorial. The pattern of Western urban carnival has prevailed there over the centuries while the memory of labrys-Orion and the sacred marriage of heaven and earth around the spring equinox have remained on the fringes of cultural memory as a half-forgotten archaic memory. The myth of the heavenly warrior-ploughman has lost its relevance over time. No one looks at the starry sky to see the picture of divine re-creation of the world and this picture itself has changed significantly over time, but the memories of distant epochs of the development of human civilization have remained in the rites and rituals, in scarce props of the original myth.
The mummers from Boyanovo ploughing the first three symbolic furrows with yoked necks during the sacred ritual of ploughing – don’t they remind to the modern spectator or participant in the carnival for the creature with the head of bull on a man’s body, the Minotaur of the Labyrinth, harnessed like them in space plough of the Heavenly ploughman - Orion? Or the "araps" of northern Greece, who put bags on their backs under their fur-coats with turned skin outside in to emphasize gibbosity, don’t they look like bulls humps? The "murder" of the Minotaur in Knossos by the ancient hero Theseus (Orion?) puts an end to the Age of Taurus (III millennium BC) and as result of the precession of the earth the world, including the Cretan civilization, enter the Age of Aries (II millennium BC), but traces of the cult of the cosmic bull, and the cult of labrys-Orion remain to this day in ritual practices of populations of the Mediterranean. And maybe that's why it is not a coincidence that the bearers of these "cultural traces" gather together in Heraklion, near Knossos today.

Nikolay Sivkov was born in Russia. He graduated from the Faculty of Slavic Studies at Sofia University. Currently, he is working in the Regional History Museum in Pernik as Head of Public Relations Department. His research interests are in the field of archaeo-astronomy and traditional rituals, including carnival traditions. He has participated in international conferences in Greece, Hungary, Estonia, Russia on the subject.