Our Hellenic Odyssey

On June 28th nine questing souls met at Philadelphia airport for a three week exploration of ancient sites and mystery centers in Greece and Turkey with four guiding angels. Nassia in Greece and Hakan in Turkey were our knowledgeable local guides. Gillian Schoemaker (picture right), co-leader and curative eurythmist, led us in healing movements appropriate to each sacred site; Glen Williamson (below), co-leader and New York-based actor and story teller, related and performed tales of the ancients, often on the very ground they trod.

The quest led into ancient Greek Mysteries and myths, and early Christianity; and also into ourselves, individually and as a traveling community. We tested capacities for sensing the evolution of consciousness described by Rudolf Steiner, as in the statuary, which reflected a gradual flowering from archaic and ancient Greek times through to early Roman.

Our senses were filled. The translucent blue of warm Aegean and Corinthian seas beckoned us to immerse ourselves. Soft summer breezes and cool shade trees became a welcome relief from 100 degree heat. Inner senses were stimulated by Glen’s stories and Gillian’s eurythmy. In Athens, as night fell on the rooftop garden of our hotel, Glen gave riveting scenes from his play Aeschylus Unbound, the Acropolis behind him. We visited Eleusis, the play’s setting, the previous day. In the mountainous region of Delphi, four brave souls joined Gillian the noonday sun for a special healing dance in the theatre just above the temple where Apollo’s oracle once spoke. The circle moved so eloquently that tourists alongside us on the path became still, and a hush fell upon this sacred place. Another one of our group, a music therapist, led us in spiritual songs, one being “Dona Nobis Pacem” in the Beehive Tomb at Mycenae. The resonances around us and within us were palpable. — From Athens’ Acropolis and Parthenon we traveled to ancient Ephesus in Turkey, an immense hillside metropolis situated at the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures. Nearby at the Temple of Artemis, now almost gone, Gillian’s eurythmy of the Zodiac felt deeply healing. Close by in the House of Mary, intensely meaningful for many of us, Glen told The Incarnation of the Logos from Mary’s standpoint.

The many stops on our Odyssey filled eye, heart and soul: the New Acropolis Museum; the Sounion peninsula at sunset with its Temple of Poseidon overlooking the sea, part of a perfect equilateral triangle with the exquisite hilltop Temple of Aphaia on the isle of Aigina, and the Parthenon; the hanging monasteries of Meteora with their wonderful wall paintings. And three less visited places with a quiet inward quality: the secluded healing center of Amphiarios with its abundance of fragrant, healing herbs; Thorikos, the oldest known theater of human size; the uniquely fortified citadel of Tiryns in the Peloponnese; ancient Mycenae’s massive structures of 1500–1200BC, with huge rock walls and impressive Lion Gate; and the deep healing center Epidaurus, where Racine’s Phedre was performed in wonderful acoustics for 15,000 people. Then island hopping to Hydra and Spetses for beach swimming and gentle idling, and a sunset cruise to Patmos, where island life is at its most languid. Here too, nestled in the mountainside, was the small Cave of St. John where he received the Revelation. We gathered within in silent meditation. Afterwards, in eurythmy Gillian recited the descent of the Holy City New Jerusalem.

Our journey ended as beautifully as it had begun: a morning on the Isle of Samos, a final day on our own in Athens, and one final sharing on our last evening. We began with a Rückschau, looking back at all we had seen, opening a space for all to offer something from their hearts. Good byes were said over a dinner of authentic ancient Greek dishes. Heading home, though travel weary we felt inwardly renewed and refreshed.

by Brenda and David Hollweger

The Odysseys

An odyssey is a journey both outer and inner. After the fall of Troy, Odysseus voyaged homewards to his island where patient Penelope waited. The journey lasted ten long years—‘full of adventure, full of instruction’ (Constantine Cavafy). In short, the odyssey is a pathway of initiation, one that we are all traveling today, and ‘our friends and companions may be for us, though they may know but little of it, the terrible and wonderful actors in the ceremony of our initiation’.( Adam Bittleston)

There are places once considered holy, sacred, numinous, where landscape was the habitation of divine beings. Ritual and ceremony conducted there resonated in the becoming of the earth and man. Now we see only ruins outwardly, remains of cultures rich in spiritual meaning. All that comes towards us can speak, and we can listen, if we prepare our eyes and ears with care.

When we stand there with 21st century consciousness, and speak, out of our striving and struggles, who and what we are—does it matter? Is it possible to give something back in gratitude? When we human beings create, in song, music, movement, we offer up something of our divine, essential nature. Doing eurythmy in such places means speaking there a language which was known and familiar, in forms appropriate to the age and culture. We give back our unique human creativity in the language of creation itself as a kind of acupuncture, with ourselves as shining needles on meridian points of the earth. We form a vessel together.

‘Your commandment’, he said, ‘is this world and it is written in your entrails. Read and strive and fight,’ he said ‘Each to his own weapons.’ And he spread his hands. ‘Here stand I, a young novice God, Creating pain and mirth together.’

(Odysseus Elytis)

The first Hellenic Odyssey was in 2002 with Dennis Klocek, artist and Goethean scientist, as co-leader. We considered how geology and geography contributed to the unfolding of mystery wisdom. Observation and drawing helped us enter into landscape and soulscape with awakened and attuned senses, then to offer eurythmy and song with focus and intention. There have been two further odysseys in Greece and two in Scotland, which sheltered the Mysteries of Hibernia, the Druids, early Christianity and the fugitive Templars.

This past summer’s odyssey to Greece, described above by two participants, aimed to trace pivotal moments of the development of consciousness, from divine to purely human. With co-leader Glen Williamson we saw how Odysseus’ cleverness, Orestes’ new-found conscience, and Socrates’ indwelling guiding daimon were evidence of this.

Across a river of olives flowing towards the sea, Delphi, navel of the earth, is set high on its mountainside, home of the oracle of Apollo, god of the sun, where purification in the springs of Castalia were preparation for meeting him. In Hebrew Hallelujah means, ‘I purify myself from all that prevents me from beholding the Most High.’ This was offered in eurythmy on the light-filled airy heights in the ancient theater, evoking awe, recognition and intense gratitude in us, and that perhaps what we gave was received.

Eleusis is situated in the most industrialized part of Greece, near Athens. Here we heard of Demeter, goddess of cosmic Natura, and Persephone, her daughter carried off by Hades to the underworld. How directly we could see his kingdom risen to the surface of the earth in the pollution of the smokestacks and refineries! Persephone, pure maiden of divine clairvoyance, how can she be revived? In eurythmy we experienced the downward “D,” and heavy falling trochee rhythm chaining us to weight and density on earth, where we struggled to retain our uprightness in “I,” and find the strength again for the uprising “T” and for lightness in the springing iambic. We experienced how we could find Demeter in ourselves in the TAO, how all of nature enters in us, giving rise to sense of self.

Ephesus, in Turkey, celebrated mysteries of the cosmic Word, the Logos, uniting space and time. St. John was bishop here; here Mary lived for some time after the Crucifixion. Nearby the mighty temple of Artemis was set close to the seashore, a wonder of the ancient world. Sister of Apollo, she reflects his radiant sun. Now is no trace of deep forests threaded by pathways, where priest and novice walked, speaking together in the moonlight. The sea receded, and standing upright in the marshy hollow there remains of the temple a single column on which a stork has built her nest. In this forlorn place we heard of Alexander the Great, born the night the great temple burned down, Artemis having left to preside over his birth. Here in eurythmy we tried to enter the space/time dynamic of the Zodiac, with its gifts of the consonants to the earth. A stork feather drifted gently down into our midst, like a blessing.

At the House of Mary, now an exquisite chapel on a wooded hillside, we heard of two Marys and two Jesus children—in a mood of infinite peace. Later we experienced the soul star, in eurythmy, of the ‘Ephesus’ verse given by Rudolf Steiner, which speaks of the planets bestowing their gifts, their vowels arising in our soul nature. Thus we united our twelve-fold with our seven-fold being.

It seems to me that the sacred places of our earth are asking something of us when we visit them. Their time is over, but we, who are alive and struggling into our spiritual inheritance, can recognize and honor their part in our story. They are waiting for that from us, and that we will indeed, one day, arise.

The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung! Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose and Phoebus sung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set!

Yet, later:

Let one living head, but only one, Arise . . .

Alfred, Lord Byron

by Gillian Schoemaker

As of 2023 these odysseys continue; for information email gillian_schoemaker@yahoo.com