Unity and Universe - Understanding Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

8/9/2019 Unity and Universe - Understanding Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

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Unity and Universe

Understanding pilgrimage to Mount Athos

Introduction

Pilgrimage, like many o the concepts used in the study o religions, embodiesboth the aspect o concept and o word. As a concept it emulates the orma-tion o categories in the natural sciences, in which science is characterized assearching or the unity in hidden likenesses, given its aim to find a new unityin the variety o nature, a likeness between things that were not thought obeore. Te term vertebrate is an illustrative and perspicuous univocalcon-cept, because it can be attributed equally well to a man, a horse and a croco-dile, the vertebral column being present in its whole in each o these species

(Bronowsky : ; Gothni : ; Bianchi : ).

Figure 1. The univocal concept

Spine = common denominator

Man Horse Crocodile

Game and religion, as well as some other phenomena o human activity,are different kinds o concepts. Bianchi argues: Te term religion (and re-ligious) is better considered at this point o research as an analogical termwhich overshadows sets o concepts and realities having in common sometypical characteristics or aspects, not always the same, sets separated, on theother hand, by differences which reach to the same depth as the similarities.Tis is a kind o amily resemblance which differs rom a strictly definableuniversal. (Bianchi : .)

Interpreting and understanding analogical concepts does not mean

searching or the unity in hidden likenesses, but rather implies an unfoldingof the universe of beliefs concealed in the word encountered. When we enterinto dialogue with a word, our aim is to let the word speak to us in all its lin-


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guisticality (Sprachlichkeit) so that it unveils the inner existence space o thereligious person or the religiosity concerned (Holm : ). Here thesetting is the opposite.

Figure 2. The analogical concept

Te universe o belies concealed in the word encountered

Word

In a previous article I have discussed the concept o pilgrimage rom theviewpoint o searching or the unity in hidden likenesses. In that article Ireconsidered Victor urners well-known theoretical model o pilgrimage asa kind o rite de passageand pointed out that the universal characteristic oa pilgrimage is not that it is a transition rite (Gothni ). Neither is com-munitasthe specific quality o a pilgrimage.

In criticizing urners conception o pilgrimage I reerred to van Gennep,who clearly stated that the one thing in common in the transition rites (ritesde passage) is the transition rom one social position to another, which meanstransition over a social threshold. Field research by E. Alan Morinis and

Harald O. Skar, or instance, has revealed that this is not the case with pil-grimage. Tereore, in order to find the unity in hidden likenesses I asked theSocratic question: What, then, should we call the quality which distinguishespilgrimages and which is characteristic o them all?

Afer comparing the findings o M. J. Sallnow (), E. Alan Morinis(), Harald O. Skar (), Glen Bowman () and Barbara Nimri Aziz() with my own field research on Mount Athos in Greece, I came to theconclusion that spiritual transformationis the specific quality o a pilgrimage.

Moreover, I realised that

Pilgrimages form an ellipse, although they are not transition rites, and that Pilgrimages are universal in form, but unique regarding their content of

belies.

Having ound the specific universal unity o pilgrimages, namely that pil-grimages are journeys o spiritual transormation (Gothni ), I began to

look more closely at the uniqueness o the content o belies embodied in pil-grimages to Mount Athos, particularly with the aim o unolding the universeo belies concealed in the word prosknima, which is the Greek word or


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pilgrimage. Tereore,I shifed my ocus romthe concept to the word

pilgrimage, denotingthe human phenom-ena o visiting holy andsacred places, persons,mountains, wells andso orth.

Te aim o this ar-ticle is to illustrate how

our preconceptions othe word pilgrimagedetermine our concep-tion o the concept orcategory o pilgrim-age, which again deter-mines our interpreta-tion and understand-ing o the content obelies o this orm ohuman phenomenon.As a by-product thisarticle is also displayingthe process o how our

limited horizon o conceiving the concepts and words is extended in parallelwith the process o research. Te article aims at showing how this horizondetermines our leaving out undamental elements o pilgrimages which, in

this case, are characteristic o visits to the Holy Mountain o Greece.

The Holy Mountain of Athos: some basic facts

Te Holy Mountain o Athos in northern Greece is a sel-governed monasticrepublic belonging to Greece. It is a peninsula, the length o which is about kilometres and the breadth about kilometres. On this peninsula there

are ruling monasteries, which all o them own their part o the area: thebuildings, monastic villages (skete), monastic cottages (kellion) as well as thearming land and the orests on their properties.

Mount Athos is inscribed on the World Heritage List

of UNESCO. Photo Ren Gothni.


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Altogether there are today about , Orthodox monks living on MountAthos and each monastery also has a number o lay workers helping themonks with the maintenance and the reurbishing work on the monasticbuildings and churches. More than , men visit the monasteries on thisHoly Mountain every year.

Mount Athos has been regarded as the oldest democracy in the world.All the twenty ruling monasteries are legal entities o public law, and dir-ectly subject to the spiritual jurisdiction o the Ecumenical Patriarchate oConstantinople. Although Mount Athos is a sel-governed monastic repub-lic, it is also supervised by the Greek state through the Governor o MountAthos, who is appointed by presidential decree on the recommendation othe Minister or Foreign Affairs. According to the new internal regulation othe ministry, the Governor has the rank and remuneration o the SecretaryGeneral o a region.

Te administration o the entire Mount Athos is carried out by the Holy

Community at the capital municipality o Karyes, which is situated in themiddle o the peninsula. It consists o twenty monks, each monk being elect-ed as a representative o his ruling monastery or a year. Te executive au-thority on Mount Athos is with the our monks o the Holy Epistasia, whichconsists o representatives chosen by rotation according to a so called tetradsystem: the twenty monasteries are arranged into five groups o our monas-teries (tetrad) in each o the groups. One o the first five senior monasteriesin rank is the first monastery in each tetrad. Each tetrad in turn takes over

the Holy Epistasia or a year the Holy Epistasia being headed by the monkrepresenting the senior monastery o the tetrad. He is known as the Protos orfirst elder, rom Protepistatis.

The fence at the border

of the Holy Mountain

of Athos. Photo Ren

Gothni.


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Te Holy Mountain o Athos is known to many as the monastic republicinto which women are prohibited to enter. Te reason or this is religious anda undamental cornerstone in the ecclesiastic legislation. Because the entire

peninsula is dedicated to the Mother o God, the monks have since the firstmonastic buildings were raised considered this to mean that no other rivalwoman should set her oot on Mount Athos. Te prohibition o men to enterand sojourn in convents and women to enter and sojourn in monasteries, theso called avatonprinciple, is an old concept with roots in the earliest stages othe monastic movement. Te prohibition is already mentioned in the Canon o the Quinisext Ecumenical Council o and in the Canon othe Seventh Ecumenical Council o . Tis avatonprinciple has aith-

ully been kept by all the Athonite ruling monasteries until the present day(Konidaris : ).Te question asked in this article is the ollowing: How can we understand

the phenomenon o more than , men visiting the Holy Mountain oAthos every year?

The challenge of understanding

Te concept o understanding reers to the scientific process o acquir-ing knowledge that is universally applicable and equal both to the naturalsciences and the human and social sciences. However, understanding is notthe same as explaining and explaining is not a synonym or understanding.Understanding is here used neither in a general sense nor in the particularsense o a method. Understanding comes beore method!

In philosophical hermeneutics, the notion o understanding is derivedrom the German word verstehen= davor stehenin Swedish frst= st

framfr(to stand in ront o), in Finnish mbrtta= kulkea ympri(to walkaround) and in English rom understandan= to stand under. o stand inront o, under, or to walk around isto be in relation to and, as we know,in a relation there is always at least two parties: () an I, or first person, whostands in ront o the other or a subject matter, and () the other or subjectmatter in relation to which an I stands. However, it is elementary to realisethat the I is never a tabula rasa, but always ensnared in preconceptions, whichare the result o the process o learning a language, in other words a mother

tongue, and o schooling.Tereore, the first thing we need to do is to encounter our preconceptions

o the subject matter, in this case o pilgrimage, in ront o which we stand as a


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first person. And we ask: In ront o what is the I standing? Strictly speaking,we are not standing in ront o the pilgrim only as a person, but rather in ronto the words used by the pilgrim. Te words expressed are not the property

o the pilgrim only, but collective property. What we try to understand is theuniverse o meanings concealed in the word pilgrimage as a word carryingpreconceptions related both to Latin and Roman Catholicism!

Our preconceptions determine our interpretation and understanding inthe ollowing way. Te word pilgrim rom Latinperegrinus(per ager) denoteswalking and within the Roman Catholic theology identification with the su-erings o Christ (imitatio Christi) through physical hardship. Hence ouri.e.the Westernerspreconception o the word pilgrimage, is that a pilgrimage

is about walking, which means that the pilgrimage is conceived o rom a lim-ited horizon o understanding. Preconceptions are always language-boundand conditioned in two ways:

Historically, reecting time and space; language and mother tongue; and Emotionally, reecting liking / disliking.

The peak of Mount Athos. Photo Ren Gothni.


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Pilgrimage (prosknima) to Mount Athos

A pilgrimage to Mount Athos ollows the universal structure pattern o any

pilgrimage, namely departure, journey and return. Tis structure is depictedin figure .

Figure 3. The structure of pilgrimage to Mount Athos

Approach rd /urning away rom worldly things

Home Monastery

Our/plis Daphne

Return rd /See worldly things with new eyes

Te Greek word or pilgrimageprosknima, rom the verbproskyn,means tobow down, to pay ones respect to, to worship and to submit onesel to. Tefirst time the pilgrim heading or Mount Athos hears the wordprosknimais

in the Pilgrims Bureau in Ouranoupolis when the official hands over the visaor diamonitrionwishing him Kal prosknima. For some years I took this tomean something like, Have a nice pilgrimage without any further reection.It was only when I realized that there is a distinct difference in meaning be-tween the Latin word or pilgrim,peregrinus, and the Greek equivalent termproskynits,that kal prosknimabegan to mean more than just Have a nicepilgrimage in the Roman Catholic sense o the word with its connotation owalking.

Te preconception o the word prosknima is not that o walking, butworship. Te connotations o the wordprosknimaromproskinare to bowdown beore an icon or a relic, to re-enact the events o the Fall, to rest in thepresence o the Holy and to pray Lord have mercy on me. Prosknimathendoes not mean have a nice pilgrimage, but enjoy your worship or may youexperience the presence o the divine energies in the liturgy and the Eucharist.e key word is worship, not walking! During aprosknima pilgrims

Make the sign of the cross Kiss the icons Kiss the holy relics


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Confess their sins to their confessor or spiritual father Take part in the services Receive the Holy Communion, the climax of any genuineprosknima

On Athos, then, we encounter another kind o preconception o the word pil-grimage, namely that o worship. Allow me to elaborate these lines o thoughta bit urther with a second example and illustrate how preconceptions deter-mine interpretation.

In , Philip Sherrard discussed the paths on Mount Athos and, some-what disappointed with the recent development o building more roads onthe Holy Mountain, argued that At least % o the visitors to Athos today are

not pilgrims. Tey are tourists. Tey do not walk along the long, steep, ofenrelentless paths, so that inner change, or the production o which walking isan essential element, cannot take place in them.

Te acts are:

pilgrims/visitors are allowed to enter Mount Athos per day Greek pilgrims non-Greek visitors Non-Greeks are about per cent o the total number o visitors per cent are Greek Orthodox pilgrims

Tis means that the vast majority o the pilgrims and visitors are Greekproskynitsand it is totally wrong to argue that most o them are tourists. ocome to an authentic interpretation of the pilgrim/tourist discussion and tounderstand pilgrimage to Mount Athos we need to

Encounter our preconceptions of the word pilgrim

Learn Modern Greek Listen to the meanings of the wordsprosknima and proskynits Learn the structure and content of the Divine Liturgy and take part in the

services Listen carefully to how the proskynits conceive o their pilgrimage to

Mount Athos

Without a thorough knowledge o the Greek context, in which the Greek men

go or pilgrimage to Mount Athos, our interpretation will inevitably be dis-torted by our preconceptions o what a pilgrimage is all about.


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Gadamers ball theory

Drawing on the thought of Aristotle and Rilke, Hans-Georg Gadamer elabor-

ates on the concept o play, which then turns into what I have called his balltheory. Te theory is simple: A ball is thrown to us without our taking theinitiative. We receive it and this draws us into the game. Te game has its ownautonomy in that each player submits to the game in the sense of letting him/hersel be carried away by the game. Gadamer concludes: We have seen thatplay does not have its being in the players consciousness or attitude, but onthe contrary play draws him into its dominion and fills him with spirit. Teplayer experiences the game as a reality that surpasses him. (Gadamer :

; Grondin : .)Analogically to a game, Gadamer argues, a piece o art is thrown to us inthe same way; as a challenge to take part in the game o conversation aboutthe interpretation and understanding o it. We experience a metamorphosis,because the play o conversation is sel-governed and cannot be controlledby us as participants or subjects. By analogy, thereore, experiencing a pieceo art is the same as what happens in a game or a play. While looking, we areabsorbed by the experience o the truth in a painting or an icon, or instance.

What does a pilgrim experience on the Holy Mountain o Mount Athos?Following the lines o thought in theMetaphysicso Aristotle, we realise thatseeing is given preerence over all the other senses on the basis that sightbest helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions. About hearingAristotle says that he who hears thereby hears more, in other words also whatcannot be seen, namely everything that can be thought o by means o lan-guage (Aristotle , I: ).

What the pilgrims see on Mount Athos is

e landscape, monastic buildings Pilgrims and monks, the guest master in particular Icons, frescoes of saints in the church and relics of saints Monks living a life in prayer; angelic life

What the pilgrims hear is

Prayers read during the services; Kyrie eleisonin particular

Discussions with monks about spiritual life


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Apart rom the universe o belies, conceptions and ideas concealed in theword, hearing also embraces the whole universe o the language. Tis is ex-pressed discerningly in the Orthodox Creed:

I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker o heaven and earth, and oall things visible and invisible (Divine Liturgy : ).

Pilgrims (proskynits) stand in ront o the energies o God present in theicons, rescoes, prayers and the Holy Communion, as a riend taking to ariend, as St Symeon the New Teologian has expressed it. Not as a riend wecan see, but in ront o the (religious) word we can hear and the energies o

God, the Holy Spirit, we can perceive. Tere is a presence and yet an other-ness. o stand in ront o is an encounter between two persons. It is not themonks the pilgrims try to understand, but the spiritual world the Athonitesare talking about. Logosor word is our common inheritance, but we eachunderstand words differently. (Gothni .)

Understanding happens as a revelatory linguistic event. Te meaning othe word (logos) is revealed in the dialogue/conversation in that understand-ing comes as an elucidating surprise.

Prosknima is an act o worship and worship is prayer. Pilgrimage as aconcept in the Western sense does not articulate authentically the mean-ing oprosknima, worship. o worship is to pray, and to pray, according toSt Johannes Klimakos, is to engage onesel in a dialogue with God.

Where, then, is language and the revelatory linguistic event articulated? Itis not articulated in the consciousness o a personwhich is ofen wronglyimplicitly thought to be the casebut in the discussion, in the exchange oideas that takes place in a conversation, and in prayer, o course.

In the encounter with the word, logos, in a dialogoslogosdialogos

logosunderstanding, pilgrimage presupposes understanding the word pil-grimage; in other words, the universe o belies concealed in the word whichis encountered in quite a specific context, namely the context o the culturestudied.

Figure 4. The dialogue of understanding

logos dialogos logos

(word) conversation (word)


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From concepts to words and back

Philosophy has been concerned with concepts since its very beginning. Te

attempt has been to give an account o the world not merely in words, but inthe universality o the words, in scientific concepts. Tis advance or progresshas reached its peak in the exact sciences, especially mathematics and in thenatural sciences, in the search or the unity (i.e. spine) in hidden likenessesas previously discussed. In the human sciences, on the contrary, the aim ismore ofen to try to understand analogical units and to unold the universe obelies concealed in the words o the language and culture studied (Gothni: ). Te way icons speak is a case in point. Allow me to give yet an-

other illustrative example.In September , I went to see an Athonite monk I had been meetingregularly or many years and who was like a spiritual ather to me. When Iarrived at the monastery, it turned out that he was lying on his death bed witha brain tumour. He was ed by a younger monk and could speak only whis-pering. I stayed with him or two days and when the young monk saw howdistressing this was for me, he tried to comfort me by saying: Dont worry! Heis in good hands. I was quite rustrated by these words. How could my riendbe in good hands, when he was looked afer by a young monk with only a ewyears o experience in monastic lie?

Afer our arewells I went to another monastery. In the evening service Icould not stay in my pew, but moved around restlessly, distressed by the actthat I was about to lose one o my dearest riends. Inadvertently I was stand-ing in ront o the huge icon o the taking down o the body o Christ rom theCross (Apokathlosi), when the words o the young monk came to my mind:He is in good hands. Indeed he is, I thought. He is in the hands o the Mothero God, as in the icon it is the Mother o God who takes down Christ rom the

cross. My spiritual ather had been just as pale as Christ in the icon and evenlooked the same in the bed where he was lying. At that moment I realisedthat my spiritual ather was indeed in good hands also or the reason that hewas going to be laid at rest in the Garden o the Mother o God, which all theAthonites conceive Mount Athos to be. Physically too, thereore, he was goingto be resting in the arms o the Mother o God. My distress disappeared likea toothache at the dentists chair and I elt a complete satisaction at havingheard the word spoken to me in this revelatory way, so that the entire universe

o belies concealed in the word was revealed to me. o my own surprise thepieces in the Athonite jigsaw puzzle fitted nicely into a coherent system obelies, the belie o the Athonites and all Orthodox believers in the world.


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The taking down of the body of Christ from the Cross. Photo Ren Gothni.


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Tis experience o the revela-tory aspect o words proved to mehow icons speak through thoughts

that strike us like revelations, in-vite us to think, to rediscover themovement o the words and tohear the word as part o a widercontext o belies. o understandreally is to hear more! o hear:Hes in good hands, in the handso the Mother o God (Teotokos)

as the Athonites believe, is moreconvincing than any scientificargument. No proo is needed.Te experience o the revelatorylinguistic event is the proo, theproo that my riend had reallyelt he was in good hands as ormore than orty years o prepara-tion he had been praying or theMercy o God and was now finallyto be laid to rest in the Garden othe Mother o God, which he hadknown he was one day to be likeall the other monks beore him.

Summary

Why do I insist on calling theprosknimato Mount Athos a pilgrimage? Tisquestion was asked by Michael Pye afer I had read my paper. My answer issimple. I am not prepared to give monopoly to the Western scholarly andRoman Catholic interpretation o what pilgrimage is or should be all about,both as a category and a word. Pilgrimage, like many o the other concepts inthe study o religions and indeed the concept o religion itsel, is limited to aWestern horizon o preconceptions, interpretation and understanding. Tis

does not do justice to the analogical phenomena in other cultures with differ-ent languages. Tis I have realized when studying monasticism and pilgrim-age on the Holy Mountain o Athos in Greece.

A burial in the monastery of Dionysiou.

Photo Ren Gothni.


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Tere is, however, yet another aspect to consider and this is that by dis-cussing the concept and word pilgrimage in the light o my own field researchand in relation to the research process o interpretation and understanding,

I at the same time illustrate the method of hermeneutic reection, in otherwords the way we may disclose and learn to discern the limited horizons othe preconceptions we are all born into. Moreover, when we encounter ourpreconceptions by these means, we are widening our horizons and in thatprocess we discover more authentic words; in this case words or the humanphenomena o pilgrimage to Mount Athos in Greece.

Analogically, the process o interpretation and understanding is the samein any culture. What we need to do is to ground our research in language, in

the interpretation and understanding o words that are the basic elementso language. Apart rom searching or the unity in hidden likenesses andagreeing upon univocalconcepts, which are also needed, o course, we needto scrutinize the analogicalconcepts and unfold the universe of beliefs con-cealed in the words that these concepts inevitably are abstractions o. By thesemeans we reach, or the time being, a more authentic understanding o theword used to describe or categorize the phenomena concerned, the word thatreaches the other and the word we can agree upon as being the most authenticword at this particular stage o research.

References

Aristotle

Te Metaphysics, books with an English translation by Hugh redennick.London.

Aziz, Barbara Nimri

Personal Dimensions on the Sacred Journey: What Pilgrims Say. ReligiousStudies: .Bianchi, Ugo

Concluding Remarks: Te History o Religions oday. In: Te Notion ofReligion in Comparative Research. Selected Proceedings of the th Congress

of the International Association for the History of Religions, Rome, rdth

September, . Roma: LErma di BRETSCHNEIDER.Bowman, Glen

Anthropology o Pilgrimage. In: Makhan Jha (ed.), Dimensions of Pilgrimage.

An Anthropological Appraisal; pp. . New Delhi: Inter-India Publications.Bronowski, Jacob

A Sense of the Future. Cambridge, Mass: MI Press.


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Divine Liturgy

Te Divine Liturgy of our father among the saints John Chrysostom. Bungay,Suffolk: Oxord University Press.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg

ruth and Method. Second, revised edition. New York: Continuum.Gothni, Ren

Pilgrimage = ransormation Journey. In: ore Ahlbck (ed.), Te Problem ofRitual. bo: e Donner Institute.

Understanding the other. In: Ren Gothni (ed.), How to do ComparativeReligion? Tree Ways, many Goals; pp. . Berlin & New York: Walter deGruyter.

Words Matter. Hermeneutics in the Study of Religions. (orthcoming).

Grondin, Jean Te Philosophy of Gadamer. Chesham: Acumen.Holm, Nils G.

Religious Symbols and Role aking. In: Nils G. Holm & J. A. Belzen (eds),Sundns Role Teory an Impetus to Contemporary Psychology of Religion;pp. . bo: bo Akademi University.

Konidaris, Ioannis M.

Te Mount Athos Avaton. Athens: Sakkoulas Publishers.Morinis, E. Alan

Pilgrimage in the Hindu radition: a Case Study of West Bengal. Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press.Sallnow, M. J.

Communitas Reconsidered: Te Sociology o Andean Pilgrimage.Man:.

Sherrard, Philip

Te Paths o Athos. Eastern Churches ReviewIX (): .Skar, Harald O.

Communitas and Schismogenesis: Te Andean Pilgrimage Reconsidered.

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Unity and Universe - Understanding Pilgrimage to Mount Athos

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