It was supposed to be the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a snow-white bull, sent to Minos by Poseidon for sacrifice.
Minos, instead of sacrificing' it, spared its life, and Poseidon, as a punishment, inspired Pasiphae with an unnatural passion for it.
He was said to have built the labyrinth for Minos, to have made a wooden cow for Pasiphae and to have fashioned a bronze man who repelled the Argonauts.
By his wife, Pasiphae, he was the father of Ariadne, Deucalion, Phaedra and others.
Frazer both explain Pasiphae's monstrous union as a sacred ceremony (iepos yap,os), at which the queen of Cnossus was wedded to a bull-formed god, just as the wife of the iip X wv lwnXein in Athens was wedded to Dionysus.