Three A's - Athens, the Archeological Museum, the Acropolis and the Agora - and one D - Delphi...
Its been a wonderful couple of days...
First off, I love Athens. I haven't enjoyed a European city so much in ages. I think Zaragoza was the last time. The buzz is fantastic, the people terrific and even though the area my hotel is in seems to be standing in for an episode of THE WIRE (as I had dinner on my first day a bunch of police were busting some Drug Dealers round the corner) I really, really love it...
Yesterday I kicked things off with a trip to the Archeological Museum. I had been warned by my Mum that you couldn't do the Acropolis during the day due to the heat, one had to go in the morning or late afternoon (as in India) so I decided the Museum was the best place to spend the midday hours. How right I was!
All those rumours about Athens being a disgustingly noisy and polluted city continued to disappear as I walked down 3rd September Rd to the Museum. Quite frankly, if Athens is noisy and polluted, then people out to take a gander at your average Indian town. Mumbai, perhaps, or Madurai? THAT is noisy and polluted! Athens is nothing like that.
The Museum was amazing. I found myself wandering from room to room in an increasing haze of wonder and glory. I was seeing things I have seen in books for years suddenly appearing before me - the Golden Mask of Agamemnon (not Agy at all, but someone else), the incredible giant statue of Zeus or Poseidon throwing an invisible spear/trident/thunderbolt and, most beautifully, the wonderful image from Eleusis of the Prince standing between Demeter and Persephone at the climax of the Mysteries. I love this piece of work, its utter beauty, its profound spirituality and its suggestion of the immortality of everyone, and was amazed to find it there before me in all its glory. I have said that I have a special relationship with these Eleusinian Mysteries. It did something very amazing to my heart to stand there before it, hypnotised by the mystical nature of the sculptor's work...
Wonders were everywhere. In the Mycenean room it was brought home to me how much that dynasty revered gold, almost as much as the Aztecs, and how their imagery of roses and flowers and whorls seemed to presage things like Celtic Spirals and even the Rosicrucian images of Western Europe. And that is not forgetting the similar shapes and patterns I had seen in India. It seems more and more that we really are all One.
Then there were the funerary carvings with people serenely shaking hands and offering birds to their deceased loved ones... and the magnificent jars and vases covered with images of Athene...
It was a great few hours and left me gasping with love and admiration for the Greeks. As I say, I have always loved ancient Greek culture, much more than Roman, and to have that adoration confirmed here, with all the images I had only seen in books suddenly standing before me was quite something. There is an elegance and poetry to the Greeks which I love to move around in, as well as a deep and primal wisdom and spirituality...
This was only strengthened by visiting the Acropolis. Many people told me that the Acropolis was a huge disappointment. Well not for me. For me it was like coming home. I must have had a past life here or something because the sense of completeness I had when I walked through the main gates was total. It was an utterly satisfying experience.
The extraordinary thing about the Acropolis is just how brilliantly it is placed. If the Indian temples I saw were marvels of architecture, this was a marvel of every kind of planning decision. The centre of Athens, it is built upon the highest hill and affords incredible views of the whole of the city, the other hills around it, the mountains beyond those and the sea which I will never forget. Standing on this summit watching the sun glitter on the waves in the distance was magical, as were the Parthenon, Erecthion and even the little area where the Greek flag stands flapping in the wind surrounded by a little wall.
So here I was on the Acropolis, this legendary place which I have known about and read about since I was a teenager. It had existed in my imagination for twenty years and here I was, suddenly standing there. What is it about the Greeks that makes them so extraordinary? Here what struck me was the perfection of their vision. The whole lay out of the Acropolis was just brilliant, a perfect synthesis of religious and political needs, carried out with utter elan. I can't really describe it. You have to go.
Borrowing an old trick I learnt in India I had gone at the right moment to coincide with sunset, just to enjoy the full glory of that Shamanic half-light. And I wasn't disappointed. I watched as the sun bathed the buildings in different colours, just as they had in India and, wonder of wonders, how its dying light made the marble in the floor look like water. Not far from the Acropolis I could see the Temple to Zeus down below among the buildings. It looked splendid, but the elevation of Athene, my favourite of the Olympians, right at the CENTRE of the city was made all the more extraordary by its relegation in size and location outside and below the Acropolis. Zeus is, after all, the Head Honcho. All Greek cities had a patron God, Athene was Athens', Ares was Sparta's. Nevertheless, it felt like a major statement for a city to chose a female deity like this as the chief expression of their spirituality.
Leaving the Acropolis as the sun set over the main gates (like the Indian temples, the Athenians had carefully constructed their main building to align with the sun) I wandered down to an enormous rock formation at the foot of the hill. To my astonishment I realised it was the Areopagus, the debating centre where Paul had delivered his barnstorming speech to the Greeks in Acts. I fancy quoting it as its a humdinger and should be quoted in every massive pompous Church in the world:
"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move and have our being. For we are also his offspring." - Acts 17: 24-28
But of a blaster, eh? Not what you would expect! It felt fairly buzzy to be standing in this place where two great epochs of European culture had their genesis - Hellenism and then Christianity... What a place!
Then, from the Areopagus I wandered down into the Agora, my head awash with ideas and thoughts. Carried away by the power of ancient Greece, I was wondering why they had moved onto Christianity, and found myself outside the Church of the Holy Apostles. I stepped inside and found myself saying an involuntary 'Wow!'. Unlike all the other churches I had seen which were ablaze with gold and colour, this Church had such purity and simplicity it took the breathe away. I always prefer the simpler churches and chapels, one's which speak of a genuinely humble and humane spirit rather than trumpeting their imperial glory. This church, which goes back a thousands years or so, moved me almost to kneel by its quietness and lack of pretension.
Leaving that, I made my way to the Temple of Haphaestos which was standing on a hill surrounded by lush green trees. As I approached, the sun was setting behind it. Everywhere you could hear birds singing, crickets chirping. The atmosphere settled into something so calm and magical that suddenly I lost all awareness of the modern city around the Agora and was transported back to the ancient world. As I walked up the Temple, which is better preserved than any other one I had seen, it felt like I was there, back then, making a votive trip. I cannot describe how peaceful, relaxed and benign the whole thing felt. Magical.
Thoroughly happy, but also tired, I let myself be lead out of the Agora (which was closing) and stopped in a nearby Taverna for a meal of stuffed vine leaves and a beer (veggie but, yes, some booze). Wholly content, I walked back through Athens to my hotel, watching the city come to life as I went for its Friday night - beautiful, dark-haired Greek women, wide boy-like men... Kids everywhere.... Lights and sounds....
I got as early a night as I could as I had read somewhere that it took a long time to do Delphi, so I planned to wake up at 6am to get the 7.30am bus. That plan died a death as I was unable to sleep for some reason so took the next train, the 10.30am. I was in a slightly grumpy mood but the journey lifted me. The landscape was breathtaking and when we got to Delphi, three hopurs later, I was knocked out by the majestic wonder of the location - right beneath Mt Parnassos, surrounded by sweeping mountains, overlooking the sea, just stunning. I thought to myself 'No wonder the Greeks were so amazing. THey couldn't help it. The landscape is so powerful they woke up to mind-expanding wonder every day!' Its why, for instance, Birmingham isn't a place of immense visionary spirituality and thought...
The Greeks really did know how to chose a location. If the Acropolis was breathtakingly well chosen, Delphi is even more so. The energy of the mountains and the valley onto which it opens out reminded me of the majesty and spiritual vibe of the Pyrenees I had encountered a few years before when I was trekking there in search of the Cathars. THere must be something extraordinary about mountains - a vibration, electromagnetic minerals in the rock or something - which makes them so associated with Gods and mysticism. There are Parnassos, Olympos, Meteora and Athos in Greece, Mount Meru in India, the Pyrenees in France and Spain, Ayers Rock in Australia, Montserrat in Catalonia and so on and so on... Whoever sensed that this location was where Apollo's presence would be at its most powerful, that this was the Omphalos of the world, really knew what they were doing.
Delphi is extraordinary. Like the Acropolis, it is a place I have been reading about and thinking about since I was a kid. Like the Acropolis, I kept having to stop myself as I walked around, look for a second and say 'My God I am here!'. Once again, the intuitive genius of the Greek sensibility was everywhere. You could sense the power of the place in the air and could well understand why they felt that Apollo walked there. I remembered the Temples in India with their Brahmin Priests and tried to imagine how Delphi must have worked in its heyday. Such awe... such wonder... I was disappointed that it wasn't possible to see the circular pit over which the Pythoness Priestess had her channelling experience with the God (does anyone know where that is, if its open to the public, or even if its just a myth?) but the experience was nevertheless unforgettable...
Even more wonderful and an added bonus, was the Sanctuary to Athene a few minutes trek from the Oracle down the hill. A circular, partyly reconstructed little thing surrounded by green, it is quite special. Athene, as I say, has a special place in my heart and I felt another great sense of peace and coming home visiting it. I sat behind it, able to see it in alignment with the Temple of Apollo and just marvelled at the ease with which the Greeks seemed to sense the relationship of these buildings with the landscape around them. Once again there was that magical sense of peace and oneness with the sky and the grass and the trees. It felt perfectly natural to be there and once again I was transported back to that extraordinary civilisation, feeling I was looking at exactly what they had looked at, that this was as it was then.
Walking back to the bus through the ruined Gymnasium overgrown with luscious trees and bushes, buzzing with bees and insects, birds singing in the ruins of Athene's grove, sky blue overhead, flowers everywhere, it was if the place was smiling. And I found myself realising how the ancient Greeks were in love with the world around them, how it was not the enemy or to be rejected, but to be lived with and loved.
We need some more of what the Greeks had now...
On the bus journey home I thought about two things (well more than that but we'll stick with two for now). Firstly, I remembered the daughter of my cousin complaining that when they go to any foreign city they always go to 'some Church' first and how boring it was. After all I have seen - the Taj Mahal, the Temples at Thanjavur and Madurai, the Lotus Temple of the Bahai in Delhi, the Gurudwaras, the Aghia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and now this, Delphi and the Temple to Athene - I wanted to reply, retrospectively, that 'Yes... That was because in all the world the human race had tended to put their greatest visions of beauty in such buildings.' These places, where different cultures in their different ways have placed their highest feelings and aspirations (if God can be described as such) are among the most magnificent and amazing in the world.
And the second thing was the realisation, or the reinforcement of the sense that every culture, especially at their moments of greatness, had an idea of the Cosmic, or the Life Unseen, however it was expressed, be it the Greek Pantheon, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, whatever, except for our own. We have no concept of anything other than the material. After six thousand years of civilisation we have concluded that its all meaningless, that we are slaves to material processes only and that is it. And we suppose that this is the height of civilisation, knowledge and achievement. Anyone who feels differently is either stuck with an old set of religious images and ideas or is out there on their own. Why haven't we taken things a step further? Even belief in Humanity has gone. And the fruits of our new found materialism and its many successes? The threat of extinction through Global Warming...
I'm not preaching a return to old-fashioned values or a revival of any religion. Religions die when they cease to be vital. But if I have seen anything over these four months, it has been the incredible inspirational power of spirituality through all the ages. The flip side is of course all the strife and tension. But surely there must come a time when we can express what inside us powerfully without it leading to further conflict and pain?
Well, enough ranting. I imagine an awful lot of people will have been shocked over these months at my interest in these things. I may have fewer friends when I get back (mind you there may well not be 'an awful lot of people' even reading this. Ah well!)... But I have seen so much magic and wonder its hard not to say something as I come to the end of the Flight of Pegasus.
One more day in Greece, when I will go to Eleusis for my final experience of my dream places of Hellas, then Paris for a few days to see some friends and my bro, then home... Back to the Box... We will see what happens.
Love to all! Its been a long one, but there won't be many more, I promise!
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