Greek Carnival, especially that of St Anna, Euboia, but also elsewhere in Greece and the Beginning of the Lent: a time capsule of Ancient Greece and one of the best evidence of Greek historical cintinuity!!! Phallic customes and rituals still exist! People of all ages, occupations, political affiliations, and social classes participate the same say they would in a religious (Christian) or national ceremony! Videos may shock you! You don't need to go to Africa to witness a rich anthropology of people still connected to their bodies and the mother nature without being ashamed! Egypt, Subsaharan Africa, Precolumbian Civilizations, and Oceania may monopolize anthropology and the academic establishment may rule out anything about Greece, Cyprus (also Greek), the Balkans or Eastern Europe, but the pictures and the videos speak for themselves!
The living Ancient Greece!!! The most visible and most touching evidence of historical continuity, a time capsule that links and connects unceasingly the ancient Greeks with the modern Greeks, as if almost nothing has been changed even in the area of religion! Language is still Greek and DNA is still Greek, both in terms of genotype based on studies and on phenotype, as you can compare statues of athletes and vases to modern Greeks, especially the young and those good in shape, such as athletes, and you see it yourself! Culture, customes and rituals have been preserved by the Byzantine Greeks in the disguise of Christian Saint Cult which is just a continuation of the local hero cults and Dionysiac rituals of Ancient Greece.
It's amazing how many affinities are still there in music, song lyrics, oral tradition, and the similarity of modern rituals with those depicted on vases and reliefs! But it's not something static! It's a dynamic living tradition that gets adapted to the new times and to the new generations! It's not just a living museum! They just preserve the same archetypal themes of fertility, the power struggle of gender, social class, and religion, but also, in the same ancient format, they get inspired by everyday life.
Following the Aristophanes' spirit of sarcasm and political satire, always by using profanity and brutal honesty, they still produce music and songs as well as short plays, performances and dances in the same ancient format that mock and satyrize or make fun of contemporary politicians, political parties, strikes, and scandals! In particular, they make fun of sex scandals, church scandals, corrupted politicians, the cops, the banks, economic crisis, euro and the Euro-group, and all kinds of news from everyday developments in the police/criminal justice/court reports, such as petty criminals busted to lifestyle news, and so on! For instance, a few years ago, there was an incident in Crete, where police exposed an entire village, Zoniana, in Crete where the locals were making their living by cultivating hash and marijuana, so carnavalists made fun of them pretending that they were smoking weed as if it was a "public secret". There is a song from St Anna village in Euboea that mocks the Byzantine hymns of the Greek Orthodox Church and then turns to folk music and there is another one from the same village, on eof the many that make fun of priests, bishops, monks and nuns, but that one says that Pytheia sent emissaries to give a chrism (prophesy) to the local Metropolitan Bishop that the twleve gods will screw him! One year, Carnavalists made fun of a politician who had sex with his secretary and there was a DVD released that exposed him in the fashion of Watergate! Another reenactment was making fun of the government and the security measures, as a famous criminal escaped the Korydalos' prison in Athens. Other reenactment was making fun of terrorists and another of petty thefts who were arrested.
The shocking profanity and vulgar language matches the masks, the custumes, the floats, and the totems. The car-driven floats are the modern version of the same concept of totemism. Some archaic forms of floats may have been used in ancient Greece, such as primarily wooden structures participating in the procession and driven by donkeys that also may wore phallus' accessories or they were carried by men, as it happens likewise in the case of the Greek Orthodox Christian Epitaphios procession that resembles the Holy Sepulcher of Christ. The Carnivalists' procession resembles of the Ieros Gamos (ιερός γάμος) or Sacred Wedding. It is said that even today, farmers rub their penis on the soil in the beginning of the Spring, so the soil becomes fertile. In those festivals, they hold effigies of double headed phallus and they make phallus trees and statues or manekens or dolls having intercourse with effigies of vaginas! They also make various structures that reanact events that they want to make fun of, such as scandals, incidents of political, social, and religious corruption, and so on.
The totems still used are of phalluses and vaginas as well as other symbols of power, status, regeneration and decadance in nature. Also, predominant figures and personas are the old men, priests, monks, nuns, prostitutes, etc. Those come from the front of either too serious, powerful and high status and may be considered symbols of oppression or from the totally opposite front. The masks, costumes, and accessories of the satyres and phallophoroi (phallus-bearers) are still made in the same artistic style of wood and fabric, but also of some new modern materials have been added such as plastic, paper, and metal. All those structures and equipment enable the Greek Carnivalists to transform into someone else and transcend into a surreal plane of existance that is at the same time quite down to earth and the here and now as they make fun of routine and everyday reality. Entheogenes or substances that induce euthymia, euthoria, and even trance is usually alcohol, such as zythos, as the ancient Greeks called it that is beer made of barley and of course wine. Social drinking allows all ages to loosen up and socialize and have fun as well as people from different age groups and generations get together and get creative and inventine in their sense of humor. Almost everything is allowed. Teens drink in front of their parents. Boys make sexual gestures to girls with the phallus effigies and the girls and the people around laugh about it and participate in the jokes without consider those gestures as harassment or insulting. Post-modern social constructs of our urban mentality, such as feminism and political correctness step aside and human nature takes over in its rough primordial form and everyone surrenders his or her ego to its sacredness and to the power of the collective spirit and worships human nature and nature in general.
The Carnivalists free themselves from societal norms and moralistic barriers and release all primary processes and raw instincts of their individual unconscious that become conscious and cure the guilt and the shame imposed by our hypocritical superego-driven societal structures that preserve order and stability. These people which are simple village people may not realize it, but they actually do something that is even better than the most elaborate form of psychodrama and existential-humanistic group therapy! They fight with their own original and authentic "folk laughter therapy", so to speak, all those symptoms and syndromes of our times: depression, suicide, anxiety, phobias, and other mental disorders! They send out the message to all directions that we must go back to nature and reunite with the universe, our true self, re-ensoul ourselves, as James Hillman, the founder of Archetypal Psychology and Jung's disciple would say. Then, we should come in direct contact with the numinous that can both be sacred and profane and the most important: discover our true self and seek for an authentic life and an authentic identity! The message tells us to stop being hypocritical and face our true nature! Respect our bodies, because they are part of nature as much as our psyche is. In the end, all is one, as Aristotle said. And as Jung said, we are all united by the archetypes, which are biologically rooted and exist within us and within the world of the collcctive unconscious the zone of cosmic unrealized and repressed consciousness that connects us all. Today's science suggests that we are all entagled by quantum entaglement.
Those days of the Carnival (e.g. in Ayianna, Euboea, it's three days), the Dionysiac spirit takes over the Apollonian, to use Nietzsche's model of thought (which is too absolute and dichotomous). The songs literally and explicitly urge the spectators to touch their testicles for good luck and worship them or rather the effigies that resemble them in the floats and those they wear fastened with belt. That's obvious a fertility ritual and a sympatheric magic rite to exonerate the negative powers and bring good luck, productivity, and prosperity for the new year. All those rituals, as you may see from the videos take place outside the village church! The profane becomes again sacred as much as the religious sacred or numinous worshiped in the Church!
So let us say again that people in Greece are still creative and they keep making similar songs and they transmit tradition to their offspring, they keep adding to folk culture and they still produce Greek tradition as they produced in the Prehistoric, the Geometric, then the Archaic Age, the Classical, the Hellenistic and later on in the times of the Roman Conquest and the Byzantine or rather East Roman Empire! Even in those times, when being Greek or Hellenism was synonymous to Paganism and Greeks could not call themselves Greeks and called them Romans, still they knew they were Greeks who were jsut Roman citizens. We still call ourselves Romans! We call ourselves "Romioi" (Ρωμιοί in plural and Ρωμιός in singular number), but we make a distinction from "Romaioi" (Ρωμαίοι) the Latin Romans of the West who spoke Latin and in the Middle Ages they became Roman Catholics and they were also mixed with the Goths and other barbaric Germanic nations who invaded them in the Early Middle Ages.
We still preserve both Ancient Greece and the East Roman Emprire that is the Byzantine or actually the "Medieval Greek" Empire, because that's what it was! It might be multicultural in terms of its vast geography, its inhabitants and its citizens, as it extended from Greece, the Balkans and some parts of Italy at specific timeperiods, as the borders changed all the time, up to Persia and Central Asia, but the culture and the language were Greek and the religion was Greek Orthodox Christianity, an ancient form of Christianity heavily based on Ancient Greek Religion and folklore! Of course, in those parts of Italy, the Slavic Balkans and Eastern European lands, and Central Asia, locals preserved their own language, culture, customs, and even their own pagan elements disguised in Orthodox Greek Religion. However, Greek was the language and culture of the official imperial authority and those educated and in high positions were part of it no matter were they came from. Western Asia, Asia Minor and Constantinople today's Instabul, were all populated by Greeks and the institutions and imperial state machine were Greek.
After the Great Schism of 1054 and especially later on after the Fourth Crusade of 1204 Latins took over Constantinople in a way equal if not worse than the Turks, then Byzantine Greeks were disappointed with the Latins. So there were Emperors such as Theodore B' Laskaris in the Late Byzantine times, who were pro Greek. A few years before the Fall of Constantinople (1453), George Gemistos or "Plethon" was not only pro Greek, but he advocated for a return to Ancient Greek Religion, though this endeavor failed. In the times of the Medieval Byzantium, the Church as well as Emperors and scholars become way more tolerant to pagan tradition, customs, and culture and sometimes, even pro Greek, unlike the Ancient Byzantium and the Late Antiquity, which was more Roman and less tolerant of pagan customs and traditions. However, even in Early Christianity there were pro Greeks, such as Emperor Julian the Apostate, but still he did not expressed the opinion and the feeling of the majority, though Laskaris did so. Such customs as the Dionysiac, not also were preserved in Late Antiquity and Ancient Byzantium, but there was a strong accretion, as Christian catacombs and graves had walls painted with phalluses for eternal prosperity and in the St Anargyroi cult, phallus effigies were brought in front of the St Anargyroi icons as votive offerings! And those are only a few examples of the the long list that goes on and on...
If in the oppresively anti-pagan Ancient Byzanium such customs were preserved it would not be hard at all to get preserved in the Medieval Byzantium were shame of calling oneself Greek as synonymous to pagan had also started to fade away and the word "Greek" reemerged as an ethnonym or ethnicity term. For instance, in Ayianna (St Anna), Euboea, today, a pole with the image of St Anna looks like Athena Polias' image of the famous lost Gold-Ivory Statue of Athena that was kept in the opisthodomos of the Parthenon in Athens. A symbiotic coexistence and tolerance exists between those customs and the church. But that doesn't always happen...
Following the Aristophanes' spirit of sarcasm and political satire, always by using profanity and brutal honesty, they still produce music and songs as well as short plays, performances and dances in the same ancient format that mock and satyrize or make fun of contemporary politicians, political parties, strikes, and scandals! In particular, they make fun of sex scandals, church scandals, corrupted politicians, the cops, the banks, economic crisis, euro and the Euro-group, and all kinds of news from everyday developments in the police/criminal justice/court reports, such as petty criminals busted to lifestyle news, and so on! For instance, a few years ago, there was an incident in Crete, where police exposed an entire village, Zoniana, in Crete where the locals were making their living by cultivating hash and marijuana, so carnavalists made fun of them pretending that they were smoking weed as if it was a "public secret". There is a song from St Anna village in Euboea that mocks the Byzantine hymns of the Greek Orthodox Church and then turns to folk music and there is another one from the same village, on eof the many that make fun of priests, bishops, monks and nuns, but that one says that Pytheia sent emissaries to give a chrism (prophesy) to the local Metropolitan Bishop that the twleve gods will screw him! One year, Carnavalists made fun of a politician who had sex with his secretary and there was a DVD released that exposed him in the fashion of Watergate! Another reenactment was making fun of the government and the security measures, as a famous criminal escaped the Korydalos' prison in Athens. Other reenactment was making fun of terrorists and another of petty thefts who were arrested.
The shocking profanity and vulgar language matches the masks, the custumes, the floats, and the totems. The car-driven floats are the modern version of the same concept of totemism. Some archaic forms of floats may have been used in ancient Greece, such as primarily wooden structures participating in the procession and driven by donkeys that also may wore phallus' accessories or they were carried by men, as it happens likewise in the case of the Greek Orthodox Christian Epitaphios procession that resembles the Holy Sepulcher of Christ. The Carnivalists' procession resembles of the Ieros Gamos (ιερός γάμος) or Sacred Wedding. It is said that even today, farmers rub their penis on the soil in the beginning of the Spring, so the soil becomes fertile. In those festivals, they hold effigies of double headed phallus and they make phallus trees and statues or manekens or dolls having intercourse with effigies of vaginas! They also make various structures that reanact events that they want to make fun of, such as scandals, incidents of political, social, and religious corruption, and so on.
The totems still used are of phalluses and vaginas as well as other symbols of power, status, regeneration and decadance in nature. Also, predominant figures and personas are the old men, priests, monks, nuns, prostitutes, etc. Those come from the front of either too serious, powerful and high status and may be considered symbols of oppression or from the totally opposite front. The masks, costumes, and accessories of the satyres and phallophoroi (phallus-bearers) are still made in the same artistic style of wood and fabric, but also of some new modern materials have been added such as plastic, paper, and metal. All those structures and equipment enable the Greek Carnivalists to transform into someone else and transcend into a surreal plane of existance that is at the same time quite down to earth and the here and now as they make fun of routine and everyday reality. Entheogenes or substances that induce euthymia, euthoria, and even trance is usually alcohol, such as zythos, as the ancient Greeks called it that is beer made of barley and of course wine. Social drinking allows all ages to loosen up and socialize and have fun as well as people from different age groups and generations get together and get creative and inventine in their sense of humor. Almost everything is allowed. Teens drink in front of their parents. Boys make sexual gestures to girls with the phallus effigies and the girls and the people around laugh about it and participate in the jokes without consider those gestures as harassment or insulting. Post-modern social constructs of our urban mentality, such as feminism and political correctness step aside and human nature takes over in its rough primordial form and everyone surrenders his or her ego to its sacredness and to the power of the collective spirit and worships human nature and nature in general.
Those days of the Carnival (e.g. in Ayianna, Euboea, it's three days), the Dionysiac spirit takes over the Apollonian, to use Nietzsche's model of thought (which is too absolute and dichotomous). The songs literally and explicitly urge the spectators to touch their testicles for good luck and worship them or rather the effigies that resemble them in the floats and those they wear fastened with belt. That's obvious a fertility ritual and a sympatheric magic rite to exonerate the negative powers and bring good luck, productivity, and prosperity for the new year. All those rituals, as you may see from the videos take place outside the village church! The profane becomes again sacred as much as the religious sacred or numinous worshiped in the Church!
So let us say again that people in Greece are still creative and they keep making similar songs and they transmit tradition to their offspring, they keep adding to folk culture and they still produce Greek tradition as they produced in the Prehistoric, the Geometric, then the Archaic Age, the Classical, the Hellenistic and later on in the times of the Roman Conquest and the Byzantine or rather East Roman Empire! Even in those times, when being Greek or Hellenism was synonymous to Paganism and Greeks could not call themselves Greeks and called them Romans, still they knew they were Greeks who were jsut Roman citizens. We still call ourselves Romans! We call ourselves "Romioi" (Ρωμιοί in plural and Ρωμιός in singular number), but we make a distinction from "Romaioi" (Ρωμαίοι) the Latin Romans of the West who spoke Latin and in the Middle Ages they became Roman Catholics and they were also mixed with the Goths and other barbaric Germanic nations who invaded them in the Early Middle Ages.
We still preserve both Ancient Greece and the East Roman Emprire that is the Byzantine or actually the "Medieval Greek" Empire, because that's what it was! It might be multicultural in terms of its vast geography, its inhabitants and its citizens, as it extended from Greece, the Balkans and some parts of Italy at specific timeperiods, as the borders changed all the time, up to Persia and Central Asia, but the culture and the language were Greek and the religion was Greek Orthodox Christianity, an ancient form of Christianity heavily based on Ancient Greek Religion and folklore! Of course, in those parts of Italy, the Slavic Balkans and Eastern European lands, and Central Asia, locals preserved their own language, culture, customs, and even their own pagan elements disguised in Orthodox Greek Religion. However, Greek was the language and culture of the official imperial authority and those educated and in high positions were part of it no matter were they came from. Western Asia, Asia Minor and Constantinople today's Instabul, were all populated by Greeks and the institutions and imperial state machine were Greek.
After the Great Schism of 1054 and especially later on after the Fourth Crusade of 1204 Latins took over Constantinople in a way equal if not worse than the Turks, then Byzantine Greeks were disappointed with the Latins. So there were Emperors such as Theodore B' Laskaris in the Late Byzantine times, who were pro Greek. A few years before the Fall of Constantinople (1453), George Gemistos or "Plethon" was not only pro Greek, but he advocated for a return to Ancient Greek Religion, though this endeavor failed. In the times of the Medieval Byzantium, the Church as well as Emperors and scholars become way more tolerant to pagan tradition, customs, and culture and sometimes, even pro Greek, unlike the Ancient Byzantium and the Late Antiquity, which was more Roman and less tolerant of pagan customs and traditions. However, even in Early Christianity there were pro Greeks, such as Emperor Julian the Apostate, but still he did not expressed the opinion and the feeling of the majority, though Laskaris did so. Such customs as the Dionysiac, not also were preserved in Late Antiquity and Ancient Byzantium, but there was a strong accretion, as Christian catacombs and graves had walls painted with phalluses for eternal prosperity and in the St Anargyroi cult, phallus effigies were brought in front of the St Anargyroi icons as votive offerings! And those are only a few examples of the the long list that goes on and on...
If in the oppresively anti-pagan Ancient Byzanium such customs were preserved it would not be hard at all to get preserved in the Medieval Byzantium were shame of calling oneself Greek as synonymous to pagan had also started to fade away and the word "Greek" reemerged as an ethnonym or ethnicity term. For instance, in Ayianna (St Anna), Euboea, today, a pole with the image of St Anna looks like Athena Polias' image of the famous lost Gold-Ivory Statue of Athena that was kept in the opisthodomos of the Parthenon in Athens. A symbiotic coexistence and tolerance exists between those customs and the church. But that doesn't always happen...
Today, the Church is still persecuting the profanity and pagan character of those customs, not the customs themselves or those who practice them depending on the idoelogy and learning of its Metropolitan Bishop. Many bishops and priests focus only on the ligh and humorous aspect of them and see them as another festival that may increase tourism and the church goers in their Parish. Others go ddper into theological disputes, but they just limit themselves to sermons and advices, thus admonishing their flock to avoid profanity and pagan rituals. Those customs, however, still exist and they will exist no matter the pressure against it whether that comes from the Church or from Globalization, modernity, post-modernity, and consumerism! That's because this lifestyle and mentality is ingrained in the deepest structures of the Greek soul, the Hellenic Psyche! It's in their DNA and their collective unconscious and their archetypes, for which Jung said they are biologically-rooted and part of nature. These people, no matter how technology and modern needs may pressure towards alientation, still they are connected to nature and their ancestors' landscape! They are part of the surrounding environment, the plants, the animals, the mountains, and the wine blue sea where Homer's words and rhythm can still be heard on the sea foam waves' crochet patterns....
Above: A Dionysiac ritual outside a village church in the disguise of a Greek-Orthodox festival!
Below: Videos from St Anna's Profane Carnival in Ayianna (St Anna), a village in North Euboia!
