The Setting

This Easternmost of the three peninsulas making up the Halkidi land form, Mt. Athos juts far out in to the Mediterranean sea and is surrounded with clear blue water and no visible islands in site from (the SW corner where I began my pilgrimage). The peninsula here is an arid paradise, thick cultivated greenery, cascading flowers, dry yet guided water rushing everywhere among the rocks, all trees producing something useful, people serving God, praying to intercede for Humanity, persuing understanding (prayer, work, reading) in the silence which enables one to actually absorb. Gorgeous buildings which are wholly traditional showing 900 years of exquisite Byzantine work.


Basic facts of life on Mt. Athos

- The monks have their own clock deviding the day into four periods of six hours each. Each period has about 2.5 hours of prayer in it (all done standing up as an act of aeseticism).
- When it is time for work, waking up, eating, or services the people are notified through the ringing of two percussion instruments hanging in every community on athos. These instruments consist of a large curved piece of Iron played with two metal sticks and a large rectangular wooden board played with a mallet. These instruments are beat without any rythm in a noise that slowly increases in speed and ends in a flurry of banging that can be heard everywhere in the area (the sound is impossible to miss no matter what you are doing). - Visitors are supposed to be Orthodox pilgrims or other spiritually interested people. People who ask for permission to visit yet state that their purpose is to see the old buildings and nature there are often delayed in receiving permission and sometimes even rejected if they don't give up.
- Visitors are charged a fee of 15 or twenty Euros to process their application for permission to visit Mt. Athos. - Visitors are given permission to stay on the peninsula for only five days and four nights but people who exhibit a genuine spiritual interest in the tradition can easily find someone to vouch for them and extend their stay to much longer.
- Visitors are given room and board completely free at any monastery on the island that says they are open to visitors. Some monastaries are only open for visits but not lodging, others are open for lodging only if you call ahead, still a few others (only four in June 2002) are open to drop-ins for food and lodging.


Excluding Women: The most contentious fact of Athos life for visitors:

- The most instantly contentious fact is that no Women are allowed on the peninsula other than the Virgen Mary (called `The Panagia` or `holiest of all` in Greek), the peninsula belongs to her and the monks there are in retreat from the world and all worldly desires, foremost among these being the desire for sex and women. It seems to me that the reason for women being forbidden the peninsula is possibly for some or all of the following reasons:
- Women represent a great distraction to the men trying to focus exclusively on God and their journey to God in the celebate Orthodox tradition.
- If women were allowed a much greater number of pilgrims would come (because the new number of pilgrims would include all those that stay home because they cannot come as a family and many single Orthodox women - women as a rule are greater church-goers than men in Greek society), strain the hospitality system and also present a distraction.
- It seemed some monks alluded to some special inner reason that the female energy represented by a woman visitng Mt. Athos would disturb things(on an energetic level).