Apr 15, 2016
Kali, Colonization & the Death of Medusa
I met a Greek who doesn’t believe in Zeus.
For me this is shocking. Terribly so. I am firmly attached to the notion of old gods, a love that began with the ancient Greeks and their vivid tales that stoked a fire in my bonfire heart. Pagan mythologies never cease to give me a lump-in-the-throat feeling, conjuring images that captured my imagination since I was a wee child. Today, new gods attempt to borrow from the old ones; on the 25th of December we celebrate the birth of Horus by the goddess Isis. And someone along the line must have questioned how shepherds watched their flocks by night in the heart of winter. Surely?
In my part of the world, the old ones still hold a world of power within their grasp. Kali devotees flock to shrines empowering the dark goddess with their passion and pain. Asia was invaded and pillaged similar to other parts of the world and in fact until very recently so. Sri Lanka celebrates a mere 68 years of independence after endless centuries of colonization. The many devout Catholics along coastal belts and affluent cities are living testament to how new religions found their way into my pagan island and her people. But Kali-Ma, Shiva, Vishnu — these are still hallowed names and their power still very much alive in the hearts of their believers. So what happened? Renamed colonizers, have the conquerors of recent centuries softened their all-consuming blow? Old religions in this part of the world have continued to flourish, allowing Christianity to dwell within the same space. Hindus utter prayers to Jesus and Buddhists dash coconut-curses across the grounds of a Hindu kovil.
A lot of my travel choices have had to do with a burning desire to walk the paths of the ancients and visit their sacred spaces. Mother India. Celtic Scotland. Sacred Stonehenge. Tribal Fiji. And even my very own Sigiriya in the heart of Sri Lanka. This year it was finally time to venture to where it all began. And so this Spring, I went to Greece, to find the root of my obsession. I went in search of Medusa. Of Hades. And a pantheon of Olympians the Titan Gaia brought forth into the realm of man.
My journey began in Aegina, a quiet island on the Saronic Gulf where I was impatient to see the temple of Aphaia. On my way up the mountain, I get my first glimpse of the pillars in the distance. And again that lump-in-the-throat, boom-boom in the heart feeling.
But I found myself to be a solitary pilgrim and my prayer the only one left to be heard.
Come summer, I am sure the winds will blow in visitors as many as the dust that surrounds the temple grounds. Unlike pilgrims from centuries past, they will come with a new reverence. This is no Jerusalem and the invisible goddess remains forever unseen. 21st-century pilgrims come laden with smartphones and selfie-sticks. Each click will be a call to prayer, each smile an offering at the altars of social media.
While I am a lone wanderer at the ancient temple, nearby devout Orthodox Christians flock to the church of Agios Nektarious a latter-day saint. Devout beings are seen kissing Byzantine figures, lighting candles and falling to their knees in age-old rituals that predate the god they now pray to.
Anything loses its power if you cease to believe in it. Jesus lives in our hearts today because we welcome him there. But how many still welcome the old ones? Christianity invaded the world in the name of a peaceful man that once walked the earth and in doing so forever banished pantheons from the grasp of mankind. Who is to say that one god is greater than the other?
I walk around that stormy plateau searching for Aphaia and in the distance I hear church bells ring.
Did they toll for the forgotten gods they once erased from this land?
Somewhere in a lost desert a child cries out for Eebe before being consumed by a sandstorm.
Elsewhere a young virgin is dedicated to Apollo’s mountain temple. She would go on to answer the questions of mankind before being devoured by smoke into a painful death.
And all the while, a serpentine Ouroboros wiggles in a never ending dance of mouth meeting tail, leading us back to where we began.
