I leave Saint Anne Skiti and hike over the folding skirts of Mt. Athos covered in butterflies and prickly herbage to the next monastary north up the peninsula's coast. After some hours I reach Saint Dionysios, this time not a skiti but an actual monastary, large and imposing, hanging over the sea on a clifftop, totally fortified in the middle ages to protect it from the frequent pirate raids of the period.

There I meet Pater Damionos, a native English speaker from the UK whose family is Greek and has roots here. He returned to Greece and to Athos to spend the rest of his life as a monk.

He invites me into a booklined sitting room which feels deliciously dim and cool despite hanging over the glaring blue seaside. He brings lokum and water. He smoothes the fallen flour the lokum pieces are covered in off his black rumpled clothes and shakes any renegade bits from his scraggily beard.

Like a bright reflection of the sea outside his eyes light on mine and he begins to give me a foundational short talk about the nature of mankind`s origins in the story of the garden of Eden and 'the fall from grace:'

"The tree and its fruit were intended for Adam,`` he says, his voice leaking a bit of cockney ``the problem was not that they ate the fruit so much as they passed the buck (passed the blame) when they were caught.`` ``She did it`` Adam said, ``the snake did it,`` Eve said - then they were cast out of Eden. It is the deviation from the straight path of the will of God which is sin."

He continued with a description of the heirarchy of those people that aspire to acheive greater union with God on Mt. Athos: The three levels of aspirants are called:
- Catharsis
- Illumination
- Theosis

The name "Catharsis" is used to describe the aspirant who is currently engaged in cleaning out himself and ridding himself of all the mental and emotional garbage he has aquired through his childhood and worldly life. This person is mainly working on pride and ego etc. The Catharsis aspirant has to have faith that this method he is persuing will later yeild results. Cleaning and polishing the heart is very hard work and so far there is no proof that all this effort will lead anywhere.

The name "Illumination" is used to describe the aspirant who has finally experienced something in his process of meditation and prayer. A moment of contact with the devine. Finally faith is no longer required since it has been replaced by a moment of direct experience with the devine. Now the Illumination aspirant has a new burning hunger to reexperience that moment of devine illumination. This is also a dangerous moment in the path because pride and ego are not yet eliminated and can become so puffed up by this moment of illumination that the person may leave the path and try to become a teacher or begin to conjecture to others with confidence about things which can only be known through direct experience.

The name "Theosis" is used to describe the aspirant that has completely died to him or herself. The ego and pride have been eliminated and only a saint remains. This is divinization: participation in the uncreated grace of God. The word “Thorea” by itself means “the vision of the uncreated light.”

Damionos goes on to state that up until ten years ago there were many true saints ("Theosis") on Athos but know they have all died. The aspirants on Athos now have to seek the highest master possible or available here and go study under that person.

Father Damionos concludes from this that we are nearing the end of the world because “as long as the tree (this world) continues to bear fruit (saints) it is preserved, but when it becomes barren it is cut down.”

He tries to connect this to an anti-globalization theme by mentioning that perhaps the 666 number we are supposed to look for (in the biblical apololypse description) is in the SKU and bar codes used in the US and Europe to label and monitor everything sold and ever creep closer to being directly placed on humans (DNA database, ID Cards, etc).


A Presence

In Dionysiou and Aghias Annas I perceived something during church services: a sweet, ancient (and I felt also female) force eminating from everything, moving around the room which tugged at my heart and begged it to weep.

At St. Dionysiou I loved the way the preist blessed everyone leaving the dining room when lunch and dinner were over with the cook, the reader and the refector (man in charge of the dining facilities) bowing down low on the other side of the door as everyone passed out the door. The blessing symbol of the preist is with the right hand held palm open and the fourth finger bent to touch the thumb. The cook, reader (who read a lesson from the scriptures or works of the holy fathers while everyone ate in silence) and the refector (the man in charge of the dining facilities) bow to ask forgiveness of the other monks and guests should anything have been unsatisfactory. That is a beautiful tradition.