Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement

By Loring M. Danforth

"If the Saint calls you, if you have an open road, then you don't feel the fire as if it were your enemy," says one of the participants in the Anastenaria. This compelling work evokes and contrasts two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual in which people who are possessed by Saint Constantine dance dramatically over red-hot coals, and, second, American firewalking, one of the more spectacular activities of New Age psychology. Loring Danforth not only analyzes these rituals in light of the most recent work in medical and symbolic anthropology but also describes in detail the lives of individual firewalkers, involving the reader personally in their experiences: he views ritual therapy as a process of transformation and empowerment through which people are metaphorically moved from a state of illness to a state of health. Danforth shows that the Anastenaria and the songs accompanying it allow people to express and resolve conflict-laden family relationships that may lead to certain kinds of illnesses. He also demonstrates how women use the ritual to gain a sense of power and control over their lives without actually challenging the ideology of male dominance that pervades Greek culture. Comparing the Anastenaria with American firewalking, Danforth includes a gripping account of his own participation in a firewalk in rural Maine. Finally he examines the place of anthropology in a postmodern world in which the boundaries between cultures are becoming increasingly blurred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Sep 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781400884360

Loring M. Danforth

Loring M. Danforth is Professor of Anthropology at Bates College. He is the author of The Death Rituals of Rural Greece, Firewalking and Religious Healing, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, and Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory.

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Preface

I WOULD LIKE to thank here the many people who have contributed so much to this study.

For years I have been fascinated by Greek culture (both ancient and modern) as well as by intense religious experiences such as spirit possession. These two interests first intersected when I read the Bacchae of Euripides with Anne Lebeck. Her teaching was a rare gift I was truly fortunate to have received.

I visited the village of Ayia Eleni in Greek Macedonia to see the Anastenaria in May 1973 and again in May 1975 while I was living in Athens. During this time my life was enriched by many people associated with Athens College, where I lived and taught. I especially valued the good friendship of the families of Xenophon and Sophia Tenezakis and Yannis and Olga Lappas.

From September 1975 through September 1976 I carried out field-work on the Anastenaria in Ayia Eleni. Then I spent almost two months visiting the other communities in northern Greece where the Anastenaria is performed. This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (soc 74-23895) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (#3089).

My early work on the Anastenaria was carried out while I was a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University. Vincent Crapanzano and Hildred Geertz served as my principal dissertation advisers and offered me much useful advice.

In May 1981 I was able to see the Anastenaria again during three weeks of fieldwork in Ayia Eleni carried out in conjunction with a course I was teaching at Bates College entitled Modern Greek Culture and Language in Greece. Another trip to Ayia Eleni in May 1986 was supported by Bates College through a Roger C. Schmutz Faculty Research Grant. Katharine Butterworth became a good friend and a valuable link to Greek culture during these years, when I was unable to be in Greece for long periods of time.

Ken Cadigan generously invited me to observe—and participate in—two firewalking workshops he led in central Maine in December 1985 and January 1986. The people who attended the first of these workshops (whose names I have changed) kindly shared their experiences with me and helped me better to understand a world of which I am almost a part.

The first draft of this book was written at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, during the year 1986/1987 while I was on a sabbatical leave from Bates College. My year there was made possible by a fellowship grant from the Mellon Foundation. The National Humanities Center is truly an ideal place to write a book, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked in the stimulating yet peaceful environment the center provides.

Anna Caraveli, Jane Cowan, Vincent Crapanzano, Dimitri Gondicas, Michael Herzfeld, and George Marcus have been kind enough to read an earlier version of this manuscript and offer many valuable comments and suggestions. Maggie Blades of the National Humanities Center and Claire Schmoll of Bates College carefully typed the various drafts of this book, while Gail Ullman and Cathy Thatcher of Princeton University Press guided it smoothly toward final publication.

Kostilides throughout Greek Macedonia and the people of Ayia Eleni in particular demonstrated great patience, trust, and good will by sharing their lives with me and by talking with me so openly about the Anastenaria. I have tried to express through this book the gratitude I feel for their hospitality and friendship as well as the respect and admiration I have for the Anastenaria as a form of religious healing and as a vital celebration of community in a rapidly changing world.

Because the names of the villages and towns where the Anastenaria is publicly performed are well-known in Greece, the use of pseudonyms would have served no purpose. I have, however, changed the names of two villages where Kostilides involved with the Anastenaria expressed a desire to avoid publicity. Similarly I have not used pseudonyms for the leaders of the Anastenarides since they are public figures whose names have appeared in both popular and scholarly articles on the Anastenaria. By using pseudonyms for all other Anastenarides and by changing some details of their lives I have sought to protect their personal anonymity. This anonymity, however, is not absolute, and I ask readers of this book to act responsibly with the portrait of the Anastenaria presented here. The people of Ayia Eleni deserve no less.

Finally I would like to dedicate this book to my wife, Peggy Rotundo. Both in Greece and in the United States she has always been a source of perceptive advice and steady support. For this I thank her deeply.

Firewalking and Religious Healing

Introduction

IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD of the late twentieth century it has become increasingly difficult to sustain the notion that even the most exotic people anthropologists write about—from the Trobriand Islanders to the Yanomamo—live in totally alien, isolated, and self-contained cultures. Our world has grown smaller; its societies and cultures, unique and diverse though they are, are now woven together in a complex web of interconnections and mutual influences that forms a thoroughly interdependent world system. In response to the many serious challenges posed by such a world, anthropology today, like other disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences, is experiencing what George Marcus and Michael Fischer (1986:7) have called a crisis of representation.¹

Much of the recent ethnographic writing that has appeared during this experimental moment (Marcus and Fischer 1986) has been shadowed by a loss of confidence in the legitimacy of widely accepted theories and paradigms as well as by a sense of uncertainty concerning the possibility of adequately representing other cultures within the well-established but, until recently at least, relatively unexamined genre conventions of realist ethnography. As a result many ethnographers have become increasingly self-conscious about how they construct the texts they write; they have begun to experiment with new narrative forms and new ethnographic genres.

Of all the dilemmas now facing ethnographers perhaps none is more challenging than that of defining an authorial voice at a time when a multiplicity of other voices are clamoring to be heard. How can ethnographers establish an authoritative presence within a text when one of their explicit goals—in both a literary and a political sense—is the dispersal of ethnographic authority?² How, in other words, can they let other voices speak in the texts they write? How can the ethnographic monographs of their offices and libraries remain most faithful to the ethnographic dialogues of the field?

Fortunately some tentative answers to these difficult questions are beginning to emerge in the growing number of experimental ethnographies that have appeared over the past ten years. Many of these works, written in a variety of voices, genres, and styles, have suceeded in portraying the richness of other cultures in a way that preserves all the ambiguities of the fieldwork encounter in the ethnographic text. They have achieved an uneasy but creative balance between two types of rhetoric—that which attempts to close off an account neatly with a satisfying self-contained explanation . . . and that which leaves the world observed as open-ended, ambiguous, and in flux (Marcus and Cushman 1982:45). The best of these works have also achieved a similar balance between an understanding of the self and an understanding of the other by integrating into one text interpretation of other cultures and reflection on the processes of ethnographic fieldwork and writing that lead to this interpretation. In this way these experimental ethnographies have brought us one step closer to realizing the elusive goal of letting the people who read them hear more clearly the voices of the people who speak through them.³

In writing this book I have been greatly influenced by many of these recent trends in ethnographic writing. I too have experimented; but I have done so, I hope, without loosing sight of the more traditional concern of interpretive anthropology: the analysis of specific cultural forms as socially established structures of meaning embodied in systems of symbols (Geertz 1973a: 12).

The primary aim of this book is to offer an interpretation of the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual involving firewalking and spirit possession which is performed by a group of refugees from eastern Thrace, known as Kostilides, who settled in Greek Macedonia in the early 1920s.⁴ The ritual cycle of the Anastenaria in the village of Ayia Eleni, where the largest group of Kostilides settled, reaches its climax on May 21, the day the Orthodox Church celebrates the festival of Saints Constantine and Helen. The Anastenarides believe that Saint Constantine has the power both to cause and to heal a wide variety of illnesses. They also believe that it is Saint Constantine who possesses them when they dance and protects them from getting burned when they perform their spectacular acts of firewalking.

Drawing on recent work in medical and psychiatric anthropology as well as more established anthropological approaches to the study of religion, I present an interpretive approach to the study of religious healing. I argue that illnesses and their symptoms may be understood as somatic symbols that express the social and psychological problems that people encounter in their daily lives. Spirit possession is a particularly powerful religious idiom or language that enables people to articulate and often resolve these problems by redefining their relationship with the possessing spirit so that they acquire the supernatural power they need in order to be healed. Ritual therapy is, therefore, a process of transformation and empowerment through which people are metaphorically moved from a state of illness to a state of health.

Central to the Anastenaria is the figure of Saint Constantine, who in Greek Orthodox tradition is considered to be the founder of the Byzantine Empire and the defender and savior of the Christian religion. During the celebrations of the Anastenaria the dance of the possessed Anastenarides, which is an expression of their relationship to Saint Constantine, is transformed from a dance of suffering to a dance of joy. Because the majority of Anastenarides are women, an analysis of the Anastenaria reveals a great deal about the role of women in rural Greece. By participating in the Anastenaria women, who occupy a particularly marginal position in the community of Kostilides, are able to act as men and in that way gain an increased sense of power and control over their lives without actually challenging the legitimacy of an official ideology of male dominance. The conflict-laden family relationships that may often be responsible for the illnesses that lead people to become involved with the Anastenaria are symbolically expressed and resolved in the songs that are sung when the Anastenarides dance. Metaphors of emergence, release, and opening up are also an important part of the therapeutic process of the Anastenaria, as is fire, a powerful symbol of passage, purification, and transformation.

In addition to analyzing the Anastenaria as a system of religious healing, I also examine the Anastenaria as a symbolic expression of the collective identity of the Kostilides. The Anastenaria is both a celebration of community and a celebration of the past. Through it Kostilides scattered throughout Greek Macedonia are able to maintain their extensive kinship networks and keep alive the past they share by preserving the memory of their lost homeland in eastern Thrace.

The Anastenaria, however, is by no means a static, traditional ritual on the verge of being destroyed by the broad currents of social and cultural change that have swept through Greece in the past few decades. It has maintained its vitality in spite of the often strained relationships between the Anastenarides and officials of the Orthodox Church and in spite of the severe conflict that has recently arisen between the sacred power of the Anastenarides and the secular power of local political leaders. Economic development, tourism, and the mass media have also had a significant impact on the Anastenaria. In addition, a new generation of Anastenarides has emerged—a generation that includes alienated university students, bohemian artists and intellectuals, and members of the upwardly mobile and increasingly urbanized middle class. In the face of all these changes the Anastenaria has demonstrated the capacity to acquire new meanings and appeal to a younger generation of Greeks by celebrating new communities and new pasts in a way that is at once traditional and modern.

A more conventional interpretive ethnography of the Anastenaria would end here, but in the postmodern world in which contemporary anthropologists work it is necessary to do more. We must move from a simple interest in the description of cultural others to a more balanced purpose of cultural critique which plays off other cultural realities against our own in order to gain a more adequate knowledge of them all (Marcus and Fischer 1986:x). In this book I have tried to meet the challenge of presenting an informative account of another culture while at the same time offering a critique of our own through a juxtaposition of the Anastenaria and the American Firewalking movement, one of the more spectacular developments in that vast collection of belief systems, social causes, and healing practices known as the New Age movement, which has spread rapidly across the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.

People who participate in the American Firewalking movement, like people who become involved in other forms of New Age healing or any of the alternative religious movements that have flourished in the United States since the 1960s, are concerned with self-realization and personal growth. They hope that by walking on fire at an evening seminar or workshop they will be able to heal their relationships with other people, overcome their fears, and find more meaning in their lives.

Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the American Firewalking movement and the Anastenaria exhibit many remarkable similarities. Both are concerned with moving people from a negative state of illness to a positive state of health through a persuasive rhetoric of empowerment and transformation. In addition, they both make use of a complex set of metaphors involving fire, release from confinement, and removal of obstacles. As might be expected, however, given the very different cultural contexts in which they exist, the American Firewalking movement and the Anastenaria exhibit an equal number of striking differences. They draw on very different conceptions of the individual and of society, and they adopt very different attitudes toward science. Finally, the psychological idiom of the American Firewalking movement contrasts sharply with the religious and somatic idioms of the Anastenaria.

By presenting an analysis of two therapeutic systems that are paradoxically so similar and yet so different, I have tried to achieve a distinctly anthropological cultural critique by using the juxtaposition of cases (derived from ethnography’s built-in Janus-faced perspective) to generate critical questions from one society to probe the other (Marcus and Fischer 1986:117). It is my hope that the two ethnographic analyses presented here are sufficiently attentive to both detail and context to stand on their own and that the juxtaposition of the two will offer new and revealing insights into both Greek and American cultures that would otherwise remain unexplored.

Ethnographic accounts that make use of this technique of defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposition (Marcus and Fischer 1986:138) frequently present a series of incongruous images that have the jarring effect of making the exotic worlds of cultural others appear more familiar, while simultaneously making the familiar world of the anthropologist appear more exotic. In the end this at times almost surrealistic juxtaposition of different cultures calls into question the anthropological endeavor itself.⁵ It invites us in a provocative and occasionally unsettling way to subject ourselves and our own discipline to the same critical gaze we so often cast only on others.

With these goals in mind I have tried to construct a mixed-genre text (Marcus 1986:188) in which I move back and forth among several narrative voices. At times I adopt the fairly traditional authoritative voice of the interpretive anthropologist concerned with the tasks of ethnographic description and analysis. At times I adopt the less authoritative voice of the literary journalist seeking to evoke the worlds of the Anastenaria and the American Firewalking movement more directly and powerfully than is possible in standard ethnographies. Finally I occasionally adopt the more private voice of an individual engaged in a personal quest for meaning through the practice of anthropology.

In this book I have taken the risk of introducing myself into the text as a first person presence in order to expose rather than conceal the self in its encounter with the other. Only in this way are self and other rendered equally vulnerable. Only in this way is the cultural reality of the anthropologist, not just that of the ethnographic subject, placed in jeopardy.⁶ In this way I also hope to raise the question of how the personal experiences of the anthropologist facilitate or hinder specific insights into other cultures.

My goal at all times has been to integrate a reflexive understanding of the self and the interpretive process with a more traditionally ethnographic understanding of the other in a single text. Therefore, while I have inserted myself as a character into the text, somewhat paradoxically perhaps, I have also tried to mute or marginalize my voice in order to give the Anastenarides of northern Greece and participants in the American Firewalking movement an increased narrative presence in the text as well. I have tried to let them speak for themselves as much as possible in long narrative passages that convey something of the vividness and color of their worlds.

In these narrative passages I have sought to avoid portraying abstract a-historical ‘others’ who are inscribed in bounded, independent cultures (Clifford 1983:119). Instead I have made use of detailed biographical portraits to achieve more concrete characterizations of particular individuals. I have also presented extended accounts of dramatic incidents in a way that emphasizes the fact that these events are interpreted quite differently by the very people who participate in them. Thus instead of presenting an authoritative and totally consistent portrait of the Anastenaria and the American Firewalking movement I have stressed the contradictions, the ambiguities, and the uncertainties that are inherent in these worlds. This results occasionally in humor, irony, and the undermining of one interpretation, one voice, by another.

At certain points these narratives are interrupted by passages that are separated from the rest of the text and set in italic type. These passages are an even more direct expression of the voices of the people who took part in the many complex ethnographic encounters from which this book has emerged. They consist of stories, dreams, newspaper articles, publicity brochures, and advertising posters, and they form a kind of ethnographic collage that complicates even further the narrative structure of the text.

It is my hope that this book will contribute to the opening up of the possibilities inherent in ethnographic writing. I realize all too well that any attempt to achieve the goal of dispersed authority in ethnographic writing by granting others an increased narrative presence runs many risks—risks of inconsistency, fragmentation, and disorientation. These risks must be taken, however, if we hope to present more faithful, more honest accounts of the actual experience of ethnographic fieldwork. I am confident that the risks of constructing such open-ended texts are more than offset by the challenging opportunities they offer readers to become actively involved in the ongoing process of cultural interpretation.

¹ On postmodernism in general see Lyotard (1984) and Jameson (1983 and 1984); on the concept of a world system see Wallerstein (1974). Clifford (1988), Fischer (1986), and Tyler (1986) discuss postmodernism in the context of anthropology more specifically.

² See Clifford (1983).

³ For valuable critiques of recent developments in ethnographic writing see Clifford and Marcus (1986), Geertz (1988), and Marcus and Cushman (1982). Particularly interesting examples of experimental ethnographic writing include Crapanzano (1980), Dumont (1978), Dwyer (1982), Favret-Saada (1980), Jackson (1986), Price (1983), and Rabinow (1977).

⁴ In Greek Anastenaria is a plural noun. I use it in the singular in English, however, to refer to a single ritual complex seen as an integrated whole. Participants in the rite generally are known as Anastenarides. The masculine singular is Anastenaris, the feminine singular Anastenarissa, the feminine plural Anastenarisses. Kostilides are people from Kosti, a village in eastern Thrace. The masculine singular is Kostilis, the feminine singular Kostilou. Alternatively a Kostilis may be referred to as a Kotsianos, a term that is also derived (by metathesis) from Kosti. In the transliteration of Greek words and phrases in the text I have been guided by a desire to approximate modern pronunciation. The names of authors cited in the bibliography, however, are given in more conventional transcription.

⁵ The relationship between ethnography and surrealism has been explored in detail by Clifford (1981).

⁶ On vulnerability in anthropology see Dwyer (1982).

I

The Festival of Saints Constantine and Helen

LIGHT THE FIRE! LIGHT THE FIRE!

OLD YORGAKIS YAVASIS stood in front of the icons of Saints Constantine and Helen and crossed himself three times. He lit a small incense burner, made the sign of the cross with it in front of the icons, and placed it on a large trunk underneath the icon shelf. As the thick, sweet-smelling smoke clouded up around him, Yavasis placed a hand on each of the two icons and stood motionless. Suddenly all the gold coins and jewelry, all the silver votive offerings and little bells, that hung from the icons began to jingle and rattle quietly.

Yavasis carried the censer around the room. As he passed, people waved some smoke toward their faces with their hands and crossed themselves. Yavasis returned to the icon shelf and put the censer down.

Good evening, he said. Welcome. And may you all be helped. May everyone who has served Saint Constantine by coming tonight receive a gift. The Saints don’t want big gifts; they only want service and devotion. If you believe, they will give you gifts.

People had come to Yavasis’ house in the village of Ayia Eleni on the eve of May 21, 1976, to see the Anastenaria. Some had come out of curiosity, to enjoy the spectacle. Others had come out of hope, to look for a miracle. Still others, including the Anastenarides themselves, their relatives, and many of their fellow Kostilides, had come to the konaki, the shrine of the Anastenarides, to serve Saint Constantine. After lighting a candle, crossing themselves, and kissing the icons of Saints Constantine and Helen, they greeted the others present with a warm embrace or a more formal kiss on the back of the hand. Then they sat down on one of the low benches that lined the walls of the room.

The powerful presence of Saints Constantine and Helen gazing down from the richly decorated icon shelf seemed to dominate the konaki. Each icon depicted the two Saints dressed in purple and blue robes standing on either side of a silver crucifix. The halos of the Saints, like the edges and handles of the icons, were plated with silver. Draped over the icons hung large red kerchiefs known as simadia, and on the icon shelf nearby lay icon covers made of purple, pink, and white satin. The flames of the two olive-oil lamps suspended above the icons were reflected off the many small metal plaques hanging from the icon covers, the simadia, and the other embroidery that decorated the icon shelf. These votive offerings depicting hands, legs, eyes, breasts, kidneys, children, soldiers, and wedding crowns were moving testimony to the ability of Saints Constantine and Helen to perform miracles.

By early evening the konaki was hot and crowded. Yavasis, dressed as usual in his coarsely woven black suit and his worn gray flannel shirt, went over to a table that stood near the icon shelf and put out some candles that were burning low. Two simadia tied together at the corners hung from around his neck. As he sat down under the icon shelf, Maria Kondou, a fifty-year-old woman from a nearby city, began to tremble. Her legs were shaking rapidly; she was pounding her knees with her fists. After a few minutes the trembling stopped and Maria crossed herself. Next to her sat Kiriakoula, her sister, crying.

People in the konaki talked about Kosti, their old village in eastern Thrace, about old Anastenarides who had died, and about new Anastenarides who were just coming out and starting to dance. They talked about their families and the other villages where the Anastenaria was being celebrated.

A few minutes later Maria began to tremble again; her feet were bouncing violently up and down. Then she stood up and danced over to the icon shelf. Her heavy footsteps could be heard clearly as she shuffled across the rough wooden floor. She stared at the icons and danced in place, her head rocking back and forth, her arms moving out and up toward the icons as if she were beckoning them to come to her. Finally she crossed herself, stopped dancing, and greeted the icons.

The icon shelf in the konaki at Yavasis’ house (Photography by Loring M. Dansforth)

A little after seven o’clock, at a slight nod from Yavasis, a man sitting opposite the icon shelf began tuning a Thracian lira, a small three-stringed wooden instrument played with a bow. As the high, tight, droning sound of the lira became louder and more regular, people grew quiet, their faces sad. The atmosphere in the konaki was one of tense expectation. The lira player began a long, slow, seemingly rhythmless tune. When he started to sing a plaintive song about a young Greek woman who was kidnapped by an old Turk, some people began to cry. One woman suddenly clapped loudly three times, jumped to her feet, and began to dance. Another woman began writhing and twisting in her seat. Yavasis sat down next to her and gave her a simadi. She kissed his hand, stood up, and joined the dance.

At this point the lira player began a faster, more rhythmic tune. He was soon joined by a man playing a large drum. An old widow dressed in black, holding an icon cover with both hands high over her head, danced in front of the musicians and with strong powerful steps set a rhythm for them to follow. Musicians and dancers began to sing loudly and intensely—verses about a child seized by a wolf, about young Constantine riding off to war, about a man searching in vain for his lost son.

Maria danced up to the icon shelf. Yavasis crossed himself, reached up, and took one of the icons off the shelf. He kissed it and handed it to her. After crossing herself Maria kissed Yavasis’ hand in return and danced off cradling the icon gently in her arms. A heavy woman with a round face and tightly braided hair was dancing with her hands out, palms to the floor, making sweeping circular gestures. Then Mihalis Kitsos, a small man who had spent several years working in a factory in Germany, approached the icon stand. He crossed himself and took several deep breaths, then he reached out and shook the icon that remained on the shelf. He raised it up a few inches, shook it again, and put it back, as if it were too heavy for him to hold. Finally he lifted it from the shelf and held it high in the air. His neck seemed to tighten and swell. His head fell back and he gazed up at the icon. Then he danced across the room holding it with both hands in front of his face. With a proud smile he danced slowly around the room holding the icon out for all those present to greet.

An old Anastenarissa dances alone in front of the musicians (Photograph by John Demos/Apeiron)

After about twenty minutes the Anastenarides stopped dancing one by one. They crossed themselves and gave their icons and simadia to Yavasis, who returned them to the icon shelf. Maria continued to dance for a few minutes after the music stopped, but soon she took her seat on the bench next to Yavasis under the icons. During the ten or fifteen minute break that followed most people remained in the konaki talking quietly. Some men went out into the hall or onto the small balcony overlooking Yavasis’ yard for a cigarette. Soon the sound of the lira drew people back into the konaki, and the dancing resumed.

By nine o’clock the konaki was even more crowded. Yavasis began calling people up to the icon shelf. As they gathered in front of him, he handed out the censer, a tall white candle, the two icons, the simadia, and the icon covers. With much hand kissing and some dancing a procession slowly formed. To the accompaniment of the lira and the drum the procession of Anastenarides made its way through the streets of Ayia Eleni. In many doorways women stood with lit censers and candles in their hands, marking the passage of Saints Constantine and Helen and the Anastenarides.

The procession stopped at the ayiasma, a small building at the edge of the village that consisted of little more than a door opening on a damp, dark stairway that led down to a well. Yavasis entered the ayiasma and went down to the well. With the procession of Anastenarides arrayed up the steps behind him Yavasis drew a bucket of water and made the sign of the cross over it with each of the two icons. After pouring the bucket of water back into the well he ordered everyone back outside and filled the bucket again.

Emerging from the ayiasma Yavasis hurled the bucket of water over the heads of the twenty or thirty people who crowded around him. He did this three more times. Then he brought up another bucket of holy water so people could drink from it, sprinkle their heads, or fill small bottles they had brought for just this purpose. When the blessing of the waters was completed, the procession returned to the konaki by a different route, moving in a circle counterclockwise or always to the right.

After several more hours of dancing Yavasis announced that the evening’s work was finished, but he reminded everyone to gather again early the next morning because there was still much work left to be done. Then he thanked everyone for their service to the Saints and expressed the hope that they receive some benefit from it in return. People filed by the icon shelf and greeted the icons before saying good night to Yavasis and the other Anastenarides. At eleven o’clock a simple meal of bread, olives, and cheese was served to the ten people who planned to spend the night at the konaki.

Maria was the first person to light a candle and greet the icons the next morning. She asked Yavasis if the large white candle she had brought could lead the procession. He said yes.

People slowly gathered: Anastenarides, other Kostilides, and a bus load of women from Thessaloniki. At ten o’clock Yavasis lit the incense burner. The music started and several women began to dance. One by one Yavasis handed out the icons and the simadia to the appropriate people. He wrapped some money and a piece of rope in a simadi and gave it to Panayotis Vlastos, the son of an old Anastenarissa who could no longer dance. Just then Thodoros Yannas, a tired looking man from Mesopotamo with a lined face and a thin mustache, came bursting into the room, clapping, shouting, and dancing wildly. Yavasis held out a simadi as Thodoros danced back and forth in front of him. Yavasis angrily shouted, Come on! We have work to do. Thodoros stopped dancing, crossed himself, and took the simadi from Yavasis’ hand.

As the procession of Anastenarides approached the house of one of the two village shepherds, an Anastenarissa began to dance and hiss. A black lamb stood alone in the fenced-in area beside the house. Three times Panayotis passed first the censer and then the simadi over the lamb’s head. Then he tied the rope and a bright red ribbon around the lamb’s neck and gave the shepherd the money from the simadi.

The lamb, stopping occasionally by the side of the road to graze, led the procession back to the ayiasma. Despite the presence of several policemen trying to keep order, people crowded closely around the large hole being dug nearby. When the lamb had been wrestled to the ground, Panayotis held its head over the edge of the hole. Several Anastenarides began to dance, driving back the crowd with waves of their arms.

Just then Keti, an artist from Athens dressed in blue jeans and a brightly colored blouse, started to cry and tremble. For the past few years she had been coming to Ayia Eleni for the festival of Saints Constantine and Helen, but she had never danced before. As Yavasis put a simadi over her shoulder, Keti began to sob more loudly and strike her chest with her hand. Then she danced a few halting steps. Yavasis held her and cried. Yannis Zoras, wearing a gray three-piece suit and an old embroidered apron, untied the red ribbon, dropped it into the hole, and cut the lamb’s throat. The bright red blood stained the brown earth of the freshly dug hole.

When the Anastenarides arrived back at the konaki, Keti went up to the icon shelf and leaned her head on one of the icons of Saints Constantine and Helen. She took a few deep breaths and kissed the icons. An old Anastenarissa grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her saying, Don’t be afraid! It’s a hard road, but it’s a road of health and joy. Another Anastenarissa called out to her, Let yourself go! It’s nothing. It’s power; it’s peace.

After lunch and a short rest the Anastenarides gathered again. A constant stream of people passed through the konaki all afternoon, lighting candles, greeting the icons, and watching with a mixture of curiosity and awe the dance of the Anastenarides. Toward evening the dancing grew more intense. As the music started once again, Thodoros, who had been sitting near the door with his head in his hands, suddenly leapt up and went hurtling across the room. He landed on his side underneath the icon shelf and rolled over on his back. Several Anastenarisses immediately began to clap and dance. Yavasis placed a simadi on his chest and returned to the icon shelf, where he continued decorating the icons with roses and sprigs of basil. Two Anastenarisses dragged Thodoros to his feet. Another Anastenarissa danced up to him and shook his arm in time to the music. Thodoros immediately regained consciousness shouting Ah! Ah! Ah! and danced off. Several minutes later he was dancing strongly with one of the icons of Saints Constantine and Helen in his hands.

Another young man, a distant relative of Thodoros’, was dancing now, bent low at the waist with his arms and head hanging down loosely. A middle-aged Anastenarissa sat with her arms clasped over her head rocking back and forth. With a clap and a wave she danced over to Keti, stamped several times loudly in front of her, and danced off. Another man stood at the side of the room blinking frequently and swaying to the music. He kissed Mihalis’ hand as Mihalis danced by. An old Anastenarissa encouraged him to leave the room, but he refused. He just stood there crying and wiping his eyes.

Suddenly one of the Anastenarides shouted, Light the fire! Light the fire! Yavasis lit a candle from one of the oil lamps above the icon shelf and gave it to the man who had led the procession the evening before. He walked quickly from the konaki to an open area near the ayiasma where several thousand people had gathered. The crowd formed a large circle about forty yards across, in the center of which stood a huge cone-shaped pile of logs over six feet high.

A second lamb, offered to Saint Constantine in fulfillment of a vow, is wrestled to the ground (Photograph by John Demos/Apeiron)

As it grew dark, the pile of logs slowly collapsed into a large mound of flaming pieces of wood and glowing red coals. The Anastenarides, who had been dancing in the konaki all afternoon, were notified when the fire was ready. At the sound of the lira and the drum the men tending the fire began to spread out the coals with long poles until they formed a large oval bed about three yards wide, eight yards long, and an inch or so deep.

A wave of excitement swept through the crowd as the procession of