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 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
THE LORE OF CRISIS AND MYSTERY
IN RURAL GREECE
a
sk
THE
“= DANGEROUS HOUR
The Lore of Crisis and Mystery
in Rural Greece

By
Richard and Eva
BLUM nara

With Fieldwork Assistance by

ANNA AMERA
and
SOPHIE KALLIFATIDOU

With a Foreword by
H.R.H. PRINCE PETER OF GREECE

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK

 Copyright © 1970 Richard and Eva Blum

All rights reserved. No part of this book may

be reproduced in any form without the permission
of Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Printed in Great Britain

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75—99589
 CONTENTS

Foreword by H.R.H. Prince Peter of Greece

Introduction

Section One: Narratives of the Villagers

II The Life Cycle: Its Dangerous Periods II

Ill The Occult Estate 22

IV Preternatural Human Conditions and Qualities 42
On Venturing into the Other World 57
VI The Extraordinary Dead 79
wut Powers and Dominions: Heavenly Hierarchies and
Infernal Peers 95
Vill That Which is Exceptional in Nature 123
IX Affliction and Deliverance 143
Powers and Words 161

Section Two:
Analysis and Interpretation of Narrative Materials
XI A Profusion of Differences 173
XII Functions and Reflections of the Narratives: An
Introduction 198
XIII Narrative Effects 201
XIV Intentional Narratives 206

XV Attitudes, Practices, and Relationships within the

Community 2i!I

XVI Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Dynamics 227

XVII Cognitive Functions 24.4

Section Three: Survivals and Parallels

XVIII The Past in the Present: Methods and Concepts in the
Study of Historical Survivals 263
 CONTENTS
XIX Continuities in Response to Crisis and Mystery 271
XX The Past in the Present: Continued SII

XxXI The Past in the Present: Commentary and Summary 392

XXII Present Parallels 358
XXIII Epilogue 376
Appendix 379
Bibliography 380
Index 393
 TO
JOSEPH FONTENROSE
AND
DANI AND DAISY
 FOREWORD

After Health and Healing in Rural Greece (1965), Richard and Eva Blum have
now given us °H kaxy wpa, The Dangerous Hour. They have thus very
thoroughly and exhaustively described the irrational of the Greek psyche,
as it reacts to the crises and the mysteries of life.
Their contribution to our knowledge of both human nature in general
and of the specifically Greek outlook in times of stress and danger is very
considerable and most important. It cannot fail to appear anything but
arresting to all those with an acquaintance of peasant communities as
opposed to urban populations.
’ The historical link with ancient Hellenic culture, going back as far as
Neolithic times, is clearly demonstrated in this book. It can only serve
to confirm that modern Greeks are the cultural continuators if not the physical
heirs of the original Hellenes. This is a point which I am always keen to
make when in discussion with those who favour the theory of the Albanian,
Turkish, Frank or Slav origin of the modern Greek. This may be true in a
racial sense, but it is immaterial when considering Hellenism, an all-
embracing outlook on life which has shown itself capable, as other superior
cultures have also, of assimilating strangers and foreigners, even enemies,
whatever their racial origin.
By making the mind of the rural Greek better known than it has been
so far, both within and without the country, Richard and Eva Blum have
also contributed, I am sure, to a better understanding of the modern
Hellene. Such an understanding is essential if we are to follow the develop-
ment of Greece’s contemporary history, with its disconcerting and abrupt
ups and downs. For in the final analysis, if my country has not shown
greater stability in its public life since its liberation from foreign domination
one hundred and forty-eight years ago, it is to a large extent because of the
insecurity to which the individual is exposed and towards which he reacts
as he feels best, guided by the beliefs and practices which he has accumu-
lated over the ages in order to be able to face the terrible and disconcerting
Dangerous Hour.

4th March 1969 Prince Peter of Greece

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 I

INTRODUCTION
HIS book is based upon four propositions. The first is that what
human beings believe to be the nature of life and of death are matters
of utmost importance, not only to those who would understand other men,
but to those who would reflect upon themselves. What men conceive to be
the relationship between human life and the surrounding world of nature
and the supernatural, what they conceive to be ways of protecting life
from the alien intrusions of pain, disease and disability, how men compre-
hend death and how it may be forestalled or abided, these are conceptions
which, we believe, can lead us to the core of human experience. If that be
so, then inquiries about men’s conceptions will necessarily yield knowledge
_ of their lives and their persons. And so it is that in setting out to understand
the people of Greece, specifically the peasants and shepherds of rural
Greece, we have addressed ourselves to these conceptions, those that deal
with crisis and mystery.
The second proposition upon which this book is based is that these
conceptions, when they are expressed, as they so often are, in the form of an
account of human experience, have dramatic and aesthetic value. Those
stories, or even simple expressions of opinion, which deal with magic, with
supernatural powers, with the occult, or with the compact between men
and nature, are provocative and intriguing. Their expression is folk art
and just as it can excite the interest or awe of the shepherd sitting about his
mountain campfire, so it can be appreciated by city folk too. For that reason
we deem it worthwhile to present the narratives of the peasants and shep-
herds in unmodified form to the reader.
The third proposition is that there is much to be found in the narratives
which, when analysed, will provide information not so easily obtained by
other means. The analysis of narrative material leads one beyond beliefs
and experience per se, it leads one to a better understanding of rural culture,
of styles of life, of kinds of human relationships, and of ways of thinking.
The narratives of crisis and mystery are a tool which can be used by the
inquirer to grasp a better and broader understanding of the communities
in which the stories are told. By extension, because the peasants and shep-
herds of Greece are not unlike rural folk elsewhere, the results of the analysis
of narrative should prove instructive about the people of the Mediterranean
area and about peasants and shepherds elsewhere in the world. Finally,
because of our common humanity and the wonderful clarity with which
Greek oral and literary traditions have, for millennia, portrayed human
beings, one may expect to learn something more about all human beings.
The fourth proposition is that there is much in the present that invokes
the past, that there will be found in the narratives of the country people the
past,
strands of their ancient heritage. To compare the present with the
elements in concepti ons about crisis and
specifically to elucidate the common
revealed in the narrative s, will not only illumina te the
mystery as these are
2 INTRODUCTION
process of history and thereby the present itself, but may very well suggest
to us something more about the content of ages hidden behind the veil of
centuries. So it is that the student of antiquity as well as the student of the
present may find something of value in what the country people have to say.
This book contains three sections each dedicated to our initial proposition.
The other three propositions are, with some interweaving, each represented
by its own section. In the first section are presented the narratives them-
selves.! There are many of them; their aesthetic worth, their capacity to
excite interest or pleasure, varies immensely. Only a few are outstanding.
The second section presents the analysis of the narrative material from
a social and psychological standpoint. The distribution of the various
narrative themes within each of the three communities studied is presented
and discussed, the functions and effects of the narratives are examined,
what they reveal about attitudes, behaviour and interpersonal relationships
within the community is explored, what the narratives demonstrate about
intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics is presented, and finally, there
is a consideration of what the stories tell us about how peasants and shep-
herds think; how they organize their experience and emerge with an
orientation to the world.
The third section begins with a study of continuities. It points to some
of the survivals from ancient Greece which are to be found among our
contemporary villagers. These survivals are of considerable interest in
their own right, not only because of the romantic pleasures of seeing the
traces of a glorious past, but also because they illustrate how historical
antecedents influence present behaviour; the traditions of yesterday still
dictate conduct for today. In that section one finds impressive evidence of
continuity in Greek thought with reference to crises and mystery; it also
suggests how little rural life in Greece has changed over several millennia.
The third section of this book moves on from the comparison of past
with present to the comparison of the Greek present to contemporary beliefs
in other Mediterranean peasant communities. Those comparisons are brief,
but they call attention to the similarities and differences in the sphere of
magical and religious healing and thought between Greece and Yugo-
slavia, Bulgaria, Spain, Southern Italy and Morocco. The parallels provide
evidence for a great similarity in outlook among peoples who are geographic-
ally separate but who share relatively similar styles of life. Some of the
similarities are so specific as to raise the question of their very presence as
evidence of a common heritage. The arguments for cultural diffusion and
simultaneous innovation not withstanding, one asks if these are not derived
from some common earlier Neolithic culture. It is a suggestion not incom-
patible with the evidence of archaeology and history. But differences exist
too, and these are striking enough to draw attention to the impact of differ-
ing historical forces and social developments in each of these ethnic areas.
Finally, in the epilogue in section three, we draw on the Greek experience
to reflect on ourselves: modern, urban men. Comparing ourselves to the
wonderful irrationality of the Greek, one asks what price we pay for
rationalism and whether what we gain in return is worth the coin.
? These are presented. Many lesser accounts are also included because they constitute the
data upon which the later analytic and interpretative sections of the book are based.
 INTRODUCTION 3
We are not folklorists and we had not set out to gather the folklore of
Greece, not even all of the lore of any one informant. Our inquiry, from
its inception in 1957 and continuing through the field work of 1962 during
which these narratives were gathered, has always had a specific focus on the
healing, the health, and the related beliefs of rural folk. We set ourselves
the task of describing the relevant patterns of living in a village, the themes
of its culture, and the style of life of its residents. It was our goal to relate
these to the healing practices, the actual health, and the individual life-
protecting conduct of the villagers. The details of that study, what methods
were employed and what findings were obtained are to be found in our
earlier book, Health and Healing in Rural Greece (Stanford University Press,
Stanford, California and Oxford University Press, London, 1965) and ina
monograph, Temperate Achilles (32).1
In order to do that study, the four of us — the two authors of this book
and our two Greek social worker colleagues — lived in one rural region, in
its central town which we shall call Doxario. We selected three near-by
. small communities for our investigation. Dhadhi was one. Its fifty families
are Greeks from Asia Minor who were settled there in 1922 after the dis-
astrous war with Turkey. Panorio was the second. Its twenty-nine families
are of Albanian origin, having probably settled there about the fourteenth
or fifteenth century. Both villages are on sites inhabited in classical times;
near Dhadhi were once Minoan-Mycenaean settlements. The third com-
munity was one of Saracatzani shepherds; eight families living in two
encampments on a mountain side. To learn about the people in these com-
munities we used methods commonly employed by social scientists and
public health workers. We were participant observers. We employed formal
interview schedules, rating scales, a log of daily observations. We intro-
duced, for the first time in the experience of the villages, a team of physicians
and allied medical workers. Each day we watched what happened, talked
to people, discussed what we had seen and heard so that, with their guidance
and stimulation, we came to know something about the lives of the people
and about their behaviour with reference to avoiding anxiety, pain, dis-
ability and death. But living and healing are by no means all a matter
of avoidance, and so it was that we also learned how they strove to under-
stand life, to sustain and enrich it, and to comprehend and even appreciate
death, that “‘marriage”’ as some called it.
There is much about a community, just as there is much about an
individual, which does not lie on the surface. Some things are not seen
because they happen so rarely; others are missed because their elements are
so complex; yet others because there is wilful concealment; and some
things are hidden because the people themselves are not aware of and
therefore are unable to reveal the forces or structures which are present.
For these reasons, and more, even the most careful observer of daily events

1 We have assigned a number only to each book or article cited in a general way in the
possible to
text. This number refers to the work’s listing in the Bibliography. It has not been
referred
reconcile the scientific and classical reference styles. Therefore, scientific works are
to by bibliographi cal reference number only and, if necessary, page citations. Classical ref-
line citations.
erences are given in full, i.e. author’s name, title of work, book, paragraph, and
.
Translations, if in quotation marks, are taken from editions listed in the bibliography
4 INTRODUCTION
is sure to overlook some of the beats which are the pulse of life, especially
those that are unusual and inexplicit, and sometimes those which are
profound.
It was our belief that there was one way to gather information which
might fill some of these probable lacunae. We thought that by asking
people to tell us of the strange and wondrous we might learn more. As
there are revelations in dreams and visions, as there are histories unearthed
in documents, so should there be valuable information in the narratives
of crisis and mystery. With that as our premise, we approached every
family in each community and asked them particular questions.’ Usually
it was the mother or grandmother who replied, but nearly always the rest
of the family were present and participated in the exchange. The tales
we sought were those dealing with dramatic episodes of supernatural healing
or hurt, with ‘“‘other worldly” sources and magical means which endanger
or sustain life, tales of the struggle between the powers of life and death,
and accounts of the nature of death itself. Nearly every family replied to our
questions, telling us what they knew of the “second world”’, and the rich
content of their own magico-religious traditions as these affected matters
of sickness and health, of life and death. In addition, there was much
material that came forth in response to other questions or during the
informal hours together.
Many of the narratives, beliefs and the practices which they reflect,
would be considered ‘‘folklore”’. Certainly the material with which we are
concerned here is of interest to the folklorist. But in this regard we must
caution the reader that materials which are ‘“‘folklore”’ to the observer from
another culture — by implication being accounts which are untrue and
practices which do not have an empirical base — are by no means considered
fictitious by the narrators. The creatures of the “second world” are not
imaginary to those who live in their midst; when a villager tells how his
brother-in-law was struck dumb by the nereids near the well at midnight,
this account is as real a part of his world, and his beliefs about that world,
as is any report about his wife’s rheumatism or his daughter’s dowry.
Indeed, if there is any feature which must be kept in mind in reading these
stories, it is their reality and saliency, their emotional charge to the peasant
and shepherd. There is then, no point in debating which is more real, the
dowry, the rheumatism, or the nereids. Each is real if it is perceived as
part of the immediate world in which the peasant lives, a world with
characteristics agreed upon, at least in major ways, by many in the village.
Because beliefs about what is real influence behaviour, guiding future
actions as well as accounting for past ones, the observer who would wish
to understand better the forces which influence the peasant’s conduct is
well advised to attend to the latter’s articles of belief fully as much as to the
characteristics of his physical and social environment.
It is a principle of the social sciences that elements of culture and per-
sonality are integrated and co-ordinated. This principle serves more as an
assumption which guides inquiry than as any unvarying and demonstrable
law of social relationships. As a guide to inquiry it suggests the value of
examining various elements in a culture to see what regular interrelation-
1 See Appendix.
 INTRODUCTION 5
ships can be detected. In the case of the story material which we gathered
it was our expectation that the beliefs, themes, and patterns of conduct and
emotion which were expressed in stories would reflect other aspects of life
in the village. This was the primary assumption which led us, in the analysis
of the narratives, to see how they did indeed appear to reflect childhood
experience, personality predilections, orientation to the world, and typical —
if sometimes unspoken — patterns of relatedness among individuals in the
community. That primary assumption was by no means an original hypo-
thesis. It represents the observations of many scholars, some of whose works
may be found in the bibliography. One name must be mentioned, that is
Henry Murray, for his work, in thematic apperception (174) and in the study
of psychological substrates of mythology (175) is fundamental to our study.
It should be useful to the reader to know more of the particular expecta-
tions we had of the role of the supernatural and magical, as these are
reflected in local tales, at the time we began our study. These expectations
provided specific guidelines for collecting and analysing narrative material.
- We set them forth below.

(1) We expected that life and the stories about it would be rich in the
irrational. We expected that magic would be an important interpersonal,
intra-psychic, and environmental-manipulative technique, and that the
supernaturals would be important both in accounting for the cause and in
the prevention and cure of human hurt. We anticipated that periods of
illness — especially when illness origins were ambiguous or their courses
uncertain as to time or outcome — would be associated with more magical
thinking and with increased invocation of supernaturals, either as the cause
or means for cure of hurt.
We deemed that the flourishing of the irrational would be a function
of at least three separate but interlocking sources: (a) beliefs which were
historical survivals from earlier times; (b) a common psychological substrate
in all human beings which is illogical, inconsistent, tending towards
omnipotence — a characteristic based perhaps on an awareness of weakness
which is compensated for by calling on the strength outside oneself — an
underlying sense of uncertainty which seeks to masquerade as, if not to
invent, certainty and security; (c) the harshness of an environment where
the opportunity to learn to control nature or to be at ease with mankind
is lacking; where threat and fear generate techniques of adaptation which
include social and psychological rituals to provide at least a conviction of
power and safety and which, once adopted, tend to become automatic
and are passed along unexamined through the generations. As Gilbert
Murray said, ‘The best seed ground for superstition is a society in which the
fortunes of men seem to bear practically no relation to their merits and
efforts.” (173) The peasant environment is one where nature is not bountiful
and where man exploits his fellows.

(2) We expected that stories about dire events, threats to life or health,
would serve as concrete illustrations of themes which are extant, but not
necessarily recognized within the culture. The stories, we expected, would
reveal some of the forms of anxiety and the foci of doubt and conflict.
6 INTRODUCTION
We expected these to be cultural in the sense that they are common to many
persons, and individual in the sense that they attend to or symbolize the
disturbing kinds of relationships between child and parent, and between
adults in various troublesome roles.
We did not expect to find each story equally explicit. Some would reflect
actual relationships between persons; others would, we thought, mirror
the fantasies which are a result of the hidden relationships among people.
They would be imaginative products expressing underlying fears and hopes
which were not part of the stated social consensus about how life went on in
the village, but which nevertheless were ‘‘more true than reality” in the
sense that they describe emotional relationships rather than echoing
distortions and rationalizations.
Given the assumptions about the truths in fantasy, we would then expect
that the tales to be told would reflect the common critical life experiences
which individuals in the culture share, such as birth, courtship and marriage,
illness, and death.

(3) We expected that the accounts would be rich in survivals from ancient
times. Beliefs about matters of importance, especially matters so important
that they are transmitted before the child has developed an independent
critical faculty, seem likely to be tenacious. When life circumstances have
changed but little, when villages are apart from the mainstream of techno-
logical and intellectual change, when tradition itself provides a sense of
safety, or rightness, or pride, there is no reason to anticipate dramatic
change. Like mutations in a species, it seems likely that there will be a
certain amount of spontaneous alteration in a society but the rate of social
mutation of beliefs in isolated cultures remains to be established. In the
meantime, we expect most changes in beliefs to depend upon exposure to
new ideas or the necessity to adapt to alterations in the environment or
within the culture itself. We know that within the last 2500 years, Greece
has been exposed to a variety of external forces; in a dynamic field, these
must necessarily become internal as well, and thereby generate continuing
change. Nevertheless, as Schmidt (239), Lawson (147), and others saw, there
was much in the nineteenth century in Greece that would have been familiar
to Pausanias and to Hesiod before him. Granting the revolutionary technical
changes within the last fifty years, we nevertheless anticipated that much
that was ancient could be found in tales but recently told. Again, because
we were dealing primarily with matters of stress and uncertainty, it was
likely that the old would be particularly enduring. As Lackman and
Bonk found during a volcanic eruption on Hawaii in 1960 (144), the human
tendency in moments of natural terror, regardless of age, education, or
creed, is to seek security in rituals and offerings, the patterns for which
exist, at least in Greece, in the ancient ways.
We anticipated that survivals would more often be found intertwined
with one another than in isolation. Our reasoning was that elements which
are parts of systems should survive intact better than elements in isolation.
Systems of belief or systems of ritual practice should be composed of
mutually reinforcing and self-defining elements more easily transmitted
over time. Insofar as systems of belief or practice are integrated with other
 INTRODUCTION 7
cultural components, themselves not subject to change, the greater should
be the opportunity for unmodified transmission over the generations.

(4) We expected stories of the supernatural or the magical to provide an

aesthetic and social opportunity for narrator and listener. In a village
culture where only a few are literate now, and fewer were before, the story
is an exciting artistic opportunity. It provides for an appeal to common
sentiments, for pleasurable excitement, and for rich nostalgia. Between
mother and child it is a shared entertainment; it should be that among
adults as well. We feel we would be wise not to try to analyse the aesthetic
too finely at this point. Nevertheless, we would expect that one component
in the accounts would be that of stimulation or excitement. Man, as Homer
knew and as experimenters in sensory deprivation (92) have recently illumi-
nated, seeks new sensations. He also seeks, it would appear, the pleasure of
dangers under control. The tale of the supernatural, embellished with fright
but comfortably related before the hearth, fulfils these requirements.
(5) We realize that stories are lessons in morality. At the conscious level,
we expected some of the accounts to be morality dramas which would
emphasize values and warn of the consequences of waywardness. One
would see no need for a morality play if there were not antagonists; conse-
quently one would expect that the morals or values which are extolled are
ones which are threatened either by social change, as for example, the
old ways lauded and the new denounced, or by the unacceptable impulses
of individuals, as for example, when the virtue of honesty is acclaimed just
because there are so many about who are, or are ready to be, dishonest. In this
sense then, we expected to find a kind of folk propaganda in some of the tales.
Propaganda, when it is used with cunning, always manages to place the
propagandist on the side of rightness and virtue. Nevertheless, the propa-
gandist’s intentions are rarely as benevolent as the image he would create.
Propaganda then, is a weapon employed in disputes of ideology, most often
those which are power struggles. We would expect this to be true also of
the morality dramas of the villagers. We should seek therefore, in the con-
tent and social context of the tales, for their value as weaponry in disputes
between groups of various persuasion.
(6) We anticipated that the tales would teach. Persuasion to a cause is
one thing; edification is another. We expected that the narratives would, in
a general way, teach villagers how to view life, how to organize their
experiences, how to account for the unknown, how to behave in those areas
where behaviour is not dictated by propriety or expediency. They would
be, we thought, a form of ‘‘just so” story to make the unfamiliar familiar,
and to induce greater certainty than had gone before.
(7) We expected that one of the functions of the stories would be to reduce
distress. A lie can be a great convenience and a rationalization much less
expect
painful, at least at first, than an insight. There is little reason to
the tales which account for untoward events to be less functiona l, psycho-
ing con-
logically speaking, than ordinary discourse. To avoid a frighten
self-esteem,
frontation, to ward off threat from another, to save one’s own
8 INTRODUCTION
to shake off the heavy cloak of responsibility, we may see all manner of
stories used to serve these ends in daily life everywhere. We would expect
it to be no different in Dhadhi or Panorio and so we should seek, in the
telling of the tale, to see what it might conceal that would be painful or
disadvantageous if revealed.

(8) We expected that stories would be organized consonant with life ex-
periences and general culture content. One would not expect that the
strange or incompatible elements would long survive among the articles
of common faith. As the Gestalt psychologists showed, people seem to organ-
ize their experiences in the direction of completion, and as rumour studies
illustrate (73) communications which pass through many mouths are
simplified, levelled, and sharpened in terms of the interests, emotions, and
experiences of the group. Thus, one anticipates change in the direction of
the more familiar, the more easily grasped, that which is compatible with
what is already known or suspected. The psychologist, Floyd Allport (12),
with well-marshalled evidence and thought, sets forth some of the intricacies
which describe the structural principles according to which humans per-
ceive, and presumably transmit, their experiences. We would not set out to
test his event-structure theory, but we do suggest at least that the manner
of story telling, no less than the world about which the stories are told, is
by no means one of random events. One of the principles ought to be
that the accounts will have a structure which is interrelated in its own ele-
ments as well as with other cultural components so as to compose part of a
larger system.
Apparent exceptions, as for example the shockingly incongruent, will
be rare. If they do appear we would expect them to be functional too, in
the sense that the incongruent may serve as the anchor for humour, or
upon examination will be found not to be unrelated but to be a dramatic
device which serves to clarify a theme. Foils, reversals, inversions, the un-
leashed repressed are the forms which we would expect to find in the
apparently incongruous materials.

(9) We expected that accounts would differ with the person of the narrator.
This is hardly a great expectation; it is to make explicit what every reader
would himself anticipate. When we set out to ask our story-stimulating
questions we presumed there would be some informants rich in lore and
others who were barren. Radin (221), for example, in studying early
societies and non-literate ones, has described the individuals who are
innovators — those who invent and create — and has compared these with the
mass. Anyone who views a human scene will find such differences among
individuals. ‘There was every reason to believe that in our villages too one
would find a few innovators, philosophers, gifted observers and story tellers
but a majority of people who were blessed with less talent.

Let us proceed to the narratives themselves to see to what extent our

expectations held true, and to learn what else — well beyond our expectations
~ one learns about the people of rural Greece, in antique times as well as
today, from their narratives of crisis and mystery.
 SECTION ONE

NARRATIVES OF THE VILLAGERS

 II
THE LIFE CYCLE: ‘
ITS DANGEROUS PERIODS
E begin our presentation of the narratives of the villagers with those
anecdotes, accounts, and stories which concern themselves with the
periods in the life cycle which present the greatest danger. These are the
times, common to most men, when they feel themselves exposed to great
risks which emanate from the world of magic and the supernatural. To
feel exposed to risk is to feel vulnerable and so it is that vulnerability is one
of the key concepts here, a concept which is associated with taboo and with
anxiety.
_ From the narratives themselves we learn that the vulnerable periods
occur for infants during the entire period before baptism, in young people
during the time of courtship and especially at the wedding, in mothers at the
time of childbirth and during the forty days post-partum during which
time the mother is known as a “‘lechona’’,! and finally for the elderly as
their vitality declines. As we shall see in the narratives, the nature of the
danger during each of these periods differs. For example the infant is not
only exposed to supernatural dangers but is himself a potent source of
trouble. As an unbaptized creature he is not yet accepted into the human
community and is, in a sense, still part of the “uncivilized” natural world
of powers and spirits. He may be a demon as well as be hurt by demons. With
the lechona it is somewhat the same, she is not only vulnerable to what the
supernaturals may do to her, but her own powers, her “pollution” associated
with fertility, are a source of danger to others. As the natives of the earth-
quake-torn island of Thera are wont to say, ‘When the lechona ventures
outside before her 40 days, the earth itself trembles.”
It is otherwise for the youth in courtship and at the wedding. At this
time the dangers are not from the supernatural world nor are they inherent
in the primitive power of the persons themselves. Danger comes from other
humans, for the most part jealous ones. The courting girl who allows
herself and her lover the pleasures of sex before the formal engagement is
also vulnerable, but again the danger is from humans rather than super-
naturals. Should her lover not marry her once she becomes visibly pregnant,
her father and brothers may well decide that the only way to recoup the
blemished family honour is to kill her. As one sees in the narratives, the
dangers which arise from those who are jealous — either of the choice of
lovers or of good fortune itself — are from their use of sorcery, especially the
“binding curse” which turns a bride away from her husband or causes
impotency in the groom. But there is no sorcery in the death of the demon-
strably sullied maiden; the accounts are brutally direct and leave no
room for magic, the supernatural, or for the imagination. The sameness
of these accounts of what happens to the abandoned and pregnant girl
1 From the ancient Greek “‘lechos’’, (Aéxos) meaning bed, couch.
12 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
demonstrates the strength of the code of vengeance which protects the family
honour without protecting the girls of the family.
There is not much magic to be found in the narratives which describe
the vulnerability of the elderly. Illness, misfortune, and death among them
are to be expected; it need not be explained by the actions of supernaturals
or sorcery. A number of accounts dealt with the social and economic hard-
ships of the aged and the possibility of their being neglected or abandoned
by the children. The accounts of the latter, a very few of which are pre-
sented here, are by no means to be taken as a fair picture of the life of the
old ones in the rural villages. Most of them lived honoured and supported
among their children and their children’s children so it is the uncommon
rather than the common event which is the subject of the moralizing story
or cautionary tale about what happens when the elders are treated badly.
And so it is with most of the narratives of danger during the dangerous
periods; the dramatic events portrayed are the unusual rather than the
usual; it is in that perhaps that the aesthetic appeal is to be found. Never-
theless we would suggest that the anxiety about these periods which the
uncommon narrative reflects is, in itself, a rather usual state of affairs in
rural Greece.

TALES THE VILLAGERS TOLD

Babies and Changelings

(1) When I was only seventeen years old, my mother died. She had just
had a baby, my brother, and I was the only one to take care of that baby.
I was very inexperienced then and didn’t know how to do things. Well, I
didn’t know to take the baby’s clothes in after sundown. What happened
then was that the exotika! took them and the poor child started vomiting
and crying and had a bad diarrhoea. I took him to the doctor in Doxario,
that one, you know, who is dead now, but he couldn’t find anything at all
the matter with that child. What he said to me was to say the ‘“‘lies’’! that
women do and maybe that would help. The doctor did give me some
medicine, but what the village women did was to bring a woman here who,
at that particular moment when the moon was turning, turning into a new
moon, put some bread, some wool, and some cheese in a handkerchief and
put it inside the boy’s shirt. Then she told some of the lies, the ““xemetrima’’,?
and she threw these things away in the dark without ever turning to see
what would happen to them. After some days the child was well.

(2) There was a very great heat spell when my daughter, Anthoulie, was
only fifteen days old. Her heart was affected and she grew up with infections.
By the time she was two and one half months old, she weighed only four
kilos (8-8 Ibs). She still cannot grow and is thin, although she is strong.

‘ Exotika, a generic term for spirits, means those who are from “‘out of there”. Among these
are the “Dangerous Hour”, also called the ‘‘Bad Hour’, and on Santorini, the “Ugly Hour’’,
the Nereids, Stringlos, etc.
* Xemetrima, the magical-ritual words used in healing, is an incantation or spell to which
the village women often refer as “‘lies’’.
 THE CIERO CYCLE 13
Well, I took her to a wise woman who often did the xemetrima, you know
the old woman in Doxario, Mrs. Pandora, well, she did the xemetrima
under the moonlight, but she did not let me watch. She tried to cure the
child, for she explained it had been hit by the moon or maybe a demon
had taken it. Well, when Anthoulie was two years old, I took her to Athens
to the hospital; there they congratulated me for taking the child to them
and not keeping her home just because she was to die. Well, that combina-
tion of doctors and xemetrima, it saved the child; Dr. Pantos in Doxario
was good, too, with his diagnosis and curing with baths. Still, until she was
two and one half, she kept vomiting. She still has no appetite. Part of it is
that the climate here is so heavy, but she’s not sick any more. If it had been
a boy, he would have burst; girls last better than boys. Well, even now I
take the clothes in before sundown and if I forget to do that, why I burn
those clothes.

(3) My daughter was affected by the moon when she was born. She lost
weight and had diarrhoea. The doctors couldn’t diagnose what was
- wrong. Finally, a wise woman from Doxario did the right xemetrima
for three nights. That saved my child. Since then, she has never been to a
doctor.

(4) My baby was born with a weak spine. The women told me to go be-
witch the moon. Well, I took my boy to an old woman, you know that
Mrs. Pandora in Doxario; she did the bewitchment of the moon and gave
me an herb to bathe the child in. What had happened was that the baby’s
clothes had been left outside before the forty days had passed; they were
seen by the moon and that caused the sickness.

(5) One of my brothers died when he was an infant because my father

opened the door to my mother’s room. The moonlight hit her. ‘This was
disastrous for her baby, and he died very soon after.

(6) When my sister was a baby, she was beaten by the nereids.* It was a
very hot summer’s night; the whole family was sleeping outside, the baby
included. At twelve midnight she awakened and began to cry. Another
time, as she was standing on the window sill the exotika pushed her out-
wards so that she fell out of the window. She was unbaptized at the time;
the people told us that this was the reason she was so vulnerable. After
she was baptized, she has never been hurt by the exotika, even though she
sleeps outside during the summer nights.

(7) My baby died from bronchitis when he was fifty days old. I took him
to the doctor but it was too late to save him. I was very happy that at
least he didn’t die without being baptized. You know what happens
otherwise? They say that when these children, the unbaptized ones, go
to the other world, they keep trying to get baptized: they carry water in
their mouths trying to fill a baptismal fount and when they have it almost
filled, when that fount is nearly full, why the demons go and empty all the
1 Nereids are female spirits, nymphs, who inhabit the Doxario countryside.
14 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

water out. The babies have to start all over again. It is good fortune that all
my children have died baptized.
(8) We don’t call them ‘‘draks” here, but it’s true that the unbaptized
child is not yet blessed by God; also, that child can suffer from the sins of
his parents. ‘““The sins of the parents torture the children” is what they say.
Drakos is an evil spirit, not a Christian spirit. People used to think it was
an animal but now we are modern and we know it is just an evil spirit, or
an aerika,! or a cry.
That child which is born of the devils is a punishment for the bad things
that the parents did in their life. If they’ve said lies or if the woman has
been unfaithful to her husband, why then God gives them a child that
doesn’t eat, that doesn’t sleep, that cries all the time, a child who brings
bad fate. Then those parents have to put their heads in their behinds; that
is, they have to get into their shell; they can never gossip about other people
again and be critical of others, because look what has happened to them!
(9) Some time back, but not very long ago, there was a bus that had some
excursionists on it; on its way to that excursion those people saw a baby
on the road all wrapped in its clothes, just crying. The bus driver stopped,
took it in his arms, brought it in the bus and asked if there was any woman
who had milk to nurse that child. There was a young woman who had a
baby of her own; she offered to nurse it. After the baby had all it wanted, it
spoke out and said, “‘I ate but I didn’t bite you!’’ Well, the woman had a
stroke right then and there. The other people opened the baby’s clothing
and found that the child was really a monster. It had the body of a snake
and only the head of a baby. It was the Stringlos,? of course.

(10) One night, a man was walking along this road towards Spathi when
he saw a baby on the road. It was late at night and well naturally, the man
was mad at any woman who left such a tiny baby lying on the road. He
started swearing at her, saying she must be some prostitute who left the
child because certainly no other mother could have done a thing like that.
He took the baby in his arms and started again towards Spathi, but as they
were getting nearer and nearer to Spathi, that baby grew till by the time
they were very near, the child opened its arms and said, “Ill eat you!”
Then it flew away without harming the man, but nevertheless he died of a
heart attack soon afterwards. Now, I myself have not seen this happen, but
it is what my grandparents said took place. That is Stringlos, a thing that
changes shape. Sometimes it is a baby; other times it is like a cat or some-
thing else.
(11) ll tell you something that happened to our own son; something
that tells you about what magic and demons can do. I didn’t ever believe
in these things until it happened to me. Well, that son who is now a soldier,
when he was less than forty days old, we took him out of the house to go
to a wedding, although we knew neither the mother nor the baby was
supposed to go out of the house for those forty days. And a second mistake
1 Aerika are spirits of the air.
® Stringlos is a spirit much talked about in the Doxario region.
 THE LIFE CYCLE 15
we made was to leave his clothes hanging outside to dry. Apparently, the
demons found those clothes and did their magic, because from that day
onward the child became sick. He was very thin, just like an old man. He
even had a beard. Nothing seemed to help, so we decided to take him to a
doctor. On the way to the doctor, we saw an old woman who was a wise
woman; she told us the baby had been bewitched and what we must do to
break the spell. So we went back to our village; that night we went to a
crossroads and made a circle in the ground. Then we put a black-handled
knife in the circle and a woman, a neighbour, threw the child in the circle,
then I took him out. We took the clothes that the demons had bewitched
and threw these into the sea — the beach, you know, is near by. Well, the
child was cured. While we were doing all these things, his father, who was
supposed to wait some distance off, heard the child cry. He got mad
because he thought we made the child cry, so he came back and told us off,
but we told him that the child had been silent during all this time. Then we
understood what had happened: when the spell was broken and the child
_ was freed from disease, why then, the demon’s child got the sickness and
started crying!

Unmarried Girls
The unmarried girl represents a source of danger to the family honour
should she become pregnant prior to her engagement. There is no problem
if she becomes pregnant and the boy is willing to marry her; if he is not, the
girl’s future becomes very uncertain, not only because she has lost that
virginity which is her asset in marriage negotiations, but because her
demonstrably unsuccessful impropriety — demonstrable in that the boy is
not marrying her — makes her family the object of ridicule and gossip in the
village. The father and brothers especially, will suffer a serious challenge
to their philotimo.1 The following accounts are illustrative.

(12) (O)? As a policeman, I can tell you that we have very little crime
around here. Oh, people kill each other once in a while, but when they
do, it’s over some matter of honour, and they turn themselves in right
away. For instance, some girl gets in trouble then her brothers find out
about it. One kills her. So he shoots her, and then comes right down here
to the police station to give himself up. He’s done what his family think is
the right thing.

(13) One of the boys here in the village had some trouble. He’s a fine
boy, but an orphan. Well, one day he was out working the fields his father
left him and, well he was friendly with this one girl. She was from this
village too, and was out working in the fields. Her parents were, well
nobody liked them very much, but still, they live here. This boy met the
girl that day out in the fields — in a sheepfold it was — about noontime.
People heard her cry out, cry out that he was trying to rape her. So they
;
* Philotimo means love of honour.
2 An “OQ” appearing before the account indicates it is from a source other than a resident
person.
of Dhadhi, Panorio, or the Saracatzani camp. Most often it will be from a Doxario
 16 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
rushed over to the sheepfold, found they were together but no one who came
over could really say what had happened. She insisted he’d tried to rape
her, but he insisted that she was only trying to force him to marry her. Her
parents insisted it be brought to court, so he was put on trial. Never once
during the trial did he offer to marry her. Well, they sent him off to prison
for five years. He’s back now, living here again. No one in the village blames
him. What he did was a very honourable thing. He preferred going to
prison to marrying such a girl. It was all her fault after all, that and the
attitude of her parents. Of course, no one. in the village would think of
marrying him, but it has nothing to do with that girl. It’s because his
parents all died of illness — his father from the bad pimple! — and so did
two older brothers — from tuberculosis. That means there’s something wrong
with his health, with that blood of his family, you know. Besides, he has
pleuritis or something; he has a poor house, and tills his fields badly. No
matter, no girl from here would marry any boy from here, because all the
village girls want to get away from here; they want to marry someone who
will take them somewhere else.

(14) Oh, you know that odd fellow, Georgio, the one who lives in a castle
up the hill [a two-storey house, the only one in the village]. He even has a
child, though he hated all women. He kept calling them “‘prostitutes’’. One
day someone told him his mother and sisters were women and he answered,
“Yes, and they’re prostitutes too!’’ Imagine! What we say is that he’s
suffering the curse of his father, for it was against his father’s wish that he
built a big house like that. His father cursed him; now look at him: odd
and unmarried.

(15) You want to know what it is like around here? Well, we eat each
other! It’s not pleasant. I know, because my own daughter was murdered.
- She was going with some boy from Spathi and you know how it is [preg-
nancy apparently occurred]. It would have worked out except that the
boy wanted to marry some girl in Athens, a maid there. Of course, he
couldn’t marry the Athenian girl because of his obligation to my Arete,
that restrained him completely. My Arete was terribly upset because the
boy was beginning to act like he didn’t want to marry her, she knew him
pretty well it seems. There was an old woman who was doing the match-
making so we hoped it would be going all right. But that old fool fouled it
up.
One day, the boyfriend’s brother approached my Arete as she was on
her way from Spathi here to Panorio. Arete was quite excited and hopeful,
because she’d been feeling worried and upset. She went to the fields and
there was the boy working alongside his mother. That old...... , She beat
Arete with a rope to kill her. But the beating didn’t kill her; they saw she
wasn’t dead so the boy shot my Arete through the back. The mother then
washed the body, dressed her in some clean things and together they
carried her under a tree, putting a pistol in her hand to make it look like
suicide. The doctor came and said suicide was impossible, so the police
came and took the boy to court. He went to prison for it; once there he
1 The bad pimple is the villagers’ name for anthrax.
 THE LIFE CYCLE 17
killed himself. But his mother and brother — who’d wanted to clear his way
to marry that other girl — they never even went to trial.

(16) Spathi is quite a place. Blood feuds and all that. They used to be wild
people there. I’ll tell you what happened to someone we knew. There was
a girl there, a perfectly decent girl. Her aunt saw her talking one time to a
boy near the public square. That old aunt went off to the girl’s father and
told him his daughter had a lover. When the girl came home, the father
beat her; he hadn’t even bothered to ask if it was true. Well, after the
beating the poor girl went over to the aunt’s to ask her what in heaven
she had seen or heard to make the aunt put her father in such a state.
You know what happened? The aunt beat her, too. And then the family
killed her. They loaded her body on a donkey and took it over the moun-
tains to dump it in the sea. But somebody found out and they went to
prison.
Things are a little better in Spathi now. Oh, one of the girls was walking
_ in the fields not too long ago and some Spathi fellow raped her, but gener-
ally the honour murders don’t happen now and there have been no rapes
recently.

(17) (O) So you want me to tell you about women? All right. Women are
born bad. All the sin is theirs. In them is everything that is bad, everything
that is the devil’s. Men are good, not like women. All women are the
sperm of Diavolos, all men are the sperm of God. That’s exactly it, that’s
the way it is.

Courtship and Wedding

(18) During the time when my daughter was engaged, the neighbours
threw the oils of the dead! and the blood of a menstruating woman all
the way up the path from our little store to the house itself. It was awful.
The boy to whom she was engaged was absolutely in love with my daughter
but then he became very cold. He explained that he didn’t know why he
was feeling the way he did, but that he could not come up the walk to our
house anymore. He said he was no longer at ease with us. The boy was
sincere and cried and cried as he told us this, but nothing could change
him; he didn’t marry my daughter. The magic had done that to him and to
us, although we still don’t know why; we don’t know the reason behind it.
Eventually, our girl married another boy, but the memory of that awful
magic has never left her.

(19) One never knows when the “‘Bad” will strike you, but I will say one
thing: my life was fine until I got married. Since then I’ve been having all
kinds of unpleasant things happen to me, bad pregnancies and sickness, for
example.
1 Oil of the dead consists in olive oil from the oilwick candles (wicks placed in a small bowl
of olive oil) which are burnt during the services for the dead.
2 “Bad” refers to a highly personalized bad luck, similar to the “Evil Fates’’, to the “Bad
Hour” or the “Dangerous Hour’”’.
18 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(20) After the wedding ceremony, it’s important that the relatives take
away the wicks of the candles; otherwise, if some enemy gets ahold of
them, he can bewitch the bride so that she may die or not have children.
Some time ago there was a fight in the church here after the wedding, the
relatives were fighting, and the priest told them that they should be ashamed.
Whole households have been destroyed just because of things like that.

(21) One of the things we do is to put a little pair of scissors in the shoe of
the bride. This is to cut the tongue, that is, to shut the mouths of the people
from gossiping.

(22) Oh, the time before the wedding is very dangerous. People might
talk about the boy or the girl and prevent the marriage from taking place.
The enemies of either the bride or the groom might do magic, you know,
bewitch and tie them. A friend of mine, somebody I know very well — here,
let’s go into the kitchen because I can’t tell you this in front of everybody
in the room here — well, [resuming in kitchen] it happened to her in
Doxario that they were married eight months and I asked my friend whether
or not she was expecting a baby. My friend admitted then that she was
having a terrible problem because her husband could not go near her. All
this time, each time he wanted to have intercourse he could have an
erection, but when he got on top of her all his power left him. They both
suffered a lot from this, especially the man. Nothing could help, so finally
they went to a magician who told them that the girl was tied. Someone,
who had wanted to harm her, had locked a door and said some magic
words during the ceremony. To break the spell the magician had to say
some magic words too; then they had to cross water. They took a boat
over to the big island there. Afterwards, the magician found the magia!
and gave these to the couple. They’ve locked the magia in a trunk; and
now nobody can harm them anymore. The husband is cured.

(23) My grandfather was an evil magician. He had a son, my uncle, and

when that son was to marry, my grandfather was afraid that someone
would do the binding curse on him. For that reason my grandfather decided
to bind his son himself so that he could unbind him after the wedding
when the boy would be out of danger. But nobody in the entire village had
any thought of binding that boy. It was the demon who put the idea into
grandfather’s head. That same demon made him forget a word when he
was doing the spell to unbind the boy. The spell was never broken, the
son never had any children; he had to adopt a soul child.? The son’s wife
went to church one day and complained to God about it. God told her that
it was not their own fault. God explained to her that it was her father-in-law
who had put the binding curse on them. God spoke to her there through
his priests and nuns, you know, just as they do today at the oracle of
Adelphos® and at other places like that.
1 Magia are objects or signs which are used in sorcery.
Soul child is a person of any age who lives with a family, works with or for them and is
treated by that family and viewed by the community as adopted kin.
5 Adelphos, meaning brother, is the local name for Delphi.
 THE LIFE CYCLE 19
(24) Witches can’t do any good; bad they can do; also priests, bad they
can do. There was a priest near here who had a daughter. He wanted a
certain boy to marry that daughter of his, but the boy wanted another girl;
he married the girl he wanted. Well, that priest — he wasn’t the one who
blessed the union — during the wedding ceremony he was nevertheless
able to bind the boy’s bride to marry a Negro. And sure enough that’s just
what happened: that night after the wedding the girl thought her new
husband was a Negro and she wasn’t able to go near him. In three months
she died.
Right after that both her parents died, too. That’s what the priest can do.

(25) You never know what will happen to you and you cannot prevent
anything from happening. One thing I know about is the binding curse at
weddings. Some people do it for fun, others because they dislike or envy the
girl or the boy. Sometimes some other woman, one who wanted the boy
for herself and didn’t get them, will curse the couple. The way they do it
is to tie knots, or to make a lock, or pretend to; then, when the thing is
~ done, the groom can’t go near the girl. He’ll be impotent. Then the couple
has to find someone who knows how to dissolve the curse and to unbind
them. This curse is very bad because the people suffer so; they can even
get tuberculosis from that suffering.

(26) At weddings when they do the binding curse the bride must be very
careful. She should have some charm on her; it’s best if it’s some polluted
thing, or some key, or a net with forty knots in it. To have the polluted
thing she should wear under her clothes a string or a net that her parents
wore when they had intercourse. Such a thing keeps the magic away.
As a priest I can tell you this: if the bride gets married in opposition to
her parents’ wishes she will bear their curses to the wedding.

The Lechona
From the time of birth until forty days afterwards, the new mother is
called a lechona. During this time she is obliged to stay inside and must
exercise a number of cautions to prevent harm befalling her or her child.
At the end of forty days she goes to church and stands outside, at which time
the priest comes out to bless her. After that blessing, which’is a purification,
she may enter the church and resume her community activities. A number
of accounts reflect the vulnerability of the woman during this period.

(27) In the old days they used to say that the lechona, if she died, was so
polluted, so impure, that she could not be accepted in heaven. After the
forty days she has to go to the priest with her baby to be blessed. She has
to stand outside the church while the priest must stand inside it; she can
only enter that church after the blessing is finished.
I almost died when I was having Agathi. A midwife helped me have
that child, I was having great difficulty because it was coming out feet first.
The midwife was unable to help; I was in terrible pain. In the process the
child’s bones were all broken and crooked, and she became paralysed. I
20 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

tried my best not to die because of what they say happens to you then, if
you die before the forty days. You’re not accepted in heaven and if this
happens, some relative, or a stranger whom the family pays to do it, must
do forty genuflections each day for forty days. Usually it will be a woman
to do this because men don’t like to genuflect. These women keep forty
stones which they put aside each time so that they will not forget and do
less. After that maybe the lechona is accepted in heaven.

(28) It is a dangerous period after birth. For those forty days the woman
should be very careful not to go out and not to have visitors who might
harm her, for instance menstruating women, because they are impure, or,
women who have been washing clothes and might still have dirt on them
or are still hot from the water and the work so that they might give her that
heat, the fever. They should not be visited by women who have been baking
bread because as the bread rises so does the condition of the woman, there-
fore you might give her the heat of the oven, you know, give her the fever.
No one should swear in the house of the lechona; no one should visit her
after dark because the demons are outside her door just waiting to come
in and do her harm. If by any chance the husband is late in coming home,
he shouldn’t enter the house without throwing a piece of bread to keep the
demons busy while he opens the door. During those forty days the woman is
really in danger, for her grave is open all those days just waiting for her,
so they say. After that she goes to church and waits for the priest to come
and take her, to exorcize the demons and then take her inside near the altar
for a blessing.

(29) Once, when I was a lechona, my mother-in-law warned me not to

speak during the night because the nereids come and take away your
voice or hurt you in some other way. During those forty days the door of
the house must be closed at sunset and not opened again until sunrise.
Well, one night I heard musical instruments: there were violins and drums
playing. I was so surprised that I turned to my sister and asked her, “Can
you hear them?” Just as soon as the words were out of my mouth, the
nereids struck me. I fell ill with pains all over my body. What was worse
was that I lost my milk and could no longer nurse my baby.

(30) I know a girl, a lechona, who was hurt because her mother-in-law
made a mistake. It was the third day after delivery, the mother-in-law did
not know any better, she threw the urine of that girl outside the window —
the house was near a stream — but that was a big mistake because the Devil
was outside just waiting. The moment the urine went out, the Devil got
hold of it, and the girl was paralyzed.

(31) Once, just after one of my children was born, while I was still a
lechona, I saw a dog coming into the house right through the window. I
knew it was something bad so I went over near my children and made sure
I didn’t say a thing until that dog left again. That dog must have been the
‘**Bad Hour’’.!
1 Bad Hour is another one of the spirits or exotica.
 JHE LIPEVGY CLE 21

The Elderly
(32) Not so long ago one family in our village had the old man living
with them; he was father of the son and must have been about eighty.
Well, the family was poor; they didn’t like having that old man to feed
and trouble over. So one day they got out the donkey and a little basket
with the old man’s few things in it, and they started to get the donkey
ready to send the old man away, off into the mountains to die. Well, the
head of the family told his son, a boy still, to get the blanket ready to put
on the donkey’s back for the old man to sit on. The boy looked at his father,
then at the old man, then took out a knife and began to split the blanket
in two.
‘What are you splitting the blanket like that for?’ asked the boy’s
father.
‘Well, I’m just going to put half of the blanket on the donkey for the old
man,”’ said the boy.
“And why?’’ demanded the father.
“I’m going to save the other half of the blanket for you, for when you’re
old and I send you away on a donkey.”
The father looked at his son and was ashamed. They took the old man
back into their home.

(33) There’s an old woman who wanders around here. Maybe you’ve
seen her. Well, she’s a crazy old lady with four sons and a daughter. They
live in the mountains beyond Spathi. But none of the children are willing
to take the old woman into their house; they keep sending her to each
other, but none will take her. Now the old woman has no one; she has
to wander over the countryside begging for something to eat. The people
of Spathi take pity on her; they try not to let her starve, but after what her
children have done, she’s bound to starve soon enough. There’s no place
she can go except to die.
 III

THE OCCULT ESTATE

NOTHER group of narratives, either anecdotes or tales, take as
A their centre of interest the special capacities of the unusual people in
the community. Unusualness in this case, as defined by the subject matter
of the narratives themselves and by our observations in the villages, is the
possession of power, power that is at least partly magical. Unlike the
narratives in Chapter II which concerned very large classes of citizens
delineated by criteria such as age or sex, the materials following limit them-
selves to a very few persons who are outstanding not because of some formal
role in any local status or administrative or economic system, but for their
link with the supernatural. These are the people with the magic touch;
as such they are potential sources of bane or boon.
In the first part of this chapter we shall present accounts which deal
with priests, magicians, sorcerers and the like. In approaching this material,
it is important to distinguish between the various classes of villagers who
use magic. Everyone in the village uses magic in one fashion or another,
but not everyone is a wise woman or “‘mayissa” who specializes in healing
through the use of magical methods in combination with herbs and empirical
treatments. For the most part, the wise women are older married women
who play the nurturent-healer roles in the household; by no means is every
older woman in the village a healer. Only some have achieved renown in
this way. Other categories of magical workers include the witches and
sorcerers who seek to do harm and finally, the awesome intermediaries
between man and the supernaturals, the priests and the magicians. Each
of the latter is necessarily descended from an hereditary line of magicians,
forefathers who are often reputed, in the “good old days” tradition, to
have been even more remarkable than is the contemporary heir. The male
magician works with words and rituals; he will have none of the parapher-
nalia of herbs or poultices with which the wise woman busies herself, nor
will he ordinarily bother with the more exotic substantive magia of the
witches and male sorcerers — the bones of dead men, the nail parings, the
blood of menstrual women, and other potent materials.
While it is necessary to distinguish between these various categories of
persons who use magic, it is also well to keep in mind that a certain mobility
occurs among these various roles just because the roles are defined by the
level of magic employed and the direction in which it is aimed. Low-level
magic restricts itself to simple sanctified tools such as repeating a blessing
three times or sprinkling holy water on a wound; the magical technician,
if such we may call him, is in no danger, for he directs himself to good ends
(there is no question that healing is good) and uses church- and com-
munity-approved tools to do the job. Somewhat more advanced magic will
have a more technical turn, be more complex, as for example, that which
the wise woman uses when she says the ritual xemetrima, incantations,
while simultaneously dropping olive oil into a cup to determine whether
 THE OCCULT ESTATE 23
or not an illness is evil-eye induced. More potent magic goes beyond these
tools which are both approved and beneficent; persons at the higher levels
work with unhallowed techniques which are frightening in the power they
contain, and which may not be directed towards the good, as is the case
with menstrual blood or earth from the tombs. At the peak of local magic
stands the man who is so skilled that he may employ, should he desire,
sanctified or polluted materials for achieving either good or bad, and who is
so powerful that he deals not only with substances and natural powers but
with the spirits or beings from the “‘out of there’, the second world, the
exotika, nereids, aerika, and so forth. Here is the true magician.
In his capacities he is not unlike the priest, for both rely primarily upon
words and rituals, only occasionally augmented with consecrated substances
such as oil, wine, water, or incense, to control powerful beings which are
thought to inhabit and direct worldly events. The difference between the
magician and the priest is that the priest is a selected or, as in the case of
Doxario, an elected member of a formally defined, outside-administered
hierarchy, a man who holds a well-defined community position and is
~ responsible for regularly conducted rites, wherein he invokes primarily
benevolent supernaturals through the use of ritually prescribed words and
gestures. The magician, on the other hand, holds an hereditary position
in a more informal community structure, one not associated with local or
outside institutions, where services are offered on an individual basis. These
services include the coercion of forces and spirits which are outside the
religious system and which, while less powerful and overriding than God or
the saints, nevertheless are a significant group of spiritual inhabitants of
the region and the minds of the local people. Precisely because these spirits
are disapproved by the church, although not denied existence by its local
priesthood, they constitute a kind of supernatural “‘underground” with
whom contact is fraught with danger, and for whom no really safe or sure
control procedures exist — in contrast to perfectly safe church rituals. As a
consequence, one sees that while the magician and priest occupy rather
similar positions in mediating between man and supernaturals, the priest
has duties which are institutionalized, conventional, community-oriented
and safe, while the magician has work which is informal, traditional,
individual-oriented and quite dangerous.
Since the magical occupations are defined by the power and com-
plexity of the tools used, the aims of the work, and the nature of the powers
to be influenced, one can see that a shift in the job leads to a change in
titles — a system not unlike modern industry. Since in the villages the jobs to
be done vary as does the confidence or motivation of the magical tech-
nicians, one should not be surprised that the do-it-yourself home magician
may also be a wise woman, or that the wise woman, given a particularly
bilious outlook on her neighbour, may experiment with sorcery and become,
for that day at least, a witch. The good magician in turn may be tempted,
for fun or profit, to try his hand at sorcery, and so too may the priest. Ifa
magician or priest becomes known for having destroyed a family or two in
this fashion, he will, in the eyes of villagers, now merit two job descriptions:
one as sorcerer, and the other as priest or magician.
The reader, then, should realize that one and the same individual may be
24 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
cast in several roles. But it is also probable that the most highly reputed
individuals will engage primarily in the activities for which they have
gained their status and reputation, if for no other reason than that it is
socially and sometimes financially sensible to continue to pursue the most
rewarding functions.

Priests
Turning first to the priests, it is to be emphasized that with them, as
with every other magical healer, manipulator, or power, they are seen as
having two kinds of potential. They can direct supernatural powers to the
good, and thus act in a conventional role to ask the saints or God to assist in
the affairs of men, or they can direct the powers to work evil. On the side
of the good one finds them consecrating baptisms, weddings, and deaths —
overseeing those rites of passage which ensure that the order of life in the
community goes smoothly. Other rituals in which the priests engage may
be of the propitiating and ‘‘tendance”’ sort, the “we serve so that we shall
be served” variety or the rituals may be apotropaic in that they seek to
ward off lurking and potential or flamboyantly present evil.
As the priest seeks either to invoke the good or ward off evil he may
himself be the vehicle for that good or that evil, a dramatic circumstance
which illustrates not only how that which is abstract may become concrete
and personified, but which shows how events and persons may be viewed as
simultaneously possessing two opposite and extreme characteristics. It is
that polarity, that duality, of man and nature which strikes us as an
important feature of Greek life. We have discussed it earlier in Health and
Healing in Rural Greece (35) and shall refer to it again in later chapters here.
In the preceding chapter we have already had a chance to see illustrated
the priest’s darker side coexisting with the lighter, recall how the priest's
anger and jealousy prompted him to employ deadly sorcery which bound
the groom’s new bride and led to the death of the bride and her parents
(Chap. II, No. 24). We continue with the narratives of the occult estate.

(1) I don’t know. Maybe the priests do know about magic and maybe
they don’t. In any event it is their work, their position, which prevents
them from discussing it, or doing anything with it. They consider magic
the work of the devil, you see. Besides, if they did use it, then they would
lower their prestige, and become laymen like you and me.

(2) Once, when I was a soldier, I was stationed near Delphi. Some friends
and I wanted to go to Arachova. Since the road between the two towns is
very busy, we were all sure we'd get a ride. As we started out we saw a
priest; I knew at that moment — and I told the others you can be sure —
that there’d be nothing going our way. Sure enough. We walked for many
kilometres and never once was there a car going our way. Priests are devils.
When you meet them, it’s bad luck.

(3) When the priest who blesses you is clean, pure in his heart and soul,
he has a power. He has electricity, and he saves you from the bad things.
 LHEPOCCULT ESTALE 25
(4) At Kalamos, in the very old days, the priests had power because they
and the people believed in religion. In those days, a priest once anathemat-
ized someone who had started a fire in his stable. You know who the
*‘someone”’ was? His own child!

(5) When you go to Tenos to pray to Panaghia you sleep on the ground,
but you have the feeling that you are sleeping on the nicest bed, the very
softest bed you can think of. When I went to Tenos several miracles
occurred, although I didn’t see any of them personally. What I did see was
the priests jumping over the sick and the crippled as they lay on the
ground, That’s good for them, they say; it’s supposed to cure them.

(6) When the exotika — the nereids or the others — hit you, you shouldn’t
go to a medical doctor. You should go either to a priest or to a woman
who knows how to cure these — a wise woman or witch. It happened, for
example, that my mother-in-law was a lechona. Well, she went to the doctor
_ before the forty days were up, something was troubling her I suppose, and
she saw the doctor. But on the way back to the village, the aerika hit her.
Instead of taking her to a priest, her family took her right back to that doctor.
He did an injection — which is especially bad after you’ve been struck by any
of the exotika — and the poor woman died.

(7) I'll tell you about the priests! You go to a priest to confess — if you're a
woman, that is — and he tells you, ““Not now, come back again at noon.”
So you come back at noon when no one is about, and you are all alone with
him in that church. He comes near you, puts that “petrahili” [the cere-
monial stole] over your head, and by that time he’s close to you all right!
Well, you know what happens. And he tells you not to move while he does
what he wants and afterwards he tells you not to say anything. Oh yes, he
tells you that he is the priest, that you must respect him.

(8) Don’t talk to me of the priests. When I was a girl, only twelve, one of the
beasts raped me.

(9) So you know him, do you? Then let me tell you what kind of a man
he is. During the war, the Germans were killing all the Jews in Greece, oh,
they were killing the Greeks too, only more slowly. Well, Father
y in
knew some fisherman, and he knew some Jews through somebod
So they all negotiat ed. Father promised to get the Jews out of
Athens.
to Turkey
the country, to have the fishermen take them in their boats over
. So he arranged that a group of
where they’d be safe from the Germans
Jews would come to , you know that village near the sea. In return for
their money — all their money — he’d put them on the boats, and see to
went there.
their escape. At least, that’s what he contracted to do. So they
Jew before. I was really surprised to
I saw them myself. I’d never seen a
like us; they were handsom e; they wore clothes
see that they looked just
looked like ours.
like ours, spoke Greek, even their women and children
told the men they would have to go separate ly from the
Well, Father go
children would
women and children. He told them the women and
26 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
first; the men would have to wait. So that night he separated them and took
the women and children to a little valley in the mountain near the sea.
Then he told them to go to sleep and wait; they would be safe. Then he
went back to the men and said the women and children were safely off,
and now the men must get into the boats. But they put only a few Jews in
each boat; the fishermen took them around the little island that was near;
Father was in the lead boat. At a signal from him, all the fishermen
took their knives and killed the men. All at once, they slaughtered them.
And threw their bodies overboard.
After that, Father took the boats to the other cove, just around
that island, and beached them there. It was near to where the women and
children were sleeping. He went by himself; the fishermen would have none
of it after that. By himself he went into that little valley and with a stone in
his hand, he crushed the skulls of the women and children as they slept.
And those that awakened? He killed them with his knife.
He’s a rich man now for his pains. The next morning we all knew what
had happened. How could we fail to know after Petros saw them in the
valley? But what should we do? They weren’t from here, they weren’t our
families, they weren’t even Christians. Still, I think of it many times, how
much they looked like us. I think maybe we did wrong not doing something
about it.

(10) As the priest of this town, I had great responsibilities during the
occupation. It was a bad time. Once, after some Germans had been shot
at on the road near here, the Germans sent two officers and a squad who
were to choose hostages they were going to kill in retaliation. I met the
captain as he came into town. I smiled at him and offered him my hospi-
tality. He came to my house, putting his men around it, I might add, but I
acted as though he was as welcome as rain in a dry winter. I had my wife
bring out the best we had — and there wasn’t much. She killed a chicken,
and I made sure the bottoms of their glasses were never white [dry]. We
kept drinking and talking — one soldier was an interpreter — far into the
night. Well, by midnight they knew what hospitality was; and what could
they do? They left without making any trouble, said they were convinced
no one here could have been shooting at the Germans. You see how I
saved the village?

(11) There was another time when the Italians were here — that was
before the Germans came. The Italians were living in the house you live in
now. Well it was evening; I’d had a little wine perhaps, and I was walking
down near the bridge at the edge of town. Two Italians were guarding it.
Well, I started talking to them and the more I talked, the more I thought,
and the more I thought the closer I came to crying. I did cry as I saw in
my mind the Italian flag flying on the Acropolis. Suddenly, I couldn’t
control myself. I lunged and grabbed both their guns; before they knew
what had happened, I had them both at gunpoint. I told them, “Tell me
that the Greek flag will fly over Rome.” They didn’t want to, but I waved
the muzzle under their noses, so they did. “Sing the Greek Easter anthem,”
I told them. And they did. “And now say that Greek wine is better than
 THE OCCULT ESTATE |
Italian wine.’’ And they did. Then I gave them back their guns and went
on home.

(12) I have heard about Father Athanasios, the priest of Spathi, that
when he was a baby in his cradle, his mother saw a light coming through
the ceiling and embracing the cradle where he slept. She was terrified
because it seemed so much like a fire burning the child, but soon the
light was gone, and nothing happened to the child. They say it was holy
light.
(13) The priesthood is corrupt from the bishops on down. You know
the proverb, “The fish stinks from the head.” I'll tell you a story showing
what I mean. Once there was a farmer who kept a pig in the sty. That pig
kept rooting in the ground, oh my, how it rooted about. Well, one day
that pig found a pot of gold, and gave it to the farmer. When the pig
died some time later, the grateful farmer asked the local priest to give it a
full liturgical burial, just the kind of burial one would give to an honorable
~ man. The priest refused, saying he couldn’t do that for the pig; after all,
it was against the rules of the church. The farmer then offered the priest
five hundred gold pounds, so the priest decided that the pig could have a
liturgical burial after all, but the priest cautioned the farmer that the
Bishop must never find out. The farmer reassured the priest, saying he
would take care of that problem. Well, it happened that the Bishop did
find out about the service and sent an angry letter to the priest demanding
that he appear for disciplinary action in the Bishop’s office. The priest
gave the letter to the farmer and asked, “What shall I do now? See what
trouble I’m in!”’ The farmer told the priest that there was nothing to worry
about; he instructed the priest to give the Bishop one thousand gold
pounds, money that the rich farmer gave the priest for this purpose. When
the priest was in the Bishop’s office, the Bishop ranted and raved, and
threatened to throw the priest out of the church for having given a full
liturgical burial to a pig. The priest interrupted him to say,
“But, your Reverence, I had no choice because that pig left five hundred
pounds for me in her will on the explicit condition that I bury her prop-
Bet ee
“And
Then the priest handed the Bishop an envelope, saying as he did,
she left one thousan d pounds for you in her will too, your Reveren ce.”’
thousand
The Bishop took the envelope and, opening it, found the one
Bishop, “Bless her indeed, good Saint
pounds in: notes. “Ah,” said the
Porker who remembered the Bishop in her will.”

Magicians, Sorcerers, and Witches

died, after we
(14) We have had some bad times. When my grandfather
his grave and
had buried him, we found out that someone had opened
was still in the grave, there
taken away his bones. Near his head, which ime
r with a red string. From that
were two wooden spoons tied togethe began
difficul t for our whole family. Our sheep
on, things became very
starvation. We put a
to die; we were faced with terrible poverty, perhaps
28 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
great deal of thought to the matter of who could be doing this to us, and
we realized there was one, a woman, who could very well have wanted to
harm us through sorcery.
We decided that the only thing to do was to go to a magician. We did
so, and he began his work. He told us that all of us must sit near him while
he read something to us all. We were all too frightened to get too close to
him, but finally his own sister approached him, and he began to read. While
he was doing the reading he went to sleep, or at least it was like sleep. After
a while, he asked, ‘‘Where am I?” but to that his sister answered, “‘Yes.”’
At that he began to tell us — we were gathered about him at a distance —
everything about ourselves and what had happened. He told us about our
family, about our hut, about who we were and what we did, even about
how other family members looked. Why, he even told us about that little
tree which grows near the door of our hut.
After telling us these things, he awakened from that state and declared
that we were the victims of sorcery. He told us to go home, and to look at a
pine tree stump that was near here. There we would find a red thread which
we would know to be a sign, a token, of one of our own dead family. In
any event, that red thread was found; it was almost rotten. What happens
is that when someone puts a curse like that on you, using a token from
the dead, it starts with an object, the token, then goes on to the smaller
animals to harm them, then moves up to hurt the larger animals, and,
getting bigger, the curse goes to people. Well, the magician came home
with us; he spent the entire night going in and out of the house doing things
and reading from those papers of his. I can tell you, not one of the family
slept that night.
From that time on, things were much better and, of course, we came to
trust the magician very much. When my brother became engaged but things
didn’t work out, that is, they weren’t able to marry,! they went to this
magician again to explain what was happening. The magician assured
them that it was not a serious matter, at least that they were not the victims
of sorcery or the binding curse, rather, it was not yet the brother’s turn to get
married, his time had not arrived yet. Another time, when I was losing my
babies through miscarriage, I went to the magician to see what was wrong.
He assured me that there was no sorcery being done; sooner or later I
would have my babies. It is sad that this magician, upon whom we relied
so much, died last year.

(15) In my village,? I’ve heard the account of a family whose members

died one by one within a very short period of time. At last, there were only
two daughters who remained alive; one was married and the other still
single. The husband of the married daughter went to a witch to find out
what was wrong with his wife’s family. The witch told them that they were
victims of sorcery, that they had been bewitched. She told them they must
all go up to the mountains where the family, they were shepherds like
ourselves, had once had a hut. When they arrived there, the witch lit some
‘i ; :
Conceivably over some dispute between their: families
cs
as to the amount of the dowry, or
perhaps attempts at premarital intercourse revealed impotence.
® She refers to where she lived before marriage.
 Dre OCCULES DAE 29
charcoal and carried it around and around the area of the hut. Suddenly,
as she walked, the fire spluttered and exploded. It was at exactly this place
that the witch knew they must dig. And dig they did there, to find in the
ground nails with the heads off, their number corresponding to the number
of persons in the girl’s family who had already died. In addition, there was
hair which had belonged to them. The witch examined these articles; then
she foretold that one more family member would die, the married daughter,
and that only the single girl would survive. The witch was unable to prevent
it for, she explained, she had already walked over the place where the magia
and tokens were buried. If she hadn’t walked over it first, perhaps she would
have been able to save the wife. As it was, that married girl did die; only
the single girl remained.

(16) Here in this village there are no magicians, but in Chalkis, ah, that is
where they say the magicians abound!

_ (17) Of course, we know about sorcery! Take for instance Megara which
has two famous witches. The one is for good; the other is for bad. One
day, a woman found a cross with nails on it whereupon she went to one of
the witches, for unhappiness had come into her house after this event, and —
what was very significant — the house itself was creaking. The good witch
told her to bless the house, do penitence and have a liturgy read there. This
witch never accepted a cent. Of course, she had ikons in her house and did
ask the people who visited her to ask a blessing of the ikon; that did cost
sixty drachma — which remained in the witch’s house — for the ikons, you
understand.

(18) Witches cannot do any good, but bad they can do. On the other
hand, I don’t believe in them at all, those mediums and witches, oh no,
I don’t believe in that sort of thing. Why, there was a girl in Doxario who
loved a boy in Dhadhi. One night she disappeared to elope with him.
The boy didn’t want her; naturally, the girl couldn’t return to her family
after a thing like that, so she disappeared. Her father was crazy with worry
and anxiety; he looked for her everywhere. He went to all kinds of mediums
and witches; they all told him the girl was dead. You know what the truth
of it was? She wasn’t dead at all. The girl was hiding out near Athens some-
where, until finally she came trudging home after six months.

(19) Once, the grandson of Miltiadis? of Spathi came here to have dinner
that Miltiadis who was the greatest wizard of all.
with us; you know,
our guest.
His grandson was our friend; we were pleased to have him as
house, and I sat with the grandson . After we
After dinner my sons left the
é
spoke of various subjects, I told him,
You will be the
“My child, in a few years your father is going to die.
in their use.
only one who will know his secrets. You must be very careful
save people or you may destroy them. You
You have a choice. You may
must consider which path you will choose to follow.”
d talking to you,
He thought for a while, then he replied, “I have enjoye
1 See Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35):
30 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

Uncle. You are right in what you say. There are many witches and sorcerers
in Spathi who destroy; they have destroyed whole families. My grandfather,
Miltiadis, would never use black magic, although he knew it, even at the
expense of losing his own life. He has used it to save people. I know already
how the black magic is done. For example, if one takes a cat and a black |
dog, washes them in the same pot, then takes the wash water and throws
it in the house, that will cause the entire family to suffer and to become
enmeshed in troubles. My grandfather would not have done such things
nor my father. My father uses his magic only to unbind the sorcery; that
is the path I shall follow.

(20) Speaking of Miltiadis, did you know that when he became old, he
developed a monstrous big belly? Everyone said it was as though he were
pregnant. You know what happened? People said it was because he col-
lected the demons while he worked; he collected them, and they began to
fill his belly. Oh, he has had some troubles with those demons; for example,
the time after he gathered the exotika around him and then, when he
wanted to send them away, he forgot the discharging words. Oh my, how
the exotika have set upon him, beating him, on those occasions!

(21) Oh, there are women who know about magic all right. You go to
them, taking with you the sweat of the person you want to harm — for
example, a handkerchief that he has wiped his face with, or the collar, or
cuff from his shirt. These women, it’s their profession, they are not con-
cerned with the harm they bring on people, they are only interested in
the money they are paid for their work. It makes me shiver to think what
they do. How can it be that they are not afraid of God?

(22) Look out if someone points the five fingers at you,! for it means that
the one who does it has hatred in his heart; he is dangerous. If he points
the five fingers at you when it is a Bad Hour, it can very well affect you
seriously. It happened to an acquaintance of ours, for example, that
someone pointed the five fingers just when it was the Bad Hour; ever since
then, his life has gone wrong. To cure it, they [his family] sought a wise
woman who had studied with the Jews, a woman who had learned special
things. They brought the wise woman to the village; she was able to tell the
man everything that was happening to him even though no one had given
her the details. She then explained what he must do. In order to get rid of
that bad luck which he had acquired, he must buy clothes for twelve
children and do a liturgy in twelve churches. That was what was necessary
to change his luck.

(23) You know the dreadful case in Doxario where the entire Proios family
was wiped out through sorcery. Well, in any event, as the family were dying
out, those few who remained brought in a wise woman who also knew about
magia; they asked her to help. Within a short time she had found at least
1 The outstretched hand, fingers spread apart, palm towards the face of another — a vulgar
ee in Italy — averts the evil eye and intends a curse upon the person to whom it is
irected.
 THE OCCULT ESTATE 31
some of the magia, all kinds of buried needles and nails, but just at that
point someone — perhaps it was the one who had done sorcery, but in any
event it was someone who hated the Proios — this someone called the police.
The police came to arrest the wise woman. The woman challenged the
police, saying she should not be arrested and prevented from helping the
Proios because she had great powers with which to combat sorcery. She
told the policeman that if he didn’t believe her he should let her demon-
strate.
“All right, you may show me if you want to,” said the policeman.
“Good. Now,” said the wise woman, “‘you lie down on that bed there
while I light this candle.”
The policeman stretched out on the bed to watch the woman.
“Now,” she said. ‘‘Look at this candle. You are no longer able to move,
you are unable to move from the bed. This candle is burning, melting
slowly. By the time it has all melted down so shall you be melted and
then, when the candle goes out, you will die!”
The policeman immediately tried to rise from the bed; to his horror,
he found that what the woman had said was true. He couldn’t move a
muscle no matter how hard he strained. As each minute passed he became
more agonized as he felt himself growing weak. His eyes stayed on the
candle which was quickly melting down. As the wax ran down its side the
policeman progressively felt the horror of his situation; he tried to talk to
the wise woman, to persuade her to lift the spell, but now, to add to his
terror, he found his voice was gone too. He averted his eyes from the
fascination of the candle and looked to the wise woman, pleading with her
now with his eyes to release him from the spell that he might not die. At
what seemed the last moment she smiled and lifted the spell from him.
The policeman was, as you can imagine, shaken and impressed. She had
certainly convinced him that she was not one of those fraudulent practi-
tioners who uses tricks to fool the naive people. It was clear that she was
truly powerful, that within her was a power like magnetism or electricity.
The policeman, after her demonstration, was glad to call her his friend.

(24) There are all manner of techniques for that sorcery which accomplishes
the binding curse. I was the victim of it when I was young and still lived in
Asia Minor. I was very beautiful then, and a young woman whom I knew,
a neighbour, was terribly jealous of my looks. She wasn’t as comely as I;
that’s what her husband used to tell her, comparing her with me, saying
how lovely I was in contrast to her. Well, you can imagine just how jealous
this girl was of me! She brooded and finally decided to kill me through
sorcery. She had learned her tricks from a Turk, one who read the old
books of the Solomonaiki.?
Her first step, once she decided that I must die, was to put some black
stuff — I don’t know what it was — on the stairs of my house so that, as I
walked over it, I would be bewitched. As soon as I had passed over tte!
realized what had occurred and took countermeasures. I lit a fire on that
black slippery stuff and spoke the words, “‘As the fire is put off, so the magia
should.”
1 Solomonaiki are the books of King Solomon’s magic (see Chapter VII).
p*
32 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Oh, I can tell you the woman was furious that she had failed to bewitch
me. Her next step was to try something more potent. What she did was to
take a new cake of soap; in it she stuck forty pins. She put it on a new
and untouched plate, placed a black-handled knife with it, and carried
these items to a running stream. As she placed them in the water she cursed
me to the effect that as the soap dissolved, so should I, and when the soap
was gone then would I be dead.
Fortunately, I had a neighbour, a friend, who was also friendly with
this woman. One day after this woman had a quarrel with the neighbour
who was my friend, my friend decided to tell me everything. It was a good
thing she did too, because I was feeling ill, my head ached and I was
languishing, wasting away. When I learned what had been done to me I
rushed to my mother to ask her what we must do. My mother, who was
wise in these matters, advised me to throw a copper object into the sea,
to let forty waves of the sea pass over my head. As the waves disappeared
on the sand, so shall the magia; when you throw something copper into the
sea, the ‘‘bad’’ passes into the sea. I did what my mother advised me,
and the sorcery ceased to harm me.
The neighbour who wanted my life could do nothing but return to the
Turk who had taught her her tricks. It cost her another ten gold pounds
to find out from him that there was nothing more that could be done. The
Turk understood that her sorcery would be counteracted, since I was
protected because “‘I was born of a mother born of a mother.”
I might add that among the other things the sorcerers use is the hair of
a person; that is why no one should throw away the hair which is on the
comb, rather, it should be burned. Here in Dhadi no one throws away their
hair or nail parings for fear they may be used in sorcery. We always burn
them. Also, in regard to the sea, if the magia are thrown by the sorcerer
into the sea, you cannot escape the curse because what is thrown into the
sea cannot be known or found.

(25) There are good and bad magicians, and magia which is used for the
good and magia for the bad. With the bad ones you dissolve. There was,
for example, a young girl here, one we knew, who was having some trouble
with her belly. She was engaged, you understand; she went to the doctor,
but the doctor couldn’t say what it was; at least he couldn’t find anything
there. They operated on her but without success. The doctor who was
unable to cure her concluded that they had done magic against her, there-
fore she should see a wise woman. The girl did so; she had to pay her
£27; but it worked; the wise woman cured her, and the girl became well
again.

(26) My sister and her family are in all kinds of trouble. The people in
their neighbourhood don’t like them; they are very jealous because my
sister’s family has been doing very well financially lately. As a result the
neighbours are trying to harm her family in every way you can imagine.
They are doing all kinds of magic. What they have done is to throw the
oil of the dead and earth from the tombs into the yard. As a result my sister
has become sick, and the family work is going very badly. They are green-
 THE OCCULT ESTATE 33
grocers; their produce is decaying, and it cannot be sold. It is a dreadful
situation.

(27) The magicians work on their magic from twelve o’clock midnight
until two o’clock in the morning. They work like this: the magician, either
on his own, from his own motives, or on behalf of someone else who has
come to request his services, ‘‘studies” the person who is to be the object
of either good or bad magic. Then he calls the demons together; with their
help he binds the magic. If the person who is bound learns what has
happened and wants to become unbound, he must go to some other
magician. The second magician has to ‘‘study”’ the person, to understand
what has happened. Then he calls the devils together in a conference, he
gathers the devils about him, and unbinds the magic. In both cases the
magician must have something in his hand that belongs to the victim. This
“‘simadi” (a token or sign) must be held by them while they work the
magic.

(28) About two months ago a shepherd woman from a village near Chalkis
came by the house selling herbs for various ailments. I asked her if she knew
what had happened to that famous magician who lived in Chalkis. The
shepherd woman said she knew the magician but that she, the magician,
was away travelling. The shepherd woman said that she herself could be of
help to me. She asked for £15 in order to buy certain things which she must
have to learn about Georgio’s case [Georgio, the informant’s son, is a
schizophrenic recently released from the hospital]. I told her that I would
give her £8 for now, and that if she could cure Georgio I would give her
even more than the £15 she asked for.
The shepherd woman told me to give her a token of Georgio’s so that she
could “study” it. I brought her a coat, but I didn’t tell her that it was my
son who suffered. Instead, I told her that it was my nephew who was ill.
The woman took the coat, then asked for a glass of water. She dipped a
cross into the water and put a mirror on top of the glass. She studied the
mirror for a while, then said that the coat belonged to someone in my
family who had been bewitched by two mourning women. At that moment
the shepherd woman saw the women’s faces in the mirror and began to
tremble all over. I begged her to let me see in the mirror too, so that I
could know who had bewitched Georgio. The woman said she could not
look for fear that it would bring trouble between us and the two
families to which those women belonged. She did say that she needed more
information and that she would return in twenty days to tell me what must
be done next. But it has been two months now that she hasn’t come back.
I’m afraid to go to her village to find her, for fear I’ll affect her magical
power.
I think there’s something to what she told me, for I’ve been told by
others that it was two women who had bewitched Georgio. We all suspect
it was his present girl friend who broke her engagement with another man
and now wants to take Georgio. The moment I have a proof that it is this
girl who has bewitched my son, I’ll go to her myself to beg her to take him
so that she will break the spell. One of the things that makes me think the
34. THE DANGEROUS HOUR

shepherd woman was right, is that this girl and her brother have been in
mourning recently.

(29) May God never let me have anything to do with the witches. I have
a very good husband; he is a good man, he doesn’t get drunk, and doesn’t
go to the coffee shop, so there is no reason for me to go to the witches.
You yourselves saw what happened last Saturday in Doxario when the
people went to the cemetery. They were digging to arrange a grave and,
while digging, they found three big pieces of cloth, each of which had a
picture painted on it with a curse written on it. One was a picture of a man;
the other two were of women. The names written on the curse were false
names; only the one who did the magic knew for whom it was intended.
The curse said, ‘‘As these dead molder and melt, so shall you.”” There were
pins through the eyes and a nail in the navel. Everyone in the whole region,
why you could see that for yourselves, was upset and excited. Anyway,
they called the priest; he came, took the magia to the church, and read
some things over them to break the spell. Then, on Sunday he gave that
speech in church where he excommunicated whomever it was who had
done the magic. He told the people that the power of the church was
greater than the power of the sorcery. The police took the magia; they are
trying to find out who did it. One told me they would try to get the finger-
prints. The people who did it should not be from around Doxario, they
must be strangers. Maybe they came from a city where, I hear, the ceme-
teries are locked just so sorcerers can’t get into them too. I’m sure those
who did it aren’t from around here.

(30) We have seen what magic can do. With sorcery whole families have
been destroyed. A cousin of ours, for instance, had a wonderful marriage.
She loved her husband very much; they never argued. The neighbour
lady was jealous and, concealing her envy, asked my cousin, “Don’t you
ever fight with your husband?”
My cousin answered, ““No, we never fight.”
“Oh, that is really wonderful,” said the neighbour. ‘‘T’ll tell you what
I’ll do. ll bring you a charm so that you will never have any future argu-
ments either.”
Saying that, the woman came calling a few days later and brought with
her a charm.
‘“‘Wear this,”’ she said, “‘and you'll never fight with your husband.”
My cousin thanked her, and put the charm around her neck. From
that day on nothing went well with her. The poor girl started to pine away,
to dissolve. She told her aunt what had happened and how ill she was
becoming. ‘The aunt suggested that they open the charm to see if that might
not be the cause. They pried it open to see what was inside it and there,
to their horror, they found a tiny piece of my cousin’s clothing, a bit of her
hair, and a pin. Well, they rushed over to the sea and threw the magia
into the deep. From that day on the girl began to recover.

(31) (O) There is, here in Doxario, a very evil man, a sorcerer.1 One day
1 For a description of him see in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), Dionysios the Sorcerer.
 THE OCCULT ESTATE 35
he demanded of a farmer here, one of the few who owns a tractor, that the
farmer help him plough. The day came, but the farmer forgot. For the
next five days after that this man came to the farmer’s house at 4 a.m.
The farmer saw him passing by each time. On each of those days the tractor,
or the plough, or the disc, or the harrower would not work. The farmer
could do no work. He came to me to ask what he should do. I told him not
to be at home, but to sleep at the house of his mother-in-law so that when the
man passed by there would be no one there. As soon as the farmer did this,
the tractor and plough worked well again.

(32) Mantheos! the magician once worked with us as a mechanic. One

day, when the tractor broke down, we asked him to fix it. He tried but
found it was beyond his skills. You know what he did? He said to us,
**You people leave me alone now; go lie down under a tree to sleep.”
We did what he told us to, and you know what? He invoked the exotika
to help him; he gathered them and told them they had to fix the tractor.
And they did! When we awakened the tractor was repaired while old
Mantheos was just sitting there smiling.

(33) Frankly, I’d prefer not to think about sorcery let alone talk about it.
It upsets me because, you see, I’ve suffered from it a great deal. It would
be better not to believe in such things, but after what one sees one knows
that it is all too real. So that you’ll understand, let me tell you why I
believe this. My grandfather was a fine man. He came from a good family;
he had five healthy children. But then, his first son died from the bad
pimple (anthrax). Just after his death a man who lives in Doxario, I may
not say his name, came to my grandmother demanding oil and food; he
said that more evil would befall the family if he was not given what he
desired.
My grandmother, frightened by this man, gave him the oil and food he
required. This went on for some time; the man frightening my grand-
mother and demanding things by threatening to harm. But eventually
my grandfather became annoyed; he said that nothing more was to be
given to this man. The next time he came he was turned away empty
handed.
Shortly afterwards my uncle, my grandfather’s son, died. Soon thereafter
his daughter became engaged and before she could marry she died. Within
a very short time, my grandmother died, then my grandfather, and finally
another daughter. All so close together in time! Now only my mother is
left of that entire family. It is a terrible thing to have to live in the same
village with that man. Whenever we see him on the streets we greet him,
for we fear not to; at the same time we say a prayer. Everyone in the village
hates and fears him. Oh I know, how can we be sure he has killed them
through sorcery. Who knows? But inside myself I know what he has done,
and so do the others in the village. He is safe while he lives; no one dares kill
him. But when he dies it will go badly with him, for the soul of those who
in
have done evil has a hard time leaving the body. He will suffer greatly
dying.
1 [bid.
36 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

Mediums
(34) Mediums exist, too. Iannos had an uncle who went to America when
he was very young. We hadn’t heard from him for many years and we
wanted to know whether or not he was stil! alive. lannos went to a medium
and learned that he was alive. It was years afterwards that he died, just a few
days before he was to come to Greece. He was living in Chicago, I don’t
know what he did there, but anyway he made a lot of money. Just before
he left they killed him, those people in Chicago. They say it’s because they
didn’t want the money to go outside the country.

(35) Here, take this “‘shirt’’! of a snake. We've had it in the house a long
time. I don’t even know why it’s here except my father said we should have
it around. Once in a while he’d ask for it and do something with it; anyway,
we’ve kept it just in case we might need it again. We don’t use it in healing.
I'll tell you what: Why don’t you go to one of those meetings where the
mediums are, you know when they try to hypnotize people and do those
things. You keep that snakeskin in your purse and I'll tell you something:
the mediums won’t be able to communicate with the spirits or with other
mediums. They’ll know right away what’s wrong, that someone has a snake-
skin, and the medium will ask whoever it is to leave the room. That hap-
pened to me once when I went to one of those meetings.

Up until now this chapter has been devoted to those persons with
magical powers who are part of the community. Priests, magicians,
sorcerers, witches, wise women, mediums, all may be found residing within
the Doxario region. There may be, of course, more famous practitioners of
these arts who live in the ancient and fabled towns of Megara, Chalkis,
Thebes, Delphi, and so on, but the differences between local and distant
persons is only one of the magnitude of reputation. But now we turn to a
second group of powerful persons, ones whose distinguishing feature is that
they are not part of the community. They are strangers. In this latter group
we find, examining our narratives, material dealing with gipsies, with
strangers, and with a king.
In number these accounts are fewer than those appearing earlier in
this chapter. We may attribute this in part to matters of contact frequency
and life importance. Strangers are not often seen; even more rarely do they
become salient in the life of the peasant or shepherd. Gipsies do pass through
from time to time; a traveller may be seen occasionally; the king exists but
his nature is a peripheral conjecture.
Nevertheless, the paucity of material should not be equated with dis-
interest, especially in regard to the role of the stranger. In Health and Healing
in Rural Greece (35), and again in Temperate Achilles (32), we referred to the
rites of hospitality: that generosity, kindness, entrapment in obligations,
and appeasement which surrounds the view and reception of any newcomer
suspected of having power. The powers of the stranger may be secular:
money, influence, political associations, practical advice; or they may be
magical or religious. The rites of hospitality are hopefully effective in either
1 The “shirt” is a snakeskin which has been shed.
 FHEOCCULT HSTATH 37
case; they may conceal, beneath the kindly warmth and shrewd manipula-
tions, an underlying anxiety which may be stated as, “‘Who is this traveller,
really?’ implying the wonder, “‘Is he someone in disguise?’ and “What
does he want from us?’’ Until such time as the stranger becomes familiar,
is tied into the village network of obligation, the questions must remain,
As we shall see in a later chapter in tales about the religious supernaturals
or personified spirits the traveller may not be human at all. We have seen
this already in Chapter II in the case of the changeling infant, Stringlos,
who was also, and this is important, a strange infant, a stranger, as indeed
all infants are until baptism.
With reference to the meagre collection of tales told to us about strangers
it would be naive not to remark on one outstanding feature which may
account for that phenomenon. We were, all four of us, strangers to the
village ourselves. Perhaps there was some reluctance to offend, even
obliquely, with anecdotes about persons in our own position. More likely,
were we feared at all because of our role — and there is little doubt that we
must have been at times — it may have been psychologically more comfort-
able to repress that knowledge, and with it not only the anxiety over our
role, but any narratives which may have been associated with it.

Gipsies
Gipsies are encountered in the Doxario region. They camp outside of
the town and trade in horses. The women, always in pairs, beg from door
to door while one or two men, skilled in sharpening knives, will also travel
through Doxario offering to sharpen the knives of the villagers. The
peasants are suspicious and fearful of the gipsies who are reputed to have
particularly efficacious — and sometimes noxious — magical powers. Gipsy
women will capitalize on their reputation by offering to sell curative herbs
or spells and will, for a consideration, undertake to bind enemies through
sorcery. In so doing they offer a service already well provided by local
witches and sorcerers.

(36) Some of the most excellent sorcerers you can wish for are to be found
among the gipsies. The gipsies who are Turkish are best of all; it is for
this reason that one does well to avoid them. Greek gipsies are not as
competent. They know all about foretelling the future from cards or coffee
one
grounds and some of them are so good, like the Turkish sorcerers, that
almost has to go to them. They make a lot of money doing these things.
stars.
The Turkish gipsies are so potent because they can even talk with the
bears
(37) Our village is protected by a magic circle. Neither gipsies nor
to do so the protecti ve magic would
are allowed to enter it because were they
be dispelled.
went to
(38) When I was younger there was a midwife here who never
yet by the time she died she had
school, one who had never been trained,
ds of babies. How did she learn? Well one
successfully delivered thousan
night in her dreams St. Peter came and told her,
38 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

“Go get ready to deliver the baby of a gipsy woman.” The midwife
protested, ‘‘I don’t know how.”
“Never mind,” said St. Peter, ‘“‘I’ll guide you.”
So in her dream she followed the Saint; together they went to the house
where a gipsy was lying. The Saint explained to her all about where the
baby was and how it comes out, what she was supposed to do, how to clean
herself and the mother; he also told her what situations were so dangerous
that she should not try to deal with them herself but should send the woman
to a doctor.
Several weeks later some gipsies did come to the village. They were look-
ing for someone to help one of them deliver her baby. They couldn’t find
anyone to help so they asked that woman, you know, the one who had seen
the dream. In spite of the dream she was terrified and had no wish to
deliver the baby. But she had to. So she did exactly what the Saint had told
her; that was the beginning of her long career.

The King
The present-day monarchy, in abeyance since King Constantine went
into exile, is historically recent, having been instituted in 1863 under the
guidance of Great Britain which placed the German—Danish House of
Gliicksburg on the throne. In antiquity, Greek city states had kings, posts
which declined in importance until the Macedonians, Philip and Alexander,
imposed the first of many ‘foreign’? kings upon the Greek cities. During
Byzantine times, from 330 to 1453 the Emperors of Byzantium held
suzerainty over Greece, but since the rise of Venetian and Turkish power
there have been no native kings of Greece.
It is perhaps for this reason that we see so little emphasis on tales of
kings and rulers. The kings of old are not remembered, except for one truly
remarkable story; current kings and queens do not seem to have been close
to the hearts or lives of the villagers. King Constantine has been a socially
and physically distant stranger; whatever power he may have had was, to
the local mind, uncertain and very temporal. Hardly monarchical in
sentiment, the peasants and shepherds were not above ridiculing their
imported royalty. What interests the local folk did have in royalty were
voiced in terms of political parties rather than in traditions of awe before,
or fealty to, the regal might. The following accounts are illustrative.

(39) Vlachos is the greatest healer in Greece.! He is like a god. You know
what happened? One day King Paul® broke his arm; since he knew that
Vlachos was better than any doctor for setting bones, he went off to see
Vlachos. He had to go in disguise, for fear his own people would ridicule
him. Well, he was very frightened, when Vlachos began to set the
bone, it does hurt to do that, the king whimpered and cried like a baby.
Vlachos won’t stand for that kind of thing, so he told the king, “Shut up
you baby!”? When Vlachos speaks people obey; the king obeyed. Later,
when his arm had healed, the king was so grateful that he had them run
1 See Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35).
2 Father of the exiled King Constantine.
 THE OCCULT ESTATE 39
power lines all the way out to Vlachos’s place so that Vlachos might have
electricity.

(40) Once a king came to this village. He was going from house to house,
just as you are doing, to see how things are, trying to understand the way
people live. They took the king to the cleanest house, and they told him
that he should sleep there, but the king didn’t like that house. Then they
took him to the second cleanest house, but he did not like that either. They
took him to the third cleanest house which he didn’t like either, and so on.
Finally they took him to the least fancy house in the village. A hard-
working farmer and his family lived there with his big family. That was
where the king decided to stay because there, in spiteof the dirt and mess,
there were animals around and plenty of food.

(41) Another time the king came to our village. They took the king
around and the king said he wanted to stay in a house where he would be
sure there was nobody who was more important than he was. Well, they
had to go to every house in the village to find what they were looking for,
because only in the last house was there a family without a baby.

(42) There have been nuns here a long time. It is an ancient holy place,
this church of ours. People come here to be healed because this is a miracu-
lous place. The church is over eight hundred years old. We know that it has
been holy for at least that long and perhaps longer, but it was in the twelfth
century that St. George appeared here. He appeared on that rock just above
the church; if you look, you can see the mark of his horse’s hoof in the stone.
Sometimes you can hear him in the night as the sound of his horse’s hooves
echoes through the darkness. And sometimes in the chapel, when it is very
still, you hear that sound, the candles flicker, then you know that St.
George has passed near by. If you look down below, you can see where the
ancient city was.
Before St. George came there was a Byzantine King who lived here
His name was King Nikephoros. He was a very rich king and there is a
legend about him which we heard from the nuns who were here before us.
They say that King Nikephoros is buried near here somewhere. When he
was buried, he was put into the earth with his golden chariot, his horses, and
his other treasures. Can you imagine what riches he must have had?

The Stranger
(43) Well of course one must be hospitable to strangers, but there are
we
problems, you know. For example, when a traveller comes by while
be sure;
are on the road with our flocks, that’s a bad omen. One can never
the sheep are so delicate, and we are afraid of the evil eye.
diet for it
(44) For ten years my husband had diabetes. He followed the
gradual improv ement in his general health; some time
and was having a
had a brain haemorr hage, too. Well, one day five years ago,
before he’d
to have his coffee. There
he went into the coffee shop of the Kifari family
40 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
sat a stout man with a distinct Turkish accent. No one knew who it was;
he was a stranger. The stranger watched my husband drink his coffee
without sugar and asked, ‘‘Do you have diabetes?” My husband told him,
‘Ves’, The stout man nodded his head and said that to cure it he must eat
the intestines of a male herring each morning before breakfast. It was to be
taken with a glass of water. The stranger explained that he had himself
done this and had been cured. My husband didn’t believe him, but when
he got home he thought about it and decided there was nothing to lose by
trying. Within ten days he was free of the diabetes symptoms, the dizziness,
the neck ache, the inability to stare at the ceiling; when he went to the
doctor they found his blood sugar was lowered. Since that time my husband
does not need to follow a diet. Imagine, after spending thousands of drach-
mas on medicine and doctors, to be cured by three drachmas given for
three male herrings. Why, even his blood pressure is normal now! After
this cure my husband tried to find that stout man, but nobody knew who
he was or anything about him; nothing at all...

(45) What you must do when you see a priest or a stranger walking toward
you is to spit. You do the same if you compliment someone, a baby for
example; you spit and that wards off the evil eye you might otherwise put
on it. If you don’t spit when you are admiring something, something bad
might happen to it. I know of people who’ve forgotten to spit when they’ve
seen a stranger coming, and all kinds of bad luck happened to them.

(46) Look, I must speak to you as a friend. Believe me now, for it is very
important. I know that Dimitrios has invited you to come stay at his place,
but I tell you you must not do that. You have seen where he lives; far out
in the country, away from any town. And who is there about his place?
Strangers. The people who work around there are all strangers; none of
them are from Doxario or Dhadhi, not even Panorio. They come from the
mountains beyond Spathi; some farther away than that. These people are
not from here, not part of our community, you cannot trust them. I tell
you that it would not be safe. They are dangerous people. Something very
bad might happen to all of you. Please, listen to me; do not stay near
Dimitrio’s. It is very dangerous.

(47) My mother bore eleven children but only I survived. When I was
six years old I was playing on a Sunday morning with the woman who
nursed me on the porch. My mother was sweeping the courtyard. An old
man, a stranger, presented himself to her and asked her how many children
she had. She said two. The old man told her that she was lying since she had
only one daughter. Then he told her not to sweep on Sunday morning.
She apologized, saying she had to clean the courtyard because my father
would bring the wheat in. He asked her not to repeat doing it on a holiday.
My mother asked him if he wanted to rest or to have some bread. The old
man refused and immediately disappeared as a shadow.

(48) I know there have been strangers who have tried to harm the village;
there are many stories about it. My grandmother has told me that since our
 THE OCCULT ESTATE 41
village began — which was back about 490 B.c. — no illness has been able to
invade the village; that is, nothing contagious has been able to get in
because Panorio is fenced with an invisible fence which was built by magic;
it is this fence which has kept the illnesses out. Many times they (the men)
have brought brides from other villages, brought them here on horseback;
it has happened that a new bride who was being brought here by her groom
dropped dead the moment she arrived where the St. Dimitrios church is.
She was bringing a disease into the village but the unseen fence would not
let her enter. I don’t know what the disease was; in those days there were
often epidemics of one sort or another, as for example, the pest.

(49) The people around here? They’re not true Greeks. Look how they
treat strangers! Now where I come from in the Peloponnesus it’s different.
We would kill our children to serve them to the stranger.
 IV
PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS
AND QUALITIES
N this chapter we shall present those accounts which deal with human
states or qualities associated in some fashion with the world of the
magical and supernatural. Unlike the preceding two chapters which
contained material having to do primarily with threats, dangers, and powers
associated with social roles and positions, the present chapter focuses on
individual variations, unrelated to categories of position or age-sex role.
We shall begin with the concept of pollution and its converse, purity.
Pollution is an abstraction which implies a dangerous contact with or
possession of power, usually a sacred power either unhallowed or incapable
of safe control. Its opposite, purity, also implies a power but in this case
a consecrated one which bodes no ill. Pollution is not so much a quality of
a person as it is his temporary state, one derived from intimacy with a
non-human power. For example we saw in Chapter II that the pollution
of the lechona (woman after childbirth) was associated with her fertility.
The pollution of the infant is also associated with fertility but also with
the infant’s being a stranger who has not yet been consecrated to the human
community — or the community of Christian deities — by the necessary
religious rituals. This same failure to have been accepted and initiated
characterizes the dangerous stranger. Pollution can also be derived from a
deviation from a ritual or a violation of taboo, as occurs when one fails to
fast or to abstain from intercourse prior to some religiously or magically
important occasion. Purity is, for the most part, the absence of pollution;
although we shall see it can be more than that, implying a gift or blessing
by the supernaturals. As we shall also see, pollution and purity are powerful
matters which affect the vital ability to interact in harmony with men,
with deities, and with less well delineated powers of nature.
After an introduction to the manifold consequences and implications
of pollution and purity, we shall turn to reports which tell us about the
light-shadowed ones. Here we confront a fascinating theme in Greek rural
life: the presence of the second-sighted, first cousins to the shamans of
older times, those villagers who are most open or exposed to visions of and
contact with the supernaturals, especially the pre-Christian spirits of
wilderness and water. While the narratives are clear about the personal
qualities of the light-shadowed ones, and of some of the means whereby their
sensitivities may be eliminated, we shall see that there is little or no syste-
matic conception of how the light-shadowed came to be the way they are.
One set of ideas related to the development of light-shadow qualities
is that of demonization. This concept, which does not mean demon posses-
sion, is employed again and again by villagers in explaining the changes
which they feel have occurred in recent years; changes which have made
men insensitive to the spirit world. We shall examine what is said about
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS 43
“our having become demons ourselves.” From there it is but an easy transi-
tion of the notion of demon possession; in taking up the few narratives about
possession, we shall encounter an explanation for epilepsy.
Another human condition or quality which is preternatural is the evil
eye. It is a power which one possesses, an effect which one has, and it is the
name of the affliction which is generated. While there is nearly complete
agreement in the village as to the existence of the evil eye, its power and
its effects, there is disagreement as to who possesses it. For the most part it
would seem that villagers agree that anyone can have the evil eye, but a few
are outstanding with regard to the strength of their eye. There is fair
agreement that the evil eye is most often activated as one admires or
compliments a person or object, and that at such times the person doing
the admiring is bewitching without his own knowledge. It is only after the
effects are observed that one can say that the evil eye took its toll. Sometimes
one may have a powerful eye, or do damage, without knowing it until a
wise woman, or someone else makes a diagnosis — ‘‘studies” the name of
the person to find out who the bewitcher was. In this one is reminded of
phenomena reported by Evans-Pritchard in his study of the Azande of
Africa.?
A second form of the evil eye is conscious or intentional witchcraft as
opposed to the unaware variety. Here it is the village consensus that only
a few seek to do damage to persons or objects through the conscious
employment of their eye as a destructive force. While both men and women
have the evil eye, it is more often a woman who is named as the deliberate
evil eye witch. This form of bewitchment causes apprehension; the villagers
are loath to discuss the individuals in the community who so employ their
power, a power which is variously likened to magnetism, electricity, soul-
throwing, greed, or devouring.
Since the evil eye is both a personal quality and an affliction, we have
chosen to place the narratives which deal with it in Chapter IX, Affliction
and Deliverance.

Pollution and Purity

and
To introduce the first group of narratives it is necessary to underst
; people who had settled in Dhadhi shortly
that they were told by refugees
After losing
after the war between the Greeks and the Turks in 1921-22.
in their ancient
to Turkey, one and one half million Greeks were resettled
the migrati on a painful one, and
homeland. The war was a bloody affair,
gly difficult. The process of readjus tment is
the resettlement exceedin
refugees are still consider ed an out-gro up by the natives,
continuing; the
money-making
albeit an out-group reputed for shrewdness, industry, and
to us: “Those people (the refugees)
skills. As one native of Doxario put it
foreigne rs.” The refugees , for their part, feel
aren’t really Greeks, they’re
and occasion al inhospit ableness of the new land; it is not
the strangeness
old days in Asia Minor,
surprising that they should hark back to the good
nor that they hold themselves superior to the local people.
the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon,
1. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among
Press, 1937).
44. THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(1) All of the real miracles have occurred in Asia Minor. There the people
were pure. The people there, why, their souls were clear; there was no
slyness in their hearts, no trying to cheat one another, no stealing from one
another. That is why we were all so healthy when we lived in Asia Minor;
healthy and privileged to see the miracles with our very eyes.
I myself come from a very poor family. My mother had ever so many
children; each year a new child came. Since I was the oldest it was up to me
to take care of them. I did so until some wealthy Asia Minor Greeks
hired me. This rich family had been to the United States and amassed great
properties there; when they came back home they were naturally rich. I
stayed with these people until the war. When I got married they gave me
a house. Oh, I was very lucky, for I got to marry the boy I loved, also those
rich people helped him a lot to get started. At one point they saved him
from having to go to the Army by giving him a job. You see, since they had
an American passport, the Army would not take people who were employed
by them. Those people had gotten rich by a miracle; in America they had
found a pot of gold coins. But that wouldn’t have happened unless God
had enlightened them. They found the pot of gold after God enlightened
them. That is how they came to have such a big property. They knew how
to act, they did, for they were wise and kind and, after they had made
money and come home, they built a church in thanks, dedicating it to St.
Constantine.

(2) The people of Asia Minor believed in God. They were saintly. It was
because they were saintly that their prayers were answered; as a result,
when they were ill and prayed, they would be cured. Since then things have
changed. People have lost their faith; they’ve left the Orthodox Church.
Now the only thing they have in their minds is money; how to grab things
from one another. They even take a woman away from another man,
that’s how bad it is today. That isn’t good at all, for marriage is a church;
when you take a woman away from her husband it is like destroying a
church. Nowadays the only time we mention God is to say “God help me”
or “Saint so-and-so help me” when we see a danger before us. It’s too late
then, for how can they help someone who has gone away from the proper
road. We don’t go to church any more but people find time to go to the
movies. We don’t even fast. I myself fasted every Wednesday, and Friday,
and all the Lenten holy days when I lived in Asia Minor, but now I can’t
do it anymore. I’m a good cook, and I’m tempted by the food. I feel it is
better to eat if you are tempted, better to eat than to fast and still have the
wish to eat inside you. Temptation and longing for what you want is even
worse than not fasting, because you’re not honest. If you’re tempted and
do eat, then at least you’re honest.
In Asia Minor there were not nearly so many diseases, although, of course,
even then death could not be avoided. None of us can escape God. When
our days end, when the olive oil finishes in our candles, then we must
leave this earth. Prayers, and herbs, and medicine help only when there is
still oil in the candle, when you still have years to live. But even so, if there
are no years left, it is good to take them because medicine and herbs are
a
consolation. You can always hope that they are going to help. In Asia
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS 45
Minor they had a saying, ‘In Charon’s springs herbs have no place, healers
and doctors do not heal, and the saints do not help.”’ A proof of that is
cancer. We have to die in some way, and new illnesses develop as old ones
become treatable. They try so hard to cure cancer, they take our money in
collections, but the money runs out and they find nothing. That is the way
it is.

(3) I'll give you an example of a miracle that took place in Asia Minor.
It was during the war; the Turks were killing everyone they could find.
During the flight when everyone was fleeing in terror from their villages,
from the Turks, they would hide so as not to be found by the Turks. The
women had to kill their own children for fear the cries of the children could
be heard and then the Turks would find them and destroy everybody. Well,
one of these women threw her child down from the top of a house in order
to kill it, but the child landed without being hurt. The baby was an innocent
soul, its heart was pure: that is why it was not hurt. God protects the inno-
cent souls.

(4) There were many miracles in Asia Minor, the ones that happened to
me occurred because I believed in the Saints and God, and because my
soul was clean. Those that happened to others, happened because the people
were clean,! and the only thing they wanted was one another’s good. It
was like that, there.

(5) In Asia Minor there was a woman who had an innocent soul. One
day she was making bread. When she had the dough all ready she said, “St.
Stylianos, bless this dough.” As soon as she said it, she saw something
moving; it was the ikon of the saint. It came down (presumably from a shelf
on which it was placed) and sat near her. As that happened the dough
began to expand, more and more of it there was, so that by the time she had
placed it all in the oven, even though she had just begun with the tiniest
amount, she ended by feeding the entire town.

We now turn to accounts which are not placed in Asia Minor.

(6) Here in Greece there are places where miracles happen, but they are
experienced only by people who have clean’ souls and who really believe.
Tenos is an example. I heard of a woman whose children had all died. She
took an oath to the Panaghia promising if she could manage to have a
child that would live beyond one year, she would give that child to the
Panaghia; she would take it to the Church of the Panaghia on Tenos, and
throw it from the bell tower. And so it happened; she did have a child, it
lived, and the woman took it to Tenos and threw it from the bell tower.
The child landed without harm, and he grew up to become a fine man.
Well, there was this other woman who heard the story and swore the
same oath. She hadn’t been able to have a living child, either. After the baby
had come and had lived to be one year old this woman took it to Tenos too.
she
But she didn’t really believe the story, so when she got to the tower
1 Unpolluted.
46 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
threw a bottle to the ground first. She watched, and saw that the bottle did
not break. Then she was willing to throw her child. She threw it all right,
but it was killed when it hit the earth. It was killed because the mother did
not believe in what she was doing and had wanted to test the Panaghia.

(7) Miracles occur on Tenos and here at the church of St. George. But
St. George isn’t very co-operative any more, because people are no longer
pure. Why, they even go so far as to steal his olive oil! No wonder he got
disgusted and has left the people.
(8) The St. George we have here is not the same saint as comes from
Cappadocia. Ours is from right here. He appeared here for the first time
long ago, up on the rock where you can see that his horse stood. Up until
the war people could hear the sound of his horse in the air or up on the hill
behind the rock, but during the war the Germans and foreigners came.
They polluted the church so that St. George does not appear anymore.

(9) There are many things one must be careful about, for example in
bread-making. If you make the dough when you are menstruating, or on
Friday, the bread will get worms in it, and you cannot eat it.

(10) There is a herb which I collect; it is used to cure the ““anemopyroma”’

(facial erysipelas). It grows in isolated places, places where a rooster does
not crow. While I pick it I say the Lord’s Prayer. The herb will not work ifa
menstruating woman touches it.

(11) As you know the lechona is vulnerable during the night; that is why
she does not go out. But that isn’t the only reason. She can’t visit other
houses because she is polluted. It is only after forty days that she takes the
priest’s blessing and is clean again. When I had a miscarriage I didn’t
go to my mother-in-law’s house because, according to her, I would cause
trouble to the animals and the people; that is, they might come to harm if I
visited.’ I had to have a special prayer from the priest after forty days.

(12) There are two things to do if you want to give birth to boys. One is
to gather that herb which looks like male genitals and you eat that. The
other is never to go to bed with your husband when you are menstruating
because then you will conceive a girl. Girls are conceived in dirt, whereas
boys like cleanliness.

(13) Youshould never have intercourse with your husband on a Wednesday

or Friday, on a holy day or Easter, or during the Lenten fasting period.
If you do so and conceive, your child will be born handicapped.? Also, you
1 A more dramatic illustration of the belief in the danger residing in the lechona, should
she
violate the rules surrounding her conduct, comes from the earthquake-ridden
island of
Thera. There we found villagers warning, “If the lechona goes outside
during her forty
days, the mountains will tremble and the earth will shake.”
* On Santorini a similar but more extreme belief is encountered. Intercours
e is not permitted
the night of the Annunciation, for any breach of chastity at that time results
in the birth of a
kallikantzaros if a boy is born from this union on Christmas Day;
if it is a girl, then she will
be a ghiallou (from the ancient “gello”) a child-snatching bloodthirs
ty demon.
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS 47
should not have intercourse with your husband when he is drunk; if you
do, there will be something wrong with your child.

(14) There are things to do to prevent miscarriages. If your first child is a

miscarriage, you must be especially careful for that might continue, and
you would never have a child. What you do is to go to forty households
whose occupants are people who have been married only once. You beg
for a total of forty silver coins, one from each household. With this money
you pay a jeweller to make a little golden lock in which he puts some
incense and some special herbs such as “‘apigano’’.t You take the lock to
church where it remains to be blessed for forty liturgies. Then you wear
the lock around your neck until you give birth to your child. Of course
not everyone can have such a lock, so if you know someone who owns one,
you borrow it when you are pregnant. I know two or three people in Spathi
who have them. Now there are two things to observe; one is that you take
the lock away from your neck each time you have intercourse because it
must not be befouled. The other is that when your time comes to give birth
you open the lock so that the child will be freed and can come out, for you
see, the lock has kept the child within you.

(15) Oh, we had one man here in the village who really had the evil eye.
People hated him for it, for what it had done to them. The people wanted
to pollute him, so they all gathered one night, forty of them in all, and
everyone shit outside his house. In the morning, when he came out of his
house what was there but this mountain of shit! Well, he turned his eye on
it and the mountain burst, disappeared, but that was his last effort; he
was polluted and that was the end of his power.

(16) There was a certain Krastos near Doxario who was very rich. People
envied him very much, and apparently someone did sorcery against him.
They say that the magia was thrown into the sea so that they could not be
found and the family freed from the sorcery. In any event, Krastos died
along with his two children. Only his wife survived. Now I don’t believe
that’s what happened. I think that this family was polluted, polluted by
some disease, and that is why they died.
(Listener) Yes I know, everyone knows what happened to the family.
It wouldn’t surprise me that they had some shameful disease, something
bad, so that none of the girls would have been able to get married. In that
case, wouldn’t it have been possible for them to bury the magia themselves
and then tell everyone that they were the victims of sorcery? It would be
better to have people believe that than to know the family had something
shameful, that they were polluted by disease.

(17) Kostas’s grandfather was a very devout person. He used to sleep in the
was
church and would sing hymns there during the day. His wife said he
crazy, but he would answer her back, saying that one day she would become
crazy. What he foretold happened and his wife did, in fact, become insane.
One night before going up to the church to sleep, Kostas went to the house
1 Rue.
48 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
of his friend, the one who had been best man at his wedding. Now on that day
his best man’s cat happened to have her kittens. Well, after Kostas had been
there a while he went on up to the church. He had laid down on the floor and
was getting ready to sleep when he heard a voice, “Get out of my home, you
‘magarismene’!’’ (polluted one). Kostas realized what was wrong; he had
become polluted by being in a house which had a lechona in it, the mother
cat, and had come polluted to church. He left the church immediately.
(18) My son went swimming at the sea one day when there were many
people there. There must have been some unclean women swimming in the
sea because when he came home he developed a sore eye. And I caught it
from him. But we both were cured by putting on a tiny grain that one
crushes, that is good for the eyes.

(19) Some people have a very strong eye. I had a koumbaros like that.
When we were in Crete together we could never visit anybody’s stable
because the moment he saw the cows they got sick and quite seriously so —
almost ready to die. This friend of mine could even kill a tree with his eye.
Once when he was in the States there was a tram going up a hill. He made
a bet with some friends that he would look at it and the tram would fall
off the rails. Well they took the bet; he looked hard at that tram and down
she went! So you see what the eye can do. Some people just look at a man
riding by, and the rider comes tumbling down. I remember there was a
man here in this village who was that bad with his eyes. He harmed many
people without wanting to, Everyone who went by his house pointed the
five fingers at him. There were two reasons for that; one was they didn’t
like him because of the harm he brought to them, and the other reason was
because they wanted to pollute him. By polluting him with the five fingers
his power would be weakened.

(20) People are more vulnerable to illness if they don’t wash, if they are
dirty. Some don’t keep their house or body clean; they eat all kinds of dirty
things — foods that are unwashed, or old, or otherwise soiled. There was
an old man here like that; it was no surprise when he got the bad disease,
you know what I mean (cancer), and he died. In general, dirty people are
more affected by disease. People who have the same blood as a tubercular,
for instance, get tuberculosis themselves.

(21) Women must be cautious in what they do. For example, a woman is
not ever allowed to approach the holy table in the apse of the church; a
menstruating woman or a lechona is not allowed to come into the church
at all. Ifa woman has been menstruating, or has had intercourse, or has not
fasted the day before, she cannot take Communion. Men can come near
the holy table of course, but only young boys are supposed to help the
priest. Boys up to the age of twelve or thirteen are pure.

The Light-Shadowed Ones

(22) When Helen was about seven she became ill. We thought it was just
a cold so we cupped her. During this time she would scream at night saying,
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS 49
“St. Elias! Don’t you see St. Elias? He wants to take me away. Here he is
coming now!”’ She was very frightened those nights, and we were upset too.
Many times she awakened as she saw the Saint, although none of us could
see him. We decided that we must dedicate her to St. Elias so we took her
to his church, the one up on the mountainside. We dressed her all in black
just as if she were a nun and did the dedication in the church. For a full
year she was dedicated to him, wearing black the whole time. We said the
xemetrima over her; eventually the Saint ceased his visits to her. It was a
saintly thing that happened to her, for Helen has a pure soul. Her heart is
ees her spirit is clean. She has a light shadow and is able to see the
aint.

(23) Ten years ago there was a woman here who was a lechona. Before
the forty days was up she went out of the house to get some water. She lost
her mind as she did so. If she hadn’t gone out she would not have gone
crazy. What happened was that she could foresee things during that period ;
she understood the future and could prophesy. They took her to a doctor,
but he wasn’t able to help. When they took her to churches, she was
healed.

(24) In the old days people were simple. They were able to see the nereids
and exotika. In those days people believed in the exotika and were affected
by them, but now we know how to say the “Our Father’ and the Credo,
and we are protected from them. They seemed to gather in places where
there was water and shade; they were most often seen at night and at
noon. Generally they were seen in the wilderness. Even now they say that
unbaptized children become nereids and exotika.
Nowadays it is the light-shadowed who can see these exotika. The light-
shadowed are pure people without wicked thoughts in their mind. I don’t
know why it is that some are light-shadowed and others not. Perhaps they
are born that way since each one of us is born with his character engraved.

(25) In Tenos the ikon of the Panaghia sweats because she is fatigued
from all of the miracles which she works. On the day of the ‘Sleeping of the
much
Panaghia’’! she makes so many different miracles, and there is so
so many people you can understa nd her fatigue. If you have a
noise and
clear heart you are able to see her; she takes the form of a shadow. If you
will make it
have a clear heart and put a coin in front of her ikon why she
stick to her face.
when
(26) One night a man from Dhadhi was walking down the road
on him and sat astride hid in the back
suddenly one of the devils jumped
very wisely didn’t do or say anythin g; he just kept
of his neck. The man
silently. The devil
walking and saying the ‘‘Credo” over and over to himself
things hap-
disappeared, becoming a wind. The light-shadowed have these
is to carry some incense or a cross with
pen to them. What they should do
them when they go out.
15, thousands go to the island of
1 On the day of the “Sleeping of the Panaghia”’, August
the healing shrine of the Virgin. “Sleepin g” refers to the death of the Virgin.
Tenos to
50 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(27) There are certain people who, when sleeping out of doors, are affected
by the nereids or exotika. You have to be light-shadowed (elafroiskiotos) to
be hurt by them. Some years ago my daughter Sofoula went along with her
two sisters to the olive trees which we own. On one night she slept outdoors
under a tree by herself. The following.morning she had a headache, and if
anyone touched her she felt as if she were stung by needles. When she
came home she was restless; soon something happened so that she began
to roll all over the floor. We knew as soon as we saw that she had been
struck by the exotika. ;
If you take someone who has been hit by the exotika to the doctor they
will not be cured, but if you take them to a priest they can be cured. For
that reason we called the priest who came and knelt on the floor beside
Sofoula. He laid his stole over her and read a special prayer. I remember
that the priest looked embarrassed when, for a few moments, he lost his
“‘words’’. Perhaps it was because it was the first time the priest had been
asked to cure such a case. In any event, Sofoula was cured immediately.
Some time later a shepherd here was struck by the exotika. It took him a
longer time to recover because the priest did not read as strong a prayer over
him as he did for Sofoula.

(28) We told you about Stringlos, how he changes shape, sometimes

taking the form of a baby or another time a cat or other animal. Only the
light-shadowed see Stringlos, for they are pure and innocent. There is no
special sign to mark them. They understand that they are light-shadowed
only from the fact that they can see and hear all of these things — Stringlos,
the nereids, the aerika, etc. Others aren’t able to understand the light
shadow.

(29) The person with a light shadow is more apt to see the nereids and
exotika than is one with a heavy shadow. The reason is that the former is
good, innocent, and naive.

(30) There are children who have the light shadow. Some remain like that
as adults. They should wear charms against the evil spirits and the Bad
Hour. In these charms one puts incense, garlic, rue, salt, gunpowder, and a
cross. Some parents pollute their light-shadowed children by giving them
the blood of a tortoise to drink. This is a very bad thing to do. Of course
the kids aren’t light-shadowed any more and they are no longer affected
by magic. But afterwards the devil takes them. My mother-in-law polluted
her children with tortoise blood ; it was a very bad thing to do. The best way
to try to control the spirits is to pray to God.

(31) My father had a cousin who would disappear at night. She used to
go to St. Athanasios. She was destined to become a saint. Her mother didn’t
want that to happen because the girl was her only child. What she did was
to befoul the child by feeding her donkey’s milk and tortoise blood. It was
a terrible thing to do, for the child died.

(32) I know that they say that fig trees are dangerous, but I’ve slept under
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN
them often with nothing bad happening.
shadow who are in danger and who see all
man here who used to see them, but his
cat’s ears in his food. Since then he hasn’t
CONDITIONS 51
It is only people with the light
these devils and spirits. There is a
mother befouled him by putting
seen the spirits.

(33) I don’t pay attention to the stories about the exotika because I’m
scared. It was two summers ago, a very hot night. My brother had come
home from school to spend a few days; he was sleeping in the same room
with me. His bed was under the open window while mine was opposite
to his at the other side of the room. That day I was very sick with an ear
ache, and I had some fever. Around midnight I very distinctly heard
musical instruments, including a bouzoukia playing, outside the house. The
sound came from my brother’s side of the room, as if the instruments were
under his window. I am absolutely sure the sounds didn’t come from
anywhere else since our house is the last one on this side of the village. It
was certainly not the creation of my fever because I could see the wall
clearly and was wide awake.
I was afraid the nereids, for that was what they were, might hurt my
brother, but I could hear that he was sleeping peacefully. I was scared to
death to go outside because they might hurt me, so I got under my covers
and tried to fall asleep. The following morning I asked my brother if he
had heard anything extraordinary during the night. He said he hadn’t.
When I told the story to the rest of the family they laughed at me and said
I was light-shadowed, and that was why I could hear things that others
could not. My grandmother since that time has put bread and rue under
my pillow, for that keeps the exotika away. People say it is a good idea for
those who go out into the wilderness to hunt to have some gunpowder in
their coat pocket, or to keep some bread crumbs handy, because these will
protect against the exotika which are in the wilds.

(34) The light-shadowed are those who have nightmares, who moan in
their sleep, who do not sleep well, who see the things from out of there
(exotika), etc. As a priest, it is my belief that it results from their not
having been baptized properly. When the words of the baptism are not
read the right way it can happen that the person, as he grows up, remains
more under the influence of the devil. Now I also think that the light-
shadowed is a milder form of the epileptic. The epileptic falls in a trance
and loses consciousness, but the light-shadowed has no real trance; he
merely sees the visions. Some of the people around here, on the other hand,
think the light-shadowed are just those who are naive and for whom life has
no interest; some are thought to be mentally backward.
It is important in the use of the word that you understand that light
shadow has nothing to do with a man’s shadow. That is something else.
If a man doesn’t lead his life in the right way, if he has given himself to the
devil, he will actually lose his shadow. Such a man has no piety and rever-
ence and will suffer for it.

(35) Those who see ghosts are light-shadowed. They are people whose
mind does not reach very far; they can’t grasp the idea of the spirit, a
52 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

person’s spirit; that’s why they call it a shadow. When we talk about light-
shadowed we really mean light-spirited. It’s usually in the night that they
can see these things. I think what happens is that their body is awake but
their mind, their spirit, is not awake in the ordinary way; I mean there is
something different about it then, and those are the times when their spirit
sees different things such as animals that are not animals, or shadows. My
brother-in-law is like that; he sees things that his brother, my husband,
can’t see. Once he saw a shadow that stopped in front of his donkey and the
donkey wouldn’t move forward; rather it went wherever the shadow took
him. Finally the shadow wanted to take the animal into the fields, but
eventually my brother-in-law could control the donkey. Another time he
saw an old lady appear in front of him who kept turning to look at
him. He was very frightened. You know the proverb, “Fear guards the
deserted.” People like this, the light-shadowed, are pure in their heart —
kind people. That is why children see these things more. It’s not a matter
of age though, for if you keep your soul pure you continue to be able to see
them.

(36) The shadow is something that is related to death. The dead have
light shadows, and it is the wish of the dead that the earth lie lightly over
them. It is very bad to lie under a heavy shadow, whether it is earth or tree.
The fig tree, for instance, has a heavy shadow which is dangerous to lie
under, dangerous for the living as well as the dead. Trees with a heavy
fragrance are also dangerous. ‘The cypress is a tree which has a light shadow;
that’s why you will find it planted in the cemeteries for it protects the dead
from heavier shadows. The heavy fragrance of flowers is dangerous too,
and that is why one never keeps flowers in the bedroom. In hospitals you
will see that they always remove the flowers at night, otherwise that heavi-
ness will kill the sick who are sleeping there. Why even the air can be heavy,
as when it is foggy or humid and that is a bad thing; the mists which lie
low over the land in winter are very bad for that reason. They put you
under a heaviness. Heavy and light, well, these don’t have anything to do
with weight or colour when we speak of them this way. It is another quality
entirely. I can’t explain it....

(37) The shadow of the fig tree is heavy because Jesus cursed it. Jesus had
gone to the fig tree when he was hungry to ask it for food. The tree refused
to give its fruit to Christ. For the same reason the milk of the fig tree produces
itch, because Christ cursed it.

(38) One with a light shadow has second sight, like a medium. He’s better
able to see the spirits and communicate with demons and saints. If the
light shadow is used for good, he will speak only to the saints; whereas if it
is used for bad, he will talk to the demons. There’s no danger in having
the light shadow except that it makes one sensitive to the spirits.

(39) We have a ghost here in Panorio, but sometimes we play tricks and
are ghosts ourselves. One night we dressed up in white sheets and waited
on the road; when someone from Doxario walked by we all jumped out.
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS 53
Lord you should have seen how we frightened that Doxario man. I bet he’s
still running. It’s the village joke now.

(40) My mother was light-shadowed. She was struck by the exotika when
she was out of doors. During the harvest she would always turn to others
saying,
“Don’t you see the exotika? Don’t you hear them dancing near by? Now
they will come and take me along.”
They struck her often and she would remain in bed trembling, and
shivering, and feeling very weak. She was especially endangered when the
moon changed; at those times we called the priest in to read a prayer. When
she was eighty-two she was struck again by the exotika; within two days
she was dead.

The Passing of the Spirits

The following material consists of the comments and accounts of the
villagers who describe a change in the contemporary world as opposed to
the days of yesteryear. The change with which we are here concerned is in
man’s relationship to the world of the exotika; a change which has come
about, it would appear, because man has himself recently changed for the
worse.

(41) We are not as pure as the people used to be. In the old days when I
was young, I was once ill with jaundice. An old man cured me and I took
a gift to him, a gift of cheese, because he would not accept money. Another
time I cured a woman who had a white spot on her eye. I used the xeme-
trima and she was soon well. She wanted to pay me; I would not accept.
But she did wish to thank me and I could not reject that wish, so I accepted
a gift of coffee. But now, well we know how to read and write, or at least
some of the youngsters do, and our mind is enlightened. We have become
cautious in whatever we do and cautious about what others might do to us.
In the old days the people were more trusting and naive,

(42) In the old days many miracles took place in the church of St. George.
Now we have become demonized and no miracles occur. I know the story
of a shepherd who gave his horse to the saint as an ex volo. The horse walked
all the way to the church by itself. At night the shepherd saw St. George
in his dreams. The Saint asked him to saddle and equip the horse with silver;
only in this way would the Saint accept it. The shepherd did what was asked.
The moment the silver saddled horse went to the rock behind the church,
it disappeared from people’s eyes and was never seen again. That was a
miracle, and there were many such in days past. Now we are all polluted;
that is the reason there are no more miracles.
Nowadays the clergy exploit the power of the church for their own
benefit. For instance, some years ago in a suburb of Athens we heard that a
fountain with holy water was found along with the ikon of a saint. Priests
and nuns asked the people to give money so that a church could be built to
the saint who had revealed himself there. The people gave their money,
54 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

the church was built, and the people visited the church bringing their
offerings and taking the holy water. I went there myself, but I didn’t like
the environment because it didn’t inspire me with reverence and piety as
it should have when one is ordinarily in church. After some time we read
in the newspapers that the church was closed by the police because the
nuns and priests there were exploiting the people. There was no spring with
holy water and no holy ikon had revealed itself. This is the other side of the
church, the side one sees nowadays.

(43) I’m seventy seven years old. I’ve tried to do good all my life. Now
people are devils themselves. They take you to court for a ten drachma
loss (3s). What can you expect from such a world? The exotika appear no
more.

(44) Today people no longer see the nereids because the people are sinful.
Why even the best man proposes intercourse to the bride!

(45) I know many stories of the nereids and other aerika, but these creatures
don’t exist any more; one never hears them. The last time I heard them
myself was back in 1938 when I was in the fields and heard them pass
through the vineyards. They were singing, and dancing, and moving along.
Now we are the demons and nereids, all of us; we are the aerika. In those
days people would never think of going out after dark while now we are all
out after midnight, and nobody seems bothered or afraid.

(46) My wife is light-shadowed but she has no special powers. She is just
more afraid, that’s all. She hears things and sees things, but it is only because
of fear. Oh, there used to be exotika all right, but now we are the exotika.
We are because the women wear short dresses and the men do bad things.

(47) The nereids won’t hurt you unless you tease them; otherwise they
will leave you alone. As soon as you say a prayer they disappear since they
are works of the devil. Generally the exotika no longer appear because
people have walked on all their places, trod their ground, and there is no
more room left to them.

(48) Today the exotika do not come out so often. The reason is that so
many of them have been killed by thunderbolts.

(49) When a cat jumps over the dead they will return as revenants, but
now these things do not exist because we are revenants ourselves. In the
days of our forefathers God was close to us all, but now he is very far away;
that is because we know many things now. We even want to go to the moon
and to find people in the stars. How can one believe in anything now?

(50) God made Day for man to work and Night for men to rest. The
Night is for the Bad Hour. In the old days people closed their gates at
sunset and opened it only for the following dawn after the rooster had
crowed three times. But now, my goodness, there are so many trucks and
 PRETERNATURAL HUMAN CONDITIONS 55
cars on the road during the night that the exotika are the ones who are
afraid, so they do not appear any more.

Demon Possession
Becoming a demon is one thing; being possessed by them is quite
another. The former is a way of describing changes in relations between men
and spirits; the latter is specifically a matter of the intrusion or incorpora-
Beye the body of some external agent which leads to illness or bizarre
conduct.

(51) One of the ways for the Bad Hour to occur is when you get angry.
When you’re angry a demon gets inside of you. Only if a pure individual
passes by, like a child for instance, will the “bad” leave you, for it will fall
on the unpolluted.

(52) In Spathi there was a woman who was demonized (demonismeni).

Her husband didn’t know what to do with her so he decided to bring home
the ikon of St. George from the church. The woman sensed that something
was going to happen or rather the demon inside her sensed it. The demon
got scared, and as the ikon was coming closer and closer to the woman’s
house her anxiety increased step by step. Finally when the ikon was in the
house the woman became like a wild anima]. Oh, she cried and made the
most terrible noises. But she fainted, and then, when she awakened, she
became better until finally she was cured completely through the use of
ikons, prayers, and churches.

(53) I had a cousin who awoke one time and was found to be demonized.
In the midst of talking decently or working along she would suddenly start
to scream, to swear at the holiness of the church. She also had spasms at
which time she would be so powerful that it took four or five men to hold
her. The demons inside her became especially upset when she went to
church. Through her mouth they would try to recite the prayers loudly in
the wrong way. They did this so well that the priest, and even the men in the
choir would begin to make the same mistakes. Whenever the demons
managed to get the priest or the choir to make these mistakes they were
very pleased with themselves. It was only after many years that my cousin
was cured, but I don’t know how it came about.

(54) A woman was getting very thin because there were devils inside her.
She could feel them inside her, and it was causing her a lot of upset. Her
family took her to the Christ of Spata on three occasions. The third time
a great flame appeared in the light of Christ which burns in the church;
when that happened, the devils departed from the woman.

(55) (O) Speaking as a priest I can say that the Church does not accept
the idea of any good power in the epileptic. In ancient times, when God had
not revealed himself, the people were pursuing belief and would believe
anything. One thing they believed was that the epileptic had power, but
G
56 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

that is no longer so. On the other hand, it is true that the light-shadowed
are related to the epileptic. One can see that when the epileptic is in a trance
he is very powerful because he is possessed by a genius which supports him
in exercising power. When he is not in a trance there is no genius possessing
him; at such times he is without any special powers.

(56) There is a man here in the village with epilepsy. People hold that
disease in awe for they believe it is a curse of God. Of course they sympa-
thize with the man himself. No one blames him for it, but the awe comes
because there is a supernatural power interfering which produces the
sickness.
 Vv

ON VENTURING INTO THE

OTHER WORLD
HIS chapter will have an “other worldly” quality to it, for its subject
matter comprises accounts of human ventures into that second, pre-
ternatural world. The ventures are of the spirit, not of the flesh, and are
concerned with three separate but not unrelated sets of concepts or activi-
ties — dreams and prophecy for one, dying and death for another, and the
soul for a third.
Concerning ourselves with the first group of accounts we find in the
visitations and foretellings three principles which may be inferred, although
they are by no means necessary to the logic of the narrator. One principle
assumes that there is order in the world, or at least direction, so that future
events are capable of being predicted by humans wise enough to have
knowledge of the kind of maps which show the lands of the future. These
maps are of a neutral sort consisting as they do of the shoulder blades of
sheep, the cry of animals, or other events or forms which require only the
skill of the interpreter for their prognostic utility.
Another principle inferred from second sight and forebodings is that
there exists a connection either among persons, or between persons and
supernaturals, a connection of such potency that events which shall fall
on one person are felt or revealed in advance to another. For example, the
mother will know her son shall die at some future time.
A third principle, this one inferred from the visitations of dreams and
trances, indicates an active concern of the supernaturals in the world of
man; a concern which takes the form of guiding men to proper alternatives
of action, or a concern which decrees the future but lets one or another
human know in advance what shall inevitably emerge. Since these principles
are derived by the observer rather than made explicit by the village narra-
tors, they can only be inferences; inferences about a rural orientation which
in itself requires nothing so regular or systematic as a principle by which to
organize itself. So one should not be surprised to see the anecdotes or
stories combining these themes or ignoring them. The effort at system is,
after all, the writer’s need, not necessarily the teller’s.
The second group of accounts has to do with death. There is about
dying, about death, and about the dead a unity of theme which seems
unarguable. Yet, as we approach the tales themselves, or the fragments of
commentary which state a relevant belief, we shall see that within the
realm of the dead there lies, for the Greek peasant and shepherd, an
immense compass of possibility, not just as to cause, which modern man
would grant can be quite varied enough, but as to outcome as well. Perhaps
one finds within the confines of our three tiny villages more variety of belief
about death and the dead than exists in supposedly complex Western urban
America. Perhaps it is that the shepherd, less removed from the actuality
58 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

of death, does not defend himself so much against expressing his considera-
tion of death’s meaning and consequences. In any event, we shall meet in
this material notions of the revenant, of transmigration, of the reunion with
an actively crying out, animated earth, and other conceptions.
Finally we shall present what little we have heard from our villagers
about the soul. It will not be unrelated to what has been found in earlier
chapters: an idea of an independent spirit like the Ker of old; a view of a
traveller wandering about while the body is at rest; the notion of a force
or power in tune with other powers and forces which are very much part
of the structure of man and nature, but all of which are preternatural in
the sense that they inspire awe, are remarkable, and are not secular and
work-a-day in operations and effects.

Dreams, Visitations, Augurs, and Omens

In Chapter III we have already presented a story told by a light-
shadowed woman about how St. Peter appeared in the dream of a woman
instructing her how to deliver the baby of a gipsy woman; a gipsy who
would come to that midwife-to-be at some future time. The story is typical
of a group in which the dreamer beholds a supernatural visitor who gives
guidance or warning about some future event, sometimes an event of special
portent — a birth for example, in itself always a miracle tied to the power of
fertility; or a stranger like a gipsy, someone in tune with the forces beyond
as with the stars. We shall see that the dream stories often foretell death
itself, and therefore, overlap with the theme of the section which follows
this one.

(1) I know of a woman who dreamed that her boy, he was only a child
then, would drown when he became twenty-two years old. As the boy
approached that age, the mother became more and more worried. When
he didn’t appear home after having gone on some errand or in the evening
after working in the fields, she would be seen out looking for him. One
night he went out on the smallest journey, just a trip to get some water
from the well down the mountainside from the huts. He failed to return.
In the morning some of the other shepherds found him. He was dead. The
mother lost her senses from that time onward.

(2) I’ve suffered as a mother suffers; my babies have died. There’s so little
one can do. One day many years ago my baby was ill, very ill. I took him
to the free clinic in the town. The doctor said to me,
“Lady, you give birth to your children just like the goats do, and then
your children suffer for it. Now what does this poor sick child you have
brought me owe to you for that, for his having been born in such circum-
stances?”
I felt awful when he said that. I came home again and didn’t have enough
milk for the baby; perhaps it was worry. that made my milk insufficient.
The baby grew thinner and thinner; there was nothing I could feed him,
and I lacked milk. I prayed to the Panaghia either to cure my child, to give
it health and me milk, or to take that baby so that it need not suffer any-
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD - 59
more. That night I went to sleep and had a dream. In that dream one of
my teeth fell out of my mouth. The next day my baby died.

(3) One May, when my husband had malaria and was suffering greatly,
he had a dream. In that dream he heard someone say,
“Go to the spring that is near the sycamore tree. Drink of that water, stay
there, sleep there, and you will be well.”
He got up and took some clothes and some food and told me what we
were to do, then we went down to the spring. The water was good, cold,
natural water. He drank it, ate, and slept. I was frightened while we were
there because it was in an isolated place; there were no people around,
and while I drank I became dizzy. But he became well. It was because he
was a good man he was able to have a dream which guided him to his cure.

(4) I have been to Tenos three different times, each because of the sickness
of my children. At Tenos the ikon of the Panaghia cannot be taken from
the church before 11 o’clock. Before then it is so very heavy the soldiers
cannot carry her.! When they take her out of the church all the boats in
the harbour whistle, the cannons fire, and the bands play music. Oh my,
it’s enough to make your hair stand up when you hear all that! It’s said
that the Panaghia came in a dream to a girl and told her to go to the
priests saying that the Panaghia was buried someplace, that the Panaghia
wanted to come out of her burial place. Well, the girl didn’t say anything
to anyone about her dream because she was afraid people would ridicule
her. But the Panaghia came to her again in a second dream. This time the
girl told the Panaghia that she was afraid of being made fun of, but the
Panaghia said:
‘Never you mind; you do what I say anyway.”
The girl did. She told the people about her dream, and just as she feared,
they made fun of her. Well the next time the Panaghia appeared to her in
her dreams the girl told her what had happened, and the Panaghia said to
her:
“You go tell them that I’ll burn them and destroy them if they don’t do
what I say!”
When the people heard that they went to the place the girl directed
them to, and there they dug. Soon they found a small ikon of the Panaghia.
Where they had dug, water began to pour forth. It is a rich fountain now,
and the water that comes from it is holy water. The reason the water came
out was that when they unearthed the ikon it was covered with dirt, since
they had no water to wash it with the Panaghia worked a miracle, sending
water so that she could be washed.

(5) When I was pregnant with Froso, I offered to christen the newborn at
Tenos if the Panaghia would let it be born safely and stay well. When Froso
was born we didn’t have any money, and since I was afraid the child might
the
die before I got to Tenos to get it baptized — if that happened I knew
baby would suffer in the other world — I decided to baptize the child
in Spathi. The same night I had it baptized, I saw myself in my dreams
1 To the narrator the ikon has become the Panaghia herself.
60 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

walking along the road coming back to Panorio from Spathi with the baby
in my arms. There appeared to me in this dream an old woman dressed in
black. I knew it was the Panaghia. That old woman in black caught up
with me as I walked, she took the child into her own hands and turned
it upside down. When she did that the child became thinner and thinner
and thinner until it became a long chicken. I was pleading with her, and
the woman asked me:
‘How many children do you have?”
“Only this one, just this one,” I answered.
Then the woman gave the child back to me and said:
“T give you back the chicken, but you do not come to me.”
Then I understood that I shouldn’t have worried about the child nor
doubted her power. The fears that I had felt were from the devil himself
who had put them inside me. I had offered that baby to the Panaghia
because I had lost all my other children, and all of the women told me that
that was what I must do in order to keep the next child.

(6) We were living in Asia Minor. They were going to force my husband
into the Army; we had just been married, and I didn’t want him to go, so
I hid him from the authorities. That night I had a dream in which St. Nikolas
appeared to me. His eyes were open as he looked at me. A voice told me,
‘‘Whatever you wish for now will come true.”
I asked for three things: one, that my husband not have to go to the
Army; two, that we remain healthy; and, three, that we be happy. All of
these wishes have been granted to me by the Saint.

(7) Before the destruction of Asia Minor I sensed that something bad
would happen, but I did not realize how awful it would be. Other people
had seen things clearly, what would happen, and they wanted to leave.
But the others who wanted to stay made great speeches and persuaded the
Greeks to stay, persuaded them that things would get better. They did stay,
and afterwards they had reason to be sorry. During this period in my
dreams I saw light illuminating the Turks and darkness enshrouding the
Greeks; that warned me of what was to come.

(8) I have seen many things in my dreams; since I know how to interpret
them, there is much that they tell me. In fact, I sometimes feel that there is
nothing that I cannot foresee through my dreams. I will know about my
death before I am to die. The meaning of dreams is as follows: if you dream
of smoke or darkness, it means death; if you dream of a ring, it means worry;
if you see a house burn down, it means death; but if you dream you are
dead, that means you will live a long time. If you are chased by a cow, it
means illness will come; if you dream you are naked, it means someone
will soon insult you; if you are interested in match-making and you dream
of the penis of the groom, you may be sure the marriage arrangements will
not work out well. To dream of fish is to be warned of coming fear; if you
are picking figs, it means poverty will come; if you dream of horse beans,
you must count on tears; and if you dream you are in the sea, poverty will
come. Recently my husband dreamed that he had a big octopus around his
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 61
neck; I knew that the octopus signified an illness and reflected his worry
about going to the hospital for an operation. Something good will happen
to you if you dream of a faucet or a spring in your house, just as if you dream
of flying uphill or see a light in the house. If something red appears to you
in your dream, something is going to happen very quickly, although it can
be either good or bad.

(9) ‘There was a man called Serafim. He became a saint. The president of
the community (the mayor) where he lived refused to believe that Serafim
was a saint, instead insisted he was just a beggar. The town, said the mayor
had no place for beggars, and with that they threw Serafim out of the
village. That night, when the mayor slept, Serafim returned to him in his
dreams and nearly killed him for what he had done.

(10) When we left Asia Minor and came to Greece one of my girls fell
sick with diphtheria. Her condition was hopeless, but the doctor suggested
that a few days, stay by the sea might help her. I would have had to go with
her and to leave my husband at home with the other six children. I knew
it would create a lot of difficulty for the family, so what I did was to pray
to the Panaghia to ask her to give me a sign that I might know if my
going to stay at the sea would help or whether it would be futile. After I
prayed I slept and had a dream. In that dream I saw the black figure of
the Panaghia who looked very sad. Then there appeared the figure of St.
Panteleimon who told me,
“Give me your lemon tree, and I will give you the vasilikos’’ (basil).
I understood that the lemon tree was my daughter and that she would
die. In a few days she passed away.

(11) During the second World War my first son was captured on Crete
and was held by the Germans there. For eight months I had no news of
him, and I was desperate. I was filled with sorrow but had not lost hope.
I prayed to the Panaghia, and something inside me told me that she was
going to give him back to me. At that time we were living in the refugee
houses in Doxario. One night I had a dream. In it I was standing on the
threshold of the house and staring upwards at the sky. An aeroplane flew
over my head and dropped a small parcel. In it there was a small beautiful
girl with curly, blonde hair. Then I said to the girl that she would stay with
me since she would get along nicely in a big family such as ours. A neigh-
bour rushed in at that moment and demanded to have the girl since the
neighbour was childless. I denied her her request, for God had sent the
child to me. The next day I told my dream to a neighbour, and she told
me that soon I would have news from my son. Just one day later I received
a letter from him saying that he was coming home; within six days he was
home!

(12) A few years ago there was a drought and all of us here in Panorio
were very worried, for without rain our peas would not grow. One night
I had a dream in which Saint Athanasios told me that on his nameday, the
second of May, it would rain. He further said that it would be the only rain
62 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

that we would have for our peas that year. And on the second of May it did
rain, a drizzle: our peas came out all right.

(13) Once I dreamt of Greece. She was a beautiful girl with wings. The
wings were embroidered with golden crosses. There was a crowd of people
in front of her, some of whom were Greeks and others who were not. She
pointed to the Greeks and said:
“You are the chosen people. Come to my right side and enter with me
the other world.”
Then she said to the other nations and peoples:
“You come to my left side because you are not good. You have no
permission to enter the kingdom of Christ, and you will remain here!”

(14) One day brigands came and stole money from the church of St.
Athanasios in Spathi. The Saint was angry and found them on their way
to their hideout. With a spear in his hand he threatened them and took his
money back which he then put in a bush. Next he appeared in the dreams
of the sexton of the church to tell him exactly where the money was and
how to go there to get it.

(15) In spite of all we do, the Lord still cares for us; he gives us nice wheat
and good crops and doesn’t send us any terrible illnesses. I wonder how He
can stand our ingratitude. We don’t go to church, and we do not believe;
yet I had a dream which proves that the Lord is still with us and cares for
us. In my dream it was Sunday night; I was coming home from the church
after putting out all the lights and candles there. Near the well at the bottom
of the village I saw a man who was naked except for his pants. He was a
tall man and was washing himself. I thought it was Ioannis Karsis and I
said to myself that it was improper for him to behave this way. I went along
a little farther and met Miltiadis Karis and told him what I had seen and
how Ioannis should be ashamed of appearing like that by the well. Miltiadis
asked me if I had really looked at the man. I said not really closely; he
then told me that it was Christ himself who was there. I turned around to
see him, but he was gone. I was worried that I hadn’t recognized him at
first, but it proved to me that the Lord loves us and still appears to us.

Incubation
Incubation is an ancient practice, one found in the Asclepions, where
patients go to sleep overnight to receive, while sleeping, a visit from
Asclepius or his reptilian epiphany which guides them or the priests in
attendance, to the necessary curative steps. The connections among illness,
a visit to a holy place, sleeping and dreaming there, and receiving guidance
for cures or other problems, may be found among contemporary accounts.

(16) (O) People still come to stay here overnight in our church when
they are ill. Some keep awake and others sleep. The simple people merely
put in their appearance here. As nuns, we’ve heard from the shepherds
who live near here now, when they have worries or troubles, St. George
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD _ 63
appears to them in their dreams to give them guidance on what to do to
solve their problems.

(17) In the past the people here used to sleep in the church of the Panaghia
which is dedicated to the nine days after the sleeping of the Panaghia. When
they slept there the Panaghia appeared to them in their dreams telling
them who was to die and who was to live. The ones who were to die just
accepted the fact. Those who slept in the Church of St. Dimitrios would
see him gallop on his horse when he appeared to them.

(18) In the past the ill people would sleep in the church of the Panaghia
on the ninth day after her death. In the morning they would be cured.

Augurs and Omens

We have already seen in Chapter III that a person may be an omen,
usually a bad one, as for example, seeing a priest or stranger led to bad luck
on a journey or produced sickness in the sheep. We have only one more of
these commentaries to pass on. The augury practised by the village folk,
shepherds especially, is the careful art of scapulamancy — an awkward and
unromantic term for an activity which invokes awe and wonderment.

(19) You must be careful who is the first person to come in your house
after the first of the year. If he has bad luck, if he is an omen of ill, you are
destroyed. A few years ago we were not so careful as we should have been,
and the first person to come into the house brought with him destruction.
That year was a bad one; so many cows died.

(20) I was sick a few years ago. On the way to the hospital I promised a
lamb to St. Constantine. I got well some time ago, but it was only recently
that we had the lamb, which we had promised, for the saint; so a few days
ago we took the lamb near the church and had the priest do a liturgy; then
we killed it and began to cook it over the spit. Before we ate it the policeman
who was near by said that we should read the lamb’s shoulder bone. It
was a good idea so we called an old shepherd who was sitting near by, gave
him to eat and to drink, and asked him to read. There is much that can
be seen there: the health of one’s family and kinfolk, death either in the
family or close to it, how the cattle will do, whether there is to be disaster
or sickness befalling one, and if the family have any ‘‘tama’’ (vows) or not.
If one is at war it is especially useful, for the bone will tell who will win and
how strong each army is.

(21) One Easter when the people here were having lamb one man looked
at the shoulder blade and read therein the death of his wife who was, that
day, in another village. He became upset and immediately set forth for that
village; sure enough, on his way there he met the people of that village who
were coming to tell him that his wife had died.

(22) You should not bite the bone while you are eating the lamb because
c*
64 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

that spoils it for the reading. In the bone one can see how armies are doing.
During the war we read the bone to see what would happen. Someone in
the village was able to foretell that the (Communist) guerrillas would be
leaving the area. But people do various things with what they read there;
for example, another villager was able to see where his neighbour kept his
money, so he went to that place and took the money. There’s another thing
that the thieves around here did. They knew how to read the shoulder
bone; in that way they always knew beforehand when the police were
coming and were able to escape being caught.

(23) We use divining to find water. Only men can do that because they
have the power, the magnetism which is necessary to locate the water;
not all men have that power, just some of them. These same men may
have the power to find minerals under the soil or to find antiquities that
are buried. One uses the olive branch to tell where these things will be
found. For myself I think these beliefs are lies, but still, that is what the
people do.

Oracles and Prescience

We have seen that beliefs about the end of life are often expressed in
comments or stories which include references to dreams, omens, and pro-
phecy. It should not be surprising that villagers would link one mystery
with another, or would seek that modicum of control which is gained by the
ability to predict important events. As one reads the material in this section
one sees how all that which is awesome in the minds of villagers merges.
We have already seen, in Chapter II, that at least one of our villagers, a
light-shadowed woman, still believes that there is an oracle of Delphi where
God speaks through priests and nuns and in speaking, illuminates the
extraordinary acts of sorcerers and demons to relate them to illness,
impotency, and the like. As we read the next story in this section we shall
see that the oracular, or at least the prophetic tradition survives in the
Doxario region itself, and that a consecrated person may be possessed of
oracular powers. Apparently ordinary persons may also possess remarkable
“‘sixth sense”, especially as they are themselves participating in or about
to be touched by the extraordinary events of life. Recall too the account
(Chapter No. IV, 23) in which an insane woman had the gift of prophecy.

(24) (O) There was a very rich shepherd hereabouts who owned as many
as a thousand sheep. His sheep began to die; no matter what he did the
shepherd could not seem to save his flock from death. He came here (to
the church of St. George) and told his woes to the old woman who lived
here. She had been the caretaker of the church all her life. She was the
intermediary between the Saint and the people, for if they came to her with
a question or a problem she would tell them the words of the Saint. After
the shepherd talked to her, the old woman talked to the Saint, and the Saint
told her of a female sheep belonging to the shepherd, a sheep that was
impure, sick and was carrying the illness to the other animals. The Saint
explained to her where the sheep would be found — it would be hiding
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD | 65
behind a door — and that it must be killed. The woman gave the words of
the Saint to the shepherd, telling him also that in return for his help the
Saint demanded a horse as a gift.
The shepherd returned to his flock and killed that polluted, contaminat-
ing sheep and, quickly enough, the illness in his flock ceased. The shepherd,
in gratitude, brought the horse to the church as he had been directed.
He left it for the Saint; there it stayed grazing until suddenly, on the
Saints’ nameday, the horse disappeared mysteriously never to be seen again.

(25) A man we knew sensed his own coming death. He took his children
aside and told them that they must take good care of their mother. If they
did not they would bear his curse.

(26) In the old days here in Panorio there was a woman who saw before
her an apparition. It took the form of three pigs. In six months she lost
three boys to death.

(27) Some time after the Koukoudi! was thrown out of Panorio it went to
Spathi. There again that huge man, that enormous man, chose the young
and handsome to die, especially the girls. Those who were to die somehow
knew about it; they sensed what would happen. There were two girls for
example, sisters, who came home from the fields one day and fell ill. After
a couple of days they arose from their beds washing themselves and putting
on clean clothes so as to be ready for death, and said,
‘““Now we are going to die.”
And they did.

(28) In the old days we used to have nereids and exotika around here;
now all that is left is the Stringlos. Some people are afraid of it but some are
not. You hear him on two occasions; at sundown and when there is going
to be a death in the village. Stringlos knows when death is to come, and he
comes here to tell it. But since this village is on the edge of a path, it often
passes through here on its way to other places to tell of deaths there, so we
hear it more often than would be expected. Sometimes it sounds like a
baby; other times like a loaded animal going by. It does ““Vooooooo,
Voo00000.”’
you
(29) Each person’s days are limited from the very beginning. I'll tell
of that. When I was young I lived in a house where there was an old
a proof
seven
man who was 83. One day he fell off the balcony; immediately
him. His people put him in the skin of a
kinds of diseases appeared on
a fleece, to heal him. Even so everyone expected him
freshly killed lamb,
When he was
to die, but he lived and each of the seven illnesses left him.
after lunch he was seated,
95 years old he was as strong as could be. One day
down and
feeling very happy and content. There he was, just sitting
playing with the ends of his moustac he when sud-
chatting with his wife,
with that his
denly he saw two golden aeroplanes appear before him, and
soul departed. You see, his days had ended.
1 For more of the Koukoudi tales, see Chapter VII.
66 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(30) A miracle happened to our grandson. Last November he was hit
by a car; oh, he was an awful mess. No one expected him to survive. They
took him to the hospital anyway and there they found he had a fractured
skull and many serious wounds. Worst of all he was unable to breathe.
Fortunately one doctor there decided to open a hole in his throat and doing
that he saved the child. That was a miraculous escape from death which
happened only because the boy still had days written for him; that is, he
still had a “‘loaf of bread’. (Another similar saying is that there was “‘oil
remaining in his lamp”’ or that “‘his candle-had not yet burned out.”’)

Death
The foregoing have dealt with the anticipation of death or with the
fatalistic belief that its occurrence is determined by a grand design. The
next group of narratives concern themselves with dying and with the nature
of death itself. They include accounts of how the dead behave and what
kinds of relationships they engage in with the living. The section begins
with comments indicative of beliefs about dying and concludes with
representatives tales of the vrikolakes or revenants — those spirits over whom
the earth does not rest easily, who return to trouble the living.

(31) No matter what bad things you do when you are alive, these return
to you just before you die. For example, there was a man who stole other
people’s goats. When he was dying he moaned and made noises just like
the goats he had stolen. The whole village heard him, and knew what he
had done, and talked about him.

(32) I had an uncle in Doxario who made his money by cheating and
mistreating people. He even killed one man. When my uncle was about to
die he fell ill for weeks and suffered a lot. You see, his soul could not leave
his body. In the last week he began to moan, once like a monkey, another
time like a dog, and so on, sounding like various animals. Finally he asked
for a priest to confess. When the priest came in and entered his room, my
cousin and I went outside and stood under the window sill to listen so that
we could hear what was going on. My uncle confessed to the priest that he
had killed and had stolen from two men. He had never been caught by
the police; it was these undetected crimes that made it so hard for him to
die. The moment he made his confession he was able to die.

(33) When I was very young it happened in Spathi that a shepherd

stumbled home one night with his jaw smashed. He was almost dead.
His relatives and neighbours gathered about him, but he was unable to
speak. I was there too. Everyone tried to find out who had done it, but the
man was unable to talk. He was lying in his house which was in the middle
of the village; it had two doors, one on the east and one on the west. Well,
the relatives proceeded to test whether the shepherd could recognize
people, so first they brought a neighbour’s child to him and asked him
whether it was his child. He shook his head. Then they brought him
another child, again asking if it were his, and again, he shook his head in
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 67
the negative. Then they brought his own child and he put his arms around
it. It was then they asked him how many people had done him harm, and
he gestured that there were two. They asked him where these people were,
and he pointed once to the east entrance and once to the west entrance of
his house. Just at that moment two neighbours were coming in, one at
each of those doors. The people grabbed these neighbours and brought
them to the shepherd, but he shook his head negatively and again pointed
to the east and to the west. Finally the people of the village gave up; they
couldn’t find who had done it. So the police came in and arrested two men,
the Stephanides brothers, and they were put in jail.
Years went by and the shepherd was never cured. One of the Stephanides
men died in prison. One day a man whose house was on the far east side of
the village was dying. He was suffering very much because his soul would
not come out of his body. They brought the priest and he, along with the
relatives, tried to help the man but without success. Finally they all under-
stood that he had probably committed a crime which he had never admit-
ted. They pleaded with him to confess. After a long struggle he confessed
that he and another man had smashed the shepherd’s jaw because the
shepherd had found them doing something — maybe stealing, I’m not sure —
and they smashed it so he would not be able to tell on them. The other
man’s house was at the west end of the village.

(34) People who want to see their beloved before they die have a bad time
parting with their soul. It happens when one has a beloved in a strange
land, when a boy or a girl are away from those they love. In such situations
the relatives must find an object, a token or sign, that belongs to the loved
one so that this may be put over the dying one; then the soul will leave the
body without any more torture. It happened with a nephew of mine. He
loved a girl, and only when they put her handkerchief under his pillow
was he able to become calm and to die.

(35) My father died in 1942, during the war, in a hospital in Athens because
of a wound. The doctors there tried to drag out his life so that they would
get more money from us. Every day they asked the relatives to pay for more
blood, more medicine, etc. Finally Dr. Kontoglou, who was a great doctor,
told my father’s brother:
“Your brother is already dead. What are you trying to do? Do not give
him any more blood, and he will leave us and this world. Don’t torture him
any more. We are not gods; we cannot make him live. We cannot even
give life to a fly, much less to a man.”
And so they did what the doctor said. The other doctors gave no more
blood; the next day his soul left him and he was very relieved. That Dr.
Kontoglou was a great doctor. The others, although my father was already
dead, had tried to keep him on this earth so that they could get more
money. On the other hand, if they had had penicillin in those days they
might have succeeded.

(36) Yesterday I was visiting the house of my eldest sister who lives in
another village, one not far from here. My sister is about to die, but then
68 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

she is quite old. While I was with her, there were moments when I wanted
to laugh because the old women of the village kept coming by to see her.
They would sit there and give her messages and greetings to carry to their
relatives who had died. We do that same thing here in Panorio when
someone is about to die. People ask them to carry messages to the dead, but
I don’t think it works.

(37) I remember talking about Stringlos once. We were keeping company

with some people who had just lost a member of the family, and they were
home after the funeral. After the funeral we sit with the relatives for the
consolation (“parigoria”’); during that time we laugh and laugh. One
tells all kinds of jokes then, dirty ones, shocking ones, that kind, and we laugh
and laugh.

(38) I don’t go to theatres or weddings, nor do I gossip with the neighbours.

My only pleasure is to visit the prison almost each year, and I go to the
hospitals in Athens to distribute clothing to the people there in order to save
my soul. I pray to the Panaghia to keep me healthy so that I can give this
year’s offering to the blind people, and she may take me away.

(39) Many times I have seen that I have been to the other world. Once I
saw that I entered the other world. In front of me I saw the sea extending
to the horizon while before me was the seashore covered with pine trees.
There were pines by my side as well. A man from Spathi, one who died
before I was born, met me and told me that their lives down there (in the
underworld) were just the same as they were when they were alive up
here. I say it was the man from Spathi because when I awakened I told
others what this man had been like, and they recognized him from his
features and habits as being that fellow they had known. Well, I walked
on in this place and was coming towards a village. As I walked I saw three
women who approached me and warned me that I would die if I entered
their village. I begged them to let me have just a glimpse of it through the
gate, but they all insisted that I must not; they refused my request. But they
did tell me that the best house in the village belonged to my sister because
she had a very good soul when she had been alive.

(40) My daughter Eleni has seen the heavens. It was a great light that
came from the heavens. Not many people can see the heavens. You have
to have a clear heart to see them. When you do, you should say a wish for
it will be granted, for example, you say:
“I want days (to live),” or ‘‘I want wealth.”

(41) Whenever there is a funeral, that is a funeral procession, all of the dead
are in that procession. They follow along behind, walking behind the living
as they go along. One woman wanted to see her dead sons, so she talked
to a man who could see the dead, one who could see ghosts. He suggested
that she go to a funeral with him. They watched as the end of the procession
walked by, when the man saw her sons coming he stepped on her toe; at
that moment somehow she was able to see them.
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 69
(42) One of the neighbours was a prisoner of war far away. One evening
his child, here at home in the village, was near the fireplace when suddenly
he looked toward the hearth and cried out,
‘‘Father!”
The family was upset and immediately took the child to the church. The
moment it took the Holy Communion the child died.

(43) My daughter was very ill so we took her to the hospital. Her illness
became worse and she died. Even though she was dead they kept her in her
bed for three days. (The inference here is that the child was unconscious.)
During this time I wasn’t allowed to stay in the hospital that whole time,
but since we were only third class patients! I could only go to see her every
day at three o’clock when visitors were allowed. The morning of the last
day the nurses heard my daughter speak; it was the first time she had
spoken after a long period of silence. What she said was, “‘Not now, please,
at three or four o’clock, but not now.” It was as ifshe was talking to someone
and asking for a prolongation. When I came in at three my girl opened her
eyes and looked at me:
“I’m going now, Mama.”
And with that her soul left her body. She had waited for her mother.

(44) My neighbour’s sister went outside one night to use the toilet. There,
outside, she saw her father-in-law who had died just forty days before.

(45) My grandmother used to say that the soul goes out of the body when
one dies, but it only leaves the house when the priest comes to read the
funeral prayers. The soul may be on the floor, in the air, or it may take
different forms. The soul only leaves this world after forty days, after the
memorial service at the grave.

(46) I don’t go to the doctor because I will spend my money without ever
being cured. That’s what has happened to others in this village. I was told
by a doctor that the only medicine for my case is a walk to the church of
St. Dimitrios (the funeral procession).

(47) (O) When I was young, before I was elected priest here, I worked
as a labourer digging for antiquities near here. In those old places (Minoan—
Mycenaean sites) we found two kinds of tombs: beehive tombs where we
found the bones of dead animals which had been sacrified, burned, for the
dead; and the second kind were those where food had been placed in pots
just like the kind we have in church now for the incense. In the old times
they offered animals to the dead, whereas we now offer a candle, or olive
oil, or kolliva? to the dead. As far as I can see it is the same except for the
difference in foods. As for the animals, we only offer animals to the saints.
What we do in the church when someone dies is to offer a prayer for the
privileges as
1 Third class: the poorest who pay only a little but have very restricted visiting
one consequence.
to the dead during
2 A cake made of wheat, raisins, barley, pomegranate, etc., offered
memorial services.
70 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
forgiveness of the dead; after forty days we ask the earth to accept them,
asking too that they go to heaven and not hell.

(48) (O) According to the church, Christ eliminated death from this
world. Our doctrine is that the Church of Christ has bitten the snake of
death and has eliminated it. The resurrection of Christ symbolizes this.
He rises in the springtime to prove that there is no more death.

(49) We used to believe that one could tell when one death would follow
another. When a house had a death in it and you looked upon the dead
person and that person was beautiful, (that is, when it was beautiful in
death), you would know that another death would follow very quickly.
Oh yes, something I should add, in looking at the corpse I’ve noticed
that the corpse takes ‘‘the death’s” mask only after the priest has read the
last prayer and the body is put to earth.

(50) In my village, when I was a small girl, there was a dead man who
was not received by the earth in his own village. The earth pushed his body
to the surface. So he was taken from that village and buried in ours.

(51) (O) During the war with the Germans and afterwards when there
was the civil war many terrible things happened. One of the worst was just
after the Germans had left. The police, who were very disorganized, had
set up a main police station in Doxario. There were about fourteen men
stationed there. One night the guerrillas made a raid on Doxario and
attacked the police station. They came suddenly in the night, and there
were many of them; a few were from around here, and a lot were strangers
from the northern mountains. Well, they seized all of those policemen and
took the younger ones, who hadn’t been policemen so long, away with
them as hostages. The others, there were seven, they took to that hillside
which rises on the north slope of the town and they shot them. Then they
told everyone that the first one to touch those bodies, the first to go out and
bury them, would be killed along with his family. The guerrillas said they
would watch the village day and night, or have their spies report, so that
their vengeance would be inevitable. So those poor bodies lay unburied in
full sight on that hillside for one whole year! The entire time that the
guerrillas were in command of the hills around here, and no one dared go
out to bury them. It was awful, unnatural. Their blood cried for burial
and the earth cried for them to return.

Revenants
The following narratives are all about revenants — those dead whose
souls have not departed to the other world. It will be seen that there are a
number of conditions or acts which may account for a person becoming a
revenant, called by the Greeks a vrikolakos.1 Essential to the concept is the
belief that his body does not decay. Implicit in this notion is the belief
that for the soul to depart this world the body must not only be returned
1 Also called vrikolax; the plural form is vrikolakes.
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 71
to earth, but must be accepted by earth as evidenced by the ‘‘melting”’
(decay) of the flesh. There is no simple belief about the conduct of the reven-
ant; rather one finds here a number of different ideas about the relationship
between the living and the dead.

(52) My uncle had visited some friends and stayed late. Then he took his
way back to the sheep. On the way, at a crossroads, he saw two priests. He
became frightened, but pride did not allow him to go back. He was ashamed
of himself so he went on towards them. He passed the first priest who was
seated and, as he turned to look at him, the two of them got up, took my
uncle by the hand and walked beside him without talking. My uncle could
hear his own shoes and steps but that was all; their footsteps could not be
heard. They were like shadows and yet real. They were silent all the time.
Finally they reached a well, and the two priests sat on it. Uncle was
standing. At that moment they heard the siren at Lavrion which sounds
when the mine workers are to start their work. It begins when the cocks
start to crow. The siren sounded right at the moment when the two shadows
were discussing with each other what they would do, although uncle was
unable to hear clearly all they said. When they heard the cocks crow they
pushed him and disappeared. After this event my uncle was so frightened
that he had to spend a whole month in bed.

(53) Vrikolakes existed in the old days. These were dead people who had
died alone and had no one there to take care of them. Some animal appar-
ently jumped over the bodies, and that makes them vrikolakes. A woman
who died in that way, all alone, become a vrikolax and used to return to
her house in the night to do all the chores, even baking the bread; then
she would leave, but only after she urinated on the bread. When people
went to the grave they found a hole in it. To prevent her return the people
put fire in the hole; the priest read all kinds of things over it, and the
woman disappeared. My cousin’s father met her one night, and she got on
the horse he was riding; she placed herself right behind him. He was
terrified but did not say a word. He just lit a cigarette and eventually the
vrikolax disappeared.

(54) (O) On my mother’s island a man was very ill and became uncon-
scious. The people thought he had died, and so they prepared the funeral.
After the ceremony there was a movement in the coffin and slowly the man
began to arise. Well, the people there believed he was becoming a vrikolax;
in their fright they threw everything they could find at him — sticks, rocks,
anything. In that way they did kill him when before he had only been in a
coma.

(55) (O) My grandfather was a doctor on one of the islands. He was

treating a little girl who was very ill, but in spite of his care she lapsed into a
coma. The parents were convinced that she had died, but my grandfather
tried to explain to them that she was still alive and that he might be able to
save her with continued treatment. The parents were very upset saying that
she was dead; if he brought her back to life, she would be a vrikolax. In
ge THE DANGEROUS HOUR

spite of his entreaties the parents insisted she was dead and that she must be
buried. So they had a funeral, and she was put into the earth. The doctor
was terribly upset because he knew they had buried her alive; late that
night he went by himself to the graveyard to unearth her. He pulled the lid
off the coffin and took her in his arms. Her breathing was very weak so
he put his lips to hers to give her his breath, but it was too late. She died in
his arms.

(56) I heard my grandmother saying that in the old days people were
buried as soon as they had died. A girl died once, and after twenty four hours
they heard her voice. The people ran to the grave and opened it to find her
lying on her face. Since that incident people bury the dead twenty-four
hours after the death so that they may be sure they are really dead, not
trodden on by the Moros! as was the case of that girl. The Moros is an ex-
otika which steps on you, and puts you into a trance or a deep sleep.

(57) People who have sinned in life do not dissolve when they die. I don’t
know how or why it is, but these must be the people of Satan (satanikoi).

(58) What happens in the case of corpses that do not decay is that they
have taken too much medicine. It may also be that the earth does not help
the person decay. Our children tell us that. In addition, they have learned
in school that when the priest curses or anathematizes a person then, when
he dies, his corpse will not decay.

(59) People who make the gesture of the five fingers, or who lie, become
vrikolakes when they die. Their body does not decay. In the case of the five
fingers the hand never decays.

(60) Once a man died and left his wife widowed. During the nights
following his death he continued to visit his wife and to sleep with her.
From their intercourse two children were born. The woman used to leave
the house early in the morning, visit different places, speak to different
people, and come back to the house in the evening when she discussed the
news of the village with her husband. Usually the topic of their conversation
was about couples who were having intercourse illegally. Once she told her
husband that she’d heard about the best man sleeping with the bride after
the husband had left the village. This shocked the vrikolax so that he cried
out:
“This world is too immoral . . . let the earth swallow all of us now.”
At this moment the entire family disappeared.

(61) I’ve heard the story of a young girl who used to walk out of her
grave at sunset and return to it at midnight. Once she went to a dance with
an officer; when midnight approached she seized his coat and ran to the
grave. The officer was much astonished and followed her. When he reached
‘In other parts of Greece Moros isa Negro, not an exotica. On Thera, for example, one
hears of him as a giant smoking a giant pipe. He is often linked with stories of treasure. An
account from Panorio in that same vein is found in Chapter VII (22).
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 73
the grave he found part of his coat was hanging outside it. The following
morning he took some friends and a priest to read a prayer over the grave.
After that the girl did not get out of her grave again.

(62) I remember reading, when we lived in Crete, about a man who was
going to a party; on the way — it was at night — he met a beautiful woman
who asked him to take her with him. He did, and they had lots of fun party-
ing until the early hours in the morning. Just before sunrise, when they
were on their way home, they passed a cemetery and the girl said:
~Lmrcolds.
The man gave her his vest. Then she said she was going home, and she
gave him her name and address. :
Some days passed. She didn’t bring him back his vest so he went to her
home to find her. When he asked for her, they told him that she had been
dead for three years. He took some people with him to the grave including
the girl’s mother, and there they found the vest torn into pieces.

(63) I’ve heard the story of the boy who was drowned in a well. In the
night time he appeared before his father’s sheep and spoke with them.
One night his father was there to ask him how he had been drowned. The
boy said it was his aunt who had put him into the well. The father then asked
the boy to go away for good. The boy disappeared. The following day the
father, after finding a hole in the grave, asked the priest to read a prayer.
After this was done the boy did not come back.

(64) There was a nursing mother in Spathi who died. She returned during
the night to nurse her baby. But after a time her baby died too.
People say that a sinful man becomes a vrikolax. But I have also heard
that saints’ bodies do not decay either.

(65) My grandfather told the story of a man who burned another man to
death but was never found out. One day he went to the forest to cut wood.
He began to saw a sycamore tree which had two big branches coming out
of the same root. He was working on the one which bent towards him as he
stood in the middle of the two branches. When it was cut it fell on him and
killed him. Because he was a criminal who had not been caught, he became
a vrikolax. As a vrikolax he visited his wife, annoying her, and he also made
dirt in the flour.

(66) I learned from my grandmother that nothing, specifically nothing

animal, bird, insect, or candle should be allowed to fly over, jump over, or
be carried over the corpse because it will become a vorkalakas (a vrikolax)
and will pollute the flour in the house. If this happens, then the relatives
and the priest go in the night after the funeral and burn! the body.

(67) Once there was a vrikolakos that married a girl from our village. He
never brought meat into the house, but he always brought in liver to eat.
is also the
1 “Burn” is sometimes used figuratively to indicate prayers that are read, but there
infrequently employed practice of actually burning the body.
74 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
The girl often complained to him, but he used to say that liver was good for
them. He never enjoyed going to church very much; when he was there
he would always leave before the “‘holies” came out of the “ieron” (sacred
place). The girl became worried; she discussed her husband with the priest
who decided to take matters into his own hands to help that poor girl. So
the next time the man-vrikolax was in the church, the priest closed all
the exits and brought out the “‘holies”. The vrikolax tried to get out, but
when he discovered that all the exits were blocked he became frantic. Wildly
he ran up and down the church, when he came to the middle of the church
he jumped straight up in a final effort to escape and, at that moment, he
burst like a cucumber. And the girl was saved.

(68) A boy from Doxario died during the war, apparently the priest did
not read all the things that he was supposed to over his grave, for the boy
became a vrikolax. He appeared in the stables to annoy the cattle and he
moaned. He also talked to his parents and relatives to ask where his sister
was. Why, the whole of Doxario was terrified. The people read something
over his grave, a priest did the rites, and that was it. When a person becomes
a vrikolax there is a hole in his grave; he comes in and goes out through that.
He returns home to pollute everything — the plates, the olive oil, and the
casseroles. To get rid of the vrikolax you have to wait over the grave, when
you hear him coming out you throw in the boiling water that you have been
keeping ready, and the priest reads something, and that is that; no more
vrikolax.

(69) Someone died and he returned! but to a different village where he

married, even though he had already been married in his first village.
In this new village he plied his old trade. He had two children with his
second wife, but some people from the first village were visiting there, saw
him, and recognized who he was. They went to his new wife and asked
about him; she told them that he ate only liver and that every Saturday
he went away to return again on Monday morning. Apparently he was
going back to his grave on the weekends. Learning all this, the villagers
went to the grave, found the hole that he was coming out from, and threw
hot water and vinegar in there. When they did that they heard him say,
“You burned me!”
When he “‘died”, why, his children in the village burst at that moment
too.

(70) I knew a man here in Panorio who became engaged to a girl in

Spathi. After some time, his fiancée broke the engagement and returned
from here to Spathi. When he died, he became a vrikolax and presented
himself to his fiancée and his three brothers. He annoyed them and made
dirt in (polluted) the flour. One night I was loading olives on the animals
with my husband. My husband got mad because the animals could not
carry the olives, the baskets were too heavy, and so he cursed. That night
when I went to sleep I saw a dream. In the dream the vrikolax came to me
and said,
1 Informant at one point said, ‘“‘reborn.””
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 45
‘Anna, please tell my fiancée and the priest to keep me with the living
because I am able to live with them.”
» “But you are dead!’
“I can live among you just the same. This night, while you were loading
the olives I was sitting on the fence and wanted to help you; I was about to
come over to do so when your husband swore. Because of his cursing I could
not help you.”
“Please, tell what you want to somebody else in the village.”
“I tell my messages only to the good people. Anna, please save me; tell
the priest not to burn me tomorrow.”
The following morning I saw the priest and some relatives go to the
grave to read a prayer over the hole through which the vrikolax had left
the grave in the night. They burned him, and since that time he has not
disturbed anyone.

(71) One of the worst curses you can put on a man is to say, ““May you
never decay.’ One who is cursed that way can become a vrikolax. So too
can someone who has been a drunk. Also a person who steals from a school
or church will not decay, nor will one who points the five fingers at his
parents or otherwise does not behave properly with his parents.

(72) When they work their sorcery on you, it does not matter whether
you eat or not because you will lose weight and wither away. When that
happens you have to go to a witch, and she'll tell you that she needs such-
and-such amount of money to find the magia and so much to counteract
them and so forth. Now last week when they did that sorcery in Doxario,
the people did not dare touch the magia they found in the cemetery, but
they brought in the priest to do an exorcism. The priest also read an
aphorism (anathema, excommunication); as a result the people who did
the sorcery, whoever they are and wherever they are, will not decay when
they die. People are bound by the priest’s anathema. Now let us say a person
is bound but then receives Holy Communion. He will be all right until he
has intercourse; as soon as he does, the priest’s binding (curse) works again,
and his body is destined not to decay when he dies. Also, if a mother points
the five fingers at her child at some time after the child has received Holy
Communion and the mother says,
“Anathema on the parent that gave birth to you,” which is, by the way,
a very common curse for us parents to use; well, after such a curse, both the
mother and the child are bound and, unless they receive communion again,
neither mother nor child will decay after death.

(73) If after some years they find that someone has not dissolved in the
grave, as for example after the three years when they go to take the bones
from the grave, it is necessary to bury the people all over again. ‘To do this
a “‘despotis”! must do the exorcising and the blessing and read a sermon.
Also, he must kneel in front of the grave while reading the exorcisement, but
a bishop does not kneel easily; indeed, he needs £15 to do it. Now it seems
1 A “despotis” is a bishop, but the term also implies one who ‘“‘binds”’ or fastens as in a
binding curse.
76 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

that they have a medicine which the priests sell. With it the bodies are
supposed to dissolve easily. It is a very holy medicine, one that has been
much ‘“‘Read” (read over, prayed over) by the priests. Myself, I’ve never
seen any of it.

(74) I come from Samos. There was a vrikolax there who used to go and
suck the milk out of all the goats. Since the people never milk goats in the
dark; yet, when they found their animals in the morning, they had no
milk, it was clear that it was a vrikolax who.was doing it. So they waited for
him with gunpowder in their guns. Only gunpowder will kill one; you
cannot catch him with anything else. When they saw him they shot him and
cut him in four pieces and, sure enough, his intestines were full of milk
which proved he was a vrikolax.

(75) In Doxario recently a girl committed suicide. She was a hairdresser

and drank some medicines that she used for the hair, and she died. Her
body did not dissolve. Some say this is because she committed the crime of
suicide; others say it was that her body was poisoned by the medicines, and
the worms didn’t like the taste of the meat.

(76) We have heard that in Athens, in the neighbourhood of Vrilissia, the

taxi drivers never drive after midnight. This is because some years ago a
Vrilissia taxi driver killed a girl who was riding in his taxi. Since that day
her ghost appears not only to him but to all the drivers in that district.

(77) Stringlos that cries in the night and warns of impending death, you
know of him. He does not appear elsewhere, just in this area. You know
why? Because there was the great battle of Doxario here in the ancient
times; the ghost of one of those warriors is still wandering about here, forlorn
and foretelling death.

(78) There is a very ancient proverb associated with that old citadel. You
know the spring there, the one with the little shrine of Aghia Marina near
by, the one just under those old walls built so long ago? Every year, in
August, the people from Panorio and Spathi make a pilgrimage there to
drink the waters which at that time have a healing power; they are a
purgative, and they purify one. Well, the old saying which is associated
with that place is one which we all know and by which we all abide. It
says, ““Come admire me in May; drink me in August to be cured; and if
you want to die, come to me in September.”
Now, as a priest, I cannot explain what it means. It is true that September
is a month in which many people die. I have heard some say that it is the
month of the Dog Star, Sirius, and that many deaths occur then. But I
am not sure.

The Soul
In the foregoing material we have seen that the ease with which one dies
depends upon the readiness of the soul to leave the body, and that this in
 ON VENTURING INTO THE OTHER WORLD 77
turn is dependent upon past criminal behaviour and the presence of one’s
loved ones. In these accounts the separateness of the soul from the body
has not been emphasized, nor has there been any suggestion of a soul as an
independent spirit. In the following accounts we shall meet these concepts.
In stories about the Vittora, we encounter a spirit remarkably like a Ker
of ancient times; whereas in the complex narrative about the nun, we shall
encounter, among a number of interesting phenomena, the notion of soul-
wandering.

(79) The Vittora is quite important. It is your luck. A year before you
die the Vittora leaves you and tries to find another owner. It goes around
saying over and over again, ““Who is going to get me now?” If you happen
to hear it, you can take it; of course, you don’t want to take a Vittora that
has brought bad luck to its former owner, but if you sense that it is good
luck, then you can take this Vittora for your own.

(80) I saw the Vittora of my daughter’s father-in-law. I went out one even-
ing to urinate and, there in the darkness, I saw a round light wandering
about. Naturally I told the family what I had seen. Well, my son-in-law
tried to tell me that it was just his flashlight. Nonsense! Just one year after
I had seen his Vittora wandering, the old man died. I’m convinced it had
just started to wander when I saw it. Sometimes you can hear the Vittoras
that have left their owners sighing in the night.

(81) My son Georgio is ill. He suffers from what the doctors call schizo-
phrenia. In order to cure him I have gone to many churches which have
reputations for miracles. I have asked the priest in Doxario to read special
services (“‘efchileo”’) in our house, and I have had the priests read special
prayers over Georgio’s clothes. About a year ago my cousin told me that
we should go to a place called Ayemodouri near Githion in the Pelopon-
nesus because a nun lives there in St. John’s church who speaks with Jesus
Christ. When this nun was a small girl she lived with her brother, for they
were orphans, on a farm where the church is located now. One day Christ
presented himself to her and asked her to follow his way which, he told her,
would lead her to Paradise; whereas, if she followed the other road, she
would be led to Hell. He showed her the two worlds, one Paradise and the
other Hell, and asked her to make up her mind.
The girl spoke to her brother about what had happened, but he suspected
that she was trying to escape from his patronage so he said, “‘no”’. He told
her that she could not follow Christ to become a nun. As soon as he uttered
those words he lost his speech. A little later, as he was riding his donkey
over some steep rocks, a divine power pushed him off the animal so that he
fell down and was badly hurt. After these things happened he came to
realize it had been a divine voice which had called his sister. He gave her
his permission and, with that, his speech returned to him,
The villagers collected money and donated work in order to build the
church which was dedicated to St. John. It is the nun who makes the
services there, for priests are forbidden to enter. When the time comes for
the bread and wine to be transformed into the Holy Communion, the angels
78 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

themselves come down from Paradise to bless it. Then the nun and the
people who are in the chapel take the Communion by themselves. People
say that if you have a pure heart you can hear the hymns the angels are
singing, but sometimes, even if you don’t have a pure heart, you can hear
them anyway, and that makes you believe in them.
My cousin and I went to the chapel. We brought some of Georgio’s clothes
with us; during the day we put them in front of the altar, prayed, and lit the
candles with the oil which we had brought with us. We didn’t say a word
about Georgio to the nun.
But the following morning the nun woke up rather late. During the
night her soul is taken by Jesus Christ who takes her to various places or
persons in which the visitors to the chapel have an interest. When we were
there we tried to awaken the nun, but her body was completely stiff. It
was as though she was dead. But when her soul returned to her, when it
came back in her, she awakened and told me that Christ had taken her to
the hospital ward where Georgio was. She told us that a girl had bewitched
him but that the Saints would dispel the sorcery which had been worked
on him. She also told us what the circumstances of life were for each person
in our family; what she said was exactly true.t The nun asked me not to
spend any more money on either medicine or magicians but to rely on the
church, to have faith in it, and to work for Georgio’s cure through the
church.

(82) I have known people who have been afraid to be photographed.

Farmers in the north of Greece are like that; they think you can capture
their soul if you take their picture.
The same with mirrors. Some people think that it is bad luck if a mirror
breaks because it can have your soul and then, when it breaks, you will
die.
1 Compare the soul-wandering episode of the nun with the accounts of the shepherds found
in Chapter III in which the magician goes into a trance, i.e. to sleep, and when he awakens
he is able to tell the visitors about their lives, their house, and about the sorcery that has
been worked on them.
 MI
THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD
N this chapter we shall present narrative material which has for its
central theme the extraordinary capacities and actions of a few particu-
larly powerful, supernatural persons — persons who are deemed by the
villagers to have lived at one time and to have died but returned and are
capable of working wonders for good or ill. The special quality of the
remarkable dead who figure in this chapter is not that they are revenants,
for revenants aplenty we have seen in the preceding chapter, but that they
are considered to be historical personages who acted for the good and whose
powers, unlike those of the vrikolakes, are not primarily frightening or
unnatural. Why? It would appear that these particular revenants are safe
because they have been consecrated by the church and are part of the
Orthodox pantheon. As in Europe to the north the hallowed and conse-
crated dead, whose powers may be cajoled by man without particular fear
of an untoward side effect, are the saints, the Virgin Mary (Panaghia), and
Jesus Christ.
A word of warning about the saints of rural Greece: not all of them by
any means are on the approved list, the Orthodox roster of accepted Saints.
Who are they then? One can never be certain, but the local saints include
gods and heroes of antiquity dressed in more modern cloth as St. Artemisios,
for example, or St. Dionysios. These same ancient gods and heroes have
maintained their functions but changed their name, St. Nikolas substituting
for Poseidon for example, or Saints Kosmas and Damianos, the penniless
ones, the healing pair, occupying the niches which may have been originally
carved for Castor and Pollux. It is also possible, as Euhemerists would claim,
that local people who died were later memorialized as saints; certainly one
feels that this process is operating under one’s eyes when, as in Chapter IV
(No. 31), one heard how one’s second cousin, her light-shadowed spirit
in contact with the supernaturals, was destined to become a saint and would
have become one if her possessive mother hadn’t polluted her with tortoise
blood and donkey’s milk.
One should also be forewarned that a number of local supernaturals
appear to be travelling under the common disguise of a single saint’s name.
St. George is a good example; St. George of Cappadocia is the Saint George
as far as Orthodoxy is concerned, but the Saint George who has a healing
shrine near the encampment of our Saracatzani shepherds is explicitly
not that Cappadocian foreigner. “This St. George is ours; he’s from here;
he’s not the same one as they talk about when they say St. George.” The
same is true of Aghia Marina for whom there are two chapels in the Doxario
area: one resting comfortably on an ancient site beneath walls begun in
Minoan times, a site once sacred to Themis; the other situated some miles
away on a sandy curve of beach, apparently more recent and, if not more
Christian in origin, at least not Themis in disguise. There are even several
Christs in the region: the most famous one known for miraculous healing
80 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

at his local church, the Christ from that place, as opposed to other Christs
attached either in loyalty or in origins to different villages.
It would be misleading then to consider the central figures in the following
accounts all to be saints even if they are called saints by the narrators —
misleading unless we amend the ordinary definition to suit rural Greek
circumstances. In that case a saint is any supernatural, presumed once to
have lived, and perceived now as salient and holy, who is called a saint by a
villager regardless of whether or not the Orthodox Church, either in its
distant archives in Athens or in the person of its exceedingly flexible local
priests, has ever heard of him or her. Given that definition, most of the
central figures in the following stories, excepting the Panaghia and Jesus,
are saints. Most but not all, for two sorcerers qualify for this chapter:
Solomon and Cyprianos. Neither are revenants, although Cyprianos is
sometimes called ‘‘a sorcerer who became a saint”’ but both are considered
as authors of highly esteemed texts on magic and sorcery, and as such their
names are uttered with gestures and intonations suggesting awe.

Christ
While it was by no means a new concept to the peasants and shepherds
of Panorio, Dhadhi, and environs, it was for us a most remarkable idea to
consider Christ as a magician. Nevertheless, it was in this context that some
of Christ’s feats were discussed, and if ancient Galilee was at all like con-
temporary rural Greece — and there is good reason to believe it was very
much the same in important ways — it may well have been that the great
impression he made among his contemporaries was as much for his magic
and miracles as for his revelations and philosophy. To the contemporary
peasant and shepherd, Christ is one among a group of remarkable super-
naturals, some of his powers or traits being easily recognized as possessed
in a lesser form by local folk. He was a magician, he was a healer, he was
light-shadowed, for he could talk to God and see the angels; and he zs a
vrikolax, for he died but returned to be seen again by the people he cared
for. That Christ is also deemed a capable sorcerer, is seen in the effectiveness
of his curse; for example the one which bound the fig tree to be heavy and
its milk to cause itching, as reported in Chapter IV.
In the previous chapter we saw how Christ appeared to a girl to ask her
to follow his way. He punished her brother when the latter obstructed the
girl’s choice, striking him so that he fell, and taking away his voice which,
as we shall sec in later chapters, are favourite tricks of the exotika and very
dangerous ones for the human victim. He then served nightly as guide to the
soul of the nun as she wandered over Greece, a role reminiscent of that of
Hermes Psychopompos who led the spirits of the dead to Hades in the
ancient days. In this section we shall present further local accounts of Christ.

(1) One way in which the evil eye works is through magnetism, a power
to radiate forces, emanations, to others. One emanation which can pass
out through the eyes so as to bewitch others is the soul itself. People who can
throw their souls outside themselves without losing their souls — and it is a
delicate thing to do without losing your soul once you’ve thrown it — these
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD 81
are soul-throwers and are the greatest magicians. They can use this power
either for evil or good. Christ was the greatest of the magicians; he had the
power to throw his soul out through his eyes, magnetically, and to bewitch.
He used this power to do good for others.

(2) No one knows where Christ was between the ages of twelve and thirty.
They say he was away learning magic and cures. Perhaps he went to India
to learn those things there.

(3) When he was healing, Jesus took the sins of others upon himself;
eventually he died from this. ‘That’s like with the healers here; when Maria,
for example, cures others of pain, that pain is transferred to her, but she has
no place to put the bad after that. (For more on how the “‘bad”’ passes
from sufferer to healer see Chapter IX.

(4) From the age of eight to the age of thirty Christ wandered in different
parts of the world. I don’t know what he did in those places, but I know
he gained a lot of experience, and by the time he was thirty he knew the
people very well. It was much the same in the old days as it is now. Christ
and those who were against him are like the opposition in parliament today
which is against the prime minister. You could say their ideas differed.

(5) For a long time there have been troubles with the other people against
the Jews. Take Hitler, for example, who is still alive and all the trouble he
made, or Father who killed so many Jews and became wealthy by
stealing their possessions. And Christ suffered so much for us; and then
the Christians suffered so much at the hands of the Jews because when
Christ was risen the Jews said that since he had left his grave he was a
demon (revenant) and so they beat the Christians for following him.

(6) Once, when Christ was going down the street, he passed a magician
who did some magic to him, and Christ’s pants fell off; he lost his pants
completely. Well, when that happened one of his disciples said, “Lord, let
us curse all magicians,” but the Lord answered, “‘No, let magic exist.”

(7) We shepherds survive despite our hard work because of God’s will
which is our only power. This relationship we have with God goes back to
the time when Jesus Christ was born. On that cold night when he was born,
only the shepherds were around to help him and his mother. One shepherd
threw his coat over the infant to protect him from the cold. Since that time
shepherds have been blessed by God. It is also since that time that the laurel
and myrrh have their sweet smell because they were the only plants near
the infant.

(8) Once a woman from near here went to the church of Christ of Spata.
She was away some time, and her husband became angry over her absence.
He swore at her as he saw her returning from the church. At that moment
Christ took away his speech, and the man couldn’t talk. After two days
82 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

Christ gave him back his speech, but it was quite a lesson to the fellow, and
from then on he never swore again.

(9) The Church of Christ in Spata is well known for its miracles. Here’s
how it came into being. When the refugees came from Asia Minor some of
them went to stay in Spata. One of them was Mrs. E who is now the
guardian of that church. When she was first in Spata she saw a rock, and on
that rock, the one on which the church is now built, there was an oil candle
burning — a candle which no human had placed there. An old man appeared
to her while she was looking at it and asked her to collect money from certain
farmers in order to build a church ‘‘in his name” on the rock. Mrs. E
went to each of the farmers whose names were mentioned to her by the old
man, who was really Christ, but they turned her away. The old man reap-
peared, and asked her to try again, telling her to warn the farmers that
should they refuse again, bundles of grain from their fields would disappear
or their animals would die. She went again to the farmers who did not
believe her and told her to leave them alone. On the following morning
the biggest bundles disappeared, and the animals were found dead. This
convinced the farmers who finally gave their money so that the church
could be built.
At that time Mrs. E had a small girl and was pregnant. The old man
appeared before her and told her that she was going to have a boy who
would be baptized by a farmer whose name he mentioned but that the child
should not be given a name until the old man appeared to give the name
himself. Some months later she had the boy, and the named farmer
became the godfather of the child. The family and the guests gathered
in the house for the baptism. When the priest came to the point where he
said, ‘“‘And let his name be. . .”’ the priest stopped and waited. Suddenly
a voice was heard saying “Emanuel”. At the same time the little girl called
out, ‘‘I see the old man.” Her mother, Mrs. E could see him too.
Many miracles occur there. People from all over Greece go there, and,
some time back, a member of the Egyptian Embassy in Athens went to the
church with his wife to take their child there, for the child had paralysed
limbs. They had taken the child to many different doctors in Europe but to
no avail. In Spata they remained kneeling and praying the whole night
through in front of Christ’s ikon. In the morning the child turned around
and embraced its parents. It was cured. The parents’ strong faith helped in
working that miracle.

(10) Some people here in Panorio may tell you what the saints have done,
or about miracles that have saved people; some will tell you that they
have even seen these things happen, but what they tell you are lies. I have
lived here forty years and have seen no miracles. We don’t even know for a
certainty that Christ ever existed.

The Panaghia
The All-holy one is intimately linked with healing, motherhood, fertility
and with her sacred island of Tenos. Most of the stories about the Panaghia
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD 83
are told by women and most of them have to do with conceiving and main-
taining life in children. The Panaghia is the one who is seen as capable of
bestowing children, and like the other powers, of taking life away. There
is a certain ferocity to the image which emerges in the following accounts;
the Panaghia is no eternally smiling Madonna, she is something of a tigress
who sees to it that the accounts with her are kept straight. Those accounts,
consisting of vows to pay her a pilgrimage, to give her coins or to silver an
ikon, to offer her a lamb or bull, or in the extreme, to sacrifice to her the
child that is hers since she has bestowed the child, are matters of genuine
concern as the narratives reflect.
We have already presented a story which contains the important theme
of child sacrifice. In Chapter IV there was the account of a woman with a
pure soul who, believing in the power of the Panaghia, kept her promise to
throw her child from the Tenos bell tower should her baby live and, doing
so, was rewarded with the life of the child which then was hers and grew to
manhood. Another woman, one lacking both purity and faith, also made
such a promise but being doubtful at the last moment, first tested the
Panaghia by throwing a bottle. It will be recalled that the bottle did not
break but that when the baby was hurled after it the Panaghia punished
the doubting mother by taking the child for her own, that is, let it die when
it hit the earth. A variant of this tale will be found in this section.
In other stories already presented we have met another significant theme,
for example, the appearance of the Panaghia in the dreams of a mother who
had reneged on her promise to have her baby baptized on Tenos. In that
dream revelation the Panaghia symbolically threatened the death of the
child but relenting, returned it to the horrified mother. One might think
that there is little reason, except for inconvenience and the cost of the
journey for a mother not to take her child to Tenos for the vowed baptism.
These are, of course, sufficient reasons for poverty-stricken work-bound
mothers, but there is a great additional concern. The baptism in Tenos
is done, so the villagers tell us, in a great pressing throng where every
stranger vies to be the baptizing hand — this for reasons of each pilgrim’s
own anticipated luck. On the other hand the mothers say babies are
crushed and rent by the crowd and many, they say, have died. No wonder
then, believing this, they journey there with leaden hearts and feet. The
offering to the Panaghia, whose will may guide or whose form may be
hidden in any one of these strangers, need not be made dramatically from
the bell tower. Its equivalent can occur within the church below.

(11) When Vassiliki was to be born I offered her to the Panaghia of Tenos,
vowing I would baptize her there. We went there together, my husband
and brother with the child and me. We entered the church but there were
so many people inside that we could hardly move, we couldn’t get up to the
front. We asked a policeman to help us because we wanted to “throw”
Vassiliki to the ikon of the Panaghia. He helped us and when we placed the
child beneath the ikon there were so many people who tried to get to her
to baptize her, well she was nearly killed in the crush. Fortunately there was
~ one girl who was closer to Vassiliki to begin with and she took the ikon and
touched her. It was frightening. So many children have died in this struggle
84 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
es
to see who is going to be the godparents; they dispute among themselv
as they all try to be the first to touch the child.

(12) My mother used to tell me the story of two women, neither of whom
could keep their babies, they kept having miscarriages or the babies would
die. When they got pregnant they both offered to throw their children to the
Panaghia, to throw them from the bell tower, and it would be up to the
Panaghia to decide whether their children would survive or not on this
occasion. Each of the women gave birth to.a child and each went to Tenos.
On top of the tower one of them threw her child from the tower and nothing
happened to it when it landed. The other one was frightened and dared not
throw the child. She kept it in her arms instead and right there in her arms
the child burst and died. This shows that when you offer something to the
saints or the Panaghia you should not go back on it or change your mind
because you will be punished.
I admit I’d most probably be like that second mother. I just can’t see
myself throwing my own child from the church tower. As for the children
that get killed in the church, the ones who get crushed while the strangers
are trying to get to them to be the godparent, that is their fate. It is written
for them to die this way. These children do not belong to their parents.
They belong to the Panaghia.

(13) There are people that are not good and yet the Lord helps them and
they live well and make lots of money. The other day we were in a coffee
house and a very rich man was sitting there. A girl about 18 years old came
in asking for help. Everybody saw that she was pregnant and were quite
willing to give her some money. When she came to that rich man he asked
her why she was begging. She explained that she had not been able to have
children but that she had prayed to the Panaghia and had offered to go to
Tenos if she managed to get pregnant. The Panaghia had done the miracle
but now the girl had no money to go to Tenos. Everybody was moved by
her story; I know we were, but that terrible rich man said, “ll not give
you anything; after all I wasn’t the one who made you pregnant.” At that
moment my husband would have killed that man if it hadn’t been for what
the law would have done to him for killing him.

(14) I’ve been to Tenos several times. Nowadays the Panaghia does not
want to appear before the people because they no longer believe; they
just come to Tenos to have fun and vacations but not to pray. But she feels
sorry for us and appears before us anyway. When I was there last time I
saw a boy, one who has a “‘heavy”’ quality about him even now, who was
mute, but the Panaghia gave him his voice. Now he goes there every year
to pray. I also saw a man who took his daughter there and offered a bull
to the Panaghia. The girl found her voice but afterwards she said that they
had wasted the bull because she didn’t believe the Panaghia had been the
one who had given her voice to her. You know what happened? The
moment she said that she became mute again!

(15) Once we had a lamb and a man who knew about these things saw
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD 85
that we had a “‘tama”.! He was right. I had vowed a “tama” to the
Panaghia and had not paid it. We had not had a lamb before for her.

(16) Many years ago on Good Friday we noticed that the ikons perspired.
In particular the ikon of the Panaghia in her church here in Panorio was
moist. The people didn’t believe it was a miracle but said it was due to such
a large crowd being in that small church. The teacher who was a man of
knowledge and experience said he believed it. His friends said that they
would believe in it as a miracle if it happened again later on in the day.
He went with them to Spathi and told the story there. Some hours later
they all came back along with some people from Spathi. When they got to
the church the ikons were wetter than the first time.

(17) Tenos is the place I want to go because there I feel God’s word.
We have been there. One time we went there we became acquainted
with the parents of a boy who had not spoken or walked for one year.
The family came from Athens; up until his disability came on him he’d
been healthy. All of a sudden one day he developed loss of appetite and
indifference to work or movement. At the end of a year they took him
to Tenos because they had faith in the Panaghia’s therapeutic power.
The parents and the child, he was seated in a little cart, spent their days
and nights inside the church. When the ikon was taken from its place for
the parade and service on the 15th of August (for the ‘‘sleeping of the
Panaghia”’) the boy got up and walked. From that moment his health was
restored.
There one can see the strangest ex votos. For instance there was a blind
man who fell on his knees one day and begged the Panaghia to give him his
sight which he had lost in an accident. He told her he would make a golden
ex voto to her ikon based on whatever happened to be near by when his
sight was regained. He was out of doors and kneeling during his prayer by
an orange tree. The Panaghia gave him his sight and you can see his ex voto
in the church now. The first year he brought a silver orange tree almost
one metre high and the next year he brought to the church a golden orange
which is still by the ikon.
Another ex voto is a small ship with a golden fish sticking through a hole
in one side of the ship. Its story is that a ship was in danger in the rough seas.
The sailors and captain were in despair because the water kept flooding
the ship and their lives were in danger. When they lost all hope they prayed
to the Panaghia to work a miracle. They noticed soon after that no more
water was coming into the ship. It meant they were saved. When they
reached shore they found that a fish had become lodged in the hole which
the water had been coming through; the fish served to plug up the hole
and that is why the water stopped coming in. They thanked the Panaghia
for her providence and dedicated the image of the ship with the fish to her
church.
We still have holy water which we collected three years ago from the
fountain in the church in Tenos. It isn’t spoiled as ordinary water would be
1 A vow or offering, in this case an animal dedicated to the Panaghia and presumably with
supernatural markings, that is, predestined.
86 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
es we
which is kept in a bottle for a long period. Whenever we have headach
drink some of the holy water and we are cured.
of
(18) I have always had great faith in God. In many difficult moments
my life God or the Panaghi a have saved me. For instance when we were
forced to leave Asia Minor, we were only a young couple at the time with
four young children, my husband — who is still a levendist now, so you can
imagine what he looked like then — wanted to stay behind in case his
being with us would cause trouble. It might have caused trouble you see
because the Turks were persecuting young men and he feared they might
persecute all of us if he were with us. I prayed to the Panaghia and promised
to give her my golden pounds if she kept my husband safe, were he to join
us. In my heart I felt the Panaghia would not abandon us. Well, I persuaded
him to come along and you can be sure it was a harrowing journey. There
were so many dangerous cross-roads at which the Turks killed many men,
but not a hair of my husband’s head was touched. Finally a ship brought
us to Crete.
The first night we slept on the free soil of Crete I heard the Panaghia
shaking my golden pounds which I wore as a necklace. She was demanding
the ex voto which I had promised her. For three nights in a row she shook
that necklace of gold which I had around my neck. It was then I told my
husband about it. You know what he said? ‘And what are you waiting for,
you bitch, not to give her the ex voto?”
He was right. The following day I covered the Panaghia’s ikon as she
had asked me to do the night before. I covered it with gold from my golden
pounds. That gold is still on the ikon, it is one which we keep with us, and
some day my sister will give the Panaghia some more gold so that a jeweller
can put another layer of gold on the ikon. That gold belongs to the
Panaghia.

(19) The first time I went to Tenos I clearly saw the figure of the Panaghia.
It was in the afternoon and the people were gathered outside the closed
door of the church. I could see the interior of the church through its glass
doors. I was in the first line and a deaf and dumb boy from Mytiline was
praying by my side. Suddenly he cried out and pointed to a white figure
covered with clouds which was walking — not on the ground but in the air —
inside the church. She blessed the people outside the church. I saw her and
only a few others from the crowd could see her. The disabled boy from
Mytiline spoke when the Panaghia disappeared. They took him to the
medical team of the monastery immediately and there the doctors certified
his cure.

(20) A niece of mine lives on the island of Karpathos. She is a dressmaker

there. One day before returning home from her job she stopped in the
church to light a candle. While she was kneeling before the ikon she saw
the figure of the Panaghia who warned her that for twenty-four hours she
would not be able to talk. My niece fainted as soon as the figure disappeared.
1 Levendis: see Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), for a discussion of an agile, handsome,
admirable man.
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD 87
The people in the church gave her first aid. When she came to herself and
remembered what happened, she indicated she wanted some paper and
pencil. She wrote what she had seen and asked her family not to worry
because she would be able to speak again in twenty-four hours, and in
truth she did regain her voice then. This experience was quite an ordeal
for her nerves and she has not really recovered since that occurred. I might
add that she had not been particularly religious; she was rather indifferent
to the church up until that time.

(21) A lady from Spathi had a fifteen-year-old girl who had been deaf and
dumb since birth. The mother promised the Panaghia of Tenos that she
would give her all the golden coins that adorned her costume — they call
these “‘lepsiniotika’’, the head and bust is decorated with golden coin. — The
mother took these coins to the ikon of the Panaghia at Tenos and her
daughter was able to speak. The woman was very pleased but on the boat,
on the way back home, she began to think and decided it had been too
simple and that she was sorry she had promised the Panaghia all her coins.
And the second miracle happened then and there, for her daughter lost
her voice immediately, the voice that the Panaghia had given her. Now the
girl has grown to be a woman. She lives in Spathi and is still a mute.

(22) (O) I go to Tenos for it is a place where many miracles occur. The
power of the ikon of the Panaghia there is immense. Until recently Turks
and Egyptians went there too, for Moslems as well as Christians realized
its power.
(Sister responding to her brother’s above comment.)
I’m a little sceptical about whether these miracles happen, but I agree
we must have faith. The fact is we must have faith, for without faith the
Greek people would be lost. And the reason we would be lost is that we have
nothing else. We have no other resources, no other strengths, it is our faith
which holds us.

(23) Here in Dhadhi four people have gone to Tenos for the sleeping of
the Panaghia.! We say sleeping instead of death because the Panaghia did
not die; she is alive, only her body left her, although I’m not even sure
about that. I have heard that when they went to take her bones out of the
grave, as one does after three years, they found only her belt. ‘That means
her body and soul both live in Paradise.

(24) Many miracles occur in Tenos. I know a man who goes there every
year. He was paralyzed once and she (the Panaghia) cured him. Since then
he has always worn black and visits her grave every year.

(25) In Proussos in Evrytania is a church of the Panaghia. They have a

miraculous ikon of the Panaghia there, and there is a monastery built
during the time of the Turks. The Turks took the ikon to Proussa in Asia
1 While only four people from Dhadhi went to Tenos on August 15th (during the course of
our study) ten went from the smaller community of Panorio. None of the Saracatzani made
the trip.
D
88 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
ry; it came
Minor. The ikon left the Turks and came back to the monaste
it and you can see the
right through the mountain in order not to go around
one 500 metres long. Many miracles
square hole that it opened in the rock,
off a rock with her baby in her arms and did not
happen there. A woman fell
die or was harmed althoug h the crevice in which she fell was 500 metres
deep.

The Saints
(26) Men want to become priests now only because priests earn a lot of
money. The bishops are the wealthiest people I’ve ever heard about. Now
you go to church and bad thoughts enter your mind even while you’re
there, You can sin in church; just watch how the priests look at the girls and
flirt with them (note, narrator is a lively, buxom, good-looking woman
who makes this statement with only ill-concealed enjoyment and excite-
ment). The priests complain that no one comes to church, but the reason
they complain isn’t that they care about the people but because they get
less money because of it.
I know of people who never visited church and yet became saints. In
Asia Minor for instance, there was a man in the village named John who
worked for the Turks. He never once went to church, but in his house he
had a door which he believed to be an ikon of St. John. He would pray
kneeling in front of this door and was very devout. When he died he became
a saint for that. When the people left Asia Minor they opened his tomb and
brought his bones along with them here.
As an illustration of his power the wife of the boss for whom John worked
cooked food which the boss liked a lot. The boss was very far away but
John told her he’d take the food to him and he did. Lord knows how many
days’ walk that place was and yet when he got there with the food, it was
still hot. That means God himself gave him the means to go there and to
keep the food hot.

(27) There was a girl in Doxario who brought eggs to her father on
Friday. She felt a power pushing her from behind and the basket turned
upside down so that the eggs were broken. She said it was a saint’s miracle
since she had intended to eat those eggs on a Friday.

(28) I learned the xemetrima from an old man from Corfu. When I cure
people with it I use no herbs. I blow on the sick person, I sprinkle him with
holy water, and I use the xemetrima. While I can’t tell you what the words
of it are — if I did I would lose the power — I can say they have to do with
Jesus and with the Saints ““Anargyroi’’! who are the protectors of doctors
and were healers themselves. They are called ‘“‘anargyroi’? which means
penniless because they never accepted money for their services. Doctors
today are different, although village people who do healing still don’t take
money for it.

(29) In Doxario there is a church of St. Anna, When a cousin of mine

1 The saints ‘‘without silver”, St. Kosmas and St. Damianos.
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD 89
was a child he saw an oil candle burning in a spot where the church is now.
He told the people about the burning oil candle but when they looked they
couldn’t see it. Only my cousin was able to see it. He told them that they
should dig at the place he pointed out and the people did so. They found
there an old, old ikon of St. Anna engraved on a brick. It was a place
holy to her so they built a church there.

(30) St. Antonios was a powerful magician. He could gather all the
demons in an earthen pot and then, when they were gathered, he made
them tell him what they had done and to whom they had done it and how
they had done it. He also made them tell him what to do to cure the victims
of the harm the demons had inflicted.

(31) We will not forget what you have done for us by bringing the doctors
here. We will always remember you to the good. Everyone wants to be
remembered, but those who cannot do good which will be remembered
will sometimes do bad. For example there was a man from Macedonia,
whom I’ve heard about, who wanted very badly to be remembered, but
he wasn’t able to do any good. So he went all the way to Efesis’ in Asia
Minor where he burned down the temple to St. Artemis just so the people
would remember him.

(32) Many miracles happened to me when I lived in Asia Minor. When I

was young and in love for example, I lived with some wealthy people.
On their estate there was a church dedicated to St. Constantine. I went to
him one day and put a coin on the face of his ikon and said, “If that boy
will marry me, take the coin, Saint.” And the saint took the coin like a
magnet; it stuck to the ikon.
After a while we were married. When my daughter became ill I went to
the ikon of St. Nikolas and did the same thing with the coin, asking him
to take it if my girl was going to get well. The ikon took the coin and she did
get well. That was Asia Minor. But when we came here my daughter was
sick in Athens and I took a coin to the saint but the coin didn’t stick to
the ikon and I knew she would not live. She died soon thereafter.

(33) The St. Dimitrios we have here in Panorio is a warrior.2 When the
Koukoudi was here many years ago, the giant that stepped on people and
they dissolved, St. Dimitrios didn’t let him come into our village. He took
him to Spathi instead. That is why nobody in Panorio died. Of course St.
Dimitrios couldn’t do anything else but to send the Koukoudi away from
his village; he had to take care of his own house and not the houses of others.
In Spathi it was St. Athanasios along with St. George who killed the Kou-
on
koudi. They hung him on a fig tree for people to see, having killed him
and of May. That is why they always have a celebratio n in Spathi on
the
that day. Koukoudi was a disease that no medicine could cure, only the
about it in school,
1 Ephesus. The narrator has heard, probably from his children who learnt
“renown” by setting fire to the Temple of Artemis in
of Herostratus’ attempt to achieve
Ephesus, in 356 B.c.
who settled there.
2 The people of Panorio are Arvanites and descendants of warriors
go THE DANGEROUS HOUR
saints. If you go to Spathi you will see the ikon of the saint that killed the
monster.

(34) My nephew was driving down the hill one night from Panorio to
Doxario. At the turn in the road near the cemetery of St. Dimitrios (church)
his lightswent out. He got out of the truck to see what was wrong. All of
a sudden his lights went back on and he saw the golden profile of three
riders on three white shining horses which were entering the back gate of
the cemetery. After that, on the 26th of October which is St. Dimitrios’
nameday, he took a big candle to the church and confessed to me, “‘So far,
uncle, I have used swear words mixed with saints’ names, but after what I
saw that night I’m not going to use any swear word in connection with
St. Dimitrios. I can tell you that!”

(35) Ikons are miraculous, but you must believe in them. I have an old
ikon of St. Dimitrios and each time my daughter or I ask anything from the
saint, he helps. For instance, my husband is a nervous man and often gets
mad. Each time he’s in such a mood the two of us, my daughter and I,
would ask the saint to do something about it, to calm the old man down,
and it always worked. After a while he’d be as calm as a lamb. My daughter
wanted to take the ikon with her when she got married but I wouldn’t give
it to her. But she also believed in the Panaghia and the Panaghia helps her
now. Some other woman might believe in St. Fanourios and he would
help her.

(36) When I was a soldier I served in different parts of Greece. In Mace-

donia I visited the church of St. Dimitrios in Salonika. There is something
miraculous there for there is a scent which comes out of the saint’s grave
whose origin nobody can explain.

(37) When we were in Asia Minor was the first time I saw the power of
St. Dimitrios. In our fields there, the village lands, there was a big fire
which a passing train started. It was summer. Everything was dry, there
was a wind, and it was impossible to turn the fire away. It was heading
towards the area where the olive trees for the whole village were planted.
There were thousands of trees there. People were terrified but there was
nothing they could do to put out the fire.
One young girl had the good sense to run to the near-by church of St.
Dimitrios. She took his ikon, raced back to us and faced the fire with it just
as it was coming with full fury towards the olive trees. She said, “St. Dimi-
trios, turn that fire away from us.”
That very moment the wind changed direction. It did so with awesome
speed and power, and soon the fire was out and the olive trees saved — and
the people too. My husband and I both saw this with our own eyes.

(38) The Turks as well as the Greeks believe in St. George. The morning
of his nameday the Turks collect the morning dew and put it in milk and
the milk becomes yoghurt — and they use it for the whole year. St. George
is the saint that killed a monster. The monster was very bad; it was a dry
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD gI
land and the monster controlled the water. He would let the people have
water only if they gave it a young person to eat every morning. One day the
monster was to get the king’s daughter for his breakfast but that day St.
George came from Cappadocia and killed it.

(39) St. Athanasios and St. George saved Spathi from the Koukoudi.
Men couldn’t kill that man because they couldn’t see him. Only saints could
see him and so these two saints of Spathi slew him right there in the village
and their arms were covered with blood. After the killing the saints came
to the church and asked for water with which to wash their arms. A young
girl there wanted to help them and was about to give them water when
her mother interfered and wouldn’t let her help wash the saints. The girl
would have become a saint herself if it hadn’t been for her mother.

(40) When they built the church of St. George in Nikephoros they didn’t
put the bell tower where it is now. But while they worked each day they
found when they returned that the tower had been pulled down at night.
Finally people understood that the Saint wanted the tower to be built on
the rock where he had revealed himself. So the people built the tower
there on the rock for the Saint to be rooted up there, and they built the
church a few metres below it.

(41) When my father was a boy he was one of the labourers who built the
church of St. George in Nikephoros. One day another labourer hurt his
finger while working and he swore at St. George. That night my father told
me that he heard the man crying and begging St. George to forgive him,
promising that he would not use his name in swearing any more. The next
morning the labourer told my father that St. George tortured him by having
his horse stand on his throat during the night. That was why he was
crying.

(42) Everyone knows that the Greek soldiers from this area saw St. George
leading them when they went into battle. He rode in front of them into the
battle.

(43) (O) We (nuns) knew an old shepherd who came to take the ikon of
St. George of Nikephoros home in order to cure his sick sheep. He was
carrying it in a sack along the road and a car came by. ‘The shepherd asked
for a ride but the driver refused. At that moment the shepherd heard a
voice coming from the sack saying, “We will meet again in a few hundred
ards.”
; Sure enough, down the road the shepherd came upon the car again;
this time it was turned upside down after an accident. The shepherd told
the driver how bad he’d been and how he had the ikon in his sack, an ikon
which had spoken to the driver. Everyone knelt down and prayed after the
shepherd told his story.

(44) There is a miraculous ikon of St. George in his church at Nikephoros.

It has long been miraculous. There are nuns there at the church. When
92 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

someone or some animal is ill we take the ikon home and pray to it; we light
a candle and do not go to sleep at night but stay up around the ikon. We
offer as votive offerings animals, oil, money, jewellery, etc. When we offer
to take animals to the church we don’t slaughter them there, but hold a
kind of auction instead. Whoever gives more money gets the animal and
the church gets the money. In a way St. George calls the animals that are
offered to him, for example my wife’s father promised a goat to the saint.
The goat wasn’t easy to handle; it felt that they were going to kill it or
give it away and, wild as it was, it became wilder still and they couldn’t
carry it there. So her father just left the goat go alone and asked the saint
to take it and with that the goat went straight to the church of St. George
by itself.

(45) Grandmother, who is blind, offered her eyes in silver to St. Paraskevi
that is at Paleopetra, but nothing happened. She is still blind.

(46) When the Germans captured Doxario they took the Greek flag away
from St. John’s bell tower and put up the German flag. It fell down
immediately. They tried three times to put the German flag up and three
times it fell down. Finally the Germans gave up and put their flag at the
entrance of the church where it remained at half mast until they left.

(47) Our cow had been expecting a calf, but it was eight days overdue and
everybody told me we would lose both the calf and the cow. I was afraid
they were right. I kept hoping and every time I went home I lit the candle
in front of the saints and prayed for the cow. I also vowed to go and light
the candles in the church of St. Modhistos, who helps the animals, if the
Saint would help my cow. Finally the Saint did help and the calf was born
and everything is fine. A few days ago I fulfilled my promise to the Saint
and lit his candles. (The narrator was so moved that she cried during this
account.)

(48) People see ghosts and things, and think they see something else.
Mostly it is fear which does it. Sometimes it’s something else, like the time
when a neighbour liked the wife of a fisherman. When the fisherman was
gone out to sea to fish the neighbour dressed as St. Nikolas, who is the
protector of sailors and fisherman, and went to that man’s wife’s house dur-
ing the night. Well that fellow told her he was St. Nikolas and she believed
him and you can imagine the rest of what happened that night! The woman
took to praying to her fine St. Nikolas and when her husband got home she
mentioned that St. Nikolas had appeared. The fisherman was no fool and
so the following night he pretended to leave but he just hid around the
corner. Sure enough, St. Nikolas went into his house, but this time the
fisherman was right behind him. When he saw neighbour St. Nikolas he
explained that he, the fisherman, was St. Peter, the man with “‘the keys to
this place” and with that he gave the saint the beating of his life.

(49) After I got married, we still lived in Crete, I developed a severe pain
in my hip. Nobody was able to cure me. I wasn’t able to move and my
 THE EXTRAORDINARY DEAD 93
husband had to carry me around as if I were a child. I was taken to doctors
and to “practikoi’”! but there was no change. Everyone thought I was
going to die. As a last chance my husband decided to take me to Iraklion? to
see a doctor, but that didn’t help either. Finally, my mother, having heard
about an old lady who cured many things, a lady who had a miraculous
ikon, took one of my dresses to that lady. She did that because I couldn’t
move.
The lady was very old and lived with two of her nieces in a very small
room filled with ikons. She lay in bed because she was so old she couldn’t
get about. She asked my mother to bring the ikon of Saint Paraskevi, the
miraculous ikon, because my mother was washed whereas neither the old
lady nor her nieces were clean. It was an old moth-eaten ikon about four
inches high. The old lady took the ikon and the dress, read some things and
then said, ‘“Your daughter fell near a river. Near the river was a bad tree.
She was fortunate because there were three saints near by and they pre-
vented the bad tree from drying out your daughter and killing her; that
is the only reason she is still alive.”
It was true. I had fallen near a river and there had been a fig tree near by.
There had been three churches thereabouts. The old lady then told the
family to do a certain “‘ritual’’, to break a plate on a Friday,® and she gave
my mother cotton that had been dipped in the olive oil of a candle that
burned day and night in front of the ikon. That was to cross me with. They
did all these things and in three or four days I was able to walk again.
This ikon which cured me is older than before the time of the Turks. ‘The
woman has cured many people with it. She was so successful that the doctors
asked the police to do something about it since she was taking their patients
away from them. The police took the ikon away from her but the next day
the ikon came back by itself to where it belonged. I know of others cured
by that lady and her ikon. A woman who was ill had been told by doctors
she had a tumour and must be operated upon in Athens. Her husband
before taking her to Athens decided to ask that old lady about his wife.
He took her a piece of her clothing and was told there was nothing wrong
with his wife, that she was pregnant only and had no tumour. And that
was true.
St. Paraskevi is, by the way, very good for the sickness of the eyes.
of
(50) There is a chapel to St. Paraskevi near here located on the lands
the lord (the great landowner). Inside there are the bones of the saint.
not sure
It is a very holy place and the saint there is good for the eyes. I’m
belong to the same St. Paraskev i as people usually talk about,
if the bones
this area. I think it’s the
or whether this is a different Saint who came from
latter.

the jackals
(51) In the old days there were people who knew how to bind
from them. There was one
on the mountains so as to protect the sheep
to do that job for her but finally
woman who always called upon a saint
in Rural Greece (35).
1 Folk healers who do manipulations; see Health and Healing
2 Heraklion.
3 Friday is called, in Greck, Paraskevi.
94 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
the saint got mad and grabbed her by the throat telling her, “You've ex-
ploited me long enough! It’s about time you do your own work and leave
me alone.”

(52) St. Serafim is very good for the wheat. The priest has his ikon all in
gold and when they put that ikon over the wheat the little fly that goes and
spoils the wheat flies away. You can watch it happen.

(53) In the past they used to leave money for the saints on the doorstep
of the house and then the saints took care of the animals. They used to
summon by name the saints whom they wanted to do this job.

(54) There was a Turkish girl who was born blind. She went to St. Pante-
leimon to pray. The Moslems believe in him too. The saint worked a
miracle and the girl was able to see again. When that happened she said to
his ikon, ‘“You I have seen first and so it is in you which I believe.” And so
she became a Christian.

Magicians
(55) Cyprianos was the most famous sorcerer in Italy. Afterwards he
repented and became a saint. He has written books on magic which you
can find in bookshops in Athens.

(56) I’ve asked many magicians to help Georgio. One read my coffee cup
and told me in detail what would happen to each member of the family.
She also told me Georgio would be cured. She told me to call the priest for
three successive Fridays to read the exorcising prayers. We were also sup-
posed to read Cyprianos’ book each day for forty days. But I have been
exploited by the magicians, and they ask me to do things I do not have time
to do. How can I read the magic of Cyprianos for forty days?

(57) When the temple of Solomon in Palestine was burned several people
stole the sacred books which contained the secret magical techniques.
That is why black magic is now called Solomonaiki, naming it after Solo-
mon. My grandfathers knew the Solomonaiki. When they were about to die
they passed on to me some information on good magic because, they said,
through this knowledge I could be of use to my fellow men. They told me
that with the Solomonaiki I could only cause damage to the people who
hurt me and upon whom I wanted to take revenge.
 vt
POWERS AND DOMINIONS: HEAVENLY
HIERARCHIES AND INFERNAL PEERS
HE accounts in the present chapter are concerned with immortal
spirits; ones which are not claimed to have once been human but
rather are seen as powers more or less timeless and with or without substance.
There are a great variety of these beings; some are identified and named as
individuals, others exist only as members of a class or fraternity of spirits.
The relationship of one class of powers to another is not set forth in the
mind of the peasant and shepherd with any great clarity or concern.
Nevertheless, there is a consistency in the narratives which allows one to
describe the realms as well as the characteristics of each class of supernatural
beings. Some, like Charon or Stringlos, are related to death and the
underworld; others, like the nereids or demons, while they may live under-
ground, are generally considered to reside on the earth rather than beneath
it; others are residents of higher spheres, not only altitudinally, as is inferred
from the name of the “‘aerika’’! but, as in the case of God and the angels, in
matters of religious respectability as well.
Lest one presume more order than exists in the rural pantheon, it is
necessary to point out that the powers and dominions overlap. Even the
names of the supernatural beings may not be subject to village consensus ;
what is demon (“‘daimon”’) to one may be Stringlos to another and exotika
to a third. The flexibility in names also suggests a certain flexibility in
class; Stringlos is an individual, a one-of-a-kind being, but his character-
istics are such that another villager may refer to him only as an exotika and
not distinguish him as a unique being or phantasm. The “Bad Hour’” for
example, is usually referred to as though it were an individual spirit, but
sometimes the name refers to all those exotika which take animal as well
as human form and bring harm to people. Upon occasion the “Bad Hour”
is discussed in such a way as to suggest only the vaguest kind of ill fortune,
unassociated with the intervention of any lively supernatural and may
indeed be used in a simply descriptive fashion without reference even to
luck, as when someone says, “‘It was the Bad Hour when I became ill.”
The system of ordering which we have employed separates the saints and
other extraordinary dead from the immortal spirits, and these in turn, as
will be seen in a later chapter, are considered separately from the preter-
natural qualities of animals or natural objects. While such a distinction is a
convenience — and a rational one at that, since it is based on the terminology
employed by the rural folk — it would be unwise to labour the differences
among the various classes of supernaturals or of animals or humans invested
1 Air creatures. Me
2 The direct translation from the Greek is the “Bad Hour’’, but we think the implications are
better expressed when it is translated as the “Dangerous Hour”’. It is from this that the title
of our book is drawn. On Thera it is known as the “Ugly Hour”, or “Shameful Hour”.
p*
96 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

with one or another preternatural qualities. There is a great deal in

common among magicians, saints, the Panaghia, nereids and those animals
which have human-like, supernatural guiding spirits. All of these beings —
and others besides — partake of awesome powers which are displayed when
they participate in the world of man and nature. For the most part these
are powers which can be manipulated for good or ill by men wise in tech-
niques of magic or religion, although it must be observed that the super-
naturals which are reputedly Christian are not usually besought by men to
work evil on other men. These Christian powers, on the other hand, may
readily decide to raise havoc with humans who have aroused their ire,
examples of which were clearly seen in the preceding chapter.
We shall begin with narratives which focus on unique named beings
and then move on to those spirits which are recognized only as members of
a class rather than as individuals.

Stringlos
(1) Stringlos was heard more clearly and more often during the first years
that we settled here. Oh my, what a voice it had; so deep and hoarse. But
now things are changing and Stringlos is rarely heard.

(2) Stringlos is a voice, something of air, which appears in the darkness

and wilderness. Sometimes you hear him coming as the galloping of a
horse. Yet a few moments later he will be heard in the far distance. If
you say a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, or the Apostles Creed, he will disappear.

(3) Stringlos exists. There are two places where it is to be heard. One of
them is a deep gorge right outside the village, the other is on the mountain-
side where they take the goats to feed. I’ve heard it often but I’m not afraid,
for Stringlos does no one harm. Some people are so afraid of it though that
if they hear it while on their way from here to Spathi they turn right
around and run back to Panorio. So, the Stringlos exists, but what it is I
cannot say.

(4) When I was a boy I was out on the mountains one night with my
father; we were taking care of the goat. The Stringlos came. My father
started swearing at it, but it refused to leave; the swear words weren’t strong
enough to drive it away. So my father asked me to say the Credo and I did,
and with that Stringlos left us and the night became silent again.
While I have said that I do not know what Stringlos is, there are some
here who say he is a baby that died unbaptized. In any event, if you have
dogs around they know when the Stringlos is coming. They start crying. In
general the dogs cry whenever something bad is going to happen. They
know when they are going to die or when their master shall die.

(5) I have heard Stringlos and I believe (in) him, but I don’t know what
he is. Tradition says he is the son of a very beautiful young woman who
was found dead at the seashore by a man. When he found her the man raped
her. A child was born from that intercourse; a child which is antichristian
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 97
and is the embodiment of the evil spirit. His voice is frequently heard when
somebody in the village is going to die. He will be heard in that part of the
village where the ill person is. Stringlos has a thick, wild hoarse voice which
is heard here and there, in a moment, two kilometres away. We are country
people and we know the animals and the birds, but Stringlos resembles
none of these — he is air, he is shadow.

(6) Stringlos exists. It is something of the devil. It cries and tries to frighten
you; one can get a heart attack from that. If you hear it cry from the village
that means someone in the village soon will die.

(7) Stringlos only wants to scare you. It does no harm unless you are so
frightened that you die from fear itself. Some years ago I heard it crying
like a child. “Father, father,” it cried out to me. It was trying to attract me
to him so as to tease me, using the voice of a little child. Another time I
heard Stringlos and it was pretending to be a troop of horses, the cavalry.
Another man saw Stringlos on the road in the form of a baby. He picked it
up to carry along, but fortunately he soon understood what it was, for it
was getting heavier and heavier. When he realized what it was he threw
it as far as he could. The Stringlos shouted then, “‘Oh, if only you had held
me for a few minutes more . .!”
Sometimes you hear Stringlos right behind you and then a minute later
200 yards away.

(8) Stringlos is like a baby when it cries. It becomes a pig or cat or baby
and is like the wind. If you hear it in the village you know a death will
occur, but it does not hurt you. Nevertheless I am afraid because it is a
devil. I know, I have heard it.
Long ago there were exotika to be seen and, at the crossroads, the Bad
Hour. But now only Stringlos exists.

(9) Stringlos exists. It goes about sucking the milk of the sheep and then
they die. What we do is to change the bells on the animals so that he will be
confused and the animals saved. We put sheep bells on the goats and vice
versa. That fools him. When it’s around you’d better say the “‘Our father
who art in heaven” or swear at it. My father used to say to Stringlos, “May
you be exorcised. I’ll put the root of the fig tree up your ass.”

(10) As a small girl I took the sheep to graze. One night as some sheep
were lagging behind I made them jump to the whip and as I was doing that
I heard a sound as though a puppy were whining — although there was no
dog or puppy among the animals. On the following morning, as we were
milking the sheep, my father and I heard a whining voice which seemed to
be coming out of a calf. We found five dead animals that morning. ‘The next
morning we heard the same whining voice and found some more dead
animals. We realized it was Stringlos who, disguised as a puppy and then as
a calf, had killed the animals.
We knew that if you try to kill the animal into which you think he is
disguised more losses will come to you. So we called the priest who read the
98 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

special prayer and no more deaths occurred. Today however the animals
are vaccinated and no Stringlos appears. If you see Stringlos he will
disappear if you say the words, “My Maker and Creator save me and help
me.”
He may be the air, the whirlwind, and he makes deep hoarse sounds. If
the shepherd thinks he has taken the form of a donkey, a sheep, a goat, ora
dog and chases that animal away the shepherd himself will fall ill.

(11) In the old days people said it was the Stringlos who rode on the sheep
and caused their death. Today we know it is anthrax that causes it and
vaccination which saves us.

(12) Stringlos is a peculiar animal. I’ve not heard it but my family have.
It does exist. It changes from a dog or cat to a baby and mostly you hear it
at night. In the daytime you hear it outside the village while at night inside
it. When Stringlos has intercourse with the sheep the sheep die. If it shouts
near or from a house then someone in the house will die. To protect yourself
from the Stringlos and all the other spirits you should have a charm on you
or a cross. Charms are made of incense, pages of ecclesiastical books, and
apigano.}

(13) (O) I have heard a story of Stringlos which I believe, for the man who
told me is a very serious and honest man. An army major along with
several men, one of whom was my friend, went rabbit hunting at night out
in the wild country towards the old acropolis. They were in the army jeep
and it was about midnight. Suddenly in front of the headlights they saw
about twenty yards ahead of them a half man, that is the top half of a man,
the bottom, shaggy like a furry animal, but hard to see, dancing and pranc-
ing. He kept dancing along in front of the car. It was Stringlos of course.
The major levelled his rifle to shoot but was so afraid he couldn’t hold
the weapon. They turned the jeep around and drove back to Doxario
as fast as they could. My friend was so frightened he went to bed and
slept for 24 hours. When he told the story to me he was so upset that he
cried.

Charon
In the account below, we see how Charon is very simply death itself,
but as such is a personified being.

(14) I live now only to see my daughters married and so, until that comes
about I tell Charon not to take me yet. When they are married that will
be the time to die, then I will say to Charon, “‘Yes, you may take me now.”
It doesn’t frighten me to die; I think about it often and talk to Charon
himself from time to time. Death doesn’t frighten me, but people do. People
can do some terrible things to one another. After all, Charon will listen to
one and make allowances. When people are ill and I heal them, one is put-
ting Charon off for a time. One gets to feel close to him in some ways.
1 The herb, rue.
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 99
The Devil
The only underworld creature who is part of the Christian phantasma-
goria, a necessary but hardly respectable member of the faith, is the devil
himself. The decision to consider him as a person as opposed to considering
devils as ‘“‘them’’, a fraternity of spirits, is made difficult by the double
usage employed by rural folk — and by sophisticated Western city dwellers
too. It is a problem that is recurrent in this chapter. The matter of proper
labels, whether singular or plural bedevils, so to speak, most of the powers
and dominions here. Sometimes a devil is a very definite Diavolo, a ‘““He’’;
at others he is something of a nonentity — just a devil among devils, or even
more broadly, just a devil footloose among a hundred varieties of demons
and spirits, very few of whom are accepted in Christian dogma but who,
unconcerned about their bastardy, do not disappear on account of it.

(15) (O) There is still black magic. It is when you ask the Diavolo to help.
When you ask him to help you then you will succeed in a bad thing. But
the devil doesn’t give any help. I think I read somewhere that in France?
two men wanted the devil to help them do bad things, to steal or something.
They set up a picture of a goat and they killed a boy for the devil so he
would help. They prayed, “Oh Diavolo, we give you this boy so that you
will see we pray to you and that we worship you so that you will come help
us. Diavolo, you who help the woman murder her unwanted child, you
help those who steal. . . .”” I don’t know how the rest of it went. The
Solomonaiki has the liturgy for the black magic in it.
The demons are bad gods just like devils. There are many demons all
of them bad. Just last week there were two men in here, not from Doxario.
They were tile setters who talk to demons. They want to do bad things so
they have a conversation with a demon to ask for help. But they cannot
hurt me. As long as I wear this cross I’m safe. If I didn’t wear it then I could
be harmed. The Diavolo has a beard and tail and horns. It is like a goat.
That is because goats are so bad. The goats are always jumping, jumping
here and there. They are bad, so the Diavolo is a goat. I’m not sure whether
the devil is a he or a she, I guess a he.

(16) (O) All women are the sperm of the Diavolo; all men come from God.
Women are born bad, all the sin is theirs. In them is everything that is bad
— that is the devil’s. Men are good — the sperm of God.

(17) The devil often becomes a friend. He takes the shape of a friend. You
must always beware. The devil enters between relatives and couples so that
they get divorces.” He also spoils match-makings.

1 Roman Catholic clerics are still called “Franks” and an occasional villager will still refer to
of
Western Europeans as Franks or “Frankish devils’, recalling the history of occupation
Greece during the thirteenth century to approximately 1453, and continuing on certain
mainland strongholds until 1540.
2 “Diavolo” is derived from the ancient Greek work “‘diaballo” (8uaBdAAw), to throw over,
the Devil
to slander, to accuse one man to another, to mislead, etc. The villager’s notion of
of the
entering between relatives and couples seems to be related to the original meaning
word.
100 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

(18) My father once went hunting and suddenly saw in front of him four
animals which resembled hares but were not hares. They were black and
kept moving and changing size in front of him. They were Satanic (satani-
cos). He was wise enough not to fire at them because if he did something
very bad would happen to him. He said a prayer and they disappeared.

The Moira
The three Moirai or fates were well known in ancient times and, as we
shall see, remain important in current lore.

(19) I believe that whatever happens to any human being during his life
span is written on his forehead since the time of birth. We were always told
when we were children that we would have to treat the three Moirai very
well so that when we grew up and had children our newborn babies would
have good lives. For that reason for the first three nights after the birth
of a child we leave a table — called the “‘sofra’”’ (law table) — laid out with
sweet things so that the Moirai will be satisfied with what we have done for
them when they come to visit the baby, for it is during those first nights that
they visit him and determine his future.
We also have a saying that one’s Tychi! should be poor so that he will
become rich, or that one’s Tychi must be rich if he is to be poor.?

(20) When one of my babies was just three days old I expected the Moirai
to come to bless the child, for they usually do that on the third day. I
decided to stay up and wait for them in order to see what they looked like.
But curiosity is a bad thing and the Moirai decided to punish me for mine.
At midnight they appeared in the form of three big white sheets and they
danced around me. I was very, very frightened and felt ashamed of having
been curious. I immediately ran off to bed and saw nothing of what the
Moirai did to my child.

Moros
Moros is a relatively infrequently mentioned supernatural. We have seen
a reference to it in No. 56 in Chapter V in the case of a girl trodden by
Moros; she had been taken for dead whereas she was, in fact, in a trance or
deep sleep.

(21) Now I don’t believe it exists. It just depends on your nerves and
whether or not you sleep very soundly, that’s all. The nerves don’t sleep
when you sleep, you know; they aren’t immobile, certainly not, for they
wander about somewhat and bring a little weight on you at one point or
another and, of course, you can’t wake up until it’s over, I mean till the
nerves are through wandering. But the others around here think that the
Moros is a creature that looks like a little black dog — if you do see it — that
1 Tychi; fortune, luck, fate.
* This may be a Greek variant of: ““The meek shall inherit the earth’”’. Another interpreta-
tion would be as a warning against overweening pride, the “hubris” of the ancients.
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 101
goes away whenever you try to get it. Moros comes and steps on you when
you’re asleep and you can’t wake up and you moan and groan until it goes
away and in the meantime you can hardly breathe. My brother’s wife and
her father have often seen the Moros and have felt it in their sleep. Some-
times it is invisible.
I think you can get these same symptoms from weight on the stomach
or from bad food before you go to bed. That is why you have bad dreams
too. On the other hand my brother believes in dreams because his dream
about going to the hospital with appendicitis came true. Come to think of
it, there are some signs in dreams which do mean coming death or illness.

(22) There is a legend in this part of Greece that in the very old days there
was a very big Negro who had a great number of golden pounds. These
pounds wandered in the night and they also had bells on them which you
could hear. Now these pounds would stack up wherever there was a pile of
human faeces. That is why the whole region around here was filled with
cakes of faeces — because people hoped to make a fortune by attracting the
golden pounds! That shows you how poor people were in those days.

The Dangerous Hour

(23) My brother was a shepherd who got sick and had very high fever.
He went to doctors in Doxario and even in Athens. They thought he had
typhoid and treated him accordingly but he didn’t get any better and indeed
his situation was very bad. An aunt of ours came to see him and decided
what he needed was the xemetrima. She did it and his fever went down
immediately. The next day he had a little fever and that was it. It was not
typhoid. It was either the evil eye or the Bad Hour, I don’t know which of
the two.

(24) When I was a small child I frequently suffered spasms in my sleep

which were spasms of moon convulsions. It isn’t good for a patient with this
to be taken to the medical doctor, for he will automatically get worse. So
my mother asked the priest to do the xemetrima. Then she took something
of mine to an old practikia who asked her to bring the heads of two golden
magpies. The healer explained I had been hit by the Bad Hour. My
brother brought the heads of the two killed birds to her out of which the
woman made a dust almost like coffee — a dust I had to take with water on
three successive mornings. I’ve never had any trouble since.

(25) One of my boys died from a bad cold, at least that is what the doctor
said. But the women of the village told me the Bad Hour killed him. I
don’t know, but people say the exotika, the Bad Hour, will wound a child
and that is what happened to my baby who died.

(26) I don’t know, perhaps this is one reason I’m so frightened of what can
happen, so worried about what people will do. You see, people have talked
against me so often, especially when I had Eleni. They used to say that I
did not give her my milk just because she was born a girl and I did not
102 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

want her. But this wasn’t true; I was just worried because the child was
born bow-legged and I was so worried thinking how hard it would be for
the child to exist and survive since it is so hard even for the strong and healthy
ones to live. I had had to work so hard while I was pregnant and I feared
that the child was already (destined to be) killed in the womb because of
my fatigue.
Now I’m pleased that Eleni is able to take care of herself at least and can
help around the house. She works slowly but well. I thank the Panaghia
for that. Eleni was almost hit by the Bad Hour when she was a baby. One
day I saw her open her mouth as if to say something but she didn’t. I
understood that something bad had happened and immediately I took a
piece of clothing that belonged to the child and brought it to the priest —
an old priest we had then who knew about such things but now is dead. I
said to him, “‘Oh Father, please save this child because she has already
suffered so much.”
I think Eleni is retarded (the child is feebleminded) because of what
happened that day she was hit by the Bad Hour. The doctor told me it was
because of the great pain Eleni had when she was but a baby that her mind
is so dull.

(27) I became pregnant with my first child when I was engaged. In those
days we didn’t know how to prevent pregnancies, but now the men know
how to interrupt intercourse. Well, we got married and when the child was
eleven months old my husband came home drunk from the baptism. I told
him off for that so he got mad and went outside to sleep, even though it
was still winter. Men are worse than children; you have to treat them “‘with
honey and the fig’’. All night I felt so guilty that I pleaded with him to come
back in so he wouldn’t catch cold. But he refused so I went out to him
frequently to plead and to cover him with blankets. I left the door open all
that night.
When I came back into the house for the last time, after having made
sure my husband was warm, I was on my way to bed when I saw a small
black dog come to my feet. I kicked it to make it leave but apparently it
went to the child instead; the child was sleeping in the room. From that
moment the child began to cry and moan. It was the Bad Hour that had
come in. Well we tried to cure the child by putting a goat’s hair around its
toe. Some days later it was still sick, so we took it to an old man who knew
about the Bad Hour, but he wasn’t very capable. Next we took the child to
a priest, and that failing, we took him to an MD. The MD did an injection
and that was a bad thing — injections are dangerous if someone has been hit
by the Bad Hour or the exotika — and the poor child died.
I admit it had been a long delay before we took him to the old man, but
that was because we didn’t know what was the matter with him. It was
only when we realized it had been the Bad Hour, and hadn’t been able to
cure it ourselves, that we knew to take it to him. There are many of these
knowledgeable men and women who are very good, although of course
some are better than others; for example I’m better than most at doing
the xemetrima. What they do in such a case is to gather all the nereids
and exotika that do the harm and they ask them what was done and why
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 103
it was done and then they ask them as a favour to save that person that they
have harmed. They don’t give anything to the exotika in return for that
favour.

(28) Petros is a shepherd who works for the great landowner. He can’t
talk very well because one time when he had his sheep high on the moun-
tains, up where the forests were so thick that you could not see the sun, he
was caught between the echo of two mountains, which is a very bad thing
to have happen, and in consequence he lost his voice. At first his people
thought it was meningitis but it turned out to be the Bad Hour. The very
same thing happened to my nephew too.

(29) The night is the Bad Hour.

(30) The Bad Hour is a woman - like a shadow.

(31) I’ve seen the Bad Hour. I didn’t realize it at the time but after I got
sick I knew what it was. One noon after working the fields I took a nap. I
lay down on a path, lying across it I was, with my head on a steady stone.
My goats were all around me and when they began to move that awakened
me. What I saw when I opened my eyes was a black dog, well nearly black
anyway, and I threw something to frighten him away. The very next day
I had a pain in my eyes and it felt as though I had sand in them. That
was when I understood it had been the Bad Hour I’d met out there, because
I was lying across a path. It was a good thing that the goats had sensed it
and awakened me, otherwise a lot worse might have happened to me.
That “‘dog”’ might have stepped on me or jumped over me and that would
have been really bad. Fortunately as soon as I went home I washed my
head and the “‘bad”’ came out immediately. It didn’t get cooked in me, you
know, it didn’t have a chance to grow in me. I called in the priest rightaway
and he read some things over me. Then I called in Maria. (Maria is a
village healer) and she did the xemetrima and in three days I was well.

(32) Once I was out in the fields and heard a woman crying. At first I
thought it was Mrs. Markakis whose husband was gone and she was left
alone in the desert — her house, you know, is the last one in that direction
and the very end of the village and naturally quite lonely. I looked around
and didn’t see anybody, then when I went by Mrs. Markakis’s house I saw
her there and she wasn’t crying. I concluded that it had been the Bad Hour
acting like a woman crying.

(33) I’ve seen the Bad Hour or the aerika or the nereids — they are all the
same. One night I was asleep under a tree and I opened my eyes. Lae
moon was shining so brightly it was like daylight. Right in front of me was a
big bear which wore a hat with a thousand feathers on it. I got scared and
covered my eyes with my blankets so that I couldn’t see any more. When I
awakened in the morning the sun was shining and the beast had disappeared.
It had been the Bad Hour.
1 See Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35).
104 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

(34) When people have things happen to them because they haven’t
used good sense or caution why instead of blaming themselves they say
it is the Bad Hour, or that they stepped on the table or dinner of the devil.

(35) The Bad Hour and the nereids exist. My cousin was hit by them when
he stepped on their food and his mouth went to the side of his face. He had
to go to a woman who knew about these things and she gathered the
nereids and beat them and told them she’d beat them even more if they
didn’t repair the harm they’d done. The Bad Hour is a whirlwind. If it
comes near you you have to sit down and say, ‘“‘With the honey, with the
honey’’ so they will leave without harming you.

(36) The Bad Hour is a shadow. Sometimes it is like a donkey, at others

like a baby. People here have charms to protect against it. They put gun-
powder, incense, bread and the aromatic plant “skino’’! into the charms.

(37) In order to protect themselves from the Bad Hour the lechona must
not go out after dark, must not cross a road, or go over the sea. She should
not keep the child’s clothing outside after dark. Any visitor to the lechona
should never enter after dark without having (carrying) fire or touching
fire, and he or she must be rinsed with holy water. If not, something bad will
happen.

(38) The Bad Hour occurs in the shadow of the fig tree. The shadow of the
tree is heavy; one should not stay under it. I had a neighbour who sat under
a fig tree and he heard the devils boiling oil in a frying pan, boiling it to
burn him with. He got out of there fast enough, you can be sure!

Koukoudi
We have encountered the giant who, as a disease, killed the villagers
of Spathi and was himself in turn cut down by the protective saints of that
community. It will be recalled that Koukoudi was hung on a fig tree for the
people to see (No. 33 in Chapter VI), and that those who were about to die
prepared themselves for death by changing clothes and washing (No. 27,
Chapter V). The following stories tell us more about the Koukoudi. Before
presenting them it is worth noting that “‘koukoudi’”’ in current usage means
a lump, knot, or boil under the skin and can be used to refer to lymphatic
swellings of the kind which occur in bubonic plague. While there has been
no bubonic plague in Panorio during this century, earlier outbreaks have
occurred, including the Twelfth Century epidemic which swept Europe.
In a later chapter we shall see illustrations taken from elsewhere in Greece
and Europe of the personification of plague.

(39) The Koukoudi could not come to Panorio because the people had
1 A variety of plants which the modern Greek would pronounce skino, were known to the
ancients. Dioscorides describes the rush, schoinos (cymbopogon schoenanthus or juncus
odoratus, I.16) and the juncus acutus (IV.52) as well as the “mastich’’, schinos (1.89)
(pistacia lentiscus) and the “‘mastick” (I.90) (schinine retine).
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 105
drawn a circle around the village using a plough pulled by twin calves.
They chose calves because calves licked Christ when he was born and
consequently calves are on good terms with Christianity. They buried those
calves alive after they ploughed that circle and Koukoudi didn’t come here.
In Spathi St. George and St. Athanasios killed it and in their churches
there where you see a monster being cut down under their swords, that
monster is the Koukoudi.

(40) In the very old days there was a terrible disease in Panorio. Many
people died of it. It struck the same area as the flu strikes. Many families
were destroyed. For the most part old people didn’t die from it, only the
young ones, especially the pretty ones. The Koukoudi was an enormous
““theoratos’’,4 a man who visited the village and roamed about inside
choosing his victims. After some time Spiros Terzakis who died recently at
the age of 115 had an idea. His cow had given birth to twin calves and he
suggested to the other villagers that these be silvered and harnessed to a
silver plough. This was done. Then they went around the village with the
plough pulled by that pair; when they finally reached the point of the old
bridge, the one that stands on the way to Spathi, they buried the calves
alive deep in the earth. In this way they bound the village and no disease
could enter it any more. From that day on they have been very careful not
to let the gipsies enter the village and even till today the binding works, for
no one has died from that disease and even now we are very healthy.
And here is another proof: The men in those days brought their brides
from other villages on horseback. ‘Two men had married in other villages
and were bringing their brides back here. But the brides didn’t get inside
the village for they had that disease and the moment they neared the magic
circle they dropped dead. I know where the grave of one of those brides is,
for they buried her near St. Dimitrios’ Church without ever carrying her in
the village. They buried her with her clothes and all, but it seems that the
“corsares’’2 dug her out and stole all the golden coins that had decorated
her costume and all the jewellery which she had worn.

God
There is remarkably little said about the Christian God by the villagers
and he certainly seems to play a less personal or important role than do many
of the saints, the Panaghia, or even some of the exotika. God, while singular,
remains something of an abstraction and as such he seems to have less
relevancy to the villagers, who prefer their deities to be colourful, human-
like, and not abstract at all. As we saw in No. 3, Chapter IV, God protects
the innocent. In some of the following accounts we shall see that he is also
punitive.

(41) My first two children, both boys, died. I’ve lost a girl too, but when I
think of the boys I still feel like crying. When you pay a healer and your
people do get well you forget what the cost was, but not when they don’t get
1 Literal translation: “Seen by God”.
2 Pirates or brigands.
106 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

cured. God didn’t leave me my healthy children; instead he decided to

leave me the one we all expected to die, the one we cared for because we
felt sorry for it, as you care for a little animal. (The reference is to a feeble-
minded child.) Now she is alive and the boys are not. I see the young men
that were born at the same time as my boys and tears come to my eyes. If
they were here they could help their father in the fields and I could be
proud of them. But God is great in order to make people suffer and in this
way God proved to me he exists and is powerful. He owed this tome...

(42) The things we wise women know do much to heal. The holy things of
God are good as well as are the findings of men. We abide by the holy
things and the proper things here and I’m proud of how we shepherds
behave. As the proverb says, “‘there is no price for honour; and joy to the
man who has it’’.

(43) When I was young I believed in God. We belonged to that group of

shepherds that are Orthodox (Christians) but who do not follow the new
calendar.1 We were very religious and backwards in many ways. Now I do
not believe so much and I doubt certain things. Sometimes I think that
what I am doing now is the right thing and yet on other occasions I recall
that it was when I believed so thoroughly that I had my health. Who knows,
maybe believing without doubt and having one’s health are related. And
yet, now I cannot help believe that people have made all these rules; that
they do not come directly from God. Look at how the priests behave. What
kind of an example is that?

(44) You can’t cure people who are convinced that they are sick. People
that don’t have God’s blessing, ones that have a worry inside them or are
filled with jealousy or grief, these people pine away, they dissolve. You
know the saying, “‘If you have a fixed idea and jealousy in your body you
don’t need an illness.’? Such people don’t put any meat on themselves;
they get very thin and don’t progress in life. They always complain. If
they do bad things they will usually be punished by God. For example
the man who stole a number of things; the first time he wasn’t caught, nor
the second, but finally he got a big bad boil in his hand that almost para-
lysed him. It was a punishment for the hand that was stealing.

(45) In the past people used to believe in God, but now we believe that
we are going to the moon. That is why God has sent all these disasters and
illnesses to us.

(46) To earn the blessing of God one should not complain but always say
1 Many shepherds are still “‘palioimerologites”’ who follow the old calendar which is 13 days
behind the present Gregorian calendar. One old shepherd said of this, ‘In the past all the
shepherds (Saracatzani) followed the old calendar because they wanted to maintain the
tradition which was that the holidays of the church coincided with the day these anni-
versaries are mentioned in the calendar. As the years have passed some shepherds have
changed, but some still follow the old. When the palioimerologites want to make a service in
a church which does not belong to them they will ask a priest of their belief to do it for
them. They will not ask any other priest to do it.”
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 107
“Glory to God”’, because if it is his wish we shall be better off or have
more. It was wrong for my wife to complain about the drought we’re having
this summer by asking what happened to this cuckold God that he didn’t
piss this summer. I told her she shouldn’t talk like that because God has
ears, but she told me he is too old by now to listen to every word the people
say.

(47) The nereids and Stringlos are sent by God, just as he sends the lightning
which makes coals out of a person. We knew a person who died from the
lightning God sent. The peculiar thing was that his dog cried out before it
happened. Dogs are very sensitive animals.

(48) If you want to have a boy when you’re pregnant take that tall herb
which has a part that looks like the testicles of a boy. The doctor in Doxario
asked us for some of that herb to give to his wife when she was pregnant. In
the old days they used to say that God gave you either boys or girls; what
they really meant was that he made love and some women had his babies.

From individually identifiable beings we now turn to those supernatural

creatures who are identifiable only as members of a class or group. Accounts
of many of them have been met in earlier chapters, especially in the section
on the light-shadowed persons, Chapter IV, on the dangers in critical life
periods, Chapter II, and in the accounts of the activities of magicians, sor-
cerers and priests, Chapter III.
Many of the class names are fairly interchangeable: thus, exotika, demons,
devils and aerika all refer to a category of spirits. Nereids usually are
nymphs, but since they can be either male or female we must recognize that
nereids can also be a rather inclusive classification. The kalikantzari, or
kalkes for short, are usually a specific group; nevertheless an occasional
peasant will equate them with other exotika. The only recognizable Christ-
ian spirits in this section are the angels who may be presumed to be close
relatives to the aerika both historically and psychologically.

Exotika and Demons

(49) An uncle of mine was taking care of the sheep. At night he brought
them back only to find out that one of them was missing so he decided to
go back where he had seen the animal for the last time to see if he could find
it. It was in a gorge that he had seen it last; sure enough when he arrived
it was there but it was dead. He lit a match to see what had happened and
at that minute a whole lot of people gathered, most of them women; they
danced and sang around him, and kept trying to make him talk. They
wouldn’t let him go; even after he finally got away they followed him for
a mile or more. It was a good thing he didn’t speak, for it is bad to say
anything in those circumstances. When he returned home he was trembling
with fright and had to stay in bed for quite some time.

(50) During the time of the guerrillas there was a boy about my age. He
was taking care of the goats. Somebody called him out of the hut. When his
108 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

friend came back he couldn’t find him and decided he must be with the
other shepherds or maybe, he thought, he’d gone out to find some bread.
In the middle of the night he saw him coming back in a terribly frightened
state with most of his clothes gone. The man explained that the guerrillas
had come and had asked him to give them his goat which he refused to
do. They took him to the gorge to slaughter him but they only hit him and
slapped his face. Of course these were no guerrillas — these were the demons.
The shepherds went back to the place — it was by a spring in the gorge —
and they found all his belongings except his hat. That the demons had
taken.
Then they took him to a woman who knew about these things and she
told them that since the demons had taken something that belonged to him
and kept it that there was nothing she or anybody could do to cure him.
For a year he was well, and during that period something could have been
done for him, but not later. When the year was up the shepherd became
insane. A woman told his family to dress him in black underwear but that
didn’t help either. Now he disappears from time to time and laughs all
alone in the wilderness. He runs around, hates his family and cannot stand
his sister and brother. They’ve taken him everywhere, even to Kephalonia
where St. Gerassimos cures the crazy ones, but nothing has helped.

(51) I’ve heard a shepherd tell how one night as he was with his sheep he
ran after one which was lost. When he got to an isolated place he felt four
men, who were exotika, dragging his feet to earth. They asked him his
name. They also asked him to tell his brothers — who were calling him at
that moment — where he was. The shepherd was wise enough not to for
he knew that the moment he uttered a word his speech would be taken
from him.

(52) Here in Dhadhi there was a lady that lived in the last house of the
village. When she was alone — at times her husband was gone — a woman
dressed in black used to come outside her house and throw stones at the
windows and doors. The lady didn’t know what to do so she put an ikon
behind the door. Once the woman in black told her, ‘‘What can I do since
you have that thing behind the door.”

(53) My son was returning from Doxario one night. On his way he saw a
figure that resembled a hedgehog which kept changing sizes in front of him.
He was scared and in his embarrassment he lit a cigarette and began to
say a prayer. The evil spirit disappeared. All these exotika are afraid of the
light and the prayer.

(54) Once I was on my cart taking vegetables and fruit to Athens. Around
midnight, as I was approaching Doxario, my horse neighed and stood on
its front feet. I saw at the side of the road among the green bushes a girl.
She was sitting with her head towards the plain. She disappeared before a
minute had passed. A few metres farther on, I saw the figure of a slender
young man dressed in a military coat. He preceded me on the road. I tried
to catch up with him but I couldn’t do it even though he walked on foot
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 109
and I was in the horse cart. After some moments he disappeared too. We
country people live under harder conditions than city people so what we
say you can be sure has actually happened. It is no creation of our mind or
of our fear because we are used to isolation, darkness and wilderness.

(55) At Paliopetra there is a great precipice. At midnight there was a man

coming on horseback when a bride, all dressed in white, appeared in front
of him. The horse was frightened and so was the man. The bride asked him
to give her part of his shirt. He didn’t, so she led the horse near the precipice
and the horse followed, beginning to trot. To save his life the man gave
her a part of his shirt. She disappeared. For seven days he couldn’t speak
and after that this exotika went to his house every night to torture him in
his sleep. Finally he told his wife about it and she set about to save him.
The following night when he started to sweat and moan and turn in his
sleep she woke him up and then they saw in the fireplace a little black dog.
That was the exotika that was running away, and the man was saved. (The
narrator was so frightened that he broke out in goose pimples while giving
this account.)

(56) When we were still in Asia Minor, one night at 2 a.m. my cousin was
taken by the exotika. They simply knocked at his door and asked him to go
out. His wife wanted to stop him but she couldn’t. When he went outside
they took him. The whole village turned out to look for him but with no
result. After forty-eight hours he returned to his house all drenched. He was
not conscious of himself and, as the relatives warmed him with water and
changed his clothes, they tried to learn what had happened to him because
when he came to himself they realized he might have forgotten. So he told
us that it was a male exotika that took him — the female exotika are more
sly and vicious; they usually kill a man after maltreating him. They took
him to a river and dipped him into the water and would not let him go.
My brother told him that he came looking for him as far as the river bank
but had not seen him around, my cousin replied that he had seen my brother
but had been afraid to call out for fear they would harm him more. So after
two days the exotika had let him return to the village. The family took
him to a Turk, a magician, who made an amulet for him which he has
been wearing ever since that time.

(57) Mother: “I think my son is mentally retarded.”

Interviewer’s private observation: there is no visible sign of retardation.
Interviewer’s question to the son: ‘‘Can you hear well?”
Son: “I have trouble hearing sounds that come from more than ten
metres, but in conversation I can hear all right.”
Interviewer’s private observation: The son responds to questions put
to him in a low voice but occasionally seems preoccupied and questions
must be repeated.
Interviewer’s question: “How did your hearing difficulty arise?”
Son: “When I was twelve, I took some sheep to graze and then I left
them there to join some other kids in playing games. The sheep went to the
lands of a neighbour and damaged his wheat. My father became angry
110 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

when he heard about that and beat me on the head and ears. Since then
I’ve had trouble hearing.”’
Mother: “Nonsense. His trouble started when he was twelve and was
struck by the exotika. He fell ill and when he got out of bed he couldn’t
hear so well.”
Son: “That’s not so. When I was accepted by the army the examining
doctor asked me during the medical examination (apparently the only one
he has had) if I hurt my head by accident or if somebody hurt my head when
I was younger.”

(58) Mantheos is a famous magician in Spathi. He learned his art from

his father Miltiadis who was well known too. Once his father called the
exotika for a consultation and he forgot the words which would untie them.
Then the exotika beat him cruelly.

(59) Before coming to Dhadhi I lived in Doxario. I knew a woman there

whose child was beaten by the nereids during his sleep. At that time he
was a baby and when he awakened in the morning his face was black and
swollen. That same woman was sleeping outside with her husband one
summer’s night. After midnight she felt a terrible pain in her left eye. She
awoke and began to cry and asked her husband to take her inside because
the exotika had hurt her. That same woman was sitting with me on my
porch and was resting her left arm on a roof supporter made out of a tree
trunk. Suddenly she asked me if I felt the earthquake. I said, “No.” She
asked me to go inside because a current was passing through her arm and
it made her whole body shiver. We went inside and it took her some time to
recover.
This woman was light-shadowed. The priest’s mother can give you more
information about her because she’s a neighbour of hers too. Now she lives
in Athens. The Kakiades! used to live in that house. Some people believe it
is the house which called the exotika and the nereids.

(60) Two months ago I was at my grandmother’s house in Levadia. My

grandmother has been tortured by the exotika for a long time. She used to
grasp me by the hand and say to me, “‘Can’t you see that right in front of me
there are nereids dancing? Don’t you see the parade of black coloured
men singing and dancing? Don’t you see we are surrounded by the kallikant-
zari?”? Oh, she suffered from these visions for long nights and days. Her
people asked the priest to have a special service at home and they put some
gun shot in her amulet to keep the exotika away. At the same time they took
her to Mantheos, the magician, who asked her to spin a thread from a black
sheep and to take it to him. She prepared the thread and brought it to him.
He used several words and then asked her to hide the thread under a stone
outside the village so that the exotika would not hurt anyone else. My
grandmother was cured when this was done. |

(61) Demons, ghosts and such creatures exist. I know because I have seen
them myself. I have a light shadow, although I don’t know what that means
1 The “Bad Ones’’, from the word kakos: bad.
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS Par
except that when you have it you see them. I used to see shadows like dogs,
like a black man, like ghosts, like a short man, and such things. These
things call you twice and they try to get you out of the house in the dark
so as to throw stones at you and drive you insane. You should never never
answer when they call you twice. You wait and if they call you a third time
it is a human being. If there is no third call don’t open that door!
When I go into the darkness they pinch me and I have black spots on
my legs. These aerika are temptations, like all the others that God has
created, to harm people. That is why God made the snakes and bears and
the demons. Because we don’t want to repent, we have to suffer.

(62) Once when I was young I woke up at midnight to light the oven and
bake the bread for the next day. It was a very bright moon-lit night.When
I finished arranging the oven I saw a woman coming my way. She was
dressed in black and was very large. When she came closer she seemed
like a man-woman (hermaphrodite) and not like someone from this village.
My husband’s mother who was near by understood that the woman was
something from out of this world and that I had to be careful. What I did
was to lock myself in the house and not come out until the next morning.

(63) In my father’s village in the Peloponnesus there were many exotika,

nereids, and demons because it is a place where there has been much crime
and killing. You will find that these spirits concentrate around places where
there has been murder.

(64) The period after birth is a very dangerous one. There was a woman
in Asia Minor who was left alone on one of these days without anyone to
guard her. She heard someone call her name from downstairs, someone
walking in the yard. She answered, not knowing that it was the devil and
he took her voice. The devil wore her wooden shoes that stood in the yard
and pretended to be a woman walking. The lechona died after this incident.
This happened to my mother, too, but she was smart and did not answer
them. They talked to her in her sleep and awakened her. Another time my
mother was sitting at the window looking outside in the early evening.
She saw the demons in the field dancing and playing with a “‘trokania’’?
making lots of noise. She watched them for a while without opening her
mouth to say a word and then she closed the window and went inside. That
is how she was saved, because devils not only can take your voice they can
even take your soul.
Even I myself, when I go out in the night, see that black spots form on my
legs. See them? (showing area) They are like small bleedings as if I had hit
myself on something and it was bruised, but it is the night or the Bad Hour
which causes these.

(65) I heard the old folks saying that as they were coming to the village
with the animals one night they saw lights on in the church, and heard a
chorus singing hymns in a very stirring way. This happened often and once,
when the priest was there as they came in, they asked him what happened.
1 Rattle.
112 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

The priest was embarrassed and told them, “TLet’s get away from here as
quick as we can because it is the devils who possess the church at such an
hour as this!”

Nereids
(66) There is a tale my father used to tell. I don’t know whether it is true
or not. In those days it seems when handsome boys would sleep under the
shadows of trees the nereids came and teased them and wanted to marry
them. One boy told his grandfather about it. He said that a girl came to him
every noon while he relaxed under the tree, a girl who was very lovely and
very different from all the others that he had met in his life. His grandfather
understood that the girl was a nereid and suggested to the boy that he get
her scarf from her. The boy said he was afraid to touch her but the grand-
father assured him that there was no danger; if he really wanted to marry
that girl getting the scarf was the only way he could hope to keep her.
The boy secured her scarf and a marriage followed, for a nereid cannot
go away without her scarf. Years went by and they had a child together and
the nereid was a good and faithful wife. One day they had a fair in the
village and everyone danced in the square. The nereid was by far the best
dancer; she was something “out of this world’’. When she danced her feet
seemed not to touch the earth. People commented on it and her husband
heard and was very proud of her. At one point when she had stopped
dancing he told her how beautifully she danced she said that she could do
better still if she had her scarf and asked if he would give it back to her,
if only for one dance. He decided that there was no danger of her going
away any more since they had a child together. He gave her the scarf;
her dance was truly superb. As it was ending she turned to her husband
and said, ‘‘Look how I turn and look how Ill take the dance to the sky.”’
After the third turn-around off she went into the sky never to come back
again.

(67) Some years ago my husband was hit by the Bad Hour. One morning
he awakened and his mouth was crooked around the cheek and one of his
eyes was small and the other too big and his face was swollen. He went to
different people for a cure and even to a priest but they weren’t able to
help him. Finally they told him to go to a lady from Asia Minor that knew
many things. He did that. She didn’t speak very good Greek but since he
didn’t know what had happened she decided to find out in order to know
what to do next. So she put three burning coals in an earthenware incense
burner and asked her husband to give her some gunpowder. She put that
in there too and stirred some water in it with her finger. With the same
finger she made the sign of the cross on my husband’s forehead. Then she
took these things and went outside and threw them away. This served to
gather the exotika or the nereids that had harmed him.
These women who know how to cure you from the Bad Hour know how
to gather the nereids and they talk with them just as you and I are chatting
now. The nereids tell them what they did and why, and if they are willing
to take back the harm they have done or not. Well, this woman talked with
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 113
the nereids; they told her what had happened and she, in turn, told my
husband about it. Even though he hadn’t given her any details of the
situation she was able to tell him what had occurred. She told him that he
had been out very early in the morning, that he was holding something in
his hands, and that he was with two other people to make three altogether,
that they were three houses out of the village, and that something touched
his cheek.
All this was true. He had gone out with two other people to go hunting
and he had his gun in his hands. It was true that he felt something walking
on his cheek and he had thought it to be a centipede! which he brushed
away with his hand.
“Well,”’ said the lady, ‘it wasn’t a centipede. You were standing on the
spot where the nereids were having lunch; one of them saw and liked you
and she caressed you. There she was being kind and you hit her and brushed
her away. No wonder she got mad and hit you back and that is why your
face is deformed. No matter, in three days you’ll be okay.”
And so it happened.

(68) We have heard that in Athens there is a neighbourhood with a spring

where the nereids gather. A saint came there one day and the nereids even
beat him.

(69) My grandmother told me that two neighbours once agreed to bake

bread together early the following morning. Almost at dawn someone
knocked on the neighbour’s door and said, ‘‘Mrs. Maria get up and make
your bread.”’
Mrs. Maria got up and another knock was followed by the words, “Mrs.
Maria come out and let’s bake that bread because the oven is ready.”
Mrs. Maria went out and there were the nereids. They took her away,
stripped her of her clothes and forced her to dance with them. When the
cock crowed they let her go. Oh my, how exhausted the woman was after
that wild dancing.

(70) A woman I know told me how she had been riding her mule towards
the mill. On her way she was caught by a group of nereids. In order to save
her life she got undressed and danced with them during the night. In the
morning they disappeared leaving her half dead from exhaustion. She
dressed herself and went on to the mill, having saved her life by her actions.

(71) I know a fat woman in Doxario who was taken during the night by
three nereids to the square in the village. They had knocked at her door
and asked her to follow them. She did and when they got to the square they
beat her.

(72) My sister went once to get water from the well. She was a young girl.
Three nereids appeared in front of her, one was Greek and two were
Turkish. They asked her to follow them. On the way they met a neighbour
1 In Greek the centipede is “the forty-footed” in keeping with the emphasis on the magical
and ubiquitous forty-unit time period.
114 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

and the three beautiful nereids disappeared. The neighbour asked my sister
where she was going and my sister, who was very frightened, said she was
going to a near-by village. As soon as the neighbour had passed the nereids
reappeared and again said for my sister to follow them. Finally in the
afternoon — they had taken her at noon — they reached a well. The Turkish
nereids wanted to drown her and the Greek nereid wanted to save her.
They pushed her into the well where the water came to her neck but
then they lifted her outside again and let her go. She came home at ten
that night drenched and scared to death. .

(73) I haven’t seen any nereids but I’ve heard trustworthy people saying
they’ve seen them. In the old days there were many of them in special
places. My elder brother still trembles as he recalls what happened to
him when he was hunting after midnight. He suddenly heard music and
drums and a whirlwind began to blow. After he made sure it didn’t come
from the opposite coast, which was the only [human] possibility, he
collected his equipment and left that place.
Nereids are revealed to one or prove harmful when a man steps over their
table. They live under the ground and feast there. When they hurt someone,
as for instance the man from here who came home with one eye protruding,
the other eye closed, his mouth out of place, and unable to eat, they cause
the symptoms which are the same as for a brain haemorrhage.

(74) I remember sitting at the window once in 1938. It was about midnight
when I heard the nereids and aerika passing by with drums and violins.
They were dancing, and going towards their square where they always
went to dance, a square! which is up towards the mountains. These nereids
did not harm anyone, but when you heard them you became frightened and
you shivered.

(75) When I was still young and we lived in the refugee district of Doxario
I was home alone one night. At midnight I heard girls giggling and clapping
their hands out by the well which we had in our yard. It was certainly the
nereids but I was too afraid to go out to find out. I heard one say to another,
“‘Let’s go away because the first rooster has crowed.”’ After a while they all
lett:
I told my father-in-law what had happened and he asked my husband
never to leave me alone in the house during the night because the exotika
might come to take me away and hurt me. Since that night I’ve not gone
out after midnight. When I go out in the evening, even before midnight,
my hands show black spots on them because I have heard the sound of
the exotika.

(76) ve heard the nereids are very beautiful, in fact we have the saying
of a pretty woman that she is as lovely as a nereid. I’ve heard there are
Turkish and Greek nereids, the former bad and the latter good. They take
several forms when they present themselves to men. For instance one of
them was disguised as a beautiful girl who was married to a man. They
1 The reference is to a village square, the centre of community life.
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 115
lived happily together and made children. After a while the nereid
became tired of family life and wanted to leave her husband and children
to return to her old ways. All her power was concentrated in her dress
which her husband, who knew her true nature, kept in a secret place. She
begged him to let her put on that dress just once for the last time. He
finally gave in and as soon as she had the dress on she became her nereid
self and disappeared.

(77) A neighbour of ours told us that his brother and his brother’s wife
were walking one night. Suddenly the nereids got hold of him, seizing him
by the arms, and dragged him along with them. His wife lost him as the
nereids carried him away. Some days later he was found dead by a fountain;
his body was covered with black spots from maltreatment.

(78) In Doxario there was a girl who could see the nereids and the lamias
(they are the same). These creatures are very beautiful and they dance very
well. The girl wanted to go out with them and dance with them whenever
she saw and heard them. Her brothers had a hard time keeping her inside
the house, for she kept saying, “‘Oh, listen to them singing. Look at their
dance. I want to go with them.”’
The brothers brought the priest in and he read something over her and
put his stole over her. The combination of the priest and the gospel exorcises
these aerika. After the priest came the brothers kept her inside as if she was
a lechona — made her stay inside for forty days. No impure woman was
allowed to come in to visit her; during these forty days she was dressed in
black and fasted. It cured her for wanting to go with the nereids.
All these creatures are co-operators-with-the-devil (diavolosynerghies).
The devil has God’s permission to tease and tempt us so that God will see
if we believe in him or not. Only faith will save you from these creatures.
(79) I know a man who heard the nereids dancing in the forest singing,
“The marathos! and the apiganos (rue) and one more herb which — if only
your mother knew it — she would never lose a child.’’ But the nereids never
said what the name of the third herb was.
(80) I have a cousin named Thanasis. One night the nereids came and
knocked on his door asking him to go to the train tracks because his animal
was there with its life in danger. His wife understood the callers were evil
spirits so she grasped her husband’s shoulders and didn’t want to let him
go. But the nereids pulled him away, pulled him fiercely towards the train
tracks, his wife running after him. When they approached the tracks she
lost him from view.
Ten days later he came back to the village staggering and in miserable
shape. His wife boiled water and put it around him in different pots while
1 Foeniculum Vulgare, fennel, called marathos, or marathon in ancient Greek is spelled
marathron by Dioscorides (III.81). He ascribes to it a “force to draw down the milk”; as
good for nephritis, a diuretic. When drunk with wine it is “fitting for ye serpent-bitten” and
“it expells ye menstrua”. The tall wild fennel, hippomarathron (prangos ferulacea), has
similar virtue with regard to menstruation; in addition, says Dioscorides (III.82) “it
brings out milk and cleanseth ye women after childbirth”’.
116 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

he sat shivering in a chair. Then the family took him to a magician who
made a “chaimali’’! for him which he put around his neck. During the
days when he had been with the nereids he was made to eat dirt,? had been
badly mistreated, but was finally released.
(81) One night I was walking with a friend of mine going towards Doxario.
Near the well we heard the barking of dogs and immediately a girl’s scream
rent the air. We were so afraid that we ran as fast as we could, never once
turning backwards to see what it was. We didn’t utter a word until we
reached our homes for fear we might lose our language (svc).
We had flashlights with us and that’s the reason the nereids were not
revealed to us but only their voices were heard. I was so scared that now I
never dare go out of the house after midnight, not even to urinate. The
nereids are outside, especially near the spring. Of course a prayer protects
you at such moments to some extent.

(82) While I was waiting to see the doctor in the public clinic in Athens
a woman there told me she had been sleeping under a half-closed window
and, after midnight, she heard musical instruments playing and saw the
nereids dancing. The following day, while she was sitting by the window
doing some sewing, the nereids suddenly rushed through the window, took
her in their arms, and threw her out of the window. She broke her arm when
she fell and that was the reason she was waiting there in the hospital when
I met her.
The following accounts all centre about the same incident and are
therefore included together even though there is some disagreement as to
the kind of exotika involved. While we ordinarily do not present minor
variants of the same story, the following accounts are most instructive for
they make clear how the same incident is differently reported among the
neighbours and family members.

(83) Solon Spanos who lives here was hurt by the nereids when he was
twelve. He was out at the well which is near the porch of his house one
night when he was struck by them. Ever since that night his brain hasn’t
worked so well.
(84) Solon Spanos was hit by the nereids and for a while after that he was
stupid. He couldn’t talk either, for they took his voice. His family spent a
lot of money to cure him but it wasn’t until he went to a good and powerful
magician that he regained his voice and wit.

(85) Solon Spanos is an example of how people who are afraid are more
likely to see the exotika, Stringlos, and so forth. One night Solon saw a black
cat sitting on the well and as a result he lost his voice and his family had to
spend a lot of money to cure him. It was the Bad Hour which he had seen
and which took his voice away.
Here is what Solon, his wife, and his mother have to say:
1 Amulet.
2 Pollution, presumably excrement.
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS iby
(86) Solon Spanos (age 38): When I was eighteen I used to take fruit and
other produce to Spathi; in order to be there before the other greengrocers
I would leave Dhadhi at about 3 a.m. One night when I reached a cross-
roads, I saw a shadow. It was the Bad Hour — apparently devils were at
their dinner table; usually it is at the crossroads where they eat. Unfor-
tunately at that moment I had to talk to the horse which was drawing
our cart because the horse was frightened; as soon as I did the devils took
my voice. They can take any one of your senses if you happen upon them
when they are at their dinner table.
I felt lost and for two months I was numb, couldn’t talk, and was nearly
unconscious. Finally an uncle of mine took me to a magician who mumbled
a few words, came to understand what the situation was, and told us what
to do. The magician was in Athens and with words and his ‘‘kombolio””!
could dissolve the demons. What he had us do was to go to that crossroads
where it had happened. With a black-handled knife we tore a white shirt
and took the shirt to three springs from which we took “‘silent water’? —
_ while you take the water you are not supposed to utter a word and even
if people talk to you, you ignore them. The magician had given us little
pieces of paper that had gunpowder in them; each morning we had to burn
one of these papers in the house. We did these things each day for ten days
in order to exorcise the devils to make them leave the house. When the ten
days were over I was cured.
His wife: One should believe in God and say the Credo or the Our
Father when such a bad thing happens and God protects you. What we
can’t understand is why such a bad thing happened to Solon; maybe greed
is the cause since the only reason for his starting out so early was to be in
Spathi before the rest of the greengrocers and earn more money than they.
Maybe greed brought the demons.
Solon: Much greed spoils the stomach.
Observer’s notes: Solon is a bright, charming, good-humoured fellow who
is quiet in the presence of his bigger, more talkative, and domineering wife.
Around his mother he behaves with docility and respectfulness, although
suggestions of temper are seen when he flushes or begins to move and speak
in an agitated manner. He and his wife live next door to his mother.
Solon’s mother (a woman well versed in healing and magic who has
herself had experience with the saints and the exotika): My children were
so good when they were young but as they grew older they grew wilder and
disobedient. Believe me, I did what I could to keep them in line and tell
them a thing or two, but would you believe it, for a while Solon had the
gall to curse me, his own mother, when I would tell him what to do. And
now, well he’s influenced by his wife, that’s all. That’s why he swears at
me and acts foolishly. Oh, his wife is dreadful, I could tell you all kinds of
things about her, like the time she stole some money from me (etc.) . . .
When you marry off your children never be neighbours except at a far
distance!
Observer’s note: During an estimated 20 to 30 hours with Solon’s
mother she never once made reference to Solon’s muteness in his young
manhood (prior to marriage) nor the attribution of this to the nereids or
1A rosary.
118 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

devils. She avoids discussion of this event and one senses it is a sore spot
with her.
(87) My husband has had some experience with the effects of the nereids.
We were in Doxario at the time and one night he went out to urinate. He’d
heard the neighbour’s horse annoying ours so he’d gotten up to see. Well
when he was up he didn’t see the horses but decided to go out and urinate.
It took him a very long time. I thought something must have happened to
him so I went out to see.
I saw him standing, staring towards that old spring that was near by.
He stared and stared and then suddenly fell down, just as if he were dead.
I carried him in and put him to bed and for some time he was sick. He didn’t
remember a thing when he opened his eyes, but I’m sure he was staring
at something and that something were the nereids. Something still remains
of this shock, for when he sees blood or someone in pain he faints.
(88) I myself have seen the nereids. I was working for the great landowner
at the time and late one night, about 11 p.m., I was leaving his house. I
had a bucket of water on my head. As I went past the pond in front of his
house some creatures started throwing stones at me. I turned around
and saw a very beautiful girl all dressed in white sitting at the pond. She
had a mandolin and was playing a most touching melody.
Someone else from Dhadhi about the same period saw a whole group of
these people, the nereids, going towards the beach. They started from that
pond and were all playing instruments of one sort of another and dancing.
(89) Mantheos the magician is good against the demons. He gathers them
and forces them to tell him what they have done and how to cure the
affected person. We took one of our nieces to him when she was badly hurt
by the nereids. But the nereids that hurt her were Turkish so unfortunately
Mantheos was unable to cure her.
(90) I’ve met the nereids. When I was a soldier I was walking home and
I stopped near a river to eat some bread and drink some water. When I
tried to drink the nereids started throwing pebbles in the water to try to
frighten me. I saw the point and gave up trying to drink there.

(91) All these stories about the nereids and the Stringlos and the things
that go in the night — these are all lies. They must be lies since I have
walked many times in the woods and in the darkness without ever encounter-
ing anything, without ever seeing a vrikolax, Some people say they have
felt someone walking behind them but I cannot be sure of that since it
never happened to me. These stories, including the ones about the kalli-
kantzari, were often heard in the old days when people were afraid to go
out after the sunset.

Lamias
In antiquity the lamias were fearful female monsters, stupid, gluttonous
and unclean, who preyed upon children. Nowadays in the Doxario region
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 119
their traits as well as their fearfulness seem lost and only the name remains, a
name which is confused with the other classes of exotika.

(92) In the past things such as lamias existed. They used to go and sit
with the shepherds, but I don’t know any stories about them. All I know
now is that “‘lamia’’ is a swear word.

(93) Lamias are worms that you get in the intestines. Seeds of the big
decorative squashes are good for them; you eat these and the worms fall.
For the little worms of children one gives garlic water.

(94) Once when I was drunk and coming home late I saw something like
an animal, but an unknown kind, moving in front of me and laughing after
me. After a while it disappeared. You don’t see things like that so much
any more; the lamias have disappeared because we are lamias ourselves.
Besides there are so many people these days that there’s no room for the
lamias to walk through.

(95) Long ago there used to be lamias on the roads but not now. Women
from Panorio have seen them, I know. Ask Mrs. Valmas, she has, but she
might not admit it if you ask her.

Kallikantzari
(96) One New Year’s Day a shepherd was preparing roast lamb on the
spit. The kalkes (kallikantzari) came, sat around him and they said,
“Cooked or uncooked, give it to us to eat.”’
“Tt’s not ready yet,’’ replied the shepherd, ‘‘you’ll have to wait; besides
the wine is not yet here.”
“What is your name, shepherd?’ demanded the kalkes.
He, being clever, answered, “‘My name is, I myself.’
The kalkes moved closer towards the shepherd and his fire. As they did
so the shepherd saw his opportunity and suddenly threw hot coals on them
which burned them. The kalkes ran away howling and screaming, they
were running to get their friends to ask them to return to punish the shep-
herd. When the kalkes arrived they told them how they had been sitting
around the fire when hot coals were thrown on them.
“Who did it?’’ asked the other kalkes.
The burned ones all answered with the name of the shepherd, “‘I myself,”’
they cried out together.
“Foolish you,” said their friends to this, “you deserve what you do to
yourselves.”
And so the shepherd went unharmed.

(97) A man was coming back from the mill one night. He was sitting on
his donkey with two big sacks of flour on either side of him and with his
coat up over his head to hide himself. The kalkes saw him and they won-
dered what it was. They could only see the coat and sacks, so they asked,
‘Where is the man himself?”’
120 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

The man replied from beneath his hat, “The man was left at the prcchl Bis
So the kalkes scampered off to the mill to find the man. But he was not
there of course, so they returned to the walking donkey to repeat their
question while the man, still carefully hidden, kept repeating the same
reply. In this way he kept the kalkes scurrying back and forth between the
mill and the donkey without ever finding him until he arrived at his house
unharmed. Once inside his house the kalkes saw him and how angry they
were!
“Lucky for you, you made it home,’’ they cried, “because if we’d found
you we would have eaten you!”

(98) The kalkes are wild hairy men with a tail; they look like cats or
monkeys. I’m sorry we gave our daughter’s school books away because
there was a picture in one of them of what must have been the kalkes. In
the same book were pictures of creatures from other parts of the world, for
example the lions and leopards that they have in Africa.

(99) I heard about a girl — she is a middle-aged woman now who lived in
Doxario — who went one day to the mill outside Doxario. As she was riding
there she saw on her way a small ugly child who jumped on her lap. As
they kept riding together she noticed that the child’s size kept growing and
growing. By this sign she came to realize it was a kallikantzaros; so she
threw it off her donkey and began saying to herself the Apostles Creed.
As she said it the kallikantzaros disappeared.

(100) On Christmas day everybody went to church with the exception of

one woman who stayed home to cook. As she was frying liver she saw a
small disfigured child spring up in front of her. It began to grow in size and
to jump around her. It was a kallikantzaros who asked the woman what her
name might be. She was clever enough to say, “‘I, myself.”
He continued to tease her; when her chance came the woman turned
the pan upside down and threw it and the burning oil on the kallikantzaros.
He screamed with pain and rushed outside to where the other kallikantzari
were waiting for him.
“Who burned you?”’ they all asked.
“IT, myself,’ screamed the burned one.
The others began to tease him and to tell him he deserved his pains for
having been so stupid as to burn himself.
That is how the woman was saved.

(101) My grandmother used to say that during the Christmas days you
have to keep the fire going because if the kallikantzari find it cool they will
urinate on it and then you cannot light a fire there afterwards.

(102) Herein Panorio we call the kallikantzari “‘kalkes’’. I don’t know much
about them except that they appear around Christmas. People don’t let
their fire go out during that period but I’m not sure why. After Christmas
when the kalkes go away the people scatter cinders around the fences, maybe
to shoo them away.
 POWERS AND DOMINIONS 121
Interviewer’s note: The young people of the family were the ones to insist
that magic exists, that sorcery works and that the various exotika, Stringlos,
the vrikolakes and the kallikantzari were genuine. The old man was much
more sceptical, combining disbelief, suspicion and belief as well, in a fashion
typified by the following comment:
“Oh, all this talk about the exotika and sorcery. I tell you that magic
does not exist as long as the human body and the mind function properly.
Take the kallikantzari for example, what they are in reality are tricky and
sly men who want to take away other people’s food and property. So you
know what they do? They throw lighted sticks next to houses and begin to
scream loudly. This makes the people frightened; they run away leaving
their house for the kallikantzari.”’

(103) The kallikantzari, kalkes we call them, are scoundrels that’s what
they are! Around Christmas time when the houses are filled with food and
bread they take the opportunity to come in and steal. They’re close relatives
to the “‘kolovelonides” ; that’s another bunch of scoundrels for you; I don’t
know what either bunch of them look like, but I know they’re people just
like us.
The kalkes come around Christmas time, at least that’s what the people
talk about when they sit around the fireplace during that period, and they
annoy people. They go to where the bread is made and take things. We
have to keep a fire in the fireplace, otherwise they will be found in the
ashes where they also make annoyance.? Anyway on the sixth of January
we throw the ashes away, scattering them, to get rid of the kalkes. As I say,
they are people like us, except that they are wild, naked, and have hair
all over their bodies.

(104) On New Year’s Eve a shepherd was walking to the sheep pen rather
late one night. He was late because his mother hadn’t baked the sweet
cakes in time which he was carrying along with him. The kallikantzari
met him; they were hairy naked men. They kept asking the shepherd
different questions and teasing him. The shepherd knew that if he spoke to
to
them he would be lost. He knew too that if he had had some gunpowder
explode they would disappear but the poor man didn’t have any. I might
eye
add this is the reason that you put gunpowder, incense, bread, an
items keep the exotika away from
bead? and rue inside amulets, for these
a pot of
you and will also keep off the kallikantzari. Similarly if you have
front door of your house it will keep the house from the exotika.
rue by the
word but they kept on
Anyway the shepherd did his best not to utter a
at them he swore, “‘Go to the
teasing him and finally he got so irritated
devil.”
on him
That was all the kalkes needed — that was his end. They jumped
and killed him.
applied to teddy-boys of the nine-
1 Kolovelonides, according to an Athenian, was a word
which they used ‘“‘to needle”
teenth century who were known for carrying long needles
“velona’’, needle.
women wearing bustles; from “kolos”, bottoms, and
2 Reference is probably to the urinating.
3 A blue stone against the evil eye.
122 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(105) I never went to school because in those days, when I was a girl, our
mothers told us that if we went out of the house — especially at night — the
kalkes would piss on us, piss on our heads. Panorio didn’t have a school
then; the children had to go to Spathi; by the time you got home it was
night. So we never went to school and we never went out after dark.

(106) The kalkes are second rate people. They are exactly like we are for
there are both males and females and they look like us but they are very
hairy. They try to harm people. In the past they used to go to where the
shepherds were and would sit around the fire to get warm. Then they would
scatter the coals and burn the shepherds. Many shepherds came back
burned from the mountains and would tell how the kalkes had burned
them.

(107) One day two neighbours decided to get up early in the morning to
bake bread. The next morning the one heard the other calling her; so she
went outside and they baked the bread. When they were through she put all
the bread on the board that we use in the villages for carrying bread and
she started from the oven to her house. But that other woman wasn’t really
her neighbour. It was one of the kalkes. That kalki called all the others and
they all took the woman away. They danced around her and obliged her
to dance with the bread board on her head. That went on till early
morning.
Then one of the kalkes asked, ‘“‘Has the white cock crowed?”
“Yes,” answered the rest and they all continued to dance.
““Has the red cock crowed?” asked another.
“Yes,” they replied and went on dancing.
Then the black cock was heard to crow and all of the kalkes disappeared.
That is because they don’t like the black cock for it exorcises them.

(108) The kalkes appear during the forty days before Christmas; they
bother people until the sixth of January. At Christmas we bring the priest
to clean and bless the house with holy water because the kalkes have
urinated on the walls.

Angels
There is only one narrative about the angels. We take the absence of
references as indicative of their unimportance in the spiritual world of the
peasants and shepherds.

(109) A man can become a vrikolax if his corpse is not guarded by his
relatives. Another reason to become a vrikolax is that he had been very
sinful or he had not really died. The old folks used to say that the man who
died out on the road, or who is killed there, will be guarded by the angels.
If a man happens to pass by an unguarded corpse he should stay with the
dead until it is buried because if one man ever leaves the corpse no one else
will guard it, not even the angels.
 VIll
THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL
IN NATURE
HIS chapter presents accounts of strange animals, plants, trees and
other objects in or aspects of the natural world which impinge in
supernatural ways on the affairs of men. Many of the narratives in earlier
chapters have anticipated the materials found here: the power of the moon
to harm the newborn, the power of beads or herbs to ward off danger, the
danger to be found at springs, wells, or streams where the nereids gather,
the sensititivy of dogs to impending death, the animal forms which Stringlos
and the Dangerous Hour assume, the corpse which becomes a vrikolax
when an animal jumps over it, and the curse and danger of the fig tree.
In rural Greece that which is nature’s and non-human is intimately
intertwined in life and in thought with that which is human. Preternatural
themes, while limited in number, know many variations and interpenetra-
tions and these encompass the arena of man’s concern: the waters, the
animals, the stars and the plants. For these reasons there has been no way to
delay the presentation of the strange in nature until this chapter. As a result,
some of the following material will not be novel to the reader.

Animals
Some of the exotika may take animal shapes; other exotika are committed
to an animal form. Ordinary animals may have special powers or capacities
which, in their link with humans, are preternatural; while still other,
supposedly ordinary animals, may have links with the spiritual world,
saints or exotika, which are in themselves marvellous.

Birds and Fowl

We have met a number of stories (Chapter VII, No. 69, No. 75, No. 107)
in which the rooster figures as a link with the spiritual world. Ghostly
shades or revenants, nereids, and kallikantzari all disappear with the cock’s
crow, especially the black cock; for the rooster separates the day which
“God made for man” from the night, which belongs to the spirits and
which is for some the Bad Hour itself.

(1) It is said that a man in Spathi, who tried to kill the exotika which sat
on his neck taking the appearance of a bird, was himself killed. The people
who witnessed him pointing his gun towards the bird saw him covered by a
wave of dust. When it cleared he was found to be dead.

(2) There was an old man who lived here in Dhadhi who was afraid to go
by the graveyard on the edge of the village. That was because each time
124 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

he went by there, a mother hen and her chickens pecked his donkey. The
donkey became frightened too for these were exotika.

(3) My best man told me that once he was passing by the cemetery of St.
Athanasios. It was dark and in front of him he saw a hen with some small
chickens. There was no reason for the hen to be there then so he prayed and
the hen with the chickens disappeared.

(4) There is an ointment which is very good for healing. It is made using
olive oil and the down of a wild bird which one finds in the swamp.

(5) If you hear a chicken or a hen crowing like a rooster someone is going
to die.

Dogs
In Chapter VII an account of the Moros was presented (No. 21) in
considering the unique (named) supernatural spirits. The Moros was a
little black dog which caused discomfort to sleepers. In Chapter VII, No. 4,
dogs were said to cry when something bad was to happen, most likely the
death of the dog or its master, and to be sensitive to the presence of
Stringlos.

(6) I remember one night I was returning from Spathi. I had been hunting
that day. In a place on the way to Panorio I saw a big white dog moving
in front of me and then in a few seconds I saw it at a distance. I shot him
and killed him. When I went to the place he’d fallen there was nothing
there. Then I became scared and began to think it had been an exotika
and not a dog at all. Two months later I was again in Spathi. I came home
rather late because I’d been drinking with some friends. As I approached
the same spot I saw on the wall a big yellow splash. As I came nearer, it
made a funny cry and the dogs barked at it from far off. They were afraid
of getting near to it. I passed by there and swore never to go near that
spot again since it was evident that the exotika were to be seen there. But
some time later I found myself there anyway. On this occasion I saw a big
hare which I considered shooting. As I walked it disappeared; then a fox
trotted by me and in a moment two horses appeared and then a big dog. I
lost my speech. I came home and it took me several days to recover. That
was the last time I ever went near the spot.

(7) My father did not believe in spirits or in ghosts. He had no fear of them.
He feared only bad men and mad dogs. But once he saw the Rizos, which
is a ghost dog. Oh it is very big and has big claws and it goes around in the
darkness. The Rizos jumped over my father but fortunately it did him no
harm.

(8) The dogs know it a year before a person dies. The dogs also know
whether the Stringlos is around and they know whether the sheep will be
sold or not.
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 125
(9) When you have a pain in the arm or neck it becomes hard like a stone.
In order to exorcise the pain you should put dry white dog faeces on it along
with honey and mint. But you have to do that before the pain makes roots ;
after it does that it is hard to get rid of.

Jackals
(10) There was an old lady in Spathi who was a midwife; her ability to
counteract the evil eye was great. She could even bind the jackals so they
couldn’t get near the sheep, but she is dead now.

Bears
There have been two references to bears: one (Chapter VII, No. 33) in
which an exotika took the form of a bear; the other (III, No. 37) in which
bears (and gipsies) were denied entrance to Panorio because they would
destroy the protective magic of the ploughed magic circle.

Snakes
In Chapter V, No. 48 there was the Orthodox account, related by the
priest, of the resurrection as triumph over death; specifically, the Church
had bit the snake of death. As we shall see in the following accounts the
snake is associated with death, but also with preternatural powers for
bringing healing and good fortune, and for warding off evil.
It is also well to recall the Stringlos story (Chapter II, No. g) in which the
spirit Stringlos took the form of a baby which then proved to be a monster
with the body of a snake and the head of a baby.
The power of the snake to “‘neutralize” a magician is seen in Chapter III,
No. 35, where a snakeskin present in the room prevents a medium from
communicating with the spirits.

that’s
(11) When you see a snake in the morning it is good luck, at least
my wife disagrees . Both of us know though that if
what I think, although
a snake at sundown it is bad luck. It is really bad to see a snake at
you see
in
sundown or afterwards and not to be able to kill it because then someone
r I go to take the cows in the evening
the family is bound to die. Wheneve
or my shoes or
I’m careful not to look around; I keep my eyes on the cow
I were to see one
something just to make sure that I won’t see a snake, for if
kill it. For the same reason I
then the chances are I wouldn’t be able to
be tempted to look around and try to
don’t take a stick with me so I won’t to
see one, for as I said, ’m afraid I’d not be able
kill a snake were I to
kill it.
for it.
Vipers are especially bad if they bite you because there’s no cure
to have in the house, the “thendr ogalia” ’,*
But there are snakes that are good
When one of them lives in the house it guides
because they are our guides.
the people to have a good household.
1 Adder.
126 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(12) In the past people here considered certain kinds of snakes as good.
These were the guides; those they did not kill. Once, they say, there was a
man who had such a snake in his house. The snake sat all of the time on the
top of the barrel where he had the olive oil. Each time he went to the cellar
to get some oil the snake got off the top of the barrel; when he had taken
the oil it was right back there again; it did this by itself. You are not sup-
posed to kill these snakes. Someone did once and he became very sick.

(13) Most of the people around here think the house snake is good luck.
We put milk out to lure the snake and to keep him fed. As long as he lives
in your house you are likely to have better fortune.

(14) There are snakes that are called “‘tyflites”! that are blind. They see
only once a year on the holy Saturday before Easter. God cursed them to
be blind because they harmed people by smelling their footprints. A man
whose footprints this snake smelled would die.

(15) The doctor who was treating my grandchild the other day, told my
daughter a story which she told to me. I have kept it for you in my memory
since I knew you’d be interested in it. When that doctor was a student in
Sweden he heard from some fellow students about a tuberculosis patient
they had. The man had spent all he had trying to get cured but without
success. So he decided to “‘take his eyes” and go away from his village and
the doctors there in order to let his “‘fate’’ decide whether he would live or
not. He walked for days and nights until he reached a forest up in the
mountains; once in the forest he continued to walk for a long time. Finally
one day, being very tired, he stopped to sit on a white stone. While seated,
he noticed that the stone was hollow and that in the hollow there was some
white stuff much like milk.
‘Why not drink it?’’ he said to himself, and so he drank it after first
doing the sign of the cross. As he was drinking it he saw a snake coming, a
very big snake; he realized that the snake had vomited this stuff, for the
stuff could not have come from the sky; anyway it is true that snakes vomit
things and then come back to eat them again. That was just what this snake
was doing, it was looking for the white stuff.
Well the man felt uncomfortable inside himself at first, but in a minute
or so after drinking he felt a great power within him. He left the stone and
went to a near-by village where he asked for some bread and water. The
people were very hospitable; they wanted to give him all kinds of nice
things but all he wanted was bread and water which he ate; then he left
for another village. In the next village he again asked for bread and water,
nothing else; then left for another village, and in this way he found himself
back in his own village. Once back, nobody recognized him, so strong and
healthy he was! The doctors examined him; even they found him absolutely
healthy. Maybe it was that snake stuff which did it.

(16) There was a tuberculosis patient in Turkey. He had the best doctor
in Turkey as his friend; that friend told him there was no medicine which
1A blind worm.
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 127
would cure him, except for one that he could not find. So the doctor sug-
gested that he go to the mountains to live there until he died. The man went
to the mountains and while there he saw a red cow. Then he saw a snake
come and milk the cow and drink the milk, but because he had drunk too
much milk the snake vomited it up into a stone. The watching patient,
nearly dead by now, decided to drink that vomited poison. When he did so
he became stronger and returned to the city where he had lived to see his
doctor friend. The doctor examined him and said there was nothing the
matter with him. Then he asked, ‘““Where did you find the red cow and the
snake that vomited the milk?”
When the doctor asked that, his friend knew that he was a good doctor,
since he understood what had cured him.

(17) In the old days the priests had power because they and the people
believed in religion. One time a priest in Crete saw a snake coming out of
the ceiling; he anathematized it and the snake died then and there. It
hung dead from the ceiling, which shows the priest’s power.

(18) It’s not safe to sit among the old stones of the Acropolis in Athens.
You know those stones near the gate (Propylaea) at the top, for among those
stones there lives a giant snake; oh, he must be fifteen or twenty feet long,
and he’s lived there for centuries. The guards never let anyone in that area
because of the danger.
(19) If you have a snake on you, or the snake-skin with the eyes, anyone
who tries to hypnotize you will lose his electricity and his magnetism. In
the same way the snake-skin safeguards against the evil eye for it stops the
electricity which is the power of the eye.

(20) My husband always carries a snake-skin with him. It is the skin of the
“Jafitis”.1 My husband used to say, and there is no reason not to believe
him, that once he went into a motion picture house and sat down to watch
the show. But they weren’t able to get the projection machines to run the
film; so the operator who realized what was wrong, announced to the
audience that he wished the person who was carrying the snake-skin would
leave the theatre. The power of the skin was so great that it interfered with
the machines. When my husband left, the film could be shown.

(21) When I used to live in Asia Minor there was once a rain storm, oh
it was really a storm, and during it a snake eighteen feet long fell from the
clouds. What had happened was that the clouds had gathered the snake
from some deserted area and then dropped it near our village. Everybody
saw what happened and they called the police to take it away.
1 In the Doxario region a long snake, said to resemble a viper, is called lafitis. The etymology
in
of the name is unclear. It may be derived from elafis (the vowel e is commonly left out
modern Greek), the longest European snake — about 1-60 m to 2 m. The “‘elafis of Asclepius”
be
was kept by the ancient Romans in their temples. The “‘tetragrammati elafis” can still
seen in Attika. It is a useful devourer of mice and rats. (cf. 183) vol. 6, p. 566. In ancient
to
Greek the root AA®, to which the verb (Aa¢voow) is related, means to swallow greedily,
animals (cf. Liddell and Scott (151)). The name of the snake may
devour; it is said of
signify “devourer” or “glutton”.
z*
128 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

The Liokra+
(22) The liokra is a snake with horns. Every so often the snake gets rid
of those horns and new ones come out. Whoever finds the old horns is very
lucky because they have curative power. When you find them you first
plate them with silver and then take them to the sea to let forty waves
wash over them. Then you give the liokra to the priest who must bless them
during forty liturgies for forty days. When that is done the owner comes
to take them away from the church. But it is very important that the owner
be very clean (not polluted) when he takes the horns home; otherwise, the
power is destroyed. One keeps the horns with the ikons at home; then, when
someone is bitten by a centipede, or stung by a wasp, or has blisters from
the barley dust, one puts the silvered liokra in water. And the water must
be very clean; holy water is best. One puts the liokra in and out three times;
each time one does it one sees the water bubble like (carbonated) lemonade.
The water is put on the blisters or affected parts.
I don’t have a liokra. I know a woman in Spathi who has it and I go
there every so often to get some liokra water which I keep at home. Once I
almost was able to get a liokra for myself. There was a woman who liked
wine too much, in fact she was an alcoholic and she sold everything she
had for wine. But the only thing she wouldn’t sell was the liokra she had
hanging around her neck. I tried to persuade her to sell it to me, but in
vain. That woman knew she could save people with it and she wanted to
be able to continue doing that, but she wouldn’t save or help the people
that ridiculed her for her drinking.

(23) My mother was given the horns of a liokra by her mother, wrapped
in silver string. She kept these within a cross made of special stones (‘‘rosdos-
fontils”) and when anyone was bitten by the snake (viper) she treated the
person with the liokra. The person had to sleep out under the stars that
night; in the following morning his hands and face had to be washed with
the water of the liokra. Over the years people have broken pieces off the
horns so that the ones we keep today are much smaller than the originals.
We also use them to treat people who have been bitten by ticks or when
someone’s body has become swollen.

(24) The liokra is a little cross made out of horns, or it can be made from
the bones of saints. In the latter case these are bones brought from Christ’s
tomb. You put it in water and it bubbles; then you put it on a blister or on
bites and it will cure you.
1 In Southern Europe there exists a horned viper, the vipera ammodytes which has one horn
at the tip of its snout. It is almost extinct, but the variety ammodytes meridionalis can still
be found in small numbers in Greece. During classical times, two types of snakes with horns
over each eye were probably known to the much travelled Greek historians and sailors; the
vipera cerastes cerastes and the vipera cerastes cornuta, both natives of the Sahara, extend-
ing to Palestine and Arabia. (Personal communication from Dr. Robert Stebbins, Univ. of
California). It is possible that the villagers’ tales of a “horned snake” represent actual
experiences with the ammodytes, or perhaps hearken back to some folkmemory which has
survived since antiquity. For instance, Schmidt and Inger (240, p. 263) suggest that the
Palestinian vipera pseudocerastes fieldi may be the horned snake mentioned in the Genesis
[see also, Ditmars (67), and Mertens (170).]
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 129
(25) Very few people have the liokra.1 Many come to borrow this one I
have to take home when they are sick. It has been made holier than usual
by having it undergo forty liturgies over forty days; it is as holy as the horned
snake. We use it to cure skin itching and irritations. You see how it is in
the shape of a cross? Now watch when I put it in water — see how it bubbles?
Those bubbles prove the healing power is within. As a priest I believe that
the power is the power of the cross, or maybe the power of belief in the cross.
I’m not sure. Anyway my wife’s sister was left this one by her mother when
she died aged 105. It is made of bone.

Animal Objects and Substances

The armamentarium of the villager is especially rich in compounds or
devices which utilize animal substances or parts for remedies. While a few
of them are fairly easily categorized as primarily magical, most are employed
in such a way as to suggest the healers think of them as having direct
medical value, that they are part of the natural materia medica of empirical
folk medicine in the same fashion that herbs may be.
In the previous chapters we have seen references to animal substances
used in healing. For example in Chapter V, No. 29, an old man with seven
diseases was placed in a lamb’s skin or fleece and cured. In Chapter VI,
No. 24, an account told how the heads of golden magpies were pulverized
and the dust ingested in order to heal spasms occurring in the sleep.
Light-shadowed children are polluted with donkey’s milk and tortoise
blood (Chapter IV, No. 30 and No. 31). In Chapter HI, No. 44, the
intestines of herring were used to cure diabetes; in this chapter, No. 4, the
down of a wild swamp bird was said to be used in healing ointments, and
in No. 9, we saw dog faeces as a cure for muscular pain.
Animal substances or objects used in healing which appeared in other
narratives but which are not directly reproduced in this Volume and not
referred to in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), include: porcupine
bile, porcupine bladder, polluted water from hens’ drinking bowls, thread
made from goat’s wool, red-dyed thread or string made from lamb’s wool,
cheese and milk, pig’s hair, and mice.
Because of its historical interest, the mouse having been sacred to Apollo,
the healer as well as the giver of disease, we cite an account of the use of
mouse.

(26) I’m a healer, a practika. Some of the things I do I have learned from
others but some I have found out for myself through trial and error. There
is a special treatment that I do for cuts and for ear pain. It is mouse
blind,
oil. What I do is to take baby mice caught when still hairless and
leave them in that oil for at least one
put them in a bottle of olive oil and
it stays there in the sun the better. If you use
year in the sun. The longer
you stir it, for ears you do not. It is called “‘balsam o” and it
it for cuts
stinks.
to any object which
1[t was our impression that the Arvanitiki word “liokra” referred
submerg ed in water. The liokra the priest showed us was porous and bubbled
bubbled when
quite nicely. He is not himself of Arvanite extractio n.
130 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Once the lord? cut himself when I was near by, so I put oil of mouse, the
balsamo, on his wound; that stopped the bleeding when nothing else had
been able to do so before. Now, whenever his workers find newborn mice
the lord doesn’t allow his men to throw them away but he sends them to me
instead; at least he did that once.
The balsamo is also good for dogbites. People who don’t have the balsamo
use some hair of the dog that bit them as a brush to put boiling oil on the
wound, but that is dangerous. One time when a man was bitten the people
around him did this; the man fainted and. was very sick. I found him,
cleaned his wound with alcohol, and then put the balsamo on it. That
cured him. Later the bitten man wanted to sue the person who had put the
boiling oil on him with the dog’s hair brush, so he went to the doctor for a
report. The doctor examined the wound; he wondered what the stuff was
that had cured the wound so fast and so successfully. I was very proud of
that!

Animal objects or substances are less often reported to be used in sorcery

and to effect binding curses than in healing. In the accounts gathered from
villagers we found only one reference to animal ‘‘magia”’. It has been pre-
sented in Chapter III, quoting Mantheos the magician in his talk with a
Panorio elder: Water in which a cat and a black dog have been washed
together will cause suffering to any family into whose house it is thrown.
Presumably the water is infected with the natural enmity of the two unlikely
bath companions and in turn transmits that enmity to the family who are
exposed to the water.

Human Substances with Magical Uses

At this point it is convenient to review the human objects or substances
which are employed magically, either in healing or in working sorcery. From
the accounts in earlier chapters we have already had an opportunity to learn
of the emphasis on “‘magia’’, the signs or tokens which if taken from a
person may be treated as though they were that person, the person himself
suffering whatever consequences must ensue, dependent upon what is done
to the materials that once were his. Human materials are more often em-
ployed (using frequency of narratives and frequency of mention as the
measure), for harmful magic than for curative work. Finger nail clippings
(see Chapter ITT) and hair are favourite tokens, for this reason the villagers
in Dhadhi and Panorio burn these substances rather than taking the chance
they might fall into enemy hands. Sweat is such a token: it is procured by
using cuff, collar or handkerchief, a procedure which automatically provides
the sorcerer with the clothing of the victim which in itself may be sufficient
stuff for the practice of black magic.
Clothing seems to be the favourite token which the exotika employ to
gain and maintain power over humans, as was evident in Chapter VII,
No. 50 in the story of the poor shepherd driven mad by the demons who had
kidnapped him and kept his hat. Clothing is also used by humans to main-
tain control over the exotika, told in repeated stories of the husband who
1 Owner of the largest estate in the area.
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 131
soa ae a nereid and keeps her captive as long as he possesses her scarf or
ress.
Bones of the dead are also used in sorcery (Chapter III); for instance,
the bones of a grandfather were taken from the grave and used against his
family. However the use of bones is not always destructive; the healing
liokra can be made of saints’ bones, said one villager. The bones of fore-
fathers or of saints are revered and carried with the people on migrations
to be deposited in the new earth where settlements are established; pre-
sumably this act not only establishes a tie with the new earth and maintains
bonds with the departed, but also serves to keep the dead in a continuing
relationship with the living. An illustration is seen in Chapter IV, No. 26,
in the story of the local St. John whose bones have been kept with the Asia
Minor folk during their migrations, and in the presence on an ancient site
of a near-by chapel of the glass-encased bones of a local St. Paraskevi
(Chapter VI, No. 50), probably bones unearthed near by, which are the
object of reverential awe.
Blood is a substance with considerable emotional significance and pre-
ternatural potential. In Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), we introduced
the concept of “‘the bloods being related”. This implies a kinship of blood
which needs not be familial, but which exists in such a way that a disease
striking one will be likely to affect another person if their bloods are related.
In Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) there were narratives describing
how the “hard blood” throws off ‘“‘the bad” through beneficial pimples
and boils. In Temperate Achilles (32) the magical relatedness, or homogeneity,
of kinsmen’s blood was seen to extend to wine. A folk song describes how
wine in the father’s glass turned murky as his son was imprisoned far
away.
The power of blood is such that the dead are thought to be revived
through transfusions (Chapter V). When used in sorcery — in its most
powerful form which is the menstrual blood — it can destroy marriage plans
and cool the love of the swain (Chapter III). Nor can we forget the immense
power of menstrual blood in association with the person of the menstruating
woman, the essence of pollution, as seen in Chapter IV.
A few further illustrations of blood concepts, uses, and powers follow.

(27) During the war when the guerrillas left the dead unburied it was a
terrible thing, for the blood cried out for burial.

(28) The people who are most likely to be bewitched by the evil eye are
ones that have developed a habit of taking the eye. These are ones who,
since they were young, have had their parents do the xemetrima on them
and as a consequence they are used to getting the evil eye. But even for
these people the blood is a very important factor, for there is one variety of
blood which is easily bewitched.

(29) The blood of the lamb and the blood of humans is the same.

(30) Grandmother told us that when we were bewitched we must go to

another healer for the cure because she could not do the xemetrima on her
132 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

family. It is when the blood is common that the xemetrima does not
succeed.

(31) Sometimes the blood isn’t healthy; it can be dirty (polluted). What is
good to do in such a case is to take it out and put new blood in. Some
wealthy Turks used to do that; they lived longer as a result — some lived to
be 186 years old! You see, it is the blood that gives us the power to live.
We all have the same amount of it, seven okas,1 no matter whether we are
fat or thin.

(32) Some blood is clear and some is not. The people who have dirty blood,
blood that is polluted, become sick more easily. Blood is important for the
circulation but sometimes it turns into water and you die. Blood is good for
the whole body; it heats you up in cold weather and gives strength to the
heart — which is why it goes through the heart.
Human secretions and excretions are employed to heal, as well as to pollute
and to weaken the power of others. The latter was vividly illustrated in
Chapter IV where a mound of human faeces polluted a man with the evil
eye, taking away his power. The characteristic “‘dirtying” of home and food
by the vrikolakes presumes that the dead could and do pollute the living;
the concrete manner of this pollution is by faeces and urine. The many
taboos which surround the movement and conduct of the lechona, who
during much of the forty day period is discharging the lochia,” express the
awe in which reproductive powers are held. The lochial discharge is believed
to contain as well as to symbolize these powers. The narratives which demon-
strate ideas about and uses for human secretions and excretions are to be
found in Chapter IV.
In addition to the material presented there, the accounts of villagers
make reference to the use of human urine for the treatment of the evil eye.
In the absence of someone who knows the xemetrima for bewitchment
cures, the recommendation is to “‘smell your armpit’ and “‘count the holes
of your body’’; both actions are presumably related to the efficacy and
power of body odours, emanations, and excretions.

For sorcery, mother’s milk has a special use:

(33) Only people who know about sorcery know how to protect themselves
from bad luck or to attract good luck. For instance there are women who get
the man they want by giving him a drink called “‘manogala”’ which is put
secretly in coffee or in the “spoon sweet’? when the man comes over. Mano-
gala is a mixture of the milk of a mother and her daughter when both are
nursing their own babies at the same time. Even if a man has no interest in
you, you can be sure that when he drinks that he’ll be yours.

Trees, Plants, and Vegetable Substances

The fig tree is widely known in rural Greece as a “heavy shadowed”’ tree
1 One oka is about one litre.
* Our English word is derived from the Greek.
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 133
under which it is dangerous to sleep. It was on a fig tree that the Koukoudi
was hung (Chapter VII). It was a fig tree which tried to kill a Dhadhi
woman by “drying” her (Chapter VI), and under which a villager heard
the devils boiling oil with which to kill him (Chapter VII). In addition two
brief narratives tell us:

(34) Some people say that one shouldn’t sit under the fig tree at noon for
there are exotika there that pass by — of course we don’t believe in them.

(3 5) The shadow of a fig tree is heavy and there are many spirits under it;
this is why you should not sleep there. There are other kinds of trees like
that too but I don’t know about them.

The cypress tree is also of interest. As an account in Chapter IV indicated

it is related to the dead. One informant suggested that it had a light shadow,
desirable for the dead to lie under in the cemetery. That same account
which told of the dangers from the “heavy” fragrance of flowers which
must therefore never stay overnight in a bedroom or hospital sick room for
fear the ill or sleeping persons will be killed by the odour.t
The only other tree mentioned in the narratives we gathered as having
preternatural powers is the olive. It is said to possess healing virtues; an
olive branch or spray is employed in some healing rituals.
A wide variety of botanicals are employed in healing; some of these
have been listed in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35). It is often not pos-
sible to separate the botanicals used with the presumption of empirical
medical value from those which are used in magical or ritual ways — most
drugs with presumed medicinal qualities are applied in some ritual setting.
Nevertheless, there are a few botanicals which are used in such a way as
to rule out any belief in their pharmaceutical worth. Apigano (rue) is one
of these, for it is put in charms against the evil spirits and the Bad Hour
(Chapter IV), against the exotika (Chapter IV), against the kallikantzari
(Chapter VII), against Stringlos (Chapter VII), and against the “Whirl-
wind”,
Olive oil is another vegetable substance which has widespread use both
medicinally (folk empirical) and in ritual magic. It is most widely employed
in connection with the xemetrima for the evil eye:

(36) The woman has a cup of water in front of her. She pours a drop of
olive oil in it. If you are bewitched the oil will dissolve. She will say the
words of the xemetrima and repeat the droppings until one drop does not
dissolve. When that happens the evil eye is taken from you.»
Olive oil may also be employed ‘“‘for the bad”’, as a sorcerer’s tool. For
this purpose the “‘oil of the dead” is the weapon of choice, oil taken from the
1 It is worth noting that Athenian physicians trained abroad express the same concerns as
the villagers. Several contended that the fragrance of flowers left indoors at night in sick
so
rooms would be deadly, arguing that CO, would be generated at night and the air
deprived of oxygen that patients would suffocate.
2 Other descriptions of the xemetrima procedure will be found in Chapter X, and in Health
and Healing in Rural Greece (35), Chapter XIII.
134. THE DANGEROUS HOUR
oil lamps which burn on the graves and which, when scattered in the yard
or house of the victim, produces illness and disaster (Chapter III).
Incense is very widely used for religious and magical rituals. Its use is
rationalized on the basis that “‘devils don’t like incense” (Chapter VII).
It is used in the xemetrima ritual where it is placed on coals, it is a constituent
of the protective amulets, and it is burned in the house thrice daily to
counteract sorcery, to protect the lechona and the baby during the vulner-
able period.

Oleander is also employed:

(37) Herbs are sometimes more useful than medicines. When I was in
Crete I read in the newspapers there was a child that was so ill they couldn’t
keep him in the hospital any longer. His situation was so hopeless they told
the parents to take him home so that he could at least die at home among
the family. Once he was home someone told the family to rub him all over
with oleander leaves: these cured him. Apparently these leaves have some
curative power, but one should not eat them or taste their juice because it is
poison.
Vine branches are used in the xemetrima for very serious ailments, while
wine is used both pharmaceutically and ritually. The residue from grape
pressings is also used.
Among the other plants or plant products, which our accounts imply as
having a magical rather than (or as well as) pharmaceutical potency, are
reeds, palm leaves, bread, wine, honey, garlic and, among the flowers, the
passion flowers or flowers of Christ. There is also the herb (name unknown)?
which is shaped like male genitalia.

Natural Objects, Substances and Phenomena

Under this heading are to be considered the inanimate natural objects
and reactions which intervene or are employed in the lives of men, and which
have preternatural capabilities or uses. Restricting ourselves to information
derived from the narratives reported here, or their unreported variants,
we find three major categories. These are the heavenly bodies, elements and
compounds, and fire.
Among the natural objects only the heavenly bodies are described in
such a way as to imply any spiritual vitality or animating will within. The
moon, the stars, and the sun are mentioned in that order of frequency with
the moon being the object of greatest narrative interest.
We have seen in Chapter II that the moon is ‘held responsible for weak-
ness of the spine; the cure consists of “bewitching the moon’’. It is also
deemed responsible for weight loss and diarrhoea among infants, the cure
consisting of xemetrima at night. The following are additional accounts
about the moon:

The Moon
(38) The lechona is especially vulnerable to the exotika, That is why her
1 Possibly skunk cabbage, which grows in the region.
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 195
house door is closed at sunset and is only opened in the morning. The lech-
ona’s and the baby’s clothes must be taken inside the house before sunset
because if they remain outside the moonlight will hurt the baby: it will suffer
from diarrhoea. Only xemetrima under the moon will cure the child.

(39) The moon must never see the clothes of the child because it might
harm him and the child might get very weak. Doctors don’t know about
these things. You must also burn incense in the house and iron the clothes
of the newborn — that kills microbes.

(40) One thing I do is to take the child’s clothes in before sunset until the
baby is baptized. I don’t believe in these things, or at least I’m not sure
that they’re true, but I do them just in case... People say something special
about the full moon too but I don’t remember what.

(41) For the illness of the spleen, unless you bleed it, there is a very good
medicament. You put the juice of garlic in vinegar and leave it out at night,
when it is cool, for the moon to see. The moon should be new or full; it
shouldn’t be in its “‘hassi’’! that is, when it is beginning to get lost, because
in this way the disease will get lost too. You drink this juice five times; it
brings terrible pains but it cures you completely.

(42) The moon is very important. When the moon gets lost is the time for
medicaments to be prepared, for in this way the disease disappears too.
When the moon is getting filled you plant, you graft, you prune, and you
have your animals get pregnant. Then it is a good time, because as the moon
gets filled so do your animals and plants, and they will grow; otherwise
they do not. It’s funny, but the fact is that women follow the moon too.

(43) In Doxario there is a man, Kostas, who is a healer. He cuts the

jaundice. There is another healer there too but he is very old and people do
not go to him anymore. When Fotis had the jaundice we first took him to
that old man but he was no good. Then we took him to Kostas. With the
help of his daughter he first cut with a needle the membrane that is under
the lip, the one which grows when you have jaundice. A yellow fluid came
out. Then he cut with a blade over the ears, on the forehead and behind the
head, making the sign of the cross. He cut just enough for a little blood to
come out; that did not hurt. The kid was fine the next day. If you go to the
doctors you suffer for three or four months; this way, going to a healer,
you are cured faster. The treatment has to take place a little after dark but
we don’t know whether it has to be with a full moon, a new moon, or what;
anyway it has something to do with the moon.

(44) If you are not careful when the moon changes you can get some
terrible headaches that could melt (dissolve) you.

(45) For the anemopyroma? there is a herb that cures it. You boil the herb
1 Waning.
2 Facial erisypelas.
136 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

and put it on the anemopyroma. When you gather it you should say
“Our father who art in heaven” and it should be at night when the moon
is getting lost, the second part of the moon month.
The same is true for “parmos’’!, a condition in which the animals do
not have milk. You gather the herb for it in the same way. In order to boil
it you make a fire out of nine different kinds of woods, but none of these
should have thorns on them.
This same herb helped my husband during the long years of his suffering
when he had difficulty in urinating. He plans to continue drinking it now
even after his operation, like tea in the morning.

Stars
The Saracatzani treat the person bitten by a viper by having him sleep
out under the stars (Chapter VIII, No. 23). The gipsies from Turkey “are
so potent because they can even talk with the stars” (Chapter III, No. 36).
In addition:

(46) The people who have the evil eye have it in their stars to be that way.”

(47) When I was younger I counted the stars although my mother often
told me not to do it. As a result I got some kind of warts. The way to cure
these was to dip them in rain water many times right after it had rained and
the water bubbled.

(48) My father knew how to do the xemetrima for teeth. He spoke with
the stars in order to do that. The only thing I remember is that when a
certain star was out he took his patient out under it and had him step on a
steady-rooty-stone while he said the words.

(49) For toothache I place a knife or pocket knife with a black handle on
the side which hurts. I do this during the night when the star is out and I
say the following words (of the xemetrima): “‘Star, small star, so-and-so’s
tooth aches. Let it neither hurt nor fall, only let it melt like salt.’ Then I
wish the person good health and tell him it hurts no more and that I think
it is safer for him to go to the dentist if it hurts again.

The Sun
(50) Ifa person has a headache and they feel it is because of the sun they
enchant the sun: At noon they put a napkin over the person’s head and a
glass filled with water on top of it and let him sit in the sun. If the water
boils the sun has been enchanted and the headache should leave. If not,
then the sun is not responsible for the headache and one should look else-
where for the cause.
1 According to G. A. Megas, when a sheep dries up prematurely it is “parmos’’ (or
“parmara’’); one folk remedy is to prepare a powder of what remains of the animal’s own
milk and to feed it to her. The etymology of ‘‘parmos”’ is unclear; some have suggested that
it may be derived from the verb “perno” (7épyw), to take, (ancient Greek zaiprw).
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 137
(51) If you have sunstroke you bewitch the sun with a scarf and water.
You do it when the moon is getting lost.

Elements and Compounds

Water: A review of the earlier chapters will find water mentioned with
great frequency in connection with exceptional powers. At its source it is
dangerous for it is around there that the nereids and other exotika may
gather (see Chapter VII). When one approaches a water source one
exposes oneself to their attacks and may be subject to murderous abuse,
blows leading to bruises, madness, muteness, and extensive paralysis.
There one may also be subject to drowning attempts and to being killed out-
right.
Water has healing and protective powers; in the form of holy water, it is
central to many rituals designed to ward off evil and to ensure blessings.
It is used in conjunction with the xemetrima. We have also seen that a
spring may be a place to which one is directed by a dream for illness cure
(Chapter V), that “silent water’’ is used to cure muteness (Chapter IIT),
that rain water cures warts (this chapter, No. 47), and that water empowered
by the liokra has healing virtues (this chapter, No. 24).
Water can be used by humans as a tool in sorcery, as for example in the
many accounts of binding spells, consisting of a token fashioned into a knot,
and thrown into the sea so they cannot be found, or thrown into a stream so
that they, and the victims they represent, will dissolve. The mixed cat and
dog wash water brings misery to the house on which it is thrown. Water
is also used by humans in magical treatments, again by throwing the dis-
covered tokens into the sea so that the sorcerer cannot use them again.
Similarly the rituals of cure or protection may require that the sea take “the
bad” or that water wash over the pain before “‘the bad’’ matures. Ritual
may also require that those bound by a curse cross water before they can
be cured, or that the lechona, to protect herself, not travel over water.
One protective formula, not presented here, calls for the bride to wear a
piece of reed and a piece of fishing net inside her brassiére during the
marriage ceremony in order to protect herself from the binding curse;
presumably these objects draw their magic virtue from their association with
water.
In another account (not presented) it is said that the spring at the
reputed Church of Christ at Spata lends power to stones gathered there,
these, added to holy water and passion flowers, make a charm which
protects a house from illness. The narrator of this account added almost
as an afterthought, apparently to make it respectably Christian, “because
the cross and the other saints do not let the diseases come inside.”
In a story which marks the murdered as vrikolakes, who stay to haunt
the living, we find that the place of such an awesome crime was a well
(Chapter V, No. 63). In another association with death, there is the warning
associated with the spring near the ancient citadel by Doxario: *“Come in
May to see me, in August to be cured, and if you want to die, come in
September” (see Chapter V, No. 78 for a variant). Finally there are the
stories of holy springs brought into existence by consecrated supernaturals,
138 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
by Christ or the Panaghia, (Chapter VI) — springs which have the power to
heal.
Salt: Salt is used in the xemetrima and in charms against the exotika
and the Bad Hour.
Copper sulphate (alum or “‘turquoise” as it is called), is used in treating
dangerous pimples, including the “bad pimple”, anthrax (Chapter IT).
Copper is used in magical rituals (Chapter IIT).
Lime in whitewash is used as a remedy. The whitewash is scraped
from the walls of the Church of the Panaghia in Panorio, for example;
the old frescoes there were also partly scraped off and put in healing com-
ounds.
‘ Gold is specified for the lock inside of which is put rue and incense; this
lock is worn by the expectant mother to prevent miscarriage (Chapter
IV). A golden ring is used in another ritual:

(52) To protect the wheat the people bring me a handful of wheat and a
golden ring. I let the wheat pass through the ring nine times while I say
“‘Let the wheat be as bright as this ring’’, and some other special words.
With that, the fly that harms the wheat disappears.
Golden pounds figure in the story of Moros (Chapter VII), and as the
promised recompense to the Panaghia for saving the life of the husband of
a Dhadhi woman (Chapter VI).
Silver frequently is mentioned as a gift of thanks, as a payment tendered
in recognition of an obligation incurred to a saint or to the Panaghia for a
miracle bestowed. Silvered saddles, silvered ikons, silvered ex votos are
mentioned. The plough which drew a magic ring around Panorio to protect
the town against the Koukoudi (Chapter VII) was silver. Silver may be
used in the xemetrima:

(53) My grandmother taught me how to cure people who are stiff. She
put a thread of goat hair around their necks with something silver hanging
from it; she then said some words over them. I know how to do it but I’ve
never had the chance to practise that particular healing.
Iron is used in protective magic: one touches iron when one sees a priest
in order to ward off the bad luck he brings.
Earth and stone. Stone powder is used on wounds as is earth. The earth
is placed on the wound along with the object that has cut or injured
the person. Earth is believed to be animated, as when it “‘cries out”’, like
blood, for the burial of the unburied dead, or when it “‘refuses’? a dead
man and pushes his body to the surface (Chapter V). The earth from
tombs has a special significance and potency; it is used in sorcery
(Chapter III). In addition, as we shall see below, certain fixed large rocks
are implied to have healing properties and may be employed in healing
rituals,

Natural Formations: Arches and Caves

One of the more interesting rituals employed to achieve illness cure is
to have the ill person pass under an archway. Near Panorio there is a rock
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 139
arch so employed and also a bush with roots outside the earth under which
persons may pass. The first three accounts below illustrate the power attri-
buted to rituals so performed. Caves also have special significance, although
only one narrative makes mention of their use, and in this case it is for a
burial site.
(54) Near Panorio there is a big stone, a big rock, that is like an arch.
People go there when they have a sick person in the family. They leave
three pieces of bread and three pieces of cheese; then they say that the
person gets well. I don’t know whether that is a medicine or whether it is
the grace of God.

(55) When Tasso had malaria, or at least it was high fever, his mother
took a cloth that belonged to him to the rock arch which is only a half-
hour’s walk from Panorio. She went through this rock-arch and as she did
so she left the cloth without turning back to see what happened. The
people around here agree that the rock-arch has such therapeutic qualities
_ that all you have to do to cure the sick is to leave a garment belonging
to the sick and never turn back to see.

(56) There is a very big bush near Panorio; its roots are outside the earth,
and they form an arch. People go there, or at least they used to go there, and
took the ill child or adult under the arched roots three times. They would
also leave a garment of the sick person there.
The reader will recognize the following story as a variant of the magic
circle theme encountered in the accounts of the saving of Panorio from the
Koukoudi. It appears here to illustrate the significance of the cave as a
burial site.

(57) Someone said you are going to hike to that old cave (an ancient
healing site) in the wilderness. I really wouldn’t go if I were you. Look at
what time it is too; it’s noon! Don’t go, it just wouldn’t be safe.

Fire
Fire and products associated with it such as smoke, soot, coals, and ashes
figure extensively in the accounts of magical healing efforts and in the
warding off of danger. Recall Chapter VII, No. 37, in which the visitor to
the lechona must carry or touch fire in order to be assured that he or she
will not bring the vulnerable woman harm. Fire used as a counter-measure
to sorcery was also seen in Chapter III where the victim burnt the magia
prepared by the sorcerer. The ritual which accompanies the xemetrima
for the evil eye in some cases calls for incense to be placed on burning
coals (see Chapter VI); charcoal may be used as part of the curse-breaking
by a witch who carries it around the area where the magia are suspected
of being buried (Chapter ITI).
Candle flame is used in rituals for the dead, in religious ceremonials and
in home magic for healing and protection; the soot or smoke from flames is
used in remedies and protectively, the latter illustrated by the following
observation:
140 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
on
(58) When new animals are born to us we make a small spot with soot
their front so they will not be vulnerab le to the evil eye.

The hearth or fireplace is intimately linked with the kallikantzari and

the exotika. Recall that the kalkes (see Chapter VII) are thrown out with
the ashes in January, and will “piss on the hearth which is cold’’, thus
preventing its being lit later. Some say the kalkes arrive by chimney,
coming down it in the pre-Christian period. In addition, there were several
accounts which spoke of exotika possession: in which the spirit materialized
in front of the hearth after having been exorcised from the possessed
victim.

Echo
In two narratives the echo was associated with supernaturals. In one
(not presented) the echo was said to be Stringlos shouting in the mountains.
In the other the echo is implicated in the theft of a shepherd’s voice. In
the latter, the echo is called the Bad Hour, but one can infer that it is the
echo itself which is a dire and wilful voice-snatching force.

Manufactured Objects
Processed products, while not quite ‘natural’ in the sense of this chapter,
are also used in magical operations. They are most easily considered in this
section. Given the immense range of manufactured materials available it
is important to remark how very few of these are employed in any of the
magical operations described in our narrative material. It does not seem
worthwhile to demonstrate their use in context; the reader will recall them
from the accounts so far presented and will find others in the narratives in
the next chapter. We shall limit ourselves to listing the manufactured objects
so employed.
Gunpowder (for amulets and charms)
Clothing (as tokens, signs, ‘‘simadi’’ and “‘magia”) used both in sorcery
and in the breaking of curses and spells, and in healing
Fish net (used to protect against the binding curse)
Beads (the blue ‘‘eye beads” worn as a charm against the evil eye)
Mirror (used in divining who has done sorcery and to capture souls.
Covered in the room of the lechona)
Rope and string (used to make the binding curse and to protect against
it)
Pages from holy books; ecclesiastical writing (used in amulets)
The cross (as a charm and used in rituals; also used in sorcery)
Rings (in expelling rituals)
Locks (as charms used to bind baby within mother till delivery time)
Coins (used in healing the wandering navel)
Key (worn as protection against the binding curse)
Spoons (used in sorcery)
Nails and pins (used in sorcery)
Soap (used in sorcery; placed in water so as to dissolve)
Black-handled knife (used in curing sorcery-induced harm)
 THAT WHICH IS EXCEPTIONAL IN NATURE 141
Candles (used in sorcery; used in religious and healing rituals)
Drawings of the cross, of the Star of David, of persons (used to ward off
harm, to cure, and in sorcery)
Pottery (used in religious and magical rituals)
Bracelets (as amulets; see Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) Chapter
VII)

Times and Places

There are three divisions of time which are to be remarked upon. First
there is night, which is primarily when the exotika are about, and there is day.
During the night the greatest danger, or at least awe, is associated with
midnight, while during the day the critical period, during which one should
not be abroad, is noon. As we have seen, sunset marks the beginning of
night and the crowing of the rooster its end.
Another time division is the month, although for the rural folk whose
concern is with healing and the preternatural, it is the moon-month rather
than the calendarial one. The moon-month is built about the phases of the
moon with planting to take place during the ripening of the moon and
curing, in so far as it is possible, to take place during the waning.
A third time division is that of the year. The seasons are, especially
for the shepherds, primarily two. There is the period during which the
sheep are on the mountains, its beginning marked by St. George’s day
and the accompanying festivities, and its end, when the sheep go into
winter pasture on the lowlands, marked by St. Dimitrios’ day. As
Temperate Achilles (32) discusses, the harvest festivals and rites occur at
the end of the long summer. These include rituals and taboos for the
handling of the first wheat, the first fruits, the wine, the yeast, and other
foods.
Two primary divisions of place are made as can be seen in the narratives.
There are civilized places where men live, essentially the village itself;
and there are wild places, isolated and fearful, given over to the exotika.
The divisions are hardly neat, for we see that the exotika enter the villages,
and humans work in, and walk through the wilderness; nevertheless
if one were to speak of provinces and domains, it would be in these
terms.
Other places of importance for the supernatural include water sources:
streams, wells, springs and the sea; mountain peaks, where St. Elias has
his chapels decorated with ikons of the sun being drawn by the good Saint
in his chariot; and grottoes and gorges, which are favoured by the exotika.
Among the places made by men, aside from the village itself where life
is centred, the cemetery is surrounded with lore and emotions — the latter,
for the most part, are dread and fear. To illustrate:

(59) A bunch of Cretans — who are men with strong hearts — wanted to see
how brave they were, so they decided to go to the cemetery at night. The
big group remained outside and one of them went in; then the rest had to
follow one by one. When the first one went in he sat on a cypress tree which
was lying on the ground. The trunk happened to have a nail and his
142 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

clothes got caught on it so that when he tried to get up, he couldn’t. He

thought that the saints or the dead were keeping him there and as a result
he filled his pants.
Certain exotika as well as the revenants are found in the cemetery and
it is there that the memorial rites to the dead take place.
The crossroads is another man-made place which has preternatural
significance. Recall that Stringlos or demons can be found at the crossroads.
 1,6
AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE
(oe this chapter are presented accounts describing the healing methods
employed for that important category of afflictions which rural folk
call “‘the illnesses that doctors do not know.” In addition the chapter
presents, for the purpose of illustration, descriptions of folk healing
methods employed for the treatment of illnesses which doctors may know —
but may not get a chance to treat since the peasants and shepherds
will undertake to treat them themselves with home remedies and magic and,
' these failing, with the intervention of wise woman, magician, priest or
physician.
In Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), the illnesses whose names,
etiology, and methods of treatment are a salient part of rural lore were
discussed. We found that much healing effort was directed towards those
conditions classified as “‘the illnesses doctors do not know.”’ These illnesses
were sometimes unknown to doctors only in the sense that villagers gave
them a different name; the symptoms described by villagers were clear-cut
enough to allow a physician to infer their proper medical label. Ilnesses
of this sort include the folk “‘anemopyroma” which appears to be facial
erysipelas, the “bad pimple” which, in its most common form, describes
anthrax, and the ‘‘koukoudi’” which we have assumed to be bubonic
plague.
Jaundice is another illness which villagers say the doctors do not know,
but in this instance both the terminology and the symptom description
are the same as those employed by western-trained Greek physicians. For
jaundice then it would seem that only the belief of the rural folk that doctors
don’t know about it separates their designation from that of urban scientific
tradition.
There is another group of ailments which “doctors don’t know” in which
both the folk label and the described symptoms, signs, or syndrome fail to
correspond to western medical notions. It is characteristic of illnesses in
this group that the villager’s label is a broad one. The same village “‘diag-
nosis” can be given to what physicians would probably consider to be a
number of different and unrelated conditions.
Among the ailments where there is no one-to-one correspondence either
in nomenclature or in symptoms description between folk and physician
are the evil eye, the wandering navel, the waist, the “korakiasma” (meaning
becoming black like a crow, to have a crow’s cough, to be thirsty like a
crow, the “‘white”’ or ‘‘shadow of a fly”’ in the eye, and the diverse disorders
labelled by origins attributable to the victim’s being struck by the exotika,
the demons or the Dangerous Hour. Additional ailments in this group, also
labelled by presumed origins, are those consequent to being “seen” by the
moon or stars, the moon convulsions, and being walked upon in one’s sleep
by the Moros. One can also include in this category the disabilities which,
144 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
like the evil eye, owe their existence to human actions and are assumed to be
the result of sorcery and curses.
A third category for designation of ailments may be inferred from the
purposeful avoidance of the utterance of the illness name. The fear of
naming reflects the fear of invoking the disease and, as we discussed in
Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), is most frequently found in discussions
of cancer and tuberculosis. These are referred to as “‘the exorcised” or “the
bad disease”. Venereal diseases may also not be mentioned specifically but,
in this case, the avoidance appears more to be a matter of decorum and
shame. Naming here takes the form of projection of the bad; venereal
diseases are called ‘“‘women’s diseases” by men and ‘‘men’s diseases’? by
women. Both may agree on calling them “bad illnesses” or “the French
disease”’.
A fourth category may usefully be imposed upon the amorphous body
of lore by considering together those ailments which bear both labels
and descriptions which are the same as, or allow easy translation into
medical terminology, but where the difference between the villagers and the
city medical practitioner lies in information and techniques. About these
ailments there will be differences in opinion and knowledge as to origins,
modes of action and communication, and proper therapies. It is probably
the largest category from the medical viewpoint and includes those many
ailments about which villagers are partially or totally ignorant. As a sub-
category among these one would include ailments about which villagers
profess a knowledge, knowledge itself which may once have been scientific —
or at least in vogue — but which is now out of date by modern medical
standards. These ailments are surrounded by traditions dating from millen-
nia to recent years past.
It is among the illnesses conceived by villagers as medically unknown —
or less charitably, about which doctors are thought to have dangerously
wrong ideas — that one most often finds descriptions of cause and cure
which invoke the preternatural. As far as the folk-prescribed therapies are
concerned these tend to combine magical and empirical (or at least con-
crete) pharmaceutical or simple surgical approaches. There is, of course,
considerable variation in emphasis from ailment to ailment or even from
healer to healer on magic or pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, it is well to
bear in mind that the distinction between these two types of healing — the
former primarily a matter of words, gestures, odours, pictures and the like;
and the latter primarily the external application or ingestion of substances —
it is a distinction made by us as observers. Neither patient nor healer in
the village are likely to have drawn a line between any two such forms of
healing. In point of fact the mixture of techniques in folk healing is such a
hodge-podge that the observer no less than the participant will have diffi-
culty separating medicine from magic.
We have already presented the material relevant to ailments caused by
various supernaturals, by natural objects and forces, and by sorcerers. What
remains are the narratives describing the means of treatment for the
bewitchment by the evil eye and for those non-supernatural, non-magical
ailments for which the peasants and shepherds have ready therapies at
hand.
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 145

The Evil Eye}

The evil eye is a powerful force; one capable of hurting or destroying
objects, plants, animals and people. The defences against it range from
charms and amulets through spitting or substituting the word “‘phtoo”’ to
dramatic community action which pollutes and destroys the power of
the one who has the eye (Chapter IV). Healing, on the other hand, relies
primarily on the words of the xemetrima with accompanying rituals,
although, as less well recommended substitutes, one may pray or count the
holes of the body. In the first story below a more drastic remedy is em-
ployed.

(1) I know of a shepherd who had the evil eye himself, although he didn’t
know it at first. He noticed that his sheep were dying. He looked but could
find no reason, so he considered the possibility that he himself might have
the evil eye which was killing them. He closed one eye and looked at his
_ flock but nothing happened. He closed the other eye and looked; sure
enough a sheep died right then and there. So he tore his own eye out in
order to save his flock.

(2) There are only certain people who have the evil eye, but they can’t be
distinguished from ordinary people in any way. The healers of the evil eye
can see if you are bewitched by a man or a woman, but the healer never
tells the names of those who have done it or he will find himself in trouble.
It’s the same thing in cases of sorcery; one dare not say who did it. Some
people don’t even know they have the evil eye; others learn from experience
that they have it. Some intentionally bewitch with their evil eye; others do
it without meaning to. It’s said that if you admire a beautiful animal or
woman to the point where you wish it belonged to you, why then you are
likely to lay an evil eye on that animal or woman (Note the order of
importance to the peasant narrator of animals and women).

(3) We go to Aspasia Kantakouzinos in Doxario when we are bewitched.

She does the xemetrima because a grandmother can’t do it for members of
her own family. After Aspasia is finished with the ceremony (sic) she throws
water on the person; that helps because the ‘“‘bad”’ leaves the person as a
result. Aspasia gets the discomfort herself — the one which her patient had —
but it doesn’t last long. People used to try to give her money for her services
but she never accepted it. She did it for the good of her soul. Spitting, by
the way, is one of the things that takes the evil eye away.

(4) At one time when I went to the healer — I was bewitched — she made the
sign of the cross in her palm in which she held incense and salt. At the same
time she said the words of the xemetrima. Then she put the salt in a cup
with water. I drank from it and she sprinkled me with some of it and
threw the rest in the fire. Then she told me that some of my husband’s
relatives, one of my in-laws, bewitched me and gave me the evil eye.
1 See Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) for a discussion of the extensive beliefs about the
evil eye, its origins, actions and symptomatic consequences.
146 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
(5) When people are affected by the evil eye they yawn continuously.
They need to be taken to someone who can break the spell. The healers do
it with olive oil in water and by putting holy water on the sufferer’s head.
Animals are affected by the evil eye too, cows especially. Another way of
breaking a spell is to put palm leaves on the censer, crossing the person who
is affected and putting holy water on their head. The palm leaves get
blistered in the (burning) censer if the person is bewitched; if not, you
must look elsewhere for the cause of the discomfort. In order to treat the
cows you must repeat the ceremony three times. During the healing the
person breaking the spell gets the discomfort from the one who is bewitched.

(6) There is the evil eye and also the enchantment (“‘fectia”’). If someone is
troubled and feels he is fascinated by the evil eye, then the person who
counteracts it mumbles some magic words over a glass of water and one
of olive oil. Then he dips his finger in the glass with the oil, and then in the
glass with the water. If the oil disperses in the water, then it is clear that the
person was fascinated but now is cured. If the oil does not disperse, then he
was not affected by the evil eye and something else is the cause of his
trouble.

(7) My daughter has the evil eye. It is unbelievable what happens as a

result. She can’t help it at all. The moment she looks at something, man,
flower or animal, or speaks favourably about it, it will inevitably fall sick.
One of the things that causes this is if the baby resumes breast feeding after
having been interrupted for a few days or weeks.

(8) I know how to break the spell of the evil eye. I do the xemetrima with
clean or holy water in which I put three drops of olive oil, and as I say the
words the drops disperse. The words are secret. After I finish with the
words, I take the water and olive oil and rinse the patient with it forty
times. When you are bewitched you should not go to sleep without having
the spell broken, because it can then become very serious. When the situation
is serious I have to do the xemetrima three times. When it is a heavy spell
that is upon someone I get it myself sometimes, but I become free of it
later. Both animals and people can burst from the evil eye if it is really a
heavy case.
Both my husband and I are called in for cures. We don’t get any money
for it; we just do a good thing. After all, we did not spend any money to
learn the trade, so why should we take any?
People who have the evil eye are born that way. Their eye has power.
It isn’t true, as some say, that people with eyebrows close together have it,
for our daughters have eyebrows growing close together and they don’t have
the eye. It is admiration which bewitches.
It isn’t only people and animals who get the spell; flowers do too. I often
break the spell on my flowers. When they wither I do the xemetrima and
they become vigorous again.

(9) If you have a headache which is caused by the evil eye, no matter
how many aspirins you take it will not pass unless the xemetrima is
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 147
used. Some people employ incense; some use oil and water to cure 1
others use salt which they throw to the chickens afterwards. I use certain
words, and then make the sign of the cross on the front (forehead), on the
two cheeks, and on the chin of the sick person. I do this only after I
lick my middle finger because Christ was licked in the manger by the
animals.
A few days ago a woman brought her child to me because it had been
crying and vomiting. I told the woman not to worry because the only thing
that was wrong, was that the child had the evil eye. The symptoms were
yawning and tears. The mother wasn’t convinced, and she took it to a doctor
who quite naturally could find nothing wrong with the child, as the mother
told me afterwards. The evil eye is like a current, like electricity, but men
have a heavier evil eye than women.

(10) Not everybody has the evil eye. Only certain women have it. Men do
not.

(11) Nausea, vomiting, headache and sluggishness are the symptoms of

the evil eye. The people who bewitch with it are ones who have their
eyebrows close together or who admire things, animals, or people. When
you admire something you must spit and say “‘phtoo, let it not be be-
witched”, so as to protect it from the eye. Once there was a beautiful
horse; apparently someone admired it, for a little later it fell on the ground.
Fortunately I was near by; I sprayed it with holy water and said the proper
words and saved it. When an animal gets up after such a spell it starts
jerking, whereas people stretch. I use different words for animals than for
people, but both have to do with Christ and the saints. The difference is
in the fact that the people are baptized and have the Holy Myron! on them
and are surrendered (dedicated) to God. Animals are surrendered to God
but are not baptized and don’t have the Holy Myron on them.
Once Evanghelos was going to Spathi and in that town is a person
who has a truly terrible eye. Evanghelos had things stacked on the cart and
that woman had admired it. Everything came tumbling down as soon as
she walked away! Evanghelos called her back, and together they found
someone to cure the horse which had fallen down too.
There are, of course, many other women here in Dhadhi who know the
xemetrima, but still and all, a lot of people come to me. If the sufferer
cannot come himself, someone in his family brings me a piece of his clothing.
I blow on it, or them, and say the words and rinse them with holy water.
It’s important that when you do the xemetrima, you not be hungry because
doing it (saying the xemetrima) weakens you. When I’m hungry and the
situation of the patient is serious I get the discomfort myself, but it isn’t too
hard to get rid of later.

(12) If you have a headache because of the evil eye, you should say the
‘Our father who art in heaven” prayer nine times.
1 Holy Myron is the blessed and scented oil used for baptism. At first it was just oil. Since the
fourth century a combination of many aromatic oils and other scents is used symbolizing the
various and fragrant qualities of the Holy Spirit.
148 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
them; they
(13) People with the evil eye want everything to belong to
of others and they can bewitch both animals and people. In
are jealous
many like this, they are
their soul they want to do only bad. There are not
one in a thousand. Practically all the women of this village know how to do
it with olive oil that they put in water, then they
the xemetrima. They do
put a candle in the water and light it and say the secret words which they
know. As you are getting cured you yawn.

(14) We use olive oil and water to break the spell. People with thick
eyebrows and ones close together bewitch more, but the person doing it
might not even know he does it. By admiring something you bewitch it.
I think it is a mistake when parents start breaking the spells of their children
when the children are very young, that is before they are baptized, because
in that way the child gets the habit of being easily bewitched and in doing so
becomes more vulnerable.

(15) The evil eye happened to me when I was helping a tailor. I felt a
terrible headache and dizziness. The tailor’s wife saw me, and when I
told her what the matter was she did the xemetrima; in a minute I was fine.
Now if there had been a doctor around, then he would have given me I
don’t know how many injections and pills to cure me but nothing would
have happened.
Another time a friend and I were going down the road when we saw a
cart with sheaves beautifully and masterfully stacked high up on it. The
friend said, “How beautifully they have stacked them. I wonder how they
managed it.” The moment he said that the cart’s shaft broke and everything
tumbled down! You see, the moment we admired the cart it was bewitched.

(16) The evil eye is bad. You can die from it. Once I went to Athens to
visit my daughter and came back bewitched. Apparently someone had said
something about me, admiring me, or saying how thin I was, or something.
The next day I couldn’t get up from bed. When I finally did so to take the
goat out to graze I felt so weak that I fell down. I called Maria? who took
care of the goat and took me back to her house where she did the xemetrima
they do for the heart — so serious was my condition, For this xemetrima Maria
uses vine branches.

(17) I use vine branches, that is words about vine branches, to treat the
evil eye in animals. Only in very serious situations do I use these for
people.

(18) Someone came to the village and was selling things here. His horse
was a very fine one; apparently someone bewitched either him, or the
horse, or the things that he was selling; for as the horse was walking, it
stopped, started going backwards, and fell down. Fortunately there was a
woman near who understood what was the matter. She did the xemetrima
until the horse sneezed and the “‘bad”’ went away; then it was okay again.
1 Maria is the wise woman of Panorio; see Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) for further
descriptions of Maria’s healing methods.
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 149
Fortunately the woman understood in time; otherwise the horse would
have been dead.

(19) All the women know how to do the xemetrima. There are only
some people who can bewitch you with the evil eye. Here in Dhadhi
there are only two who are terrible. Their eyes are very bad and they
can destroy you. These are Kostas Theotakis and his wife. These people
who bewitch are ones whose eyes stay on you; they have greedy eyes.
They can do it either by saying or thinking how beautiful or how ugly a
person is.
When you are bewitched you feel nausea and headache. If you don’t
understand that you’re bewitched and don’t go to someone for the xeme-
trima you might burst. When the xemetrima is done both the person and
the healer yawn. The other day I was leaving for work one morning when I
saw Theotakis; for that whole day I tried to load the donkey but couldn’t
do it.

(20) I break the evil spells. I’ll tell you the words I use. They are Albanian
and I have no idea what they mean. (Healer recited in Arvanitiki which
was intoned with very marked rhythm and rhyme) I also put drops of olive
oil in water while saying them, if the olive oil disperses, then the person
was bewitched but is not any more. I also spit three times.

(21) If the bewitched person can come to grandmother he does; if not,

then some relative brings something that belongs to the person, preferably
clothes. The patient or the relative also brings some “silent water” from
a spring and grandmother uses that water. She places the water near
the fire, lights the coals till they are hot, and then drops them in the
water while saying the xemetrima. If the person is lightly bewitched,
the coals float; if he is seriously bewitched, then the coals stay at the
bottom. While she says the words she thinks, “‘studies’’, the name of the
person.

Aemetrima for Other Ills

While the ceremonies with the secret words are most frequently employed
for those conditions arising from bewitchment by the evil eye, there are
other ailments which are also thought to be curable through ritual words
and gestures. We have seen, in Chapter II, that the illnesses which are
caused by the moon or the stars “‘seeing”’ the baby or the lechona, can be
treated in this fashion. In Chapter VII the xemetrima emerge as one of the
constellation of techniques which are used to treat the disorders inflicted by
various kinds of exotika.
In addition, one finds in the accounts descriptions of the use of the xeme-
trima for the treatment of the wandering navel, eye troubles, toothache,
mumps, nose bleed, tonsillitis, bleeding wounds, erysipelas, burns, snake bite,
kidney trouble, jaundice, heart ailments, muscular stiffness, and umbilical
hernia. This list should not be considered exclusive; it represents only those
ills listed in the narratives elicited by the stimulus questions upon which this
150 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

study is based. Examples of the use of xemetrima for some of these conditions
will be found in the following accounts.

The Wandering Navel

(22) When I was about eighteen years old and very thin I felt pain in all
the parts of my body and had a persistent headache. I felt as if I was
carrying heavy loads under my armpits. I didn’t feel like working. What
happened to me was the unbinding of the navel; this is also called “‘kardichta-
podi”, “‘kardispodi”, or heart-octopus' because it has the tendency to expand
like an octopus towards the heart. It happened after an accident. I fell on
the ground when riding a horse, and the horse pulled me along the road. I
was so shocked that I got these symptoms which I have described. Usually
the unbinding is caused by fear.
Now it occurred that my sister, a lovely young girl, died of typhoid fever
after a few days in the hospital in Athens. My mother cried bitterly over
her loss, and each time I heard her dirge my own pains were aggravated.
Because of this my mother took me to several women who tried the following
practika without result:
First, the healer put a clay pot like a vendouza (cup) on my stomach over
the navel. This softened my belly too much so that it was impossible for
the navel to remain in place. Second, the woman twisted the nerve of the
navel which is under the armpit so that the nerve’s roots would get close
to their base. Third, she filled a bottle with cold water, this she put upside
down on the navel. The water began to boil inside the bottle. Fourth, she
placed a sieve on the navel, and then she wrapped my waist with a woman’s
head-kerchief. She put a spindle between the sieve and the head-kerchief
and began to twist it around until it was well tied down. Another woman
rubbed my stomach (it must be empty) downwards. Afterwards she cut an
onion in the middle and wrapped the one half of it with the head-kerchief
around my waist.
I didn’t feel any better after this practika, so my mother took me to a
magician in Spathi. The woman is now dead but she was my saviour. I
had to go to her on either a Thursday or a Saturday morning with an empty
stomach. She only read a xemetrima to me and I was cured. I remember
that in doing it she lost her words which proves that the unbinding was a
true event. I felt a dizziness; my mother told me that I turned pale. After
a while I came to myself. The woman asked me to come again on Saturday
morning (it was Thursday) in case I didn’t feel well. I had been to her several
times because the unbinding occurred to me rather often. After the xeme-
trima I had to eat something — the first time the woman gave me a glass of
goat’s milk and I could go straight to work, only I had to be careful not to
bend.
After that first time I went to her many times, and since she recited the
words of the xemetrima loudly I learned them and have cured other people
who have suffered from the same ailment. I believe that when one is really
suffering and the healer knows the ways of healing, the person can be cured
whether he believes in the ability of the healer or not.
1 From kardia, meaning heart and chtapodi, octopus.
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 151

The words for the xemetrima of the navel are as follows:

Star, star bird where do you go
down to the seashore, down to the coast?
There are three plates
There is honey in one, milk in the other
and man’s intestines in the third.
Eat honey, eat milk, leave the man’s intestines.
Black-handled knife in the Panaghia’s hand
A wind brought it, a wind took it
in the ravine, in the forest and in the cold waters.
One Hebrew, one Christian and one dark girl
took away the pain from your body and your head.
Why do you sleep alone girl? I don’t sleep alone,
I have Peter, I have Pau! and Jesus Christ’s cross
by my side and head.
I don’t sleep alone,
I lie down to make the sign of the cross and I arm
my side.
I’m considered the slave of God and I’m not afraid
of anyone.
I knock at your door clean landlord, sly landlady.
A crooked old man followed a crooked road;
went to a crooked osier.
He made a crooked basket.
How much stays in the crooked basket,
Let so much the pain stay in your heart
from hour, wind, wisdom,
In the Bad Hour let it have tied every evil.
This xemetrima is also used for the eye and for the heart. Generally it
is not good to use holy words in the xemetrima for in that way you would
employ the holy powers in your service.

(23) When the navel is out of its place I rub the belly, put a glass in the
centre, take it away, put a cut onion with red pepper on the centre of the
belly and tie it with some cloth around the waist of the sick person. All the
words I use (in the xemetrima) are God’s words.

(24) There are different ways to treat the navel. One is to measure the arm
with the palm and say words (xemetrima). A second is to put a cup on the
navel as when we do cuppings. One turns it and brings the navel back.
The third is to rub the navel and bring it back to its place that way. My
mother knows how to do the second and third ways. She has saved many
people doing that.
When you have the (wandering) navel you vomit, you feel dizzy, you
have no appetite and no matter what you eat you get diarrhoea and pain in
the belly. The pains turn in you like a whirl (wind) but not as fast.

(25) The person whose navel starts wandering feels thirsty even when
F
152 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

he has not eaten anything. He feels weak, feels like vomiting, and has
darkness in the eyes and dizziness. These things happen because the navel
holds the body together and when it starts wandering then the body is
loosed. The way to diagnose it is to feel the pulse where the navel should
be, there in the navel hole. If you cannot feel the pulse, you know that the
discomfort is due to its wandering. The navel can go to the back, near the
waist, and to the sides.
In the old days there was a woman at Spathi who knew how to cure it
by the xemetrima. She could only do that if it was the first time that the
navel had wandered away. She is dead now. Now there are some people
that can cure it by rubbing it back to its place.

(26) The navel moves inside the body without causing any apparent change
on the outside. It happened to me once, and I went to an old woman who
wrapped one coin with a cloth dipped in olive oil. She lit it and heated the
cup which we put on the navel. It came back to its place immediately.
On another occasion I went to the priest who pressed the spindle on the
left lower side towards the navel and in this way it was put back in its
place.

(27) There is a man called Spyros in the village who knows about navels.
There are different illnesses there. If the navel is out! they put a glass or
an earthen pot on it and push, then it goes back to its place. If it has fallen,
you cannot see that because it goes inside but you have a pain and know it;
then something like a little bean® develops under the skin at the back of
the knee. This man rubs it for three or four days, when it disappears then
you are okay. It hurts very much when he rubs it. Others say that a little
knot! develops between the thumb and the index finger. They rub that till
it disappears.

(28) You get the navel if you drink cold water when you were sweating
and hot, or if you eat cucumbers while hot. You might also get it if you
pick up something heavy, or even if you have a sudden great joy. The
nerves are free at that point it seems, and when these things happen the
navel gets loose.
When the navel wanders there are people who know how to bring it
back to where it should be. Some put a cup on it, like when we do cuppings,
and bring it back by turning it around. Some put their finger in the navel
and turn around you bringing it back that way. This is a very dangerous
method because the person should turn io the right, counter clockwise. If
not, if they turn in the opposite direction, then all the faeces come up;
the person vomits faeces and dies. It cuts the intestines when you turn
the wrong way. It happened to an uncle of mine that he died from this
mistake. There are some other healers who are more intelligent; they find
a nerve under your armpit and press it, then the navel goes back to its
place.
1 Narrator refers to a umbilical hernia in this first instance.
2In ancient Greek “‘omphalos’’ (navel) also means: boss, knob, centre or middlepoint.
[cf. Liddell and Scott, A Greek—English Lexicon (151)].
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 153
(29) The navel wanders inside the body. You get it when you are weak
inside, when you don’t have enough to eat, when you work too hard. You
get diarrhoea when the navel wanders. My daughter had it, and I rubbed
her every day. It all started with diarrhoea; we took her to the doctor and
he said that she was pre-tubercular. He gave her all kinds of medicines and
injections to strengthen her and improve her appetite. After this treatment
the diarrhoea continued and we realized it was not that disease (being
pre-tubercular) but the wandering navel, so we did the rubbing and that
cured it.

(30) Everybody can get the navel — women, men, children. It is a habit
that they develop. Each time they pick up heavy things or even pick up a
chair unless their stomach is empty they get it — that is, the navel starts to
wander.
I treat it first by “‘breaking’’ it. I take the skin of the back near the
waist between my two hands, the thumb and the index finger of the hands
and pull hard upwards and towards myself. Then I rub the navel and the
belly around it and tie a scarf around the patient’s waist, tying the knots on
the belly button. I put a stick through the knot and turn it clock-wise so
as to have the scarf as tight around the waist as possible. I don’t say any
words.

(31) You get the wandering navel from fear or when you are hungry and
drink water while your stomach is empty. You can get it from fear. The
symptoms are dizziness and seeing everything black. There are different
ways to bring the navel back. One is to squeeze some onion juice on the
navel. In this way the patient shivers and gets goose pimples and the
navel returns. A second way is with the xemetrima. A third way is with
rubbing. A fourth way is to put a cup on the navel, as in cupping. Some
people turn (around the patient) and some don’t.

The Waist'
(32) Many people come to me for the waist. There are other people
(healers) who know about it too but they use a different method, like
taking the patient on their back and turning them. My way is different. I
learned it from my brother who learned it in turn from the eldest brother.
Doctors do not know how to cure the waist; they use plaster but it doesn’t
work,
You get the waist because man is all fat. The vertebrae are like knots,
and sometimes when you bend or pick up something heavy the vertebrae
catch a part of the person’s fat and they keep it and it hurts — or the vertebrae
may get out of their position.
To treat it I rub the patient with alcohol, then get hold of his flesh on
the left and right of the waist and pull it up. I have the patient lying on his
back and I put a scarf around his face holding the two ends. Then I get
behind the patient with the scarf, jerk the patient’s head lightly, and then
1 The “waist”? includes the whole circumference of the body in its middle portion — front,
sides, and the small of the back.
154. THE DANGEROUS HOUR
jerk it towards myself and I hear a “crack” in the vertebrae, then it is back
in its place. After that the patient has to stay in bed for a while. We put a
plaster on the waist; either one they buy at the store or one they make
with a cake of unused soap, eggs, and ouzo. They beat all these together
until it becomes a foam. You put it on a paper and stick it on the waist;
it is a very good plaster, for you have the feeling that a strong arm is holding
you.

(33) The waist is another disease the doctors do not know about. You
get it from colds or from picking up something heavy and from bending.
Spyros knows how to cure it.

(34) One woman here treats the children who have back pain. She has
them lie on their face and rubs their waist with olive oil. Then she tries to
make the left hand touch the right foot. If they touch, then that side
is okay and she tries the other side. In this way she finds which side is
affected. Then she starts rubbing, and then she raises the child by the feet
until you hear a ‘“‘crack”’, and the child is okay. Then she does the xemetrima
over the child, and we keep the waist bound for three days.

Anemopyroma (Facial erysipelas )

(35) I have suffered a lot in my life; my health was not so good when I
was younger. I had the anemopyroma. The MD’s told me it wasn’t the
anemopyroma (erysipelas), but this is what I call it. Anyway, other people
get swollen when they get it, but I only had itching around my eyes and
face in general. I used to put a hot frying pan on my face and that relieved
the pain; I also put ouzo on the nerves. This helped. The condition de-
veloped into high blood pressure of the nervous sort. Now I don’t have the
excruciating pain that I used to have in my head, but the doctor says my
blood pressure goes very high at times. Fortunately my blood is very
hard as the doctor told me. Once, for example, I got a boil and the doctor
told me I was lucky I got it because in that way my blood got cleaned, and
I did not die from it (the infection).

(36) For the anemopyroma we take a herb which is called ““anemopyroma-

like”. We boil it and make compresses with it on the face of the sick person
using a red cloth. Then the person drinks the rest with some sugar.

(37) For the anemopyroma there is a herb that cures it. You boil it and
put it on the anemopyroma (the word implies heat present in the affected
area). When you gather that herb you should say the “Our father who art
in heaven,” and it should be at night when the moon is getting lost — the
second part of the moon month.

(38) There are certain women who know the xemetrima for the anemo-
pyroma. It is rare to know that xemetrima. They put a red cloth over the
sick person’s face and say the special words.
1 From pyr, meaning fire in ancient Greek.
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 155
Jaundice
In Chapter VIII, No. 43 the story of Kostas the Turk [see also Health
and Healing in Rural Greece (35)| described in some detail the treatment for
the jaundice which includes cutting the labial frenum and cutting the head
with a blade to signify the cross; procedures which are to be done at night
in phase with the moon. There is little to be added to that account; the
narratives below are minor variations or supplements.
(39) You cut the jaundice under the lip. It has to be a night when the moon
is getting lost (waning) so that the disease will get lost just as the moon is.

(40) Angelika had the jaundice cut by a healer in Spathi. She cut under
the lip, over the ears, on the forehead, top of the head, and on the hands
near the wrist. It didn’t hurt. Under the lip they cut with a needle. In a day
it was cured.

Korakiasma
(41) There was a disease in Crete that the doctors did not know about
and so did not know how to cure. They don’t have it here. It is “koraki-
asma’’; the person who has it has splitting headaches and vomits. To cure
it they burn the top of the palate with a red hot nail and in an hour the
person is fine.

The Bad Pimple (Anthrax)

(42) There are many kinds of pimples. One of them we call the “bad
pimple” or “emorphi”. It is very dangerous, and the doctors don’t know
how to cure it. If a person has this pimple it is very important that he eat
no pork or salted food. And we never allow a menstruating woman to get
near anyone who has the pimple. My father died from it; the doctor ignored
it and put on “‘vendouzes” (cupping) thinking he had only a cold. We usu-
ally treat it by cutting it with a razor. Then we put on sugar and a dried
fig and pour some turquoise (blue stone, alum) on it which dissolves it, and
the person can be cured.
My husband had this pimple many years ago in his moustache. It can
appear in several parts of the body. Its surface is red and there is a black dot
in the middle. The area around it gets swollen and is very painful. Well, ©
my husband came home shivering with pain and fever. I shaved his
moustache, and my brother showed me how to prepare a broth from a
variety of herbs. When these were boiled we lowered the fire, put the kettle
close to the place where he was lying, and let him breathe the vapour.
When we saw he was becoming dizzy, we covered his face with a heavy
cloth and left the broth to simmer. After a while he began breathing in the
steam and continued to do so until the pimple was softened and broke.
We collected the pus with cotton, and there was left in his face a hole as big
as a chick-pea.

(43) The “emorphia” is a bad boil and lots of blood comes out of it.
156 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

What you do is scratch it and put alum on it and raisins. If you do not do
it in time, you might die because it might sink you.
Aside from the illnesses that doctors do not know there are accounts
of methods for treatment of illnesses which are not taken to a doctor for
treatment for any one of the many reasons cited in Health and Healing in
Rural Greece (35).

Moon Convulsions
In Chapter VII, No. 24 a case of moon convulsions was described, and
its treatment by the priest doing xemetrima and a wise woman using
powdered magpies’ heads discussed. Another moon convulsion case is
referred to below:

(44) A friend of mine had a small girl who had moon convulsions (sleep
spasms). Her parents saw that only the readings of the priests had an
healing effect on her. Finally they took her to the church of Christ in Spata
and she was cured.

Insanity
Detailed description of treatment methods employed for insanity have
been encountered earlier, when the mother of Georgio tells what she has
done to try to cure him. It will be recalled that wise women and magicians
were consulted, that a pilgrimage was made to a holy shrine where a nun
went into a trance and her soul, led by Christ it was said, visited the sick
boy to determine the origins and proper treatment of his case. As might
be expected, the magicians and wise women recommended magic, and the
priests and nuns recommended religious rites. Nevertheless, Georgio ended
up in a mental institution and at the time of our study had just been
released for a visit to his home. The mother was still engaged in consulta-
tions with wise women, magicians, priests, doctors — and when we came to
the village, with us as well — seeking the cure of her son.
Reviewing the other stories which make mention of madness we find the
following origins posited: sorcery, being struck by the exotika, demons, or
the Dangerous Hour, and being possessed by demons. As treatment methods
we have seen proposed in the narratives, counter-magic against sorcery
or binding curses, the gathering of the exotika, and religious rituals in-
volving priests, nuns or home healing rituals. The following accounts have
not yet been presented and provide supplemental views.

(45) A crazy woman was taken to the Church of Christ at Spata and held
there for thirty-seven days to be cured. She wasn’t cured. Four men held
her and the priest showed her the cross which she called “rubbish”. They
showed her the Panaghia (an ikon) and they called her ‘‘a simple Hebrew
woman”, and when they put the holy stole of the priest about her, an
embroidered one, she tried furiously to get rid of it.

(46) Madness is one of the main illnesses of the brain; one gets it because
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 15
one falls in love with a woman and she doesn’t want them, and then they
lose their brain. This is quite odd because they should know that for each
man there are twenty women on earth. Some become so crazy they even
kill themselves. This is a sin which is not forgiven, and for that they do not
bury them. Also one can go mad from the French illness which is venereal
disease.

(47) Syphilis can make you crazy. I saw a man who had it. He didn’t want
to eat any food and he ate his faeces. The faeces of crazy people are very thin
like a cord. When someone gets this disease he should immediately go to
someone and tell them and get therapy; otherwise it cannot be cured. If
you let it go you die or become crazy. Women can get it too, but it is easier
to cure them because they are not as thin as men are. For this treatment they
put needles in you and it is better to be fat than skinny. If you don’t cure it
in time, then your whole body becomes a wound; you have worms running
up and down you and you stink.

Pimples and Boils

As illustrated in Chapter IX, pimples and boils are often considered to be
beneficial ailments which purify the blood, or which enable the blood to
pass ‘“‘the bad” outside of the body and so serve an hygienic or purificatory
function. Nevertheless pimples and boils, aside from the bad pimple of
anthrax may be treated. Examples follow:

(48) When as children we had pimples with pus, the old women told us to
tread on the cloth which was used to clean the oven and say the words,
“Let the pimple disappear as this cloth will disappear.” (We always threw
the cloth away). In the case of pimples I also use the following ointment: I
bake an onion very well on a small fire before the fire goes out and melt with
it on a clean plate one tablespoon of sugar and a few drops of oil. Then
I put this on a clean cloth around the pimple. If I do it twice, the pus comes
out and the pimple is cured. The oil smothers the pimple; the sugar collects
the pus. Sometimes for a pimple or a wound we make an ointment from
smoke (soot) and oil.

(49) For boils snails are good. You put them on the boil and they take the
dirt away. Also you put cooked okra with sugar on them. This helps the
boil to open and be cured. In the past, for people who had dirty blood, they
would put leeches on them to take away the dirty blood, but they don’t do
that any longer.

Skin Disorders
1
Skin disorders which present a visible blemish are shameful illnesses.
Considerable effort is made to cure them.

was okay
(50) A nephew of ours, who was born twenty-five years ago,
1 See Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35).
158 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

when he was born but later he developed a skin condition that the doctors
could not cure. His whole body became red and the skin was peeling. The
doctors asked if the father had had any venereal disease but “‘he never
reached such doors”, as the saying goes. A woman saw that baby and asked
the family to bring an old sheep to her. They slaughtered it and she took
the viscera, shook it so the bulk of the dirt would be eliminated, and then
she added to the remaining dirt and viscera all kinds of spices but not any
pepper. She put the child in this stuff up to his neck and left him there for
twenty-four hours. After that they took him out and bathed him, and that
was that. He was never bothered by the disease any more. The doctors in
Doxario were so amazed that they asked what had been done, and then they
wrote about this cure in their textbooks. Now the boy is married and is
healthy.

(51) In Northern Greece I know that they take the newborn child and
coat him with charcoal and ouzo and keep him in that for forty days. After
that they wash the baby, and I have seen how beautiful and glowing the
baby’s skin is after they remove that plaster from him.

Toothache
In Chapter VII it was seen that the xemetrima for toothache is done
under a particular star, and that the words require communication with
and intervention by the stars for a cure. Other results of treatment are
described as follows:
(52) In the days when dentists didn’t exist, I got rid of a terrible toothache
by going to one of the men who do the xemetrima that relieve you of pain.
My teeth just rotted and fell out with no pain at all. Nowadays if you
have money you don’t suffer because you can go to the dentist who comes
to Spathi and Doxario.

(53) In the old days when I had a bad toothache, I went to a woman to
be relieved of my pain. She did the xemetrima and the (afflicted) teeth fell
out. It didn’t hurt but the teeth were destroyed. Now, was the xemetrima
the cause? I don’t know. I recall that they had to use a black-handled knife
which they touched to your cheek as they said the words.

Urinary Disorder
(54) Some years ago my husband Athanasios hit his “‘bad’’ — his penis —
but didn’t go to a doctor. The wound healed but it closed the (urethral)
passage. For years now he’s had a terrible time urinating; at times he got
swollen, and he developed stones in his kidneys that wouldn’t come out.
He didn’t have money to go to the doctor, so he kept drinking all kinds of
herbs that are good for the kidneys or ones that exorcise whatever is ‘‘the
bad’’. I believe that herbs are always helpful, but they don’t (necessarily)
cure you. They helped Athanasios to urinate but didn’t cure him. When
finally he did go to a doctor, he was told he should have come much sooner.
The doctor did an examination and prescribed some helpful injections.
 AFFLICTION AND DELIVERANCE 159
Mumps
(55) You have to go to the priest who reads you something. And he writes
something which he puts on the mumps along with tar. This kills the disease.
If you do not do this in time, then you have to find a frog, and slit it open,
and put it on the mumps. That is a sure cure.

Tonsillitis
(56) I know a woman who does xemetrima for tonsils. She puts some cotton
around her finger, dips it into coffee and presses the tonsils. The pus comes
out in this way. Afterwards she rubs the neck with olive oil. If the pain
continues, she makes an emollient plaster out of baked and crushed olives,
or out of olive oil, flour and grape syrup. I don’t know why she uses coffee
except maybe to cauterize the spot.

(57) For the tonsils we draw the star of David on the throat and say some
words (xemetrima). Of course these were the only things we knew in the
old days and that is why we believed as they worked. Nowadays it is
different.

Abscesses
(58) My grandmother used to prescribe a cream made of beans, olive oil
and soap. I have a small abscess — at least I think it is, even though it doesn’t
seem like one — and I’m going to try that cream. I have had it for years but
now people tell me that it must hurt, since they started saying that, why it
has started hurting too.

Measles
(59) One of my boys died of the measles. The (village) women told me that
was what it was. All I know is that I took him to the doctor in Doxario;
he said the boy had a cold. He gave me an ointment to rub him with, and
afterwards he died. The women told me that the boy had the measles but
the kind where the little pimples were inside him, and the doctor didn’t
see them, so he made the wrong diagnosis and gave that ointment which
was bad for measles. When kids have measles you should not rub anything
on them — and my boy died.

Wounds
(60) There is a cream that I use a lot. It is made of olive oil, the root of the
“sperdoukli” (asphodel)! bush, some of the inside of a reed, the inside of a
1 For the ancient Greeks the asphodel was a symbol of mourning; (183) they planted asphodels
near the graves, for they thought the souls of the dead fed on the bulbs of these plants.The
Asphodel Valley, residence of the shades in the underworld is mentioned in the Odyssey.
Dioscorides attributes medicinal quality to the bulbs. In Greece, during its isolation in 1917
and again during the occupation, asphodel starch was used to make bread (183 vol. 3,
pp. 854-5):
r*
160 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

“ligaria”! made into powder, some wax and some male (sic!) white incense.
I boil all these and put them in a clean glass. The water remains at the
bottom, and the cream floats. I gather the cream and work it till it becomes
a yellow ointment; then I put that stuff on a clean ironed cloth and then on
the wound.
My son-in-law was hurt on the skull while cutting wood. He had a hole
in his head which you can still feel. It happened to him in the mountains ;
he didn’t have anything with him, so he put some tobacco on it. For two
days he was almost unconscious; then I came and used this ointment, and
in a couple of days he was fine and the wound closed.

(61) I’ve used the balsamo, the oil-of-mouse, on many occasions. One time
the landowner cut his hand; and it bled badly and I stopped the bleeding
and cured it with the balsamo. He was afraid it would harm him, but it
didn’t. Another time a doctor, who often comes near here to hunt, got
wounded one day with his shotgun. He asked for alcohol and I told him
I’d fix his wound. He was afraid that the balsamo would infect it but I
kidded him, telling him that if that did happen he could save himself in
time since he was a doctor. So I cleaned his arm with some kind of anti-
septic; that way the bad blood would go away. Since cleanliness is necessary
anyway, I used sterilized gauze that I keep in the house, and then I put
the balsamo on the wound. The next time the doctor came to our village he
congratulated me, telling me that, “‘You’re a better doctor than I am.”
1 “]igaria” is osier, (Agnos, vitex Agnus-castus, chaste tree), from the ancient Greek Avyos,
pronounced in modern Greek, ligos. Before the Anthesteria the Athenian ladies placed
branches of osier on their beds, believing that their chastity preserving virtue would help
them remain unpolluted for the ceremonies. Dioscorides (I.135, 66) assigns it such powers,
and says that a concoction made from it when being drunk with wine “brings down the milk,
expells ye menstrua . . . destroys generation, annoies the head, drawing on a deep sleep. Its
fruit helps the serpents’ sting”; however, among its many useful properties enumerated by
Dioscorides, the modern-day use for wounds is not mentioned.
 xX
POWERS AND WORDS
The Healing Power
HE power to heal, as its attributes are inferred from the narrative
material, is contained or possessed by supernatural beings, specially en-
dowed substances or objects, and by human beings. The healing power when
exercised by humans is spoken of as though it were an entity, a thing or
spirit which in itself can be transferred from one person to another; in
the case of the xemetrima, which represents a significant portion of the folk
healing repertoire, the power resides in the words themselves, although its
effectiveness is also dependent upon the proper exercise of the ritual gestures
and the employment of ancillary substances and devices. The power can
also be affected by the state of purity or pollution of the healer.
It is interesting to note that learning, in the sense that healing can be
conceived as a skill to be learned, receives little mention in the discussion
of the development of folk healing capabilities. This is in sharp contrast
to the views about the doctor’s skills as discussed in Health and Healing in Rural
Greece (35); there it was apparent that intellect, motivation, and training
were considered prerequisites for medical ability. Similarly aptitude, in the
sense of personal endowment, receives little mention as a factor affecting
the goodness of healers. The interest of the healer is set forth as a condition
for the acquisition of healing powers, but variations in ability are almost
uniformly ascribed to what has been acquired in the way of powers and
techniques, rather than to any individual differences among healers in
ability to learn or to practise healing. Acquisition in turn depends to some
extent upon interest, as was indicated, but primarily upon exposure and
opportunity, the chance to acquire the healing words or methods with the
power implicit in their use.
The healing techniques and the healing powers, are transmitted by and
acquired from family and neighbours or acquaintances. In no instance is
transmission biologically hereditary in the sense that healing power passes
from one family to another genetically or “through the blood”’. It is always
required that the power be passed along from one to another in some inter-
personal exchange which signifies the transfer of these techniques and which,
by implication, shows that the power to heal is conceived of as definitely
something independent of and outside the person himself.
There are two features of transmission which are intriguing. One is that
some techniques or powers, must pass along in a “zig zag” chain from one
sex to another through the generations; father to daughter to daughter’s
son to son’s daughter, and so on. There seems to be little consistency within
our villages as to what techniques require alternate sex transmission for
each generation; the variations seem to be within family rather than
common for a particular kind of xemetrima or ritual. The other interesting
feature is the manner in which the power is transmitted, ‘‘stealing” the
 ¢
162 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
d for
words appearing as the transfer method most commonly employe
When the healing words are not stolen, their transfer from
the xemetrima.
of the one diminish es
one person to another is likely to mean that the power
ly the power — if not stolen —
as the power of the other increases; common
becomes operative only upon the death of the elder healer. Stealing , on the
other hand, seems to imply that both the younger and the older healer may
work with the words, although this is by no means always the case.
The following narratives demonstrate the beliefs associated with the
transmission of healing power from person to person:

(1) The words are secrets, and I’m not supposed to tell them to anyone or
to let anyone hear them, because then I will lose my power. Were a man to
hear them, then it would be all right because he will have the power that
I lose (narrator is female), but if a woman heard them, I would not only
lose the power but she would not get it either. I got the power from a man,
and I should give it to a man; it goes like that.

(2) I learned the xemetrima for the evil eye from Miltiadis of Spathi. He
was about to die and he spoke the words loudly, and I stole them from him.

(3) What I know was given to me by the grandfathers when they were at
their last moments. I’ll pass it on to my sons and daughters who will wish
to learn (what I know) when I reach the same moments (narrator is male).
If I communicate (teach) the knowledge now, it won’t be catching (trans-
mitted). The only way for somebody to learn my techniques is to steal the
words as I am whispering them.

(4) I know how to do the xemetrima. I learned about it from an old man
from Corfu who did it on me once when I was affected. He was an un-
educated working man. He asked me to write it down on paper and start
using it, although (we knew) I would never have enough power as long
as the old man remained alive. That happened sixty-five years ago. The
man must be dead by now, and little by little the power has come to me.
When I first started, my words had no effect.
Since I was taught these things by a man, I think I should teach them to
a man. Some time ago, when I got sick, I wrote the words down on paper
just in case (I would die) but the paper disappeared. Probably some child
got it, but maybe not. Maybe someone else got it, in which case that
someone will not be able to use it (the words, the power) since I’m not
dead yet.

(5) I know how to do the xemetrima for mumps, I write the star of David
on a spot or on a piece of paper that I stick on the mumps spot. In three or
four days the person is well. I learned how to do this from a man (narrator is
male). On the other hand, the xemetrima for the evil eye must be passed
from a man to a woman back to a man, and so on. I don’t know why this
is so.

(6) I’ve learned how to do the xemetrima from a man, therefore I think
 POWERS AND WORDS 163
that it will be better - maybe even necessary — to give this power to a man
so that he can give it to a woman next. I don’t know why this is better.
That man (who taught me) died, and then I was able to do it myself. But
I didn’t really wait that long (until he died) because I stole it from someone
else, and they say it is good to steal it; but I don’t know why. I also stole
how to do the xemetrima for anemopyroma.

(7) The teacher who teaches someone how to break spells loses his power
once the disciple starts practising.

(8) My father knew how to do the xemetrima for teeth. I didn’t learn it
because he didn’t want to teach it to me. He used to say that it is a sin to
know such things and he didn’t want his children to learn them. Before
he died he told them to his stepdaughter, but not to his own children. One
thing I’m not very sure about is whether my father told the words to his
stepdaughter himself or whether she stole them from him by listening.

(9) Grandmother used to be very good in the xemetrima for the evil eye.
She could cure both animals and people. Now she says that she doesn’t
have the power anymore. She didn’t pass it on to anyone, and she cannot
do it now because she has forgotten the words that they use. I’m her
daughter-in-law and I know the ceremony but not the words, so I can’t
do it either.
When grandmother was young she was herself bewitched and went to
stay overnight with a woman who did the xemetrima and cured her. This
woman was saying the words out loud, and so grandmother stole them
from her. This was a very good thing to do. When you teach someone these
words either you have to stop practising, or the person you teach has to
wait until you die before he is able to practise. For example a man taught
my uncle how to cure the animals with the xemetrima but the man is still
alive so my uncle cannot practise yet. Now if you steal the words there is
no such delay. You — if you steal them — can practise right away and the
person from whom you stole the words doesn’t lose the power either. At
least we don’t know that the other person whom grandmother stole it from
lost her power, but we don’t think so, because people say it doesn’t happen;
that is, they don’t lose it when it’s stolen.

(10) I learned how to break evil spells from my grandmother who was a
great healer in this region. People used to come and stay in our house, and
she would treat them. She taught both her children and her grandchildren
how to do it, but they could practise it only after her death.

(11) The skino and soot protect you from the evil eye. When you are be-
witched you get nauseated, you get a headache and your heart is pressed,
crushed. Certain people bewitch — most of them don’t know it. I know of
one who knows it; when she bewitches you, she tells it to you so that you
can go to someone who can break the spell. I took my child once to
Maria! when she was bewitched. Maria tells (utters) the words, but you
1 The wise woman of Panorio.
164 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

don’t hear what she says. You shouldn’t. Even if she taught them to you,
you would not be able to cure anyone before her (Maria’s) death. The
power goes from woman to woman. Maria learned it from an old lady
who told her all these things before she died — the old lady knew she was
going to die. Men don’t learn these things. You can’t transfer the power
until the teacher has died.

(12) The words of the xemetrima are not “‘catching”’ (transmitted) if one
says them loudly so that they will be heard. The words are passed on by the old
when they are about to die, passed on to the younger members of the family.

The “Bad” Passes Out

The healing power is not the only entity in the healing rituals which
moves independent of person; the “‘bad’’ of the ailment or bewitchment is
itself conceived of as somehow identifiable, mobile, transmissable, self-
contained. A number of narratives presented earlier have demonstrated
the passing of the “‘bad”. For example, in Chapter IV, one heard that “‘after
the demon gets inside you if a ‘pure’ individual goes by, like a child, the
‘bad’ falls on him’’. In Chapter II the devil’s child received the illness from
which the human child had been freed, and in Chapter III in taking
countermeasures against sorcery, a villager threw copper into the sea so
that ‘‘the sea takes the bad”.
The course most often reported in the accounts we heard was that the
“bad” passed from the sufferer to the healer during the rituals. Thus
Aspasia the healer ‘‘gets the discomfort” as the bad leaves the person
(Chapter IX). Maria, in the illustrative narrative in Health and Healing in
Rural Greece (35) reported that she starts yawning, gets a headache and in
general ‘‘I get the pain myself” during the ritual, adding that she is not
able to treat herself for the symptoms she gets from the people whom she
frees from the spell. Again, in Chapter IX, one hears the same report.
Christ’s healing was described in terms of this phenomenon in one instance.
Indeed, in its. frequency and in its unanimous interpretation this pheno-
menon, among all those reported in narratives during the study, is one of
the most widely agreed upon specifics of the healing process. Further
accounts add but little; one very intelligent informant asked about his
experience could only observe,

(13) Well, I know Maria gets the discomfort when she breaks the spell that
the patient had. I don’t know if priests get it too when they exorcise, but I
do know that MD’s do not. I don’t know why the difference.”
Both sneezing and yawning are mentioned in connection with the passing
of the bad; both healer and sufferer can yawn (Chapter IX) as the cure is
taking place or they can sneeze. There is no consensus that these are neces-
sary healing features, but yawning especially should be considered in the
light of the remark mentioned by the villager which indicates yawning
can be a dangerous as well as potentially beneficial act, “You can die from
yawning.” The inference can be made that “‘the bad’’ passes from one
person to another while the mouth is open.
 POWERS AND WORDS 165

The Power of Words

The power of words is demonstrated in the ritual incantations of the
xemetrima which can heal the ill and break the bewitching spells. Similarly
it is with the words that the magicians gather the exotika and force or
persuade them to take back the damage they have done. Words are used
by the priest in those liturgies which consecrate the liokra and other objects
to be put to magical healing use; words are the tools the priest employs
when he “‘reads”’ over the ill and the bewitched so as to exorcise ‘‘the bad”.
The written word, pages torn from ecclesiastical books, become an ingredi-
ent for the amulets against all manner of supernatural and malicious mis-
chief, and words supplemented by sympathetic acts constitute the binding
curse which can doom individuals or families to sorrow, to illness and
impotency, to disaster and to death. Words too are the building blocks for
prayers and petitions to the reputable Christian powers, begging them to
intervene for the good; and the invocation of prayer can also be used —
although we had no evidence that anyone in the villages we studied did
employ prayer in such a fashion — to beg the devil, Diavolo, to do the bidding
of the bargaining supplicant.
Additional evidence for the power of words is found in the efficacy of
names and curses. A related power is attached to certain numbers which
are widely used in magical and healing rituals and to counting, in itself a
magical act, which can lead to illness. (Chapter VIII, No. 47.)

Names
Those who heal sorcery, or the bewitchment of the evil eye, are described
as being careful not to tell the names of those who have done the evil for
fear of getting in trouble. It is not merely a politic consideration but a
magical one, for as with other dangerous words, “‘cancer”’, “‘death’’,
“tuberculosis”, the very mention may bring to the speaker the disaster
signified. One technique for performing sorcery is to write the names of
the victim along with the written curse which, with the magia or tokens
are the destructive instruments. A technique for breaking the spell of the
evil eye is to “study” the name of the victim. To use the name of a saint in
swearing is an act which may invoke the saint’s vengeance and lead to
warnings or to punishment visited upon the oath-maker; remember the
sufferings of the worker building the church of St. George, who unwisely
used that saint’s name (Chapter VI) only to have the saint torture him
during the night.
To give one’s name to the exotika (Chapter VII) can cost one one’s
power of speech and even one’s life; the same dangers hold true for the
curious kallikantzari and give rise to the several humorous-macabre acc-
ounts, of how peasants have outwitted these creatures by giving their name
as “I myself” (Chapter VII). The Christian spirits also take an interest in
names; Christ, for example, is taken to have showed his favour for the
woman in Spata by naming her child himself. Christ, the Panaghia and the
saints are invoked by name in prayer and in the xemetrima.
The magical importance of words is also strongly implied in the
166 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

prohibition against speech under certain circumstances. When, for example,

the boy from Doxario was struck by demons as he walked across their
dinner table at the crossroads, they took his voice. The magician who
healed him required the family to take “‘silent water” from three springs
(See Chapter VII), water taken while the drawer utters not a word. The
muteness which was to be cured is probably the most common consequence
reported as a result of being struck by any of the exotika — or for that
matter by the Panaghia herself. While we shall reserve discussion of muteness
till a later chapter, it is well to remark here upon the important association
between the loss of speech and the punitive intervention by supernatural
spirits.

Curses
A curse is only a special and destructive application of the power of words
to direct the fates of others according to the wishes of the speaker. The
curse of sorcery, the binding curse, has been presented in detail in the
accounts in Chapter ITI. The nature of our inquiry was not such as to elicit
the wide variety of curses which are in use in the Doxario region. For a
catalogue of curses one is advised to turn to a folklore compendium such as
Argenti and Rose, The Folklore of Chios (20). Our narrative material has
demonstrated that it is believed by at least some of the rural people that
the curse of the priest can kill (Chapter VIII, No. 17) and can prevent the
body from decaying. The curse worded ‘‘May you never decay”’ is likewise
thought capable of turning a person into a revenant when he dies. The
curse of the parents is considered particularly powerful even after they are
dead, as the following accounts illustrate:

(14) We try to maintain the same spirit in the family that our forefathers
had. We try to teach our children to be modest. I lived with my mother-in-
law for several years, and we got along nicely. When she was about to die,
the family gathered around her. She turned to her three sons and said,
‘“‘Never dare mistreat or make the five fingers (gesture) at your wives
because if you do, I’ll curse you even from my grave!”

(15) My brother disobeyed his father. He took our house down and built
in its place a two-storey house when our father was away. When he returned,
father got mad and cursed him. He took ashes in his hand, threw them in the
air and said, ‘‘May you become ashes.”’ Then my brother got mad and told
my father off, told him about all the wives he’d had and how they had all
died. Father got doubly mad over this, and cursed him to take seven women
and to have none. I pleaded with my father not to curse him like that but
he did — and his curse was strong. My brother has never married although
he has a lot of property, and is educated and knows how to count. Never-
theless he is never rich because people manage to get the money from him.
My father used to say that his curse would be strong and that it would des-
troy the boy, and that everyone would say after he (the father) died, ““The
shit-hole (meaning the grave) was right and knew all that would transpire.”
 POWERS AND WORDS 167
Even an exclamation in the form of a curse may have lasting effects.
Recall how the revenant, shocked by his wife’s tales of the immortality of
the village, cried out, “Let the earth swallow us’’, and the earth did.
Another instance emerges from the following narrative:

(16) My husband is going to die soon because he swears, for swearing is

very bad. For example, there was a disaster at Corinth, and the people
there went to Tenos to ask for the ikon of the Panaghia in order to take it
through Corinth so that her Grace would bless the city and send “‘the bad”
out of their town. The priest who was at Tenos received the Corinthians
and listened to them; then he told them that they were asking for too great
a favour. The Panaghia, he told them, was pregnant and could not leave
the island. As a matter of fact she would soon be giving birth. The people
were surprised and didn’t know what to say.
At this point the priest, who up to then had been calm and pleasant,
became very angry and told them that for all these many years the Corinthi-
ans had all of them been swearing saying (the common oath) “I fuck your
Panaghia.”
“Well,”? the priest went on, “with all that, you’ve finally succeeded in
making her pregnant, and now she can’t come to bless you.”
And that was a good lesson for them.

(17) A marriage which is not blessed by the parents will fail. As the priest,
I know what I speak. The bride will bear her parents’ curses if the marriage
opposes her parents’ wishes. And no good will come out of that, I can tell
you!

Numbers
Numbers and counting are also powerful tools to be used in efforts to
direct extraordinary powers to the accomplishment of human ends,
Throughout the narratives we have seen the emphasis on repetitions of
rituals according to a set number or for a particular period of time. The
numbers which have had some magical significance are three, seven, nine,
twelve, and forty. There follows below a summary of the kinds of acts or
events which are associated in the narratives with each of these sets of
numbers:

FORTY
Forty days is the period during which the post-partum mother is a lechona,
She and her baby are particularly vulnerable to strangers, the moon, ex-
otika, etc. during this time.
Healing ritual requires the patient be rinsed with medicament forty
times.
If a lechona a dies, forty genuflections are to be made for forty days; they
are remembered by forty stones required to gain her entrance into heaven.
Forty pins are used in sorcery.
Forty waves are used to counteract sorcery.
The soul leaves the living community forty days after death.
168 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
The liokra is sanctified by forty waves, and by being in a holy place in
church for forty liturgies.
A charm to prevent miscarriages is made with forty coins, begged in forty
homes, and blessed by forty liturgies.
A net with forty knots, worn during intercourse by her parents, serves to
protect a bride against the binding curse.
It was forty villagers who defecated outside his house to pollute and
weaken a man with the evil eye.
Forty waves of sea will cure pimples.
Forty days of reading from the magic book of Cyprianos were used to cure
a sick boy.
A girl called by the nereids was kept in the house and made to fast for
forty days.
The revenant was seen by relatives on the fortieth night after his death.
A doctor orders pills to be taken for forty days.
A charcoal and ouzo mixture is applied to the newborn’s skin and remains
for forty days.
TWELVE
To counteract the harm brought by the curse of the five fingers, one says
liturgies in twelve churches and buys clothes for twelve children.

NINE
Medicine for animal sickness is to be boiled with nine kinds of wood.
To protect from the destructive fly, the wheat is passed through a ring nine
times.
The “Our Father” is to be said nine times to cure headaches resulting from
the evil eye.

SEVEN
Persons destroyed by a sorcerer return in seven days to destroy the sorcerer.
Seven kinds of illness befall an old man.
There are seven kinds of prostitutes; the worst of whom is the gossip.
Seven blessings and prayers are used to counteract sorcery.
The curse of the father destined the son to know seven women and to have
none.

THREE
In xemetrima and ritual for evil spells one spits three times.
Three pieces of bread and three of cheese are left under the stone arch in
certain curing rituals.
A woman possessed by demons was taken three times to the church
of Christ at Spata, and she was cured.
Sick persons walk under the arched bush three times to be cured.
Exotika call only twice; three calls, and caller is a human.
The saint permitted three wishes.
Xemetrima are done three times for serious cases.
Three drops of olive oil are used for xemetrima for evil eye.
Incense is burned three times a day in the house in order to exorcise the
“having-been-devoured-by-gossip”. (Cf. this chapter No. @rz)
 POWERS AND WORDS 169
Diabetes was cured by eating herring intestines for three days.
Night ended, but humans came out of doors only after cock crowed three
times.
Illness caused by the Bad Hour passed after three days of treatment.
Nereids depart on the third cock’s crow.
The three Moirai come for sweets and to give the child his fate for three
nights after his birth.
The Germans tried and failed three times to put flag up on the church in
Doxario.
A supernatural hand pushed up the sleeper’s pillow three times.
The liokra is dipped in water three times before the water is used in
healing.
The medicament used along with xemetrima was to be taken for three
days.

_ Gossip
The less ritualized and more socially dynamic use of words in village
gossip is considered to be a source of danger, not just to reputation and
social position, but to health itself. In talking to the villagers, one gains the
impression that gossip may be conceived as acting directly. The words
themselves do harm independently of the destructive social effects they may
have and independently of the motives of malice, envy and anger which
gossip reflects in the speaker; motives which might well be expressed in
conduct damaging to the victim of these feelings. In this sense, gossip may
be viewed by the observer as a triple threat: the words harm magically by
themselves, they also do damage insofar as they are believed and produce
social damage, and finally, the motives reflected in gossip may also move
the gossiping person to do sorcery or to engage in other destructive acts.
These are, of course, our interpretations and need not reflect the conceptions
of the villagers.
In earlier chapters we have already seen evidence of the fear of gossip.
The bride (Chapter II) may wear tiny scissors in her shoe to ward off the
wedding gossip; the pre-wedding vulnerability of bride and groom was
attributed in part to the danger that people might talk about either one of
the couple and thereby prevent the marriage, or go so far as to do sorcery
to bind them with the curse. That gossip is evil enough to warrant the
punishment of God, was seen in Chapter II where it was said that parents
may have a demon for a child, or one that brings bad fate, if the parents have
gossiped about others; such a child will — it is implied — force the parents
to beat a social retreat and to “get into their shell” and “‘put their heads in
their behinds’’.
Other comments about gossip include the following:

(18) A girl should learn from her mother what dangers exist and how to
protect herself. To know that honour cannot be bought is what she must
know. If she has a worry she should feel free to discuss it with her mother,
and the mother should act with reason. Even if your daughter reaches the
it
point of having an illegitimate child, she should be able to talk about
170 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

with you and you, as the mother, should be able to find a solution and help
your daughter in such a way as not to give anybody the right to criticize
and gossip about it. Your daughter should know that there are bad things
more important than giving your body and that it is far worse to behave
badly in society. There are seven kinds of prostitutes and the worst one is
the prostitute of the tongue, the one who gossips and speaks against other
people. Your girl should know that even the slightest thing she does will be
discussed. The saying goes, “Even if you fart, it is going to be heard.”’ People
will talk. ;

(19) When people talk about you, it can harm you. They eat you with
their tongue.

(20) Life here in Panorio is not so pleasant. People are not close or friendly.
They eat one another.

(21) The other day my daughter visited my sister and, in looking at her
carnations, we found oil in them, oil that no one of the family had poured
there. It was oil of the dead, just like the oil of the dead and menstrual blood
which the neighbours had thrown to break my niece’s engagement because
they were envious and don’t like the family (See Chapter IIT). Now my
sister has to have an holy unction in the house, with seven blessings by the
priests, and seven prayers, special ones the priests do for sorcery. They will
have to exorcise the “‘glossofaghia’”’ (meaning the having-been-eaten-by-
tongues or having-been-devoured-by-gossip). They will also have to burn
incense in the house three times a day during the period when the priests
are doing the holy unction.
 SECTION TWO

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

OF NARRATIVE MATERIALS
 XI
A.PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES
N this chapter we shall provide information on the extent to which
peasants and shepherds in one area of rural Greece agreed and disagreed
in beliefs and concepts, folk tales and narratives elicited by our questions,
and during more spontaneous discussions in which one or more of our
interview team were present. For the reader who is not a partisan in anthro-
pological controversies as to the homogeneity or heterogeneity of peasant
and shepherd cultures, this chapter may have no appeal. Rather than
require that reader to peruse our statistics, we shall venture to offer our
conclusions at the outset.
Acknowledging the limitations of our methods for gathering and report-
ing narrative materials concerned with the life and death, health and sick-
ness themes which were of interest to us, we must conclude that a variety
of beliefs, lore and magical techniques exist side-by-side within each of
the two small villages of Dhadhi and Panorio, and even within the tiny
settlement which comprises the near-by mountain encampment of the
Saracatzani. The narrative materials suggest that individuals are them-
selves inconsistent from one moment to the next in beliefs expressed,
and there is clear evidence that families within the village differ one from
another over a range which varies from slight modifications in story themes,
to ignorance of phenomena described by others, to outright and even
heated denial of the conceptions implicit in the accounts put forth by their
neighbours. For a few themes, beliefs, or concepts there is fairly general
agreement; for many there are areas of sizeable differences in views;
and for a few others there would seem to be intense disagreement over
the substance of a belief and its entire set of implications, emotional and
cultural.
The conclusions reached as to whether similarity or difference of beliefs
and concepts prevails within the village, depend on the goodness of methods
for gathering information; on the care with which one sets forth definitions
of areas of content to be examined for heterogeneity and homogeneity; and
on the levels of description and inference which are employed. As to the
first, we have indicated that each family, in each of the three communities
studies, was asked the same questions; ones designed to elicit narratives
containing material of interest to our study. In addition, there were many
hours of more spontaneous conversations during which topics for discussion
were brought up by the villagers or by the interviewers; these provided
opportunities to expand upon earlier guided interview comments. When a
villager proved to be particularly productive in response to questions or
demonstrated the story-telling gift in conversations, a number of repeat
calls were made; in the case of Maria‘ for example, an estimated 100 inter-
view hours were spent in her presence.
Most interviews took place in family settings, many with neighbours
1 Panorio’s wise woman.
174 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
gathered around. Most were in the home or, since the weather was fair dur-
ing most of our stay, in the courtyards or front porches. Sometimes the talk
was at work in the fields or at the village well, and sometimes in the even-
ing at the coffee house. When the occasions presented themselves, the
conversation went on at special occasions: festivals, around the sick bed,
waiting on the porch of the clinic to see the doctor, after a baptism, and so
forth.
As to possible blocks to communication, we are aware of several. One was
our role as strangers in the village. Two of us Americans, two Greek city
girls, there was no doubt about our being strangers and being perceived as
potentially powerful doers of good or evil. What we would be told was likely
to be influenced by what our conversationalists hoped or feared from us. As
far as possible we employed those clinical tools which take note of cues and,
interpreting them, reflect the feelings present or probed for the unspoken. In
addition, the casual hint dropped by one villager could be presented to
another so as to imply that here was an unspoken issue about which we
knew; one respondent’s vague allusion could be used as a source of questions
for others. The clinical test — one not unlike a sophisticated policeman’s
interrogation — for the goodness of such inquiries, is the extent to which the
pieces fit together afterwards. We believe that our pieces did fit; but lest
we have erred, we encourage others to explore the villagers’ world for
themselves.
Most of the narratives obtained were told by the villagers of Dhadhi,
Panorio and the Saracatzani encampment, but about twenty-five accounts
come from persons we knew in the central town of Doxario. The doctors,
priests, druggists and midwives were all Doxarians; in addition many hours
were spent with other residents there who became our friends. When they
contributed narratives of interest, we recorded them rather than ignore
them. The same is true for six or seven accounts taken from people outside of
Doxario; one, a beekeeper whose hives stood on the hills near Panorio but
who lived a few miles away; another was Mantheos of Spathi and his
daughter; a third was the proprietor of a tiny taverna a few miles down the
road — a pleasant place and wonderfully near the cool blue sea. Three
accounts come from Athenians, each in response to an observation made
while visiting us in Doxario or talking to us about something we had seen
there that day. Again the accounts proved so relevant to the themes of
interest to us that we could not bear to ignore them; so they are included.
What we have done to set off the local accounts from those given by voices
not Doxario bred, has been to mark each, in the preceding chapters, with a
sign, ‘“O”’, signifying its outside source.
One should gain no false sense of methodological meticulousness or
purity of the local culture from our having distinguished “insiders”
from “‘outsiders”. There is, in fact, no “pure” local culture in any of the
three villages, as references to Tables I, II, III and IV below will show.
For many parents and grandparents of the villagers have come from
elsewhere.
* Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) describes the morbidity survey during which several
teams of physicians, nurses, laboratory personnel and technicians were brought to the study
communities to conduct a series of free clinics for the villagers.
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 175

TABLE [!
REPORTED
REGIONS OF BIRTH FOR
PARENTSOF FATHER
(or eldest living male in household)

REGION DHADHI PANORIO SARACATZANI

Asia Minor 18
“Greater Doxario”’ region 3 15 4
Greek Islands 3
Elsewhere in Greece 2
TOTAL 24. 15 6
Note: Every second Dhadhi and Panorio family was sampled to obtain
estimates rather than complete samples on some questionnaire items. [See
Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35)|.
1 The schoolteacher who resides in Dhadhi is from the Peloponnesus. As an official and
outsider he was not considered a “‘villager’’ but was interviewed separately. [See Health and
Healing in Rural Greece (35)-]

TABLE II
REPORTED
REGIONS OF BIRTH FOR
GRANDPARENTSOF FATHER
REGION DHADHI PANORIO SARACATZANI
Asia Minor 16
“Greater Doxario” region 3 rg 2
Greek Islands 3
Crete, Cyprus I
Elsewhere in Greece I 4
Unknown 2

TABLE III

BIRTH FOR
REGION OF ED
REPORT
PARE NTS
OF MOTHER
(or eldest living woman in household)

REGION DHADHI PANORIO SARACATZANI

Asia Minor 15
‘Greater Doxario”’ region 6 15 4
Greek Islands 3
Euboa I
Elsewhere in Greece I
176 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

TABLE IV
REPORTED REGION OF BIRTH FOR
GRANDPARENTS OF MOTHER
REGION DHADHI PANORIO SARACATZANI
Asia Minor 14
“Greater Doxario”’ region 6 ; 13
Greek Islands 2
Euboa I I
Elsewhere in Greece 2
Outside Greece I
(Poland)
Unknown I I 3

The data in the tables indicate that most of the Dhadhi people were
from Asia Minor but that ten sets of grandparents (42 per cent) on the
female side and eight on the male side (33 per cent) came from elsewhere.
Only two sets of grandparents (13 per cent) on either male or female side
came from outside of Panorio or near-by towns; on the other hand, most
Panorio ‘‘residents’’ owe their origins to the Albanian migrations, probably
about the fifteenth century. The Saracatzani are also only recent arrivals in
the Doxario area. While they, and their historians (37) claim they are
descendants of ancient Greeks, within a few generations back it is north
central Greece (Thebes, Eurytania and Rumelia from which the shep-
herds say their ancestors hailed).
With further reference to the sometimes-encountered notion that rural
villages stand in isolated splendour as little islands of undisturbed cultural
accretion, one need only refer to the consistent findings among students of
the peasant societies (223): the peasant community is not self-contained; it
exists in a vital social and economic relationship to towns or near-by cities.
It is a give-and-take relationship between village and town; stated over-
simply, the village provides produce — and in Greece this is a fundamental
value for the townsfolk, while the townsfolk return technical services, manu-
factured goods, and some ideologies, which are transmitted through educa-
tion, contact with the ézte and with the middlemen, and nowadays through
the mass media of newspapers and radio. But the relationship between
village and town is not an exchange between two poles, the former agri-
cultural and the latter commercial, for village and town are, in fact, alike in
many ways; the people of both are partners in the larger culture which
villager and townsman are both constantly contributing to and, in turn,
being changed by.
It is because of this continuing exchange of ideas, techniques, and objects
between villager and townsman, and between shepherd and villager and
city dweller, that it would be unwise to consider the beliefs of Dhadhi or
Panorio as reflecting only the narrow confines of those villages themselves.
The villagers there have been learning for centuries past as well as present,
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 177
from their neighbours near and far — and teaching them as well. ‘There is no
isolated lore of the villager which exists apart from and unmodified by the
larger stream of Greek life. That is why it is not so important — as we see it —
to distinguish between the description of Stringlos given by an old man of
Panorio and the description given by the pretty miss in Dhadhi. Even if
they have not yet heard one another’s versions, there is a good chance that
by tomorrow they will have done so.
If the interchange is vital and we believe it to be, then one must expect
broad similarities in orientation, belief and practice as presented in narrative
material over the whole of a region, or a nation, or a contact area as ex-
tended as the Mediterranean basin itself. But if we expect similarities in
concepts and techniques over a broad area, we must for many of the same
reasons expect differences. Just as there is some inconsistency in the
Koukoudi tale the peasant tells today in contrast to the tale he told yester-
day; just as there is a difference in healing ritual between mother and
grandmother in the same family; and as there is a chasm between two
families in the village in beliefs as to whether or not a Christian God exists;
so too we must expect these kinds of differences to be characteristic of the
region or the nation or culture area as a whole.

Productivity of Narrative Material in Response to Stimulus Questions and

Discussion
We would expect individual differences in the productivity of narrative
materials bearing on our themes of interest. Psychological studies of any
population not pre-selected for homogeneity usually reveal a wide range of
differences in verbal abilities, in creativity, in memory, in response to
suggestion, in enjoyment of social exchange, and in interest in subject
matter. So it is with the peasants and shepherds of Greece. Among the fifty
families of Dhadhi, excluding the teacher, five (10 per cent) were unable to
produce any verbal accounts of the spontaneous or narrative sort which are
included in this volume. This does not mean they did not answer questions;
they did, but for those inquiries dealing with life and death, healing, the
magical, the supernatural or the domains of the powers, their replies were
of the “I don’t know”, “I’ve never thought about it’’, or “Ask somebody who
knows about those things because I sure don’t’”’ variety. In contrast with
Dhadhi someone in every shepherd family interviewed and someone in
every Panorio family interviewed did contribute one or more accounts, or
statements of belief, or experience dealing with the magical or supernatural
world, as it affected human life and health.
Without further study it would not be possible to account for Dhadhi’s
silent 10 per cent. Our impression was that some lacked interest in us or in
the subject at hand. Others seemed inhibited and ill-at-ease in spontaneous
discourse; others appeared lustreless and not-too-bright. Embarrassment
and distrust of the stranger’s reactions to what American city folk often
term ‘‘superstition” was an expected block, but one, to our surprise, that
did not seem to be encountered. That happy circumstance can be attributed
to the excellent interviewing skills of our research associates, and to the
confidence of the Greek peasant that he is not so apart from his city cousin
178 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

in the possession of views about the importance of magic and the unseen
powers in determining the affairs of men.
We must now turn to a very crude count of productivity of narrative
material by family within each of the three study villages — crude because of
the difficulty in separating one account from the other, and because of
recording methods which tended to reduce drastically the number of words
written down as opposed to the number spoken, perhaps by a factor of as
much as twenty. Given the limitations of our counting methods, we find
among the Saracatzani an average of eighteen separate accounts of magical
healing or supernatural events relevant to life and death per family;
each account running to an average recorded sixty to sixty-five words.
The range is from a minimal one account rendered by one family, to
another family which told us forty-two separate stories, experiences, healing
methods, or set of convictions about the magical-supernatural-religious
world, as it is manipulated by men or intrudes significantly on their
lives.
In Panorio the average was thirteen accounts per family, each account
running to an average recorded seventy-five to eighty words. The range
again was from minimal productivity, to one family’s sixty-five separate
narratives, averaging a recorded 110 to 120 words per account.
In Dhadhi, excluding the families who produced no material, there
remains a low average of ten accounts per family, each running to an average
seventy words per account. The range is from no productivity, to a family
which gave forty-six accounts, each averaging about seventy-five recorded
words.
Which families are the most productive of narrative materials? If we use
thirty accounts or more as a measure of high productivity, there will be one
Saracatzani family, three Panorio families and three Dhadhi families
designated as highly productive. In each of these three settlements the
family producing the greater number of narratives is also the family in
which the oldest woman is one of the most outstanding healers in the village.
In the case of the Saracatzani, it is the old grandmother, now blind and
feeble, who has held that respected position for many years. In Dhadhi it
was warmhearted partly-blind old Mrs. Sahinis, famed for her oil-of-mouse
balsam; while in Panorio it was Maria, the extraordinary wise woman
whom we described in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35).
Among the other two Dhadhi families that are highly productive of
narratives there are the Elytis, in which both Mr. and Mrs. Elytis are
healers and are together the most widely mentioned by their fellow
villagers as having healing skills; and there is. Mrs. Gatsos, another wise
woman of considerable repute. Among the two Panorio families also high in
productivity are the Ghatis and the Koukis. In both these families there are
healers to whom the other villagers go for treatment, although neither Mr.
Ghatis nor Mr. Koukis have reputations such as Maria’s. At the other end
of the productivity continuum there are in Dhadhi no healers among the
families which are totally unproductive, while in Panorio there are a few
healers among the least productive families.
Table V below presents data showing the average narrative productivity
for three groups of villagers: the families which contain the most widely
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 179
reputed healers,! families containing healers of lesser repute, and families in
which no member is reputed by other villagers as a healer of special merit.

TABLE V
FAMILY NARRATIVE PRODUCTIVITY
AND THE PRESENCE AND REPUTATION
OF A HEALER IN THE FAMILY
(Data from three villages combined)

Average number of narrative

accounts dealing with life
and death preternatural
themes
_ Families with widely reputed
healer (N = 7) 28
Families containing healer of
moderate local reputation (N = 15) 20
Families without any member
having a community reputation
- for healing powers and skills
N = 52) i

There is a consistent relationship between having a community reputation

for the possession of healing skills and the presence, and willingness and
ability to communicate to others, of knowledge about the supernatural and
magical worlds. The smaller part of that knowledge, as communicated to
us, was “‘technical’’; describing the ritual methods and healing substances
employed in treatment. By far the greater emphasis, as can be seen by a
review of the content of the preceding chapters, was upon broader concerns:
the range of the supernatural phenomena, the nature of the congress between
powers and men, the variety of uses and effects of magic, the necessary
actions to ensure the protection of life, and the good will, or at least the
avoidance of ill will, of the extraordinary beings, and consideration of
dreams and prophecy and death.
Thus, while there was a contamination of our measures; for healers were
certainly more likely to know how to heal and consequently to be able to
tell us the methods which would be recorded as ‘‘productive” narratives;
these techniques are only a small part of the information provided. To a
much greater extent the “‘productive’’ accounts could just as well have
been matters known to those villagers who did not have reputations for
1 The definition used here, for wide repute, is a healer recommended by three or more other
families in the village, while lesser repute is a healer recommended by one or two other
families. This question was asked only of every other household; so as the best estimate, one
would say that widely reputed healers were those actually admired by at least six families in
each village.
180 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

healing. There is no necessary reason that a wise woman know more of

Stringlos than her neighbour, or that Mr. Ghatis, skilled in healing the
wandering navel, should also know more of the miracles at ‘T'enos than his
cousin two houses down the road.
What we conclude is that those who are reputed for healing skills are
members of families where there is a general interest in a variety of topics
all of which have a common concern with the extraordinary. Family
interest is stressed here because the knowledge possessed, the interest and in
the inferred sensitivity and capacity to experience, is not necessarily limited
to the healer himself; in the case of the gentle old Saracatzani grandmother,
for example, it was her son and her daughter-in-law who spoke to us; the
old woman herself was far too feeble to talk for long. And with fat Mrs.
Sahinis; she told lovely tales, but so too did her daughter; and listening to
her as we did, in the evenings by the hearth as she recounted them to her
wide-eyed grandchildren — how by “‘that well there’? she had seen the
nereids go by dancing and singing — one was sure that in a few more years
her grandchildren would themselves be story-tellers rich-in-lore and healers
wise-in-nature.
Positing as we do, a family atmosphere in which the healer, usually the
oldest woman but not necessarily so (look at Mr. and Mrs. Elytis who both
are specialists of reknown), practices with the proud support and en-
couragement of her relatives, we may also conclude that whatever specific
situation is said to have led to the acquisition of healing skills (recall Chapter
X on the transmission of powers), the likelihood is that these skills are
nurtured in the younger generation for many years. The healing skills are
matters of great pride, sources of community and regional esteem, and of
attendant status within the family itself. It is no surprise that children would
develop interests along the same directions and that these interests would
not be narrowly confined to ritual practices or to the preparation of healing
balms alone, but would encompass the larger and intrinsically more
stimulating range of interests which their healing elders demonstrate. Thus
one may anticipate that the attribution of the healing power is but one
aspect of a larger family constellation in which the entire family expresses
an interest in pragmatic methods and abstract considerations bearing on the
maintenance of health, the proper conduct of life, and the nature of the
unseen forces which affect feelings and performance.
Having proposed a correlation between healing skills, knowledge and
curiosity about affairs more mysterious than the distaff and the plough;
having observed a relationship between these skills, or powers, and the
amount of such knowledge communicated, one supposes — and observes —
that the folk healer is the kind of person who enjoys listening to and telling
others about the strange and the unusual. Implied here is a general capacity
to listen and to instruct, an ability to recall and to improvise, a facility in
speech, a pleasure in the dramatic, and a confident social presence. These
are attributes of the successful story teller, of the good conversationalist, of
the productive interviewee or informant, and — we think — of the respected
folk healer. By inference from this alone, one may anticipate that folk
healing is itself far more dependent upon social behaviour than upon
effective pharmaceutical or surgical techniques. It is likely that the social
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 181
skills of the healer, in turn, are related to psychological characteristics such
as general verbal fluency, intelligence, emotional vitality, and an abiding
interest in nature and in other human beings.

A Diversified Heritage
The question arises as to how much of the content of the rural culture in
the Doxario region is the same from one family to the next? Are differences
in productivity of narratives simply a matter of the comprehensiveness with
which one family draws upon and dispenses material coming from the same
set of finite cultural stores? Or does one find that each family presents
somewhat different sets of beliefs, experiences, or magical methods? In the
former case one would be dealing with similar heritages and orientations
which vary only by the capacity to remember and to relate. In the latter,
one would have to argue for a greater variety of wares in the cultural store-
house, wares which would still perhaps be finite, but where the sum total of
stores equals the sum total of persons involved. Each family and each person
' would be unique in what he holds to be true, or worth telling about the
preternatural universe.
We shall examine this question in several ways; the first, by referring to a
distribution of responses to the original questionnaire items for all of the
families in the three villages. The four initial questions asked: (1) for accounts
about healers, priests, saints, wise women, magicians, doctors or others who
had remarkable powers to fight illness or combat death itself; (2) for stories
of wonderful or miraculous events where a person fought with death and
won, or came back from the dead; (3) for accounts of strangers, nymphs,
lamia, spirits, etc., who had brought death or danger, of persons who under-
stood their ways, and of persons able to protect others from the harm they
might bring; and (4) for accounts of revenants or other dangerous dead. The
first two of these questions were based on the assumption that the combat
myth, so well discussed by Fontenrose (93), provided an excellent focal
point for inquiries into concepts about the drama of life and death, man and
nature, order and chaos.
Table VI below presents the distribution of replies to these four questions,
categorized not for content or productivity, but simply for the respondent
family’s indicated whether or not they know or have heard such stories,
Data for each village are presented separately.
182 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

TABLE VI

REPORTED AWARENESS OF PRETER-

NATURAL LORE DEALING WITH FOUR
THEMES AMONG PEASANTS AND
SHEPHERDS IN THREE VILLAGES
Families who know or Families unaware of
have heard such stories such stories
or have experienced
phenomena themselves
Themes:
(1) Healers in extraordinary
combat with illness or death
Dhadhi 29 18
Panorio 18 II
Saracatzani encampment 4 I
(2) Miracles of humans
overcoming or warding off
death
Dhadhi 18 29
Panorio 18 10
Saracatzani 5 fe)
(3) The exotika and those
who understand their ways
Dhadhi 40 9
Panorio 23 5
Saracatzani 3 2
(4) Revenants and other
phenomena of life after death
Dhadhi 32 14
Panorio 22 6
Saracatzani 5 Oo

It is clear that there is nothing approaching unanimity in the reports of

the peasants and shepherds about their knowledge of stories or experiences
with reference to the major themes about which inquiries were made.
While the proportion of knowledgeable versus unaware persons remains
much the same from village to village, there are unexpected reversals; for
example, the majority of families in Panorio know of miracles of healing or
death defiance, whereas only a minority in Dhadhi claim to know of such
events.
Based on the data in Table VI, several general statements can be made;
for one, there is no theme about which every village family claims know-
ledge. The order of frequency (combining data for the three communities)
from most to least familiar subject matter finds the exotika best known, the
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 183
revenants and other strange death phenomena second best known, the
healers in extraordinary combat with illness and death ranking third, and
least familiar are the miracle stories or experiences where man overcomes
death or disability in some astonishing way with the help of some exceptional
power.
If we look more closely at these most familiar and least familiar themes,
recalling the content of stories and experiences as presented in earlier
chapters, we shall see that the best known theme centres about spirits,
concepts or creatures, those powers and dominions of the second world
which are the ones denied, denounced or abhorred by the Orthodox Christ-
ian dogma. It is the non-Christian supernaturals who play the predominant
role in the folk narrative — arid in the accounts of direct personal experience
with extraordinary powers — in our villages. Stringlos, the nereids, the
kallikantzari, lamias and the others in this only-visible-to-some con-
fraternity are not only non-Christian, they are for the most part pre-
Christian; an assertion which we make now but which we shall support in a
later chapter. If this be the case, one must argue for the importance of the
pre-Christian heritage in shaping not only the nature of the household tales
told today, but also in shaping the way in which the world is experienced; or
more concisely (117), shaping the interpretations made of experiences — for
most certainly the villagers do not merely tell tales about the exotika: they
report that they experience them directly, hearing them, seeing them,
marrying them and being splashed, struck, touched and teased by them.
In the same way, the second most familiar set of accounts cluster about the
theme of the revenant. The vrikolax is certainly not a Christian concept; yet
the village preoccupation and experience with these unmouldered bodies is
extensive.
In contrast, the themes about which the accounts of Christian powers
cluster, the life-saving miracles of the intervention by members of the
Christian pantheon to join in extraordinary combat with forces adverse to
man, are least familiar to the villagers. This is not to suggest that the
villagers have not been exposed to Orthodox ideas and legends, but the
exposure does not seem to have been intense. The reasons for this are several.
As was suggested in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), the rural priests
are themselves of local stock and, with rare exceptions, not giants of
theology. Secondly, the amount of formal contact between peasant and the
church, either for attendance or education, is minimal. In any event, it is
not the dogma of Orthodoxy, or the colourful supernumerary myths
encircling it, which is uppermost in the mind of the villager when he con-
siders preternatural phenomena.
The context in which pre-Christian elements emerge is in the considera-
tion of the villager’s struggle to maintain life and health, to ward off pain,
disability, untimely death and ugly uncertainty, and to maximize control
of a world which does not easily reveal itself as ordered or predictable.
These are certainly central issues in the life of the peasant; ones which
charge his existence with purpose and emotion; ones which direct much of
1 Lest it be overlooked, it would be well to remark at this point on a theme later to be
developed; that much that does appear as Christian in the concepts of the villagers is a poor
disguise for pre-Christian lore.
G
184 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

his endeavours. That pre-Christian elements remain predominant here,

after two millennia of Christianity, suggests not only the intensity with which
folk belief structures hold firm, but also suggests the condition for that
tenacity in the intimate linkage between a belief and the most salient con-
cerns in living. As a qualification it would be reasonable to add that such
beliefs are enduring only in so far as they are communicated within a
context of intense community and family support, of the sort posited
especially for the families of healers earlier in this chapter. These beliefs are
enduring only insofar as natural or economic conditions do not greatly alter
life styles, nor provide for refutation through new means of observing
nature, observations which would challenge the assumptions which under-
lie the belief systems.
As a final inference to be drawn from Table VI at this time, it is sug-
gested that the villager is oriented today not only in many ways similar to
his orientations as was his predecessor of ancient times, but also that these
ways of thinking about and looking at life are deeply satisfying and, as such,
reflect natural or typical ways for the human mind to function, at least in an
agrarian social setting.
The foregoing remarks anticipate conclusions in later chapters. We
return now to the more immediate consideration of diversity within the
community. Referring again to the questions which deal with the themes
cited in Table VI, there is another set of data which reflect differences
among the villagers. Two varieties of response were obtained from the
(majority) groups who report they have heard or do know of stories or
experiences relevant to the themes of the exotika and of the vrikolakes. One
set of response has the two components: awareness of beliefs about the
exotika associated with the affirmation of the correctness of those beliefs.
The other set of responses has two different components: here the awareness
that others have seen or believed in the exotika is coupled with a denial of the
accuracy of those accounts —the whole exotika belief system is rejected.
Table VII shows the distribution of the assenters and dissenters.

TABLE VII
ASSENT AND DISSENT REGARDING THE
EXOTIKA AND VRIKOLAKES
Knowledge and Knowledge and
Assent Dissent
The Exotika
Dhadhi 37 3
Panorio QI 2
Saracatzani 3 O
The Vrikolakes
Dhadhi 26 6
Panorio 19 8
Saracatzani 5 O
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 185
The dissenters, the sceptics, are in the minority, very much so. Even were we
to add their number to the unaware group in Table VI, it would in no way
change the majority affirmation of the exotika upon which discussion of pre-
Christian survivals on the preceding pages has been based. Nevertheless it is
the presence of dissent which must be stressed; in both of the peasant com-
munities there exist families who disbelieve weighty convictions held by the
majority of their neighbours. Such dissent about the exotika and revenants
is not found among the Saracatzani families interviewed about these
matters. Absence of dissent among the shepherds and its presence among
the peasants is compatible with our earlier observations reported in Health
and Healing in Rural Greece (35), as to the tightly-knit familial structure of the
shepherd camp in contrast to the diversity, factionalism, and relative
independence seen in the two peasant communities.
Lest there be doubts as to the importance of the exotika and revenants
after all, for there are some scholars (44), (133), who say such creatures are
only half-believed in any community, it would be well to point out that the
scepticism extends to matters of Orthodox dogma as well. In both Panorio
and Dhadhi are found villagers who state that there is no evidence that
Christ ever existed (Chap. VII), and that belief in him is as dubious as the
lamias. The same is said for God, only it is said more often; several atheists
and agnostics dwell in the very heart of each of these tiny rural communities ;
including the camp of the shepherds.

Differences Revealed by Content Code Analysis

Another device for assessing the similarity-dissimilarity of narrative
material is to examine its content in greater detail to see to what extent
subjects or stories are repeated by various narrators. The technique em-
ployed here for analysis has been to content code each and every account;
setting up an index category for each topic mentioned, and recording each
reference to that topic, each modification or variant of it under the major
content code. There were 158 major topics, in the content code ranging
alphabetically from ‘‘anemopiroma” and “angels” to “women” and
“xemetrima’’. Sampling every tenth entry, tabulating, and totalling all of
the narrative extracts entered under the fourteen major entries sampled,
there are 254 extracts from or references to, narrative material. Each
reference is a small narrative unit pertaining to the major topic. The
standard requirement for coding as “‘similar’? was requirement that all
elements of a small narrative unit be the same; while designated as “‘unique”’
were all those references, or extracts, in which the small narrative units
differ in some important detail from other extracts under that major entry.
One finds that 125 references are “unique”.
The foregoing tabulations show that about half of the small narrative
units coded under major content categories differ in some fashion from
every other account and narrative. Conversely, about half of the small
narrative units which are extracted under each major content code are
similar to at least one other narrative with regard to the details involving
the major content category under consideration. This similarity does not
imply that entire accounts are similar; it only means that what one person
186 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

has said about some set of details revolving around a major topic is just
about the same as what some other person said about that topic. Half of
these small narrative units are like at least one other such narrative unit,
but the tabulations also show very few of the small narrative units are
like many others. Taking our sampling as satisfactory, this would mean that
in no case have we found a detailed small narrative unit which is rendered
in the same way by more than seven informants; indeed, there is only one
such topic about which seven people say the same thing in regard to one
set of details.
To illustrate, one of the sampled entry headings, or coding categories,
was “‘nereids”. It happens that ‘‘nereids”’ are one of the topics most fre-
quently referred to in the accounts. Each reference to the nereids has been
coded or indexed. Fifty-one different subcodes, the small narrative units,
are there recorded under “‘nereids’’, for example: “sang song in which herbs
to prevent miscarriage are named”’; or ‘‘person treated badly by them at the
well is said to have poorly working brain as a result”, or “‘Mantheos is
unable to cure ills caused by Turkish nereids’’; or “‘amulets, charms, used
to ward them off”. Under these small narrative units are found a total of
sixty-four references taken from a total of about forty-five separate accounts.
Of these sixty-four, there are thirty-nine which are unique, meaning that
they have appeared in that particular form, or with those elements, in only
one narrative from among the total of approximately 900 narratives
collected in all three villages. As for similarities (still using the nereids
coding material) there are five references, all of which are similar and
coded under the same small narrative unit; in this instance, the danger
nereids offer is described: ‘‘are harmful (to men) when a human treads on
their table; they will then strike him to cause injuries including paralysis”
(symptomatic of the medical diagnosis of cerebral haemorrhage). This
tabulation means that among all of the narratives collected there are forty-
five dealing with the nereids; but among these only five which agree that
nereids pose a danger to humans who tread on their table, and will strike
humans to cause cerebral-haemorrhage-like (our concept not the narrators)
injuries.
Forty-five separate accounts by no means implies forty-five distinct
narrators. Referring to the source, we find that among the seventy-five
families contributing recordable materials, thirty families accounted for all
the forty-five narratives specifically mentioned the nereids. On the other
hand, it must be noted that many of the stories, much like those involving
the nereids, are considered under a different heading, that of the “‘exotika’’,
a more general term used by some who may not refer to nereids by name.
There are fourteen more families who contribute stories of the exotika,
which closely resemble the accounts of the nereids. If one were to search for
generally similar accounts under the yet different headings of ““Dangerous
Hour”, ““Lamia’”’, Demons and Devils, the number of families contributing
generally similar, but certainly not identical, narratives would further
increase.
A final device which may be used to illustrate the similarities and
divergencies in the narrative material is the comparison of main themes in
the accounts by the two most productive families found among all those
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 187
interviewed in the three communities. Both families are in Panorio; one is
that of Maria the wise woman; the other that of Spyros Ghatis, who is a
healer of lesser stature. In Table VIII below is presented the comparison of
themes under major headings, as extracted from their accounts.

TABLE VIII
MAJOR TOPICS APPEARING IN THE
NARRATIVE MATERIAL PRODUCED BY
THE TWO MOST PRODUCTIVE FAMILIES

MARIA Spyros GHATIS

ILLNESSES AND CURES

Wandering navel : Healing substances:

nature of disorder, diagnosis, varieties used described;
treatment, practika, techniques
xemetrima for the navel
Evil Eye:
symptoms, diagnosis and
treatment;
how healer gets the discomfort ;
substances, rituals used in;
treatment;
varieties of blood easily
bewitched;
magnet in the eyes;
names of those with eye not
given; acts which bring on the
eye: inconsistent weaning as
leading to vulnerability
Healer and healing :
better if one has suffered oneself;
stories of cures
Anemopyroma :
symptoms and treatment
Blood:
disease resistance
Stars:
cause warts
188 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
DEATH AND DYING

Accounts of death of her children: Dying man may be saved by

How one of her children was killed hitting him with ikon;
by the Bad Hour; Death can be foretold by some;
How Koukoudi brought death and _sPriests can kill
was killed by the saints;
Hard for soul of the bad to leave
body;
Foretold by dogs;
Lechona not accepted in heaven
unless magical number rituals
used ;
Unbaptized infants destined when
they die to try to fill baptismal
font emptied by demons

DREAMS

Foretold by Stringlos ;
Dreams foretold a healing career
and the coming of gipsies;
Panaghia appears in dreams

MAGICIANS, WITCHES, WISE WOMEN

Maria’s grandfather as bad one: Female magicians gather demons;
story of his binding curse on his Very skilled wise woman studied
son, how demon put it into his with Jews;
head; Can bind the jackals;
God explained: Thebes famous for magicians
through priests and nuns as
done today at oracle of Delphi;
None in Panorio:
many in Chalkis;
Their sorcery :
cannot be dissolved when magia
thrown into the sea

POLLUTION
Lechona Faeces :
Menstrual taboos destroyed the power of man
with the evil eye;
faeces also destroyed a family
polluted by illness;
story of magia thrown into the
sea
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 189
CHRISTIAN POWERS

Role of Saints : God:

Dimitrios, Athanasios and vs. nature;
George ward off Koukoudi how God used to make love;
Flowers of Christ used in Christ and his wanderings
healing ritual St. Antonios :
God: gathered the demons to cure the
proves his greatness by causing afflicted
suffering St. Nikolas:
Panaghia: droll story of fisherman’s
story of visiting Maria in her masquerade as and caught with
dreams; another’s wife;
miracle stories; St. Serafim:
cures and babies saved; story of origins;
mothers offering child to; nearly killed town president in
stories of Panaghia at Tenos; latter’s dreams;
Maria’s own experience; Panaghia:
will appear to those who are miracle stories centring about
pure; her church in Evrytania;
stories about the Panaghia of Saints :
Tenos; when paid used to take care of
other healing tales animals

PRIESTS

heal the ill at Tenos by jumping are without power;

over them are bad luck;
are devils;
stories and experiences;
had power in the old days;
several illustrative stories
killed own child who misbehaved
with aphorism ;
killed a snake with aphorism

ANIMALS
Dogs: Jackals :
can foretell dire events; binding of, by magic;
can sense Stringlos’ presence; Sheep :
Jackals : shoulder blade used in augury
bound by wise woman; Snake :
Bears: skin of, stops electricity ;
not allowed inside magic circle protects against evil eye;
of Panorio aphorised by priest
Calves:
twin: pulled magic plough;
Sheep:
shoulder blade used in augury
(scapulamancy)
190 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
THE DEAD AND THE VRIKOLAKES

charms against ;
boy drowned by aunt;
returned to remarry ;
pollute food and household;
destroyed by boiling water;
girl went to a party and
returned to the grave;
fate of a suicide
Ghosts:
reality of denied, attributed to
human fears only;
test of courage in the cemetery

THE LIGHT-SHADOWED

Unpolluted can see the heavens; Pollution of :

May wish upon the heavens; by cat’s ears;
Qualities and characteristics Characteristics and qualities of:
have radioactivity

CURSES

Effects of father’s curse; Of the five fingers;

Curse from the (shit-hole) grave Cure through magical number
rituals;
Of the dead

MAGIC, SORCERY AND TABOO

Taboos on the first wheat; Sorcery of killing Doxario

Gipsies forbidden inside family
Magia used in;
Substances used in counter-
magic, cures;
Circle :
around Panorio.
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES IQI
NON-CHRISTIAN BEINGS

Koukoudi : Spirits :
story of; discussed;
and hung on fig tree Stringlos :
Lamias: reality denied;
Kallikantzari: denial qualified
“I myself” story; Devils :
man on donkey story; actions discussed
nature of; Moros:
wild hairy men nature and effects;
Vittora: disturbs sleep;
as one’s luck; takes form of dog
leaving body before death; Kallikantzan:
as light as thieving scoundrels at
Nereids: Christmas time;
harmed Maria’s husband when as wild, hairy people in the
he trod on their table: hearth ashes;
Bad Hour: annoy and steal;
dangers of; relatives of the Kolovelonides
killed her child; Exotika:
appearing as dog; two women in black at a well
an exotika who threatened a man and
Nereids : would have taken his speech;
habits and actions; bride of Paleopetra;
appearance by water, night, appear as dog at the hearth
wilderness; Koukoudi:
relation to shadows, noon, story of;
shade; killed by saints ;
Stringlos : protection of Panorio against
description of;
foretells death

STRANGERS

Gipsies and portents : Criminals:

as bastards of the Turks:
Greeks not among them

One set of differences between the two families, which does not emerge
from a table, is the manner of life and the amount and style of communica-
tion within them. Maria is the stellar personality in her own family and to
some extent in the whole village; she speaks with rich detail, poignancy,
sensitive feeling, and an undercurrent of vibrant concern, sometimes of fear.
Her husband is taciturn, solid, with a dry wit and a suddenly winning grin.
He speaks with caution, humility and humour. The children, when they
talk, speak mostly of their mother, and with pride and affection. Among the
Ghatis there was a great initial reluctance to talk at all; their suspicion was
allayed but slowly. Here it is Spyros’ grown son who broke the ice and, with
wit and occasionally inconsistency, held forth by the hour. His parents,
o*
192 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
more silent and sceptical, often disagreed holding a more dubious view as to
the reality of some of the preternatural events of which their son spoke.
While these personal and family differences are striking to the interviewer,
they need not be associated with differences in beliefs about the world.
There are many reasons for the families to hold the same views. Maria and
her husband have lived in Panorio all their lives (both are about fifty). Old
Spyros Ghatis has been there seventy-three years and his voluble son
Vassilis for all his thirty-three. Of the four elders in the two families only one
has had any schooling at all; Maria’s husband had four years of primary
school in near-by Spathi some forty-five years before. Their forefathers have
been in Panorio for 500 years, pasturing the sheep, and more recently, tilling
the soil. Neither set of elders venture often from Panorio, and when they do,
it is rarely beyond Doxario at the base of the mountains or Spathi higher
still. Neither family has a radio; while the younger men of the families read
the paper, the elders do not read at all. All of these conditions would work,
one would expect, towards a limited and homogenous point of view within
and between these two families and the others who make up Panorio’s
129 people.
But there are sources of outside news. Both families have grown children
married and living in Athens. The Ghatis have a son who went to university
there, although he did not finish it. These children regularly return to
Panorio bringing their wives and children and the news of the town. They
bring city ways and praise them to their more sedentary neighbours; they
even bring books, a few of which are conspicuously placed in the main room
of each of their parents’ dwellings. Daily the bus goes by dropping off the
mail (or to be more exact, the driver hurls it out of the window as he races
around the mountain curves; the mail package skids on the dusty road and
bounces, likely as not, into the ditch beside it). With the mail comes the
newspaper, the contents of which are discussed by more persons than read
them, during the sporadic evening gatherings in the coffee house. Commerce
regularly brings the families, the men especially, into contact with suppliers
and buyers in the adjacent towns, while the women are visited by foot-
weary travelling hucksters displaying clothes and household items. In
addition, there is a radio in the coffee house which, while tuned to music for
the most part, occasionally brings in news and views reflecting city life. And,
while it is infrequent, some people — especially the younger ones — do get to
Athens where they absorb the flavour of the city and bring back mementos
of it. More often people get to Spathi, an old and lively, and in the past
somewhat violent, mountain town of about a thousand people. With the
people of Spathi they are bound by ties of blood, both through marriage and
murder, ties of acquaintance through shared school days (until the last few
years the Spathi school was Panorio’s as well), ties of recreation for it is to
Spathi the men go for their occasional party times, and ties of commerce.
The foregoing are major activities which bring the Panorio people into
contact with the outside. In addition, there are the infrequent exchanges
with educated persons, the élite they are called by some students of peasant
societies, who provide regular services to Panorio. Here one encounters the
policemen, who may pay a call once a month; the president of the com-
munity of Doxario (of which Panorio is a part) who calls less often; the
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 193
doctor, who is seen by one or another Panorio person probably once a
month; or the priest, who comes for a brief Sunday service once a month or
less. The teacher commutes daily from his residence-in-retreat in Doxario,
but occupies himself with the children, giving the appearance of doing his
best to avoid association with their parents. The schoolhouse is located about
a quarter of a mile from the village and facilitates the splendid intellectual
isolation of the teacher. Except for what is transmitted to the elders through
their children, the villagers learn but little from the teacher himself; he is
to them a somewhat unpopular stranger, while they are to him but proof of
the rigours of his bad luck in being assigned to teach in such a mountain
wilderness.
Within the community the exchange is much more frequent and intense;
there is daily conversation among the members of various families — at the
well, where the women and girls go to get water, along the winding road, as
men or women prod the heavily-laden donkeys off to Spathi or Doxario; at
the coffee house, where women or children buy the bits and pieces of manu-
factured stuff which supplement the home-produced materials (matches,
thread, salt, soap, etc.) or where the men sometimes sit in the evenings to
chat; at the church, where there is a rare Sunday service when Father
Vassilis sees fit to come so far from his comfortable home. Periodically there
are larger gatherings: the religious occasions and festivals at Easter, the
Sleeping of the Panaghia; St. Dimitrius’ name day; the autumn threshing
of the wheat, which brings them all to the ancient threshing machine, which
for a few days, is moored, a creaking chaff-spewing orange dragon, in the
centre of a village field. There are also gatherings of yet larger sorts in which
the Panorio delegations are but a portion: the great festival in Spathi at the
name day of St. Athanasios, the festival in Doxario at the name day of St.
John, and the harvest festival which the grand landowner near Dhadhi
provides for his workers, among whom are a contingent of young Panorio
lads and lasses.
These then are the major external sources of stimulation and diffusion of
ideas and conceptions of the world for the people of Panorio. Excluding the
few years spent in elementary school for most and the higher education
received by exactly two of the younger people in the entire town (one of
them the son of Spyros Ghatis) and excluding a very brief exposure to
Orthodox dogma presented in church services, the transmission is personal
and informal. It occurs outside any institutional setting and is independent,
for the most part, of mass media.
Given the increased exposure of younger persons to outside contacts
through travel to town, through jobs of the sort where they work in contact
with outsiders, as for examples do the ten or so Panorio youths who toil in
the fields of the Dhadhi landlord, and given their higher education, one
would expect them to have absorbed city ways. They have, in their choice
of clothing, educational and job goals, and desires for manufactured goods
as part of a new, more comfortable style of life. But the city ways absorbed
do not necessarily include — for those who remain in the village — scepticism of
that orientation to life, death and natural events which is embodied in the
belief in magic and the supernatural. On the contrary, among the sceptics
there were more older than younger folk, at least in the tiny communities of
194 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Panorio and Dhadhi. A good example is Vassilis Ghatis, much versed in lore
in contrast to his father, dubious about some — but certainly not about all —
of the reality of the supernatural world.
At this point it is important to remind ourselves that the city way itself
includes considerable acceptance of magic, of sorcery, and of folk healing.
We have not done a study within a city so we are not able to say to what
extent convictions about the preternatural are distributed among the
urban population; but keeping in mind that most Athenians are but a few
short years removed from country hamlets themselves, and that no Athenian
is likely to be more than a three-generation city boy, the anticipation is for
widespread continuation of older non-technological ‘‘unsophisticated’’
concepts among the urban population. This is one of the reasons which we
posit as accounting for failure of city contacts to disrupt traditional beliefs
about the supernatural world; city slicker and country cousin are not
worlds apart in their logic, nor in their assumptions about the powers
beyond. On the other hand, just as there are sceptics in the country so there
are in the towns; and as advanced education and increased contact with
modern ways may tend to make people embarrassed about their beliefs in
the preternatural, if not replace them with more “‘scientific’’ ideas, one
would naturally expect a considerable reduction in admissions about such
beliefs among educated city dwellers. In a sense the city has, as stories about
how “‘we have become demons ourselves’’ implied, created a way of life in
which technology is its own magic and, as has happened in the literature of
science fiction, the fantasies of the layman are but pale and meagre fare in
contrast to the actual achievements of scientists and technicians. With
son et lumiére over the Parthenon at night and a nuclear laboratory at
Democritis just outside of Athens, how can the exotika compete? And more
than that, if men can create such wonders and understand them, what need
is there for the layman to resort to the “‘aerika’’ for explanations of events of
obviously lesser magnitude?
In conclusion, reviewing again the contents of Tables I to VIII
there is evidence for a considerable range of beliefs about life, death, healing,
and the causes of otherwise not understood natural events among the
individuals in the communities studied. There is a wide range of difference
in what concepts people hold about preternatural phenomena, in the per-
sonal experiences they report, in their knowledge of accounts or stories deal-
ing with these phenomena, in their knowledge and practice of magical
operations, and in the degree of acceptance or doubt for the presence and
reality of any kind of supernatural phenomena, including the existence
and/or power of God and Christ. There are differences in the distribution of
knowledge, concepts, experience, and acceptance from one community to
the next in the three studied, and within each community from family to
family.
There was, on no issue, complete agreement among the people in a
village; even the ubiquitous evil eye was challenged as “nonsense”? by a
grizzled old Dhadhi villager of iconoclastic bent.
Thus, while granting that the majority in each community studied do
share certain basic convictions about how to maintain life, how to ward off
disaster, how to heal the ill, how to control the unseen powers, how to
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 195
account for the untoward events or unusual perceptions, one must also
stress the magnitude of disagreement among peasants and shepherds over
what events have really occurred, over how these are to be interpreted, and
over what phenomena are real, and what techniques for producing desired
effects do work. The full range, from the impassioned account of personal
experience — of miracles seen, or cures made, or of exotika touched and
talked to — to vehement rejection of the “‘lies’’ or nonsense of one’s ill-guided
neighbours, occurs in both Dhadhi and Panorio regarding healing methods,
religious rites, magic and sorcery, and the supernaturals both Christian and
non-Christian.
One must not gloss over the exception which the Saracatzani present or
the gradations in scepticism which find the Dhadhi people more frequently
dubious than those in Panorio. There are differences among communities
too; the tightly knit, more traditional Saracatzani do share convictions
about the nature and the reality of the exotika and vrikolakes with no signs of
disagreement among themselves. On the other hand, we suspect among the
eight shepherd families there are at least two individuals who are agnostics;
so one cannot say that the Christian dogma has the same widespread
acceptance as does the non-Christian among those shepherds.
Similarity of conviction and explanation for preternatural phenomena is
greatest among the Saracatzani; while in the least integrated of the three
villages, Dhadhi (with its greater number of unrelated families coming from
places more far apart and living physically more distant from one another),
there is the greatest discrepancy of belief and practice. There is a positive
relationship between the integrity of a community, its wholeness defined by
kinship, origins, way of life, and physical closeness in living, and the extent
to which it subscribes to or agrees upon the major elements of magic, of folk
healing, and of the supernatural world. Such a proposition is hardly new to
social scientists.

A Note on the Concept of ‘Culture’

There is a profusion of differences among our peasants and shepherds in
what they experience, how they interpret it, and how they try to explain and
control events. Since no two are alike in what they say or do and no two are
alike in the narratives which they render, each having supposedly extracted
these narratives and concepts from the same mutually available cultural
storehouse, it suggests caution in applying a concept such as “culture’’,
“social order’? or any other satisfying and supposedly integrating label
which an outsider imposes upon a community.
Thus if we, as observers, are led to the use of a term such as ‘‘culture’’, or
“social structure’’, or “shared belief system’’, or any other categorical con-
venience, we must keep in mind that these terms imply certain assumptions
of similarity and regularity which are not met. They are models of a sort,
and as such they are shaped only roughly to the realities of the community
and the conceptual lives of its members. The rule would seem to be that the
more accurate our matching becomes, that is, the better the notion of a
culture shared by all does actually fit the moment’s picture which we have
engraved and termed “reality”, the broader must be the components or
196 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

elements of that ‘culture’? which we categorize and the more must be

included within its unattainable limits.
To illustrate, one cannot expect ever to obtain, or record, the complete
lore of Panorio as it pertains even to one supernatural, say Stringlos. If one
twice interviewed every man, woman, and child in the village, one would
find that some would have forgotten and others elaborated a tale by the time
of a second interview, thus demonstrating the unreliability of such reports.
More important, because Stringlos is constantly putting in his appearance,
‘the’? is altering the experiences of the people there and, necessarily, the
accounts which they will subsequently render. Because Stringlos is a fact, a
fact in belief and one capable of being seen and heard he is a dynamic
entity in village life about whom new information is constantly being
generated. Add to this the observation taken from our data that no two
individuals agree exactly on where Stringlos comes from, what he looks like,
when he was last seen, how he last sounded, etc., one can see that the tiny
element of culture called Stringlos will at best be known only by approxima-
tions and estimates and then only for static moments in time. Therefore,
while it is informative to say that Stringlos is an element in the “‘culture”’ of
Panorio, additional information is also required if we are to do more than
catalogue bits and pieces. And if we go on to say, who knows Stringlos and
who does not, and what are the ways in which he is known or how is his
presence reported, we shall soon find that Stringlos-tracking is a major job,
for not only his appearance but his very existence will probably vary with
the individual sensory input, mood, personality, role, age, family member-
ship and myriad other variables all of which may be subsumed under
“culture”? but if so, are rarely either made explicit or their determining
effects defined.
Using elicited beliefs, experience and lore as a measure of one portion of
rural Greek culture, it must become apparent that the content of culture, so
defined and limited, cannot be determined except perhaps in the loosest of
outline, by relying on reports of a few informants. Using even the most
richly informed persons, as for example Maria or Vassilis Ghatis, one is first,
relying upon persons or families quite different from others in the village
and, second, one is using a measure undergoing constant change; one much
shaped by idiosyncratic features. As individuals experience and report
phenomena, they are creating new material, creating new cultural elements
so to speak, and so the measure of culture which relies on a few informants is
to an unknown extent always a measure of newly generated material that
reflects an individual point of view. ‘To what extent it matches other points
of view can be determined only after the rest of the community has been
given the same opportunity to report how the world looks to them. We
venture to predict that in any peasant or shepherd community it will be
found that the limits of a culture’s content cannot be determined without
reference to every individual member’s portfolio of cultural shares.
To make matters more complex, it must be recognized that the designa-
tion of any group as the “‘culture”’ of interest for study is itself a categorical
decision which will necessarily reject relevant information by excluding
outsiders who will not be dissimilar to insiders. By arbitrarily studying the
life and lore of Panorio, one limits oneself to a group which, while easily
 A PROFUSION OF DIFFERENCES 197
defined spatially, is not at all defined well as any kind of a cultural unit.
Except for the convenience of the researcher and the limits of his skills,
there is no reason to restrict oneself to one community which forms but a
tiny part of a larger whole. The same is true for any region of Greece or for
the nation itself. The political boundaries do define a group convenient for
study, but do not in themselves provide a rationale for such a restriction. In
the matter of healing lore, as we shall see in later chapters when we refer to
Kemp and Westermarck, it will be seen that the national and linguistic
boundaries are not by any means the boundaries of a culture, if by culture
we still mean a people sharing a common heritage of beliefs and practices.
Indeed it is likely that, except perhaps for very isolated peoples, there will
not be found any cultural boundaries of the sort implied by political
divisions, which allow one to draw a line that shows one kind of people on
one side and another kind on the other. We would consequently argue that
the distribution of cultural features, at least in regard to magic and the
supernatural, but no doubt with reference to many other things as well,
must necessarily be a study in relative distribution and weights of elements
or forms; ones statistically defined and determined by adequate sampling
methods; distributions of elements designated by careful definitions and
observed over rather vast geographic areas. Within the scope of such studies,
which it would appear must necessarily be disdainful of parochial profes-
sional disciplines, it would seem only reasonable that the description of any
arbitrarily designated culture attend fully as much to differences as to
similarities ;it must, in other words, aim as much at complete description as
at satisfying categorical conveniences.
 XII
FUNCTIONS AND REFLECTIONS OF
THE NARRATIVES: AN INTRODUCTION
E can learn more from the narratives than is revealed by their manifest
content of belief and technique. From them one can also derive infor-
mation about the relationships of the people one to another, and about their
ways of thinking and their implicit assumptions about the world. One can
also gain insight into the values of the community, into some of its enduring
problems, and into some aspects of the personality structure of individuals.
In this and the following five chapters we shall consider what the accounts
tell us and what the narratives do. In asking what they “‘do’’ we take the
position that they perform a function, that is, that they are useful and
satisfying. We also believe that what they ‘“‘do” is part and parcel of the
life circumstances and personality of the narrators and their listeners.
What we are assuming is that the narratives — their content, intent and
timing — are determined in the scientific sense, and that they are integrated in
the social and psychological sense.
We also assume that the narratives have a latent content which can be
revealed by analysis and interpretation. We assume that the latent content
occurs at several levels of meaning and significance and that these levels are
all “‘real’’ in that they reflect the psychic operations, social circumstance and
cultural heritage of the community. We believe that certain kinds of in-
formation may be more readily obtained from the latent content of
narratives than from the direct observation of village life, although we
would agree that the proof of inferences so drawn must be established by
some sort of direct observation. We further believe that the villagers are
themselves unaware of much of the latent content of their accounts,
although that does not mean that they will not respond to it emotionally.
The narratives do not only serve one purpose, reflect only one kind of
human quality, literary device, or historical content, or are open to only
one “‘correct”’ interpretation or inference. On the contrary it is expected that
the narratives are not less complex than any other kind of human activity or
communication. Their content, no doubt, represents a variety of values,
themes, social, psychological and aesthetic processes. Given the complexity
of the narratives under discussion and given our own professional orienta-
tions it is hardly likely that our interpretations exhaust the implications of
the narrative. We would not wish to pretend that they do. We do contend,
however, that interpretations of the kind we shall advance do offer assistance
in the understanding of aspects of human behaviour in the villages under
study; in particular they assist in comprehending beliefs and actions
associated with human crises, with the critical issues of sickness and health,
safety and danger, and life and death with which we are concerned.
There is no reason to expect the narratives to be consistent with one
another either in the substance of their latent content, in the levels of
 FUNCTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 199
inference which they stimulate, or even in the life descriptions which they
allow. Each narrative does have in common with the rest the fact that it is a
communication reflecting the work of the human mind dealing with vital
issues in a complex social setting. The narrative can be examined as a
communication and it is as a communication that it links itself with the
human qualities of the narrator and his fellows.
The technique employed has been to review each account and to
describe its themes; whenever possible relating the content to known
qualities or concerns of the narrator in relationship to his family and the
community. The thematic analysis of the latent content focused on implicit
values, on attitudes, motives, and orientation and on descriptions of kinds
of human relationships. Once themes and functions were set forth these were
categorized at several levels, for example a group of themes were extracted
which described the presence of anxiety. Anxiety became a heading under
which inferences about its occurrence and handling were listed. But anxiety
is only one aspect of individual psychological dynamics and so, as a number
of features of individual psychic function were extracted, the major cate-
gory of “intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics’’ was constructed. The
major categories are treated here as chapters.
In this process of synthesizing and classifying narrative themes six major
categories have emerged as useful ones for description. They are imperfect
and overlapping, nevertheless they do provide a framework within which
the more detailed analysis can be presented. The categories are as follows:
I Narrative Effects. This includes the apparent function of the narration in
the setting, the general communicative intent of speaker and listener,
the general emotional and evaluative response on the part of both to
the communication.
II Intention A: To Mould Attitudes and Conduct. The inferred intent is to
instruct in values, orientation, techniques and conduct. Instruction
includes promises of rewards for desired behaviour and punishment for
undesired behaviour. Accounts are explicit.
III Intention B: To Reinforce or Affirm Threatened Values and Systems. The in-
ferred intent is to affirm or reinforce life styles, social practices or value
themes which are threatened by counter-views, deviation or major
changes. Intent is implicit and often defensive.
IV Reflections on the Feelings, Practices and Relationships within the Community.
Here are included accounts concerned with problems and tensions
within traditional institutions, those which express emotion and wish,
those which reflect implicit values and conduct codes.
V Reflections of Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Dynamics. Here are included the
accounts which describe internal psychological conflicts and functions
and interpersonal difficulties handled by means of psychic defence or
social deception.
VI Cognitive Features. Included are the logical processes and concept-
development tendencies which appear to underlie thought processes in
narrative formulation. (Cognition is considered independent of belief
structure, emotion and specific content.)
One other point should be made. In analyzing the narratives we have
limited gurselves to interpretations which can be directly derived from the
200 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

accounts themselves. But in analysing what the narratives contain we have

made use of other information, bringing it to bear on the account to enable
us to reach conclusions about psychic or social pressures. In part that in-
formation came from the other methods which we used in our field-work in
Dhadhi, Panorio, and the Saracatzani camp. On the other hand, the ideas
and techniques which we have employed in our approach owe their exist-
ence to the work of others, our ancestors and kinsmen in scholarly studies.
They are legion, but our scope here is narrow. Consequently we have not
introduced our work with a discussion of the relevant literature in the
behavioural sciences, classics and history, or folklore studies; nor have we
attempted comprehensive citation. For the reader interested in a general
commentary on our method, which is the sociopsychological approach, we
recommend Fischer’s excellent monograph (91).
 XIII

NARRATIVE EFFECTS
N Eis struck with the wide range of style, content, themes, appeals and
settings found in the accounts. No single narrative effect seems to be
achieved by every story but there are groups of effects and circumstances of
communication which may be isolated.
One of the most common of these is the employment of the story telling as
an emotionally charged device to appeal to the listener’s own passions and
experience in a dramatic, and frequently symbolic, or at least allegorical
fashion. Situations are presented that arouse immediate feelings within both
speaker and listener by allusion to experiences which have already occurred
in the lives of both, and which have been intense. If these have not yet been
experienced but are anticipated as likely or inevitable, then the anticipation
itself is immersed in strong feelings. Such accounts serve to unite the listeners
and the speaker in an emotional community, often only a transient one. The
common bond is derived from a shared understanding of the motives,
forces, reactions and general themes centring on critical circumstances with
which the account deals. Typically encountered is the sorrow of a family
member’s death, of his serious illness and disability ;of passion, violence and
tragedy of destruction and evil; of anguish over uncertainty, of the intrusion
of alien events in the carefully wrought scheme of living. The narratives
speak also of deep satisfactions found in linking man with nature, with power
or with other humans in ties of emotion and certainty. Here too will be
found effects which derive from an awareness of man’s weakness and
inadequacy in relation to greater powers beyond; here will be found the
drama by which men seek to right that unequal balance through work
thought or various social or magical devices.
Many of these accounts touch upon the ordinarily concealed, but quickly
accessible, reservoirs of intense feeling stored within the members of the
community. Anxiety, envy, love, hatred, the desire to possess or destroy,
these are released by the words of the narrator. Often the situations will be
dramatized so as to set forth in an exaggerated form some of the themes of
life; themes which oscillate between polar opposites; their contradiction
mediated or resolved in a clever tale. Or they may, in contrast, be set forth
ever more starkly stressing the paradox, the conflict and the polarity which
remain unresolved.
One is tempted to distinguish between a bad story and a good one; (59)
bad in the sense that it lacks appeal and garners no effect; or good in that it
ignites the listener intellectually or emotionally, stirring him to a new
experience, one that will reawaken and reintegrate some previous one.
Looking at the stories and observing their telling, has led us to conclude that
one criterion of a good story, one with appeal and impact, is that it provides
alternative levels of explanation or interpretation. A poor one does not. Ina
good story there is no rigid structure requiring the listener to arrive at one
“correct” interpretation or allowing but one translation of the symbolism. It
202 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
is more like a projective test, one which allows the speaker to be spontaneous
and the listener to find in it what he will; an excellent story will be so de-
signed and presented that it probes directly into the exciting or intense
communalities in personality and social experience. Thus many listeners will
find themselves arriving at the same point, although the paths employed to
reach that point have been necessarily diverse. But it remains the test of
goodness that the story not only allows various listeners each to modulate it
in tune with their own special interests and propensities, but that each
listener himself may have an awareness of depth and complexity; each
listener finding for himself the variations on a theme, the alternatives, the
polarities which may be projected into the narrative.
Suggesting that an excellent story allows several simultaneous levels of
response within the listener, one or more of which may be reaching into the
dark waters of the unconscious or the hidden backwaters, accessible but
ordinarily unseen, of the preconscious, leads us to a principle. It is that a
good story necessarily communicates a latent content, private understand-
ings, paradoxically secret but shared symbols. It moves both the speaker and
the listener; arising from unconscious forces within them both it is trans-
mitted not just in one direction but reverberates within the participating
group, travelling by means of initial assumptions which participants make
about the reactions of one another. The myriad cues which are noted by
each either consciously or subliminally are evidence of the correctness of
these assumptions. Thus it is that the participants smile or sigh, draw deep
breaths or clench their perspiring hands, avert their eyes or bite their lips;
and each among them perceives this “silent language’’ (105) in the others
as well as within himself. Each understands that much of what occurs
reflects a secret understanding, some of which is even the listener’s own
secret from himself. It would appear that much of the excitement, shock, or
sorrow which attends the telling finds its origins beyond rational awareness,
for certainly the superficial content of many of the tales will not, in itself,
account for the intensity of the response.
The speaker and the listener are participants in the same process of
communicating, sharing, and reacting. But each will have a different role in
the situation, most likely one related to their other more formal social roles
in the community. One of the effects of the narrative is to expand the
complexities of role interaction, the narrative itself may become part of role
behaviour. The grandmother who seats herself before the hearth, her
daughter and her daughter’s children drawn up in eager circle about her,
are entering into an agreement about how they are to act, and what it is
that each is to do. One of these things to do is, for the grandmother, to be a
grandmother by spinning a yarn, and for the children to be children by
listening wide-eyed as the yarn unfolds. People not only learn the stories but
they learn that telling stories in itself prescribes forms of conduct and
response; it is part of being “‘people’’. The function then, of the story is to
become a constituent element of certain social roles.
Another function of the special narratives which concern us here is to
provide a focal point for gathering together. Once the participants have
come together there is a choice of narrative appropriate to the gathering.
The story or commentary will then become the group’s focus and will
 NARRATIVE EFFECTS 203
restrict the kinds of action that will take place. It is a structure in which
there will be attention not only to the surface content of the narrative and
reaction to its latent content, but in which participants will be evaluating
one another, “What a clever fellow’, “She really understands the nereids’’,
“A terrible liar, I’ll bet it never happened like that at all’’, “Shame, shame,
that’s not proper for now’’. ‘‘Hello, there’s foolhardy courage telling that
one in front of the witch herself’, or “What a pig to even think such things,
let alone say them’’.
The structure of the gathering, ordinarily limited to a few people in one’s
own family, facilitates the impact of the narrative by providing a social as
well as emotional atmosphere. A signal of one sort or another, a few warn-
ing nods, and the narrative is launched in a receptive gathering in which the
listener is set to digest what is to be said. Indeed, by virtue of the setting and
the reverberating response of the participants, the listener may well be
placed in one of those critical states of attention and receptivity (24r) in
which learning is enhanced and stronger-than-usual bonds with one’s fellows
forged. When conditions are ripe for enhancing receptivity, it is to be
expected that the story will be better remembered and have a more lasting
emotional impact as a result. This is why the myth, the folk tale, the con-
troversial commentaries, the awesome elucidation of magical methods, the
impassioned accounts of tragedies and preternatural experiences can play a
more significant role in the lives of villagers than do ordinary communica-
tions of the same length.
It is not only the content of the story which reintegrates experience, it is
the speaker-listener relationship which does so as well. The villagers learn to
listen to such tales and comments as children, they listen to an adult; usually
someone who likes to tell stories and who is herself or himself involved in the
preternatural. We have seen that only a few excelled in story telling and that
these few were themselves deeply concerned with life and death, healing
and pain. These are the ones, usually but not always women, who have
thought more about crises, and who communicate more of what they have
heard and felt and experienced. It is to these more experienced ones that
children are exposed, initiated into the mysteries and complexities of events
beyond the ordinary ken; events which are at the same time very much
within the spirit of every man.
How children are to listen is carefully set forth. The arrangement
capitalizes on all the natural curiosity and imaginativeness of childhood; it
supports the rapidly-growing tendrils of fantasy on trellises of terror and
delight; and it requires all of those features of child-elder conduct which
exist within the village culture to enhance respect, not untouched by awe
and dread, for the knowledgeable narrator and the parent or grandparent.
It is in this relationship that one learns to listen to stories and is bidden to
hearken to their message. It is this relationship which is repeated time and
again as the child listens to mother, to grandmother, to the uncle returned
from the hunt, to the cousin back from the wild wild sea. By the time
adolescence is reached, there is a “‘set”’ for the narrative, a peculiar readiness
to receive at the very deepest levels of conviction and emotion which the
elders, by virtue of having elected to tell a given story to a given child at a
given moment, have indicated is appropriate to the child’s needs and
204. THE DANGEROUS HOUR

development at that time. As time goes on, the listeners become the tellers
of tales; those who have learned of the preternatural from others experience
it for themselves; those who have watched suffering have become the
receptacles of bitterness and strife. As they grow older, the settings for these
narratives expand beyond the family circle; peers exchange accounts and
even strangers bend an ear. But the meaning of the story-tellings situation is
not erased, and the impact of the narrative in its own special setting can
hardly help but open the child, who may now be the man, to the wisdom and
passion therein; once heard, it bids him to think well and deeply upon what
has been said.
It is to be borne in mind that the speaker is not unmindful of himself as a
listener as well. As he talks he also listens. He returns, in his memory’s ken,
to earlier times and places to find guidance for the present. Now in speaking
he is parent and child, in the drama of story-telling the two have merged.
But it must be that the message he has for others is for himself as well.
In addition to these conditions and effects, there are certain direct appeals
which are best stated by describing the immediate emotional response to the
narrative. Stimulation and excitement are observed; their presence implies
the enjoyment of the novel, of the unusual, the relief of monotony, the
pleasures resulting from varied experience and sensory stimulation. The
human organism by no means desires a steady state; on the contrary, it
craves variety in its sensations, alterations in levels of emotion, and finds
satisfaction in seeking to heighten as well as to reduce tension. The quest for
stimulation occurs within limits bound by aversions to actual pain and fear,
discomfort in extreme ambiguity or uncertainty, and the knowledge that
no mainstays of safety or security are to be broken in the pursuit of excite-
ment. Narratives of the preternatural, of crises and passion, fulfil the re-
quirements for ‘“‘safe dangers’. Like riding a roller coaster in amusement
parks, one may indulge onself in limited panic. This can be done by
imaginary ventures in which the boundaries of the real and unreal are
partially dispelled, by vicarious or empathetic surrender to the reported
experiences of others, or by re-experiencing unpleasant events in safe
surroundings. The later course may involve a kind of psychological re-
construction work in which one attempts to gain mastery of what at one
time has been overwhelming. ’
In the village, where life is quite monotonous, each day burdened by very
heavy demands for work and sometimes worry, stimulation in the sense of
urban entertainment is rare. Some few have radios, but beyond these, there
is not much that comes from outside the village pleasurably to arrest the
eyes or ears. Social intercourse is the primary device for pleasure; on some
occasions, a pleasure considerably enhanced by alcohol, dancing and sing-
ing, but ordinarily limited to chatting and gossip or, among the men, talk of
politics, farming, or adventure. Under these conditions, a story which deals
with the unusual, whether it be adventures at sea, the midnight rites of the
nereids, or the latest activity of Stringlos has similar attractions as a radio
programme or a film; it introduces novel elements and alters the pace of
ordinary conversation. The exotika, quite literally, are like radio pro-
grammes: both come from the “‘out of here’’.
Considering the effects of narratives within the scope of stimulation per se,
 NARRATIVE EFFECTS 205
it is possible to differentiate a variety of common responses little different
from those sought by other entertainment vehicles: light amusement or
heavy-handed humour, shock and surprise, “‘safe”’ awe, dread and wonder;
or as in a tragic play, tenderness and sorrow once-removed, or a cathartic
expression of empathy. A good story may enable the listener to attend to
common events in a new fashion, opening his eyes to nuance not pre-
viously noticed; it may stir him to look beyond for the unusual, the excep-
tional which had, in the past, escaped him. It may also move him to try his
own creative skills, either in the dramatic fashioning of the same narrative
when he is the teller of tales, or to elaborate it and to construct upon it a
variation.
It will be seen that insofar as a narrative affects the hearer and leads him
to new ways of viewing the world, or merely supports him in developing his
ideas along lines sometimes specifically indicated, sometimes subtly hinted
at, the narrative will be suggestive or instructional. This observation pre-
pares the way for the analysis of the intentional narrative, by which is meant
one with a latent content so pointed as to suggest to the listener, at varying
levels of awareness, what he is to believe or how he is to act.
 © BY

INTENTIONAL NARRATIVES
NDER this category of intentional narratives two types are considered.
liens is that which has, as one apparent aim, the moulding of attitudes
and conduct. The speaker wishes to instruct the listener and to affirm within
himself certain attitudes, general forms of conduct, perhaps specific tech-
niques of ritual or healing and the like. The presence of such an intent
within a narrative by no means rules out other functions. An account is
very likely to instruct and also to entertain. Indeed, the general rule is that
the narrative effects described in Chapter XIII co-exist with other in-
tentional, expressive, and dynamic features.
The second type of intentional narrative serves to affirm threatened
value systems. It is a weapon in a battle, a persuasive tool in an argument, a
device for resolving conflicts within a person.
In examining the accounts one finds that one type of instruction comes in
the form of a warning. Unhappiness, disaster, or punishment are described
as results of particular beliefs or actions. The latent content warns of dis-
obedience to the parents, whether it be during their life or after their death.
It admonishes that authorities are to be obeyed and that one must allow
oneself to be exploited by them. There are special warnings to those who
would oppose those who have special roles or power within the local
symbolic system of healing-magical-religious beliefs; priests, magicians,
wise women and witches deserve respect.
There are also important community and familial obligations. Sad is the
fate of those who are disloyal to family members or who fail to give support
and respect to the elders. Parents, on their part, are advised that their
power is limited by community demands and that only limited action should
be taken towards a child who fails to regard the duties of propriety and piety,
or fails to observe the taboos surrounding pollution and magical power. The
accounts recognize that just as the piety-pollution-power system must be
respected in child rearing, so too must the child be prepared for the worka-
day world. The parents are warned that a child too thoroughly immersed
in the realm of the magical and supernatural can be disabled psychically and
socially. A course of balance and moderation is advised.
The stories warn of the power of magic and the need for caution in its use.
Role behaviour within the local system is affirmed as the listener is told that
only special persons are qualified to act as “‘heavies’’ in preternatural
dramas. There is also advice to the effect that those who are exceptionally
pious must not be ridiculed or doubted; if accepted, this advice means that
extreme behaviour within the preternatural system is tolerated. Those who
would be judged insane by western standards are not to be cast aside in the
local system. They are to be feared and respected instead. Vengeance will
fall on those who challenge excesses in piety; by implication the extremists
themselves are told to expect trouble from moderates in the community.
Others in vulnerable positions are also warned. New mothers, brides,
 INTENTIONAL NARRATIVES 207
grooms and the like are told to expect attack from the envious and are
advised to defend themselves against inevitable malice. Malice, along with
other evils such as possessiveness, gossip and selfishness, is shown to produce
harm. Emphasis is placed on the danger in hubris (overweening pride).
Those who are overbearing, and even those who are merely foolish enough
to let others know of their own good fortune, must expect to be trampled.
Envy and community ill will triumph over individual fortune. Discretion
and dissimulation are recommended; foolish is the man who displays his
ambition, haughtiness or success. The stories show that hatred and covetous-
ness are concealed behind admiration. The wise man who finds himself
admired will propitiate that envy with gifts and humility.
One is cautioned that there is neither privacy nor autonomy in the village.
Every act is observed and judged and no one dare delude himself to the
contrary. One is counselled to avoid involvement with strangers and not to
trust outsiders. It is courting trouble to care what happens to those who are
not family members or at least fellow villagers. Within the context of healing
there are special warnings against physicians. They are foreign city folk. It
is better not to desert the local healing-magical-religious traditions in favour
of the outside-city-technology system.
In terms of frequency of warnings versus instructions and stories of
reward, there appears to be a much greater emphasis on the former than on
the latter. No doubt the theme of tragedy, downfall, or destruction is a more
dramatic one than is a bland account of happy endings. Moreover, re-
membering that the narratives cited here are centred on the critical issues
of maintaining health and life, and warding off pain and death, they can
hardly help but emphasize the common experience of the villagers that
sorrow is inevitable. Our focus is biased in the direction of eliciting narratives
about bad experiences, how and why they have occurred, and how they
might have been forestalled. In addition, one suspects that the envy of
another’s good fortune, so frequently encountered in community life, leads
to an emphasis in narrative material on the downfall of the proud. Such
tales satisfy the listener’s envious delight or strengthen his awareness that
in his own suffering he is not isolated, but is part of a larger community of
pain.
There are many accounts which instruct by teaching a technique, e.g.
what to do when the Bad Hour comes, or by promising rewards. Among the
themes one finds an emphasis upon restraint and upon the value of deceit.
To be honest or to express one’s feelings bodes no good; the clever liar does
well. The technique is generally applicable, not only to strangers, but to
one’s in-laws and own family. There is also detailed instruction in the
conduct of rituals and magical operations. Along with the techniques of
healing, there is instruction in the necessary accompanying attitudes. Since
the powers are involved, one should feel fear, awe, respect and dependency.
One should act with manipulative cleverness and one must keep one’s
obligations in mind.
Some of the instruction is in the definition of illness according to the local
beliefs about etiology and treatment. The stories tell how one can diagnose
and take steps in the treatment of illnesses which fall within the traditional
system. Included in that instruction is information about which kinds of
208 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

local healers are supposed to treat each class of illness. One is also taught
how to arrange matters of fees and gifts.
With regard to the etiology of illness, one finds the following major causes
set forth:

1. Natural, non-magical sources.

2. Human, non-magical sources: emotions, frustration, unrequited love.
3. Human conditions associated with preternatural power or exceptional states:
pollution, contagion of bloods, sleep, soul-wandering, death.
4. Human magic : (a) unconscious witchcraft — the evil eye and (b) intentional
magic — curses, sorcery.
5. Natural phenomena associated with exceptional and mysterious powers : echo, fire,
water, rocks, smells, noon, the night, plants (e.g. fig tree), animals
(snake etc.), the sun.
6. Wilful supernaturals: The exotika and like beings. Stellar bodies: moon,
stars. The Orthodox pantheon: God, Christ, the Devil, Panaghia, saints.
the unorthodox dead: vrikolakes, ghosts.

Some of the intentional narratives are more shrill than the rest, their
higher pitch reflecting the dramatization of a point of view which attempts
to convince rather than simply to instruct. It is as though these tales sought
to enlist belief, as in a revival meeting, with evangelical fervour and
propagandistic techniques, testimonials, transfer (carrying the prestige of a
respected or revered person or practice over to something else), glittering
generalities, card-stacking, etc.
The notion of revival is an important one here, for it suggests that even
though values or practices may not be undergoing challenge from opposing
forces, they are subject to a certain atrophy, an increase of disbelief, unless
periodically recharged. Such cycles of waxing and waning, the former often
manipulated, the latter usually spontaneous, may be seen among various
groups bound by articles of belief, but where daily events or life styles do not
provide reinforcement for those matters of faith the abstraction which,
while argued as fundamental, rather quickly show themselves to be easily
extinguished or converted. Some of the narratives act as travelling evange-
lists for local traditions; revivifying ebbing sentiments and reaffirming
group ties and special roles. It is too much to suggest that the narrators are
themselves consciously aware of the cycles of belief and set out to hold the
Greek equivalent of an American Fundamentalist sect’s tent meeting. It is
not too much to suggest that villagers do see in themselves and their
neighbours some increasing deviation or lack of concern with supposedly
unifying values. For reasons of intolerance of non-conformity, of shame, or
simple self-interest they spontaneously speak about affairs which have a
latent content that communicates their concern and brings a response that is
in the direction desired.
Among the revivalist narratives are ones that dramatize the reality of
1 Natural non-magical sources were described in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35),
Chapter X; they included local living conditions and environment, self-care, diet, dangerous
or strange substances ingested, physical events, etc. Interestingly, these causes and their
disease consequences, as locally defined, rarely or never appear in the narratives.
 INTENTIONAL NARRATIVES 209
pollution by describing its effects and stories that magnify awe, wonder and
dread of the preternatural. They reinforce conduct codes surrounding
taboos and rituals and the sentiments associated with the local tradi-
tions. Added effect is gained by the use of ‘“‘testimonials’? which show
how important people subscribe to the healing-magical-religious beliefs.
Illustrative cases show the worth of people who are models of purity-
piety-propriety and suggest that such people receive the acclaim of their
neighbours. The power of holy places and of healing methods is reaffirmed,
sometimes by linking them with wonders and the authority of “reputable”’
supernatural powers.
Revivalist stories also use testimonials, prestige “‘transfers’’, and the like,
to glorify particular roles and acts. Healers and priests give such accounts to
affirm their own abilities and their right to the respect of others. These
accounts can also serve to strengthen the confidence of the villager in his
healers, for he learns that they are supported by greater powers and are the
object of personal interest on the part of supernaturals in both the Christian
and pre-Christian hierarchies.
One of the major functions of these narratives seems to be to affirm that
solutions to the crises of life can be found within the local traditions. Those
who stray will be lost, but those who are loyal — pure, pious and proper —
and abide within the healing-magical-religious system shall not be aban-
doned in their moments of need. The system, they say, works and is sufficient
to live by.
Among the intentional narratives are some which have the flavour of a
crusade. They use foils, antagonists and protagonists, and they amplify
polarities. These accounts speak of battles to be fought and causes to be
defended. We shall consider those accounts in the next section.
The narrative styles may change but the issues need not be altered. So it
is that what has been the subject for instruction and revival is also handled
in terms of attack, defence, and salesmanship. One finds accounts which pit
the local traditions against the outside system; the outcome of the conflict
is decided in favour of the local traditions for these are shown to have greater
power and to be sanctioned by greater temporal and sacred authority.
Typically the physician fails and the local healer succeeds.
There is also a demonstration of a schism within the local traditions. The
religious system with its formal ideology, outside control, economic demands,
authoritarianism, and restricted participation in the control of magical
powers is contrasted with the informal system of magic and healing. The
latter is locally controlled, fluid in its ideas, barter-based, and relatively
egalitarian in the distribution of power and skill. Depending upon the
position of the narrator, one or the other of these means for relating to the
supernatural and controlling events will be vaunted and the other derided
or defamed.
Those who are in favour of the more informal traditions attack the church
and its priests as corrupt and unworthy, while defending the healing-
magical system as pious and proper. True piety is shown to reside in
individuals who reject the unrewarding dogma of outside Orthodoxy.
Sanctions for the informal system are claimed through the support of local
supernaturals, some Orthodox and some not; through the support of
210 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

Christ and the Panaghia, and in terms of the success of the system in dealing
with critical life issues. Others defend the priests, rationalizing their
conduct, explaining their deviations from local morality and excusing their
lack of full participation in the informal system. Priestly defenders may
attack the fee-for-service activity of more famous healers; defenders of the
latter rise to their excuse, denying acquisitiveness and projecting faults once
again to the outsiders.
An important function of one type of account is to provide excuses for
failures in the preferred traditions. The limitations of persons in healing and
helping roles are accounted for, as are the failures of the supernaturals to
oblige deserving supplicants. Discrepancies between wishes or claims and
the actual performance are denied or discounted; the result is a set of
defences and justifications which serve to maintain conviction in the face of
failure.
Some of the accounts give support to those who seek revenge when family
honour or individual philotimo is attacked. The appropriateness and
satisfaction which comes from counter-aggression and retaliation is
affirmed. In another set of vengeance stories, conflict between the pious and
pragmatic, between mystics and realists is portrayed. Once again support
for the magico-religious system is forthcoming and proves that the faithful
vanquish. Ridicule is one of the weapons of choice, but wishes for the dis-
ability or death of one’s opponent are battle-worthy methods.
There are, no doubt, many areas of conflict in the village about how one
should act and believe, about how one should orient himself to man and
nature, and about which ideological system is best supported. The fore-
going summaries of the latent content of intentional narratives provides an
introduction to some of the problems and issues in village life. The next
chapter offers more material to enlarge our understanding of the troubles,
behaviour and institutions of the villagers.
 XV
ATTITUDES, PRACTICES AND RELATION-
SHIPS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY
HE latent content of the narratives is rich in its implications about
feelings and attitudes, customs and practices, institutions and relation-
ships within the community as these centre about the critical problems with
which our inquiry was concerned. We shall now deal with these matters.
Among the descriptions and reflections of village life which can be derived
from the accounts are a number that have to do with the local world in
relationship to the outside world. The following are inferences about
ethnocentrism, about provincialism, and about the dangers and benefits
associated with persons, places, powers and events which fall outside the
_ immediate geography of the hearth.
Provincialism and ethnocentrism abound; both humans and super-
naturals define their loyalties and move with comfort only in a constricted
geographical area. Ties of loyalty and obligation are indirectly proportional
to the physical distance from house and village, and to the social distance
from family and neighbours.
Occasional value conflicts may arise when ethnocentric disdain for the
plight of strangers is intruded upon by the observation that strangers may
not be so different after all, and that disasters which befall them can touch a
local heart. One expression of ethnocentrism is found in anti-Semitism, but
those expressing it do so with uncertainty and conflict.
One aspect of ties to place is that supernaturals are conceived of not only
as involved with local humans, but also as siding with them against foreign
humans and against foreign supernaturals. Thus it is seen that all of the
local wilful beings, human, Orthodox and pre-Christian form a community
of sorts which will protect one another against an outside menace.
There is a constant effort to make local beliefs and practices respectable
in the face of the intrusion of beliefs and practices from the outside world.
There is an implicit sense of local inferiority and embarrassment coupled
with some concern that failure to adopt outside ways may be a loss of
opportunity or status. Opportunism, open-mindedness, pragmatism, and the
prestige automatically attached to education, wealth and experience (all
of which outsiders possess to a larger extent than villagers) operate to
promote the acceptance of outside ways and accommodation to change.
Nevertheless attachment, a sense of awe and of the sacred, and anxiety
about altering what one has been taught by one’s family and community
reinforce ethnocentrism. In addition, there is an easy grace to the familiar
and a sense of safety attached to the old ways; change requires effort; it is not
done without uncertainty and awkwardness.
There is uneasiness about what the physician does and believes; he is
suspected of being in opposition to deeply held local feelings. There is a
distrust of those techniques, and their ultimate consequences, which
212 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

challenge local conceptions about how and where one should die. There is
worry about the aesthetic and philotimo-related wholeness of the body, and
about the treatment of illnesses which are considered to be locally caused
and known. Implicit in all this is a sensible fear that the physician can harm
his patient by not being aware of his patient’s convictions.
There is a fear of coming too close to the strange or the unknown and of
making it part of oneself one’s life. As noted in Health and Healing in Rural
Greece (35), this attitude extends to medication; it makes manufactured
drugs suspect and leads to uncooperativeness in following physician’s
recommendations.?
There is a tendency to see outsiders as very different from oneself and to
dichotomize the local versus the outside world. One aspect of this inside-
outside classification, the ‘‘us-not us’’ one, is the ease with which blame is
thrown on the “not us’. Danger is more easily seen as coming from the
outside, diseases and damage from “‘out of here”’. Externalization and pro-
jection, to be discussed again in the next major section, reflect this style of
dichotomized thinking. Not only do these serve to place blame and causes
for disease and disaster, but in doing so the village reputation and individual
philotimo is protected.
There is a distrust of the stranger who is not part of the network of
obligations, who is not bound by blood ties, whose role and power is un-
certain, and who cannot be assumed to share local beliefs. The stranger is
seen as dangerous; many a disaster is ascribed to him. Implicit in danger is
the notion of power. There is reluctance to accept strangers as kin; their
coming is met by wishes for their insulation and destruction. One may
speculate that the elaborate hospitality rituals, among many other functions,
represent reaction formations? against destructive impulses towards the
stranger.
There is also ambivalence towards the stranger, for just as his presumed
dangerous powers may bring hurt or death they may bring help or healing.
His very aloofness and detachment from the local system may secure him as
a more reliable associate.
Ethnocentrism is enjoyed; there is pleasure in describing how superior
one is to another, and humour is found in the plight of others less wise or
able than oneself. There are expressions of feelings of antagonism and
superiority towards people in neighbouring towns; Spathi or Doxario for
example, towards the Asia Minor immigrants or, on their part, of the
immigrants towards the indigenous Greeks.
Some of the ethnocentric expressions smack of inner doubts as to the real
merits of locals versus outsiders. These are detected in the remarks directed
against priests, against the Asia Minor settlers, against city folk, against
police and government officials, and against physicians. There is, however,
no evidence of well-defined factions within the village, the one taking up
1 One can hypothesize that in cultures in which externalization and projection are common
defences, especially in regard to illness cause, as in contrast to ones where emphasis is on
introjection of guilt and personalization of illness cause, there will be greater resistance to
ingesting medication.
2 Reaction formation is a psychological defence against socially harmful or disapproved
wishes. It operates by turning the original wish into its opposite; hatred and rejection
becomes excessive love and over-concern; distrust becomes blind acceptance, etc.
 ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS gis
cudgels for one system and another faction for the second; indeed, many
individuals seem ready to take their opportunities where they can find them,
simultaneously professing commitments to local traditions while accepting
the benefits of the “‘outside’’ intrusions, juggling the risks as the moment
allows.
Those who compromise call for moderation in effecting a rapprochement
between commitments to the local healing-magical-religious system and to
the outside authority-technology system. Since there are, nevertheless,
choices which must be made in terms of diagnoses, medications, and visits to
healers, there are offered a number of ready-made justifications for doing
that which is cheap, convenient and least likely to arouse internal anxiety
or external criticism.
Those individuals who are once-removed from the village ranks, either by
virtue of their outside origins, or training, or their position in the status
hierarchy (doctors, trained midwives, and priests) are sensitive to the
ambivalence of their clients; they insulate themselves from them in a
number of ways. There are illustrative stories of this which praise the skills
of persons in their position, and others of which point out various un-
desirable qualities in the villagers. The more distant the individual from the
village rank and file and at the same time the more close. his dependency
upon them for respect, income, or an excuse for being what he is, the greater
the likelihood that the latent or overt content of his narratives will denigrate
the villagers. Implied here is a considerable discomfort in living with
and being dependent upon the villagers, while set apart from them by
their ambivalence and one’s own sense of position — if not hubris and
conceit. Under these circumstances strains in role relationships are inevit-
able.
The tendency among villagers to conceive of outsiders as having similar
traits is not merely a convenience in concept-formation but also represents a
realistic appraisal of ties among the resident élite. These ties are forged by a
common element of being-a-stranger, one with education and authority
established by the outside-authority-technology system. Thus the accounts
by resident outsiders in roles of uneasy power reflect their feeling of being
apart from the villagers.
The feelings which the villagers have towards authority in general com-
plicates their relationship to the doctor, nurse and policeman, who come
bearing the authority of the city behind them. Nevertheless many of the
responses which they elicit are based on views of authority which the
villager has learned as a child, not only in relationship to city people, but in
relationship to the powerful persons in his own family. The narratives
provide considerable information on such attitudes.
There is a remarkable ambivalence towards authority. On the one hand
there is fear, hostility, rebelliousness and resentment which find expression
in criticism, gossip, gloating over troubles, attribution of base motives, and
destructive wishes and sabotage.
On the other hand there is a desire to enlist authority on one’s own side
through very manipulative devices as service, professed attachment, the
giving of a small gift (in expectation of receiving a larger one), flattery,
propitiation and the like. These efforts reflect the wish that the mighty,
214 THE DANGEROUS HOUR .

whether human or other, interest themselves in one and provide aid and
succour in meeting one’s own and one’s family’s needs.
Indirection and deference characterize actual behaviour towards
authorities upon whom one is dependent. Any direct expression of resent-
ment is much feared; instead there is a tendency to placate, show outward
compliance and gratitude, allow oneself to be exploited, to follow sug-
gestions, i.e. be suggestible, and to behave with respect if not obsequiousness.
On the other hand, any safe opportunity to trick authority, either in the
service of self-interest or rebelliousness, will be employed. Men more than
women will exhibit rebelliousness, but the negative feelings are evident in
both sexes.
There is a great effort to secure the goodwill of the powers and to bind
their actions to one’s own purposes. As a corollary, there is considerable
effort made to introduce certainty into one’s dealings with powers and
authority. This is done through attempts to establish binding obligations, to
establish relationships within a restrictive institutional structure (social,
magical, religious) in which other forces are brought to bear to control the
powers, and to behave in a manner which one has learned brings their
approval.
Subtle coercion, persuasion, abasement, veiled threats, and outright
demands are typical of these efforts on the part of the weak to control the
strong. If a workable pattern of control can he found, the weak will then
exploit the strong to the fullest.
Power and authority are linked conceptually so that the same emotions
and techniques are aroused by contact with any one ofa number of powerful
agents: father, mother, policeman, doctor, teacher, priest, magician and, as
seen in the overt content of narratives, Orthodox and other supernatural
beings. There is a tendency then to generalize about authorities and to pre-
judge them.
Implicit in relations with authorities, is the notion that one will be
exploited by them and that one cannot resist such exploitation without
incurring unacceptable risks. There is, on the other hand, a clear depend-
ency relationship established in which authorities are expected to do for one
and take care of one. Noblesse oblige is a demand of the weak, although not
necessarily a response of the strong. One outcome of exploitation and
dependency is a sense of one’s own weakness and incapacity vis-d-vis the
strong; a sense which may be reflected in apathy and irresponsibility; it
may be rationalized on the grounds of fatalism and the futility of effort in
the face of adversity.
There is pleasure as well as disappointment in finding corruption among
the strong. The failings of the strong, real or perceived, provide occasion for
criticism and contempt of them by the weak, and serve to justify negative
attitudes, deceit and trickery, or counter-exploitation. Any devious effort
which succeeds in controlling or exploiting authority will be accompanied
by secret contempt for the “‘sucker’’. While such contempt can never be
expressed if there is any danger that the powerful would learn how they are
evaluated, symbolic expressions are rampant. The mighty are great but they
may also be seen as quite stupid.
Lest there be overemphasis on the strain between the weak and the strong,
 ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS 215
there is also evidence for more positive and satisfying relationships: respect,
admiration, love, appreciation and powerful feelings are extant. Obligations
can be felt at a very deep level of concern and affection as well as at the more
calculating level of bargain and trade.
Men and women react differently to authority; this pattern can be seen
emerging in the relationships of children to parents. One also observes that
the handling of authority relationships is by no means independent of the
general patterns for feelings and actions between the two sexes. A number of
narratives reveal how males and females get on with and feel about one
another. For instance:
Husbands have power and authority; they are expected to use and abuse
it with their wives and daughters. The men, each of them a philotimous
island girded for an attack from another, may have profound friendships and
attachments for other individual males but do not have any interdependent
supporting community among themselves. Women, on the other hand, while
by no means trustworthy to one another, are much more likely to share
sentiments which link them so that each senses the support of others. So far
as they are able, women will protect or console other women; the most
powerful women will take the greatest responsibility for assisting others in
their frequent and sorrowful crises. Within the family the mother may — but
not necessarily so — protect her daughters-in-law against abuse by her sons.
Within the family the mother is expected to extend as much aid as she can
to her daughters in their moments of biological or social danger. While the
mother’s support to her daughters will be direct and wholehearted, her
actions towards the males, husbands, or sons, or sons-in-law are constrained,
artful, and indirect.
Within the community women are valued less than men; their lives and
dignity are more expendable; both men and women recognize their social
subordination.
Daughters as well as mothers are dutiful and long-suffering but daughters
more than mothers are likely to be attached to their fathers. Daughters may
also be closely attached to brothers and, as with their fathers, must endure
much for the sake of the male. One of the tasks of the sister may be to mediate
disputes between the two beloved tyrants. By mediation is meant the sister’s
own effort to appease the stronger tyrant of the two, father, and to persuade
the brother to overcome his rebelliousness by joining the ranks of the
appeasers.
On the part of the men the disdain for women is accompanied by fear and
anger. Women serve as targets upon which males project their own
blemishes and weakness. This blame-throwing upon externalized objects
serves to assign responsibility for a myriad evils upon women as a group. The
blame having been thrown, it is an easy matter to justify the aroused anger
and disdain directed at the female. This technique serves to protect the
male philotimo; it cannot be gainsaid as long as the male has more real
power.
Men do exploit the relative helplessness of women, an exploitation which
is limited only by community codes and actions rather than by any personal
counterforce available to the woman herself. The male authorities, father,
brother and priest are by no means above abusing the female, one aspect of
H
216 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

which will be sexual aggression. Father-daughter, brother-sister, and priest-

parishioner incest is one result.
The values by which a woman judges her worth, her womanhood, her
acceptability in marriage, her capacity to bear and rear young, her ability
to keep husband and household, and her ability to nurture (to feed, to care
for, to heal), and to know the rituals of pain, crisis and joy are taught to her
by other women. When her function in any of these is threatened, she will
return to these women for solace and further instruction. The others will
aid with advice and emotional support.
The male does not throw blame on the females without an awareness that
there will be retaliation when the opportunity arises. Men are, in fact, very
fearful of women; anticipating devious vengeance in the form of sorcery,
witchcraft, magical manipulations and, in fantasy at least, the visitation of
weakness or destruction through sexual congress, and even murder in the
night. There is much symbolic reference to the male’s fear of intercourse
with women, or to be both more specific and fantastic, of what will happen
to him as a result. By giving a woman of himself, indeed leaving some of
himself within her in the form of sperm, he recognizes he has come under
her sway. Thus, the fearful power of the woman is not just in the biological
mysteries of child-bearing, of nursing or healing which he may not under-
stand; but her power stems also from his dependence upon her for care and
comfort, for taking responsibility from him by personifying his projected
blemishes; and it stems from his sexual need for her; all of these he under-
stands full well, yet disavows just the same.
Women do, in fact, seek vengeance upon, as well as control of, men. Their
approach is that of the weak to the strong. One old standby is the use of
witchcraft, magic and sorcery. Thus a woman whose husband drinks, or is
out too much, or who is shamefully philandering, will brew him a brew or
bind him to her with a curse. The girl abandoned by her lover will try to
bring him back in the same way and, that failing, will cut off his joy for
ever more. The girl who is raped and receives no subsequent marriage offer
will work for those same ends. Consequently, one of the mysterious powers of
the women is their access to and willingness to employ the powers to coerce
their men. Since both men and women know what magic can do and know
the women will use it, they are agreed that women are far more dangerous
than men. Part of the danger lies in the diffuse anxiety created by the
men’s own fears and the fact that witchcraft is likely to be worked upon
them just where the men care the most — in those philotimo sustaining
capacities to talk and jest, to be strong and courageous, and to make love.
No wonder the woman’s feared powers are the centre of symbolic attention
and surrounded by defensive institutionalized: restrictions and notions of
propriety.
To be raped or be the victim of an incestuous attack may have the
appearance of a villainous assault upon innocence. Things are rarely so
journalistic. There is good reason to believe that two may savour the illicit
just as much as one. While the women are angry at their seducers and
exploiters, they can be very pleased by conquest. The women are not above
seducing priests, fathers, and brothers as well as the husbands of their
neighbours. The blame they bear as tempters is not all the projection of the
 ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS a17
male. Indeed, some of the anger the women bear towards an authority may
reflect his failure to succumb to their blandishments. Certain of the
criticisms directed at the priesthood suggest the wish, as well as the fact of
sexual intimacy. The priest, as “‘pappa’’ can be talked about as one’s real
father cannot. On the other hand, the man who treats his women well,
providing support, help, fulfilment of womanly worth, can be the object of
great dependency, dedicated slavishness, and bountifully nurturant activi-
ties.
In addition to magic, the women will employ religion as a device to
secure assistance, or control, or to alter the balance of power in relationship
to their husbands or brothers. Piety, as well as herbs, or sorcery can be put to
good use by providing a set of interests and activities which the men dare not
control. Thus one finds a wife absent from home to attend church in
opposition to her husband’s wishes, or a sister escaping from brotherly
control by dedicating herself to a Christian supernatural. In turning to the
supernaturals to effect an actual improvement as well as to pray for a future
one, the women change their objects of devotion more than the style of their
relationships. The supernaturals under whose protection they put them-
selves when they are altering their relationship with human males are male;
either Jesus or the saints. The Panaghia is not enlisted to help a woman
escape from or take vengeance upon her husband. On the other hand, by
piety, specifically by developing a special relationship to Jesus or a saint —
which may be carried into becoming a nun — the woman exchanges one
male authority for another; the mortal for the immortal. The male super-
naturals, like other men, continue to demand service and allegiance from
the woman in return for their help to her.
By their use of the religious system, including the appeal to community
values regarding the goodness of religious institutions and dedication thereto
the woman can escape from male control to some degree. It is not done
without antagonizing the men, who become resentful of the piety of women,
angry at the saints or Jesus with whom they are unsuccessfully competing,
and irritated and frustrated by the religious system which has provided the
women with such a politic escape route. The men respond with open
annoyance and attempts to re-establish control; but when they do so they
are threatened by the women, and by the priests as well, with punishment
from the supernatural authorities. Many narratives serve to remind the men
what Jesus and the saints will do to them on behalf of the women they
protect if the husband or brothers are so foolish as to challenge the divi-
nities. The effect is to reinstitute in the male his fear of and rebellion
against the authority and to link, in his mind, the women with these greater
fearful powers. Here is yet another aspect of the might of the women. It is
their pious allegiance to Christian supernaturals in a feudal system of
service for protection.
One consequence of the manipulation of the men by the piety of the
women is that men develop an antagonism to the priests who support and
encourage religious devotion in the women and who, as “pappa’’ compete
with the husbands and brothers for the affection and occasional incestuous
favours of the women. Since the antagonism towards the priests cannot be
frankly stated, for that would bring the man into conflict with the respected
218 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

religious system and subject him to retaliation by priests, powers and com-
munity, he will find other reasons for being critical. The actual corruption
of the priesthood invites attack; as does their economically easier and better
life, their commitment to at least a portion of the outside dogma of the
Christian Orthodoxy, and their envied status and privilege.
For the woman her immersion in the religious system provides, aside
from a potential leverage against the men, a source of approval (being
reverent is “good’’); it is a role relevant, motherly and womanly. Religion
also provides techniques for dealing with the crises of illness, pain and death.
Because the men are dependent upon the women for these techniques and
seek to have their women regarded with the approval of the community,
any attack upon the women’s involvement in the healing-magical-religious
system defeats some of the men’s own needs and demands. Consequently,
the men are hamstrung psychologically as well as restrained by com-
munity opinion and fear of sanctions by the deities should they make any
attack against the ideological weapon which the women have so skilfully
chosen.
While immersion in piety provides a modest escape from husbandly
controls, the wishes and fantasies of the women express a desire for much
greater freedom than they have. Marriage may be a social good and a
womanly fulfilment; it is, however, by no means, an unmixed blessing. It
is, on the contrary, the beginning of a host of troubles and is seen by women
as the precipice from which one tumbles into a chasm of woe. Love is not a
condition for marriage — for these are arranged — nor any necessary develop-
ment from it. The satisfactions of sex, freedom, ecstasy may not be provided
and will be sought, in fact or fancy, elsewhere. One consequence is the
attractiveness of the priest or others’ husbands. Dalliances are not unknown;
the narratives present evidence of the “eternal triangle’’, leading to
humour and mockery, to shame and sorrow, or to violence and murder.
Symbolic of the freedom which some women fantasy, are the nereids. A
dancing, naked, ecstatic community of the night, musical and wild, ex-
presses the antithesis of the marital state; although it is not so far removed
from the singing, dancing community of single women that may be observed
on festive occasions. One finds:

(a) There is a desire to be free of the heavy responsibility of marriage and

its attendant subordination, restraint and worry.
(b) There is recognition that children, however much enjoyed, are a
burden which one sometimes would wish to overthrow.
(c) There is a wish for ecstatic experience which will include dancing and
music, but which may also include sexual licence and, ultimately, doing
violence to men.
(d) The death and injury which nereids visit on the men reflects not only
the desire for vengeance that women have and, perhaps, a very primitive tie
between female sexuality and aggression towards the male (c.f. the romance
of the black widow spider) ; but the belief of the men in the danger posed by
nereids serves as a symbolic reminder to men, one conveyed by women, that
the man who strays from his wife to lay his head on other pillows, runs great
risk of returning with no head at all. Here one sees that the nereids and other
 ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS a19
exotika may symbolize, for men and women, the competition of other
women for a man and, conversely, the male fancy which nightly? turns to
damsels other than his spouse. One device for controlling the man is the
narrative itself, warning of the consequences of straying to strangers in the
night. One of the rather neat devices here is that the women, in warning men
of how nereids will harm them, not only indirectly express their own
ageressive wishes and frighten their men into good behaviour, but the
woman presents herself as the protector of her husband from the harm that
nereids will visit upon him. And, in a sense, she is; for insofar as she is a
nereida herself and restrains herself from violence, she does protect her
husband.
(e) The anxiety which women express about being left alone, the fear
that something dreadful will happen as in their being kidnapped by
nereids, not only illustrates the dependency of the woman upon her husband,
her need for stimulation and the difficulty of villagers in putting up with
loneliness; but it also reflects the wish that they would be kidnapped, i.e.
yrovided with a way out, so that they can achieve some greater freedom.
Such a wish must, in itself, be worrisome for it is unacceptable in terms of
local conventions.
(f) While women may look forward to ecstasy and freedom should they
join the night creatures, the men must anticipate injury or death at the
hands of women. This symbolic material reflects the awareness of men that
their women are by no means wholeheartedly devoted to them. No wonder
then that the narratives the men tell of the nereids are those which show of
how one controls a woman, refusing to allow her freedom, keeping her
tokens (children, clothes, affection, responsibility, reputation) to prevent the
flight of the wild bird.

The foregoing inferences have dealt with the relations between men and
women. These relations are complicated by the presence within the family
of children, parents, and in-laws. The narratives contain latent content
which reflects these other relationships.
One conflict described is between the demands put upon the mother by
her husband, and the demands put upon her, and doubled by her own love
of her infant. There is evidence for family failure to integrate the conflicting
requirements of the double role as nurturant mother and wife. While her
attention must go to both infant and husband, there are occasions in which
the husband, through his power and his wife’s subordination, may make a
claim for priority of attention, insisting that the wife disregard her motherly
interests.
A similar problem arises when there is a conflict between maternal
dictates and community demands. In several narratives one finds the mother
system
caught between her own desire to protect her baby while the religious
to which she has committ ed herself requires that she risk the baby; the
case is by taking it to Tenos to be baptized there in circumst ances
common
is
of danger. Caught up by these conflicting claims upon her, the mother
to the sanction of authorit y; she takes the
described once again as bowing
when the nereids are
1 Or during the siesta hour, that dangerous time from noon onwards,
abroad once again!
220 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
child to Tenos. Any harm which befalls the child is rationalized in terms of
the piety and propriety of having done what the religious system required;
the baby “‘belonged’’ to the greater mother, the Panaghia, rather than to its
natural mother. Thus, the care of the child is transferred from one mother
figure to another as it makes the transition from life to death.
On other occasions, those of wartime danger, the conflict is between
mother love and the survival of the group. The noisy baby which, crying,
leads the Turks to the hiding villagers or soldiers will be killed. It is justified
as necessary for the group, reflecting values and pressures favouring the
lives of many over the life of but one infant. Again, a rationalization is
presented in implying God’s interest in the child; its care is transferred from
the mother to the more powerful supernatural.
A number ofin-law and about-to-be in-law strains are demonstrated. One
sees distrust or malice characterizing some of the relationships between the
two families who have children intended for marriage. Some of the distrust
is towards the parents, but one also finds doubt of the goodness of the pros-
pective son-in-law or daughter-in-law. Special fears are raised when the
intended come from far away and are strangers. There are also narratives
which describe distrust and envy between the mother and her daughter-in-
law. Various techniques for disguising such conflicts are apparent, including
the common one of blame-throwing, and externalization, the rationalization
of rejection in terms of feared pollution, and so forth. When tensions arise the
women may resort to magic used against one another as a means of control;
they may use sorcery to try to implement wishes for the death of the other.
It is important, however, to remember that the narratives show that such
in-law strains are not universal; we have already referred to evidence for the
mother intervening to protect the daughter-in-law from the abuse of her
own son.
There is good reason to believe that strong efforts are made to prevent the
direct expression of negative feelings among family members. Insofar as
blame can be thrown outside the family circle (displaced), it will be done in
preference to recognizing and having to deal with disturbing ideas. Aware-
ness of negative feelings towards others in the family can be avoided thereby,
in favour of superficial harmony. Even potentially severely disruptive acts,
abuse, violence, incest or murder are ignored when their admission can be
seen to serve no purpose, while their concealment will allow the family unit,
or its tattered remains, to remain intact.
The family is a close-knit and extremely important, although not neces-
sarily harmonious, unit. What befalls one, must affect another, whether it
be joy or sorrow. Children must answer for the actions of parents; any
parental deviation from the piety-propriety code will be the child’s long
time burden. A failure to discriminate between those responsible from those
not and an implicit belief in the heredity of social characteristics is demon-
strated.
There is a strong obligation to maintain one’s family members and as they
grow old, to honour and support them, and to submit to their will. The
obligation runs contrary to desires to escape the financial or tyrannical
aspects of the care of the elderly. Sometimes self-interest will supersede this
obligation; when it does, the community opinion will be mobilized to
 ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS 221
attempt to enforce — through shaming — family care of their own elderly.
Should this sanction be of no avail, there will be none other forthcoming;
the elderly may be cast out to live or die, depending upon their strengths,
and the charity of their neighbours.
It is apparent that the behaviour of the family cannot be considered with-
out knowledge of the general attitudes, codes and pressures which the
community as a whole demonstrate, or which any one family perceives the
other families as demonstrating. The narratives provide further data on
the larger patterns of values, interpersonal themes, and conduct within the
village.
There appears to be a common tendency to project one’s own feelings
outwards on to other members of the community and, as a corollary, to
imply that boundaries between persons are not strongly defined. One is
immersed in a community, drawing direction and structure from others.
There is no privacy; and one must continually count on being evaluated by
others and must use those evaluations to guide one’s actions.
The evil eye symbolizes the intensity of community interaction; it
indicates that each person is under observation by others. Everyone is
measured from moment to moment and regarded with admiration or envy,
with approbation or censure. Implicit awareness of the consequences of the
opinions and actions of others towards oneself emerges in the evil eye con-
cept which attributes one’s own health and welfare to the judgements made
and feelings held about one by others. Community-wide interdependency
and sensitivity to the feelings of others is demonstrated.
There is evidence for the very considerable importance attached to inter-
personal relations and the interplay of pride and envy as a source of
disaster. The feelings of humans towards one another are understood as a
source of illness, disability, anxiety, injury, and death. An alternating cycle
of triumph and despair is suggested by the success of someone tempting him
to hubris, while it becomes a bitter cup filled with jealousy and ill will for
those around him. Good fortune is a dangerous blessing and its enjoyment,
for the most part visibly through its flaunting, is an invitation to destruction.
Those who have or achieve that which is valued (having a child, getting
married, enjoying the sexual favours of another, acquiring property or
reputation), must expect the congratulations of their neighbours to be but
a mask for jealousy. Success is the forbidden fruit: to taste it is to know joy at
the certain risk of alienating oneself from one’s fellows.
There is mobilization of the community in the face of common threat to
health and security posed by the disruptive behaviour, or exceptional
deviance, or malice of one of its members.
There is affirmation of the pleasure, value, and appropriateness of ven-
geance and retaliation for harms done, whether these be to health, philotimo,
family relationships, or possessions. Aggression and counter-aggression are
expected.
There is affirmation of the importance of money and property, of the
is
ubiquitousness of acquisitive drives. As a corollary, the value of cleverness
praised, of sharp bargainin g, lying and repudiati on of obligatio ns of payment
when these can be done to acquire or to save money while at the same time
not putting oneself in jeopardy of retaliation.
222 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

These same forms of self-aggrandizing conduct are employed in order to

exercise or gain power. One uses the weaker or more foolish, if one can, to
serve one’s own ends.
Integrating values are also extolled. Obligations are met, common cause
for defence is shown, sharing and helpfulness do occur.
There are strong pressures to maintain the community and to allow its
members to live in productive peace. Community integration centres on
family and kinship ties, and neighbourly obligations. Those who are not in
families, or of the neighbourhood, are disruptive; institutions for their
education and control are missing. So it is that strangers, bachelors, spin-
sters, and those living on the outskirts of town are less well integrated, i.e.
less well observed and controlled, and more often held fearful and suspect.
Similarly, those who fail to fulfil their social duties and presumed biological
destinies are a shade apart; they feel badly about themselves while others
know something is “‘wrong’’ about them. Usually the wrong is attributed to
something outside the person so as to save his esteem and prevent the flow
of insults, which could only lead to violence. When persons enter or are
born in the village who can never be fully integrated, gipsies or herma-
phrodites for example, the village will respond with protective insulation,
fear and distrust. Again there will be attribution of special powers to those
who are different and not understood.
Narratives themselves may serve to integrate the community by calling
attention to common problems through symbolic or allegorical devices. One
sees that social change is a crisis which arouses sentiments expressed in the
narratives, the latter in turn consider explanations and solutions. Altera-
tions in life style through increased commerce, interchange with strangers,
education, and introduced technology and ideas create community crises.
The narratives not only reflect these problems but provide an opportunity to
think about them, to “work through”? their implications and consider
adjustments. In a sense, a narrative concerned with the crisis of change
presents one of the few means of dealing with a social problem in an abstract
and general fashion. Unlike the immediate responses one observes in the
village to specific and short-range problems, narratives can take their time
and explore broader aspects, being a kind of implicit community thinking
which slowly builds consensus and suggests accommodations.
There is demonstration of the care taken not to disrupt the community in
the practice of magical healing. One finds extreme caution among the wise
women, witches and magicians who, while ‘“‘studying’’ the names of those
responsible for sorcery or the evil eye, do not tell the names to the victims.
This caution serves to protect the healers from retaliation from the angry
accused, protects the healers from being challenged for error in an erroneous
accusation, and protects the victims and accused from entering into conflict
with one another.
There is more elaborate concealment of social conditions or actions which,
if admitted, would damage individual philotimo, destroy chances for mar-
riage, or lead to overt conflict within the community. The devices for
concealment include name-avoidance (e.g. in the shameful ills)1 secretive-
ness, externalization and attribution to strangers, supernaturals etc., and
1 See Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), for a discussion of shameful illnesses.
 ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS) 223
reverse designation (calling that which is feared “‘the blessed”’, etc.). The
narratives give evidence for the concealment of pregnancy, incest, insanity,
mental retardation, epilepsy, and crime.
While concealing, the narrative also can accuse, confess, or focus concern.
. Individuals can engage in indirect slander or express otherwise unadmitted
anxiety in this fashion. Thus people can communicate about social or
personal problems in a disguised fashion. Among the community problems
which one infers from the narratives as existing and troublesome are
murder, adultery, desertion, bigamy, infanticide, abortion, necrophilia,
bestiality, homosexual assault, incest, grave-robbing, sexual licence, rape,
infant abandonment, assault, and theft.
There is a great amount of discourse which deals with critical concerns
requiring no disguise nor concealment. There is talk, and much of it,
about illness, about worry, about poverty and hunger, and about death.
About the latter especially do the narratives prove instructive. One
sees in the narratives clues as to their function in aiding men to face death,
and one sees in them some of the common human responses to the idea of
death.
The narratives provide comfort to the dying and to their families by
reducing uncertainty through describing how dying can be done most
easily and what one can expect after death. The material of the narratives
fulfils the wish that life continue afterwards in the same setting and at the
same pace as now, but more sweetly.
The narratives also help prepare for pain and tragedy by describing how
others have paved the path, and by giving reassurance that one can sur-
render with calm dignity and a concern for one’s family, fulfilling the require-
ments of propriety to the very end. Part of the preparation for tragedy is in
the rehearsal of it time and again as narratives are told and heard; part of
the mastery of tragedy is in reliving the actual losses one has suffered;
reliving them with others in a poignant but, since it is symbolic, once
removed fashion.
There is, in the narratives, the conveyance of shared feelings about the
death that has gone before and the death that must come again. In listening
and in telling, the villagers are linked, if only for a moment, by their very
frailty ;as indeed all of us must be, should ever we allow ourselves the pain of
that understanding.
The narratives reflect the effort made to humanize death, to conceive of
it in familiar terms, to make it subject to ordinary thinking. So it is that the
villagers come to think of death as concrete and personal, as Charon him-
self, with whom one can speak, and if needs be, beg a boon.
It is seen that the living would wish their beloved dead alive; sharing with
and projecting on them the conviction that life —- however painful — is far less
bitter than death, even if the latter state does provide for some form of
continuation.
It is also seen that the dead do live on, if not in their own corporeal reality,
at least within the minds of the living. There, in the form of memories,
images, bits and pieces of conversation, or bright ribbons of emotion, those
who are dead remain. But the villager cannot keep his dead to him-
self; what is internal and abstract becomes external and concrete and, in
H*
224 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

being externalized, the dead become — in one fashion — alive and real
for the village as a whole. Thus, through memory, projection, the con-
version of an idea to the palpable and, finally, conversation and story-telling,
a community of the dead is maintained conjoined to the community of the
living.
That the dead are now alive is not pure joy; their presence continues and
elaborates the scrutiny of the one by the many and adds invisible authorities
to those visible. Whether or not one would wish to call it “super-ego”’
conscience, or merely fearful awareness that the dead may not be all
departed, the conviction in the abiding dead makes the living somewhat
uneasy. So it is that rituals and beliefs exist which allow one to adore the
dead and know they live on; at the same time providing reliable methods for
shooing them along to another world so that they — and the living — can be
more comfortable. One sees as a result a number of well-defined steps in
which the families, the priests, and the whole community participate; steps
which gradually separate the living from the dead for the sake of each. It is
a process fraught with emotion; grief, fear, loneliness, and perhaps hatred
and triumph for some as well. It is a delicate series of manoeuvres involving
awesome powers; no wonder it may sometimes go awry. And badly awry it
has gone in the event that the living fail to accommodate to the separation.
They will, of course, blame the dead for returning, or the priest for saying
the words incorrectly; but nevertheless it will be the living whose wishes,
or memories, or fears have got out of hand.
In such cases, when the dead are adjudged to have tarried on their way
beyond, the community will mobilize ostensibly to hasten their journey.
That mobilization serves to convince the living that as much has been done
as can be done. In so doing the community recommends that the fantasy of
the living as well as corpses of the dead be laid to permanent rest. Com-
munity action reconciles private wishes that the dead live on and the public
requirement that life be oriented around the living. It is to be noted that
mediation does not lead to renunciation; individuals need not abandon
their intercourse with the dead, but they are asked to make internal states
and fantasies secondary to practical matters. This form of resolution marks
the village culture as one in which internal experiences (introversion in the
Jungian sense or mysticism in the religious sense) are accepted, encouraged
and directed but, as private matters, are subordinated to community affairs
of a more external pragmatic sort.
Among the reflections of community life or common individual feelings
there is only one other major area to be inferred from the narratives; one
which has been met earlier in discussion of the intentional functions of the
accounts. It is the widespread importance of the presence within the com-
munity of two distinct and sometimes incompatible systems of thought and
action dealing with the protection of health and life and the warding off of
pain, disease and death.
There is evidence that villagers are uncomfortably aware that there is a
demand upon them at times of crisis to act according to the local traditions.
They are also aware that technology works and that medical care does help;
thus, they are attracted to the less-estimable outside authority-technology
approach. We have indicated that there are attempts to ride both horses and
ATTITUDES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS) 225
to justify it when one falls off either. Nevertheless each system undermines
the other by criticism and doubt.
There is ambivalence towards the local healers, the wise women, witches
and magicians and, by implication, towards the whole of the healing-
magical-religious system. On the one hand, the healers are attacked for being
exploitative, ignorant and in error; on the other hand, they are attacked for
being effective, but lacking in piety or propriety should they rely on that
heavy-duty magic which is disapproved by the church itself. There is in this
ambivalence an expression of pride in the power of the local healers in
opposition to both church and technology, and an emotional gratification
derived from the magical and social techniques these healers enjoy. One
finds that the complaints against the healers smack of congratulation as
well, “that awful witch who defies God”’ (isn’t she magnificently audacious!)
“That stupid wise woman couldn’t cure hives’’ (but still, look what she did
for my headache!)
Just as the villagers are torn by what to do at the time danger threatens —
and how to make whatever they do appear proper to the others who are
watching——the persons in positions of special concern: priests, magicians,
wise women have their own problems, as do those in positions of technical
authority: doctors, nurses, trained midwives. Regardless of whether or not
they achieve a resolution in their own minds as to the proper balance be-
tween local symbolic and outside technological systems, they must act in
such a way as to gain the acceptance of the ambivalent villagers. In addition,
they must also reconcile within themselves the local symbolic and the out-
side technological choices so that they can make recommendations to
others. Each wishes to avoid a “poor result’’, i.e. a fatal outcome of treat-
ment and, to avoid this, will want to send some patients for treatment to the
opposing system. The same is true for their own health problems and life
crises. Even the physician is not so sure of his technology that he would wish
to deprive himself of the possibility of cure or safety which lies in the
magical-religious approach. Conversely, the magician will go to the hospital
as soon as it is apparent that his magic fails to work. The villagers — in any
position — have conflicting allegiances. The more intense the crisis the
greater the tendency to sample both systems; erratically so, as the anxiety
and confusion mount. While there is no need to justify inconsistency since
consistency is not held as a value, there is a need to justify what one has
done if the results are bad. At this point there is recourse to the usual blame-
throwing, cause-fixing rationalizations of which the narratives'are so full. The
availability of this recourse does not, however, rule out an occasional frank
and moving confession of error.
Local healers, priests and doctors may become aware of their own dual
allegiances and be subjected to criticism, ridicule or praise. The doctrinaire
priest, for example, may be embarrassed by the heavy loading of pre-Christ-
ian beliefs and practices which occupy his rituals, the city-trained priest
can be distressed by the magnitude of the allegiance of villagers to deities
and spirits who, like visiting relatives, occupy the house of the Christian god
without having been invited. The local priest will probably know more of
these uninvited guests than he will of his orthodox host and hostess; his
embarrassment depends upon to whom he is talking. The villagers complain
226 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

about the priest’s aloofness from local magic; the educated élite complain of
his local leanings. The narratives symbolize some of these dilemmas; they
propose a resolution by which the local world is divided into spheres of
influence; the Christian supernaturals residing in town, in church and in
daylight; the pre-Christian demons holding sway over land, and wilderness,
and night. Internally the adjustment is best described as blithe fusion with
rigid division into compartments at those border points where mixing would
cause combustion rather than amalgamation.
 XVI
INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL
DYNAMICS
|pe this chapter we shall consider what the narratives imply about the
thoughts and feelings, the psychic processes and dynamics, of individuals
within the village. The emphasis will be on internal events and conduct
styles which are idiosyncratic, or which reflect particular problems and
conditions not necessarily experienced by others in the community. Since
these psychological processes occur within a context of social living, it will
be seen that they often affect others; or conversely, that the actions of others
have led to idiosyncratic responses. For these reasons it is necessary to con-
sider intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics together. The emphasis
of course varies; some accounts lead to inferences about very private
introspective experience, which have but little effect on others; others
refer to dynamics which are very much part of a group process. In any
event the effort in this chapter is to focus on individual psychological
factors.

Conflict, Suffering, and Strain

The chapter begins with a consideration of the role of the narratives
earlier presented (Chaps. II to X) as devices employed to deal with indi-
vidual emotional problems, intrapsychic conflict and strain, and the like.
Among these, narratives told to or by those suffering from grief over the
death of a family member or sorrow over illness or disaster provide “sweet
lemons”? rationalizations, in which something good or at least “better than
if . . 2? is found to say about what has occurred. There is also an effort to
gain solace by linking the tragedy to the will of the powers, the Panaghia for
example, thereby staving off the sense of abandonment. By attributing a
death to the will of the supernaturals one maintains the belief of their
interest in one and one’s dead, denying the feeling that death is proof of dis-
interest or betrayal. Such a belief also links the sufferer at a time of crisis
to earlier dependency on parents, striving to prove that someone protective
still cares.
Narrative material also demonstrates rationalization and denial of fault
when a conflict resolving decision has been made. These are to be seen when
a choice has been made between the local healing-magical-religious system
and the outside authority-technology system; for example, when one has
failed to go to a doctor because it is frightening, expensive and inconvenient,
even though one believes one should have gone. One finds appeals for the
support of others for the decision. An appeal to alternate values may be
employed; i.e. when one fails to fast, it is better to eat than to be hypocritical
by denying that one is tempted. Moral alternatives are redefined in a fashion
which favours the outcome sought by the individual. One also finds that
228 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
support for an improper or impious decision is sought on the grounds that
others also err; the implication is that faults shared through common
practice are not as great as faults which occur in isolation. Implicit in the
use of rationalization (blame-throwing projection), denial, etc., is that
individuals do suffer from guilt over violation of codes; it cannot be said
that behaviour is controlled through shame alone.
Displacement of hostility and diversion of blame occur when indi-
viduals seek to provide safe targets for their feelings while protecting
themselves from retaliation. These mechanisms also serve to avoid
confrontations within the family which would be disruptive or anxiety-
producing.
One major role of the narratives is to provide reassurance for individuals
that in times of stress or terror, protection does exist, that hope may be
justified, or that imminent danger can be warded off. So it is when indi-
viduals are faced with interpersonal attacks — either direct or magical —
they may recall the content of their lore and the comforting repetitions of
prescribed rituals in order that they may act in the hope that safety can be
achieved. The provision of a sense of security through accounts of how
crises have been mastered by others, or should be handled when they occur,
is massively important in considering the role of narratives.
Rationalizations provide the resolution — in favour of piety — for the
conflict between individual sentiments and required behaviour. In the
previous chapter it was noted that the religious system required mothers to
risk the lives of their babies. In setting forth this requirement, and instruct-
ing mothers in its rationale, the narratives also relieve the mothers of guilt —
although not of anxiety — and provide support for their anguish as they are
invited to offer their babies to the Panaghia at Tenos.

Insanity
Moving now from what the narratives do, i.e., what their function is in
situations of conflict, we turn to what they reflect about intrapsychic
mechanisms and non-institutional interpersonal dynamics. First to be
examined are the definitions of what conduct deserves the label “‘insanity”’:
For instance, a person is insane who hates his family, who cannot get along
with his siblings, and who wanders about alone in the wilderness in pre-
ference to being with people. A person who kills himself is insane as is a
person who eats faeces. One who openly shows his anxiety about or interest
in incestuous relationships is insane, for example by exposing his genitalia to
his mother and daily inspecting the genitals of his sister to be sure she has
not been violated.
Conversely, one is not insane no matter how extreme his piety, nor is one
insane who hears voices or sees things. ‘The insane may “‘see”’ things; they
may have the gift of foreseeing the future; but this is a benefit of the illness,
one taken as a reality and is not in itself proof of the insanity. It is worth
noting that, in contrast with Northern European standards, the person who
believes himself harmed by the sorcery of others, or bewitched, is by no
means considered aberrant, nor is one who destroys parts of himself, e.g.
tears out an eye because it has bewitched his sheep.
INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 229

Muteness
There is evidence for one particularly common form of functional dis-
order within the village; the loss of voice: the frequency of stories in which a
human loses his voice after being struck by the supernaturals suggests the
importance attached to words — their magical powers — and the importance
of talk within the community. We have seen from the accounts themselves
how cursing, counting, wishing, admiring, naming, and the varieties of
incantations are acts designed to control the powers that bring disaster to
others or secure safety for oneself. The implication is that verbalized wishes
do become actualized; that is, thoughts can be omnipotent. At a social level
the accounts symbolize awareness that persons do manipulate one another
with words, and that their motives will have an impact on lives and fortunes.
Given a “‘talking culture” where words are power, to lose one’s voice is to
lose power, i.e. to be deprived of actualized wishes, control of others, and
participation in social affairs. This is quite a drastic punishment and, while
it is attributed to the actions of the exotika (its cause is externalized and
blame is thrown on outsiders), we must presume that muteness is an
hysterical response of the individual to something unmanageable in himself
and his surroundings.
Examining the one account which provides the greatest detail, and
observing the individuals involved, it is suggested that muteness serves to
stifle the expression of curses and wishes which would have brought harm to
(in this case) the mother with whom the son had become angry and against
whom the mother had inveighed. In this case, muteness prevented the son
from doing the damage to his mother which he believed his wishes, if
expressed, would accomplish. At the same time by becoming mute the son
called attention to his plight, i.e., to the fact that he had been “hurt” by a
female, but attributed it to a nereid — and solicited the concern of his
mother for what had been done to him. The mother was upset and did
attend to him with that nurturance which her role as mother and healer
required. By so acting, the cycle of aggression and counter-aggression was
broken. Also by frightening his parents — and bringing them shame for his
conduct which the villagers conceived of as stupid, he effectively punished
the mother for what he felt had been her abuse of him.
The foregoing is speculative and assumes the operation of hysterical
repression of anger and its conversion into a physical symptom. The
account is in keeping with what is known about the case.

A Case of Denial
The existence of the belief in the exotika can be used to explain not only
causes
illnesses or reactions not otherwise understood, but also those whose
em-
are understood only too well. This account illustrates how a mother
to protect her husband from the accusati ons brought
ployed the exotika
retarded
against him by her son: The mother explained that her son was
The observer intervie wer
as a result of his being struck by the exotika.
ion but did find evidence for hearing
found no evidence for retardat
230 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
loss. The son concurred in the latter finding, explaining his father had
beaten him, after which time partial deafness had occurred. The mother
heatedly denied the father’s having damaged the child and insisted
that the problem was supernatural in its origins. By denying the father’s
responsibility, she attempted to deprive the son of the justification for his
anger and possible later retaliation. She also protected the philotimo of
her husband against criticism. In taking this position, she allied herself
with her husband against her son; she put herself on the side of the greater
power and against the lesser power. In doing this, a not unusual response
to authority, she may also have felt she was protecting the family from
further disruption.

Child-Rearing
The foregoing paragraphs have dealt with how mother and child have
responded to particular family circumstances. The next group of observa-
tions deal further with childhood.
There are demonstrations of child-rearing practices in which the mother
and sisters take abuse from, and assume responsibility for, the male child.
They protect his philotimo from damage and nurture his philotimous self-
esteem through indications of pride and diversion of blame; that is, through
blaming something or someone other than the boy for troubles which he gets
into. The females also indulge his whims and teach him by their own
active and passive example to exploit others and to project his faults on to
others; indeed, by teaching him to exploit them, they thus perpetuate the
downtrodden state of the women in the family.
One finds the mother showing the piety-propriety conduct and respect for
pollution and powers. This is to reassure the child and herself that safety or
health may be secured through such behaviour when they are faced with a
crisis, The implication is that the mother feeling her own uncertainty, weak-
ness and lack of security, denies this and hopes for better through allegiance
to traditional local ideologies and conduct codes. She prefers to transmit
assurance rather than uncertainty to the child and frames her own assurance
in terms of the interest that the powers demonstrate in the family’s affairs.
It is apparent that the mother seeks to feel secure by linking herself to the
powers that be, real or fancied. One of the consequences may be that the
child will see the mother as bearing the power of the supernaturals, and
therefore, possessing considerably more potency than mere mortals have.
Hence perhaps the attribution of extraordinary wisdom and strength to
the mothers, wise women and elders. To convince herself and the child, later
the man, she must succeed as an intermediary between the powers and the
family; to that end she may allow herself to be exploited in her relationship
to the powers, will try magical-religious wish-achieving techniques, and may
seek special relationships with Christian supernaturals in which gifts are
vowed or given, etc.
The accounts indicate how concerned mothers are over how their children
will turn out. There is an awareness that the child may not turn out as
desired and this awareness, reflecting both sorrow and anxiety, appears in
narratives in which there is an allegorical or symbolic tale of parental dis-
INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 331
appointment. The child who turns against his parents, does not obey them,
or grows out of control is discernible in several of the changeling and String-
los stories, and in narratives of the ‘“demon”’ babies. Under these circum-
stances the parents feel that the child is not really their own — a sense of his
“strangeness” suggests the depressing distance between fact and expectation.
As these feelings arise, there emerge wishes to destroy the child and, these
projected, become fears of being destroyed by him. The anger and fear are
directed towards the renounced child, now a “‘demon’’, who is in turn an
externalized source of danger to his parents. ‘This being the case, the parents
must then move to protect themselves by abandoning, or killing the infant,
or simply rejecting it psychologically.
There is some evidence in the Stringlos monster-baby and changeling
stories of maternal concern over the aggressiveness of the child, symbolized
in terms of oral-aggressive breast-biting or cannibilistic ‘I'll eat you” com-
ments. It is also possible to interpret these tales in terms of their sexual
connotation, in which case there would be an implication for mother-son
intimacy and incest; a possibility about which there is anxiety as well as
interest, and which again must be resolved, in terms of propriety at any
rate, by the dissolution of the close mother-son ties.

Childhood Recollections and the Good Old Days

There are a number of narratives which hark back to “‘the good old days”
which, by implication, reveal the memories and fantasies of childhood’s
past. Comparing apparently stable contemporary child-rearing patterns
with the memories of childhood’s past by older people, there is considerable
reason to believe that the narratives present idealized, dramatically polarized
pictures of past events. Memory is selective; narratives based on selectively
remembered events fulfil the fantasy of an idealized past. Some of these
memories are recalled in stories about the “good old days”. One infers that
among some villagers at least, childhood is recalled as a “golden age”’ in
which one enjoyed the pleasures of dependency, the gratification of wish,
freedom from guilt and the demands of conscience, and freedom from the
need to give priority to harsh reality, freedom to indulge in the luxurious
play of an imaginative, animated, humanized world. We conclude that
many of the accounts of how the supernaturals were in the “good old days”
are ways of saying that one was happier then than now. While these accounts
report an actual change in styles of life, it is quite possible to interpret them
as showing not how life itself has changed, but rather how the life of
the person, once a child and now a woman (the more frequent sex
of the narrator of these tales) has changed. Thus it is that the reduction
in the abundance of exotika can be due to the reduction of fantasy and the
restraint upon introverted imagery and sensitivity as one ages.
As the person grows older, what he thinks and sees changes; he may
attribute his failure to see the exotika to the coincidental changes in living
conditions — externalizing the cause and blaming one or another modern
trend, while the actual reason lies within himself in the growth of reality-
assessment, increasing concern with practical issues, and the atrophy of
spontaneity and imagination.
232 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

In presenting a picture of how one behaves towards the supernaturals,

especially those in the Orthodox Church, beings with so many human
characteristics, the Panaghia and the saints, the narrator may be describing
his or her own patterns of relationship with parents or grandparents. A
correlation between observations on personality and family interactions of
some of the narrators who were best known to us and the kinds of relation-
ships which they described themselves as having with saints and/or the
Panaghia, shows that some of these narratives may reflect earlier family life
styles. In one case, for example, a warm and sensitive woman with an
excessively strict conscience and frequent anxiety spells described her
episodes of seeing or talking to the Panaghia just as one would have
imagined her talking to her own mother. The Panaghia was, to her, bounti-
ful and loving but also punitive, demanding and somewhat unpredictable.
Among some of the narratives, especially those dealing with the kallikant-
zari, one detects their use as a vehicle for the expression of sympathetic
acting-out of childhood impulses, notions, and fantasies. The “little”
kallikantzari, whatever else they are, perpetrate indeed the very things that
children would like to do and learn they must not. They play with fire, they
urinate on hot coals, they defecate in forbidden areas, they steal, they kill,
they tease and bully, and they raise a fairly good brand of rumpus. Con-
sidering the pollution theme which runs through the kallikantzari stories
and the vrikolakes ones, it is worth noting once again that pollution, power,
and faeces are linked. Psychoanalytic theory calls attention to the interest
aroused in faeces by toilet training and the notions of their power. That
faeces deposited in the wrong spot, or withheld at the wrong time are tools
that may be used to provoke parental wrath is soon learnt. It is possible that
one level of unconscious communication in the kalkes! and vrikolakes stories
invokes the recollected powers attached to defecation in childhood (i.e., the
power to arouse, annoy, upset, punish the parents).
This linking of pollution, power, and the damage one can do to others
may not be unrelated to the notions or fantasied omnipotence which psycho-
analytic theory ascribes to the child. One sees in the power and pollution
tales a symbolic expression of a childish belief that one can control others
and that one is omnipotent. In some accounts it is explicitly said that as long
as one has faith, wishes and prayers will have power, or magical methods
will work. The belief in the power of the wish is often met in children. In the
narratives, it may be argued, is contained the symbolic recollection that, as
a child, one did believe in one’s powers, and so as long as contradictory
evidence was ignored or was not forthcoming, for example as long as one’s
parents indulged one’s wishes, there was no reason to doubt that power.
There is also contained the warning that as long as one seeks to maintain
the belief, as an adult, that wishes are powers, one must remain immersed
in the ideological system which supports that conviction. In the village that
system is the healing-magical-religious one. It in turn requires reintegration
of certain important childhood elements, the most important of which is the
continuation of a child-parent relationship to one’s Christian “‘foster
parents’, the Panaghia, God and the saints. Similarly, within that system
one must nourish other aspects of the child-within: one must suspend dis-
1 Kalkes is used interchangeably with kallikantzari in village speech.
INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 233
belief, one must not abandon hope in the (parental) powers, one must
remain dependent, one must be open to non-logical and non-empirical
persuasion and demonstration. Another implication of the narrative is
that faith in authority will be rewarded while lack of faith, whether generated
by scepticism, pragmatism, or rebellion, will be punished by the powers’
failing to grant one what one wishes; failing to come to one’s aid in time of
crisis or need.
Among the “good old days” stories the latent content also suggests the
great difficulty with which the child becomes the man; it suggests the harsh-
ness associated with moving from the very considerable indulgence meted
out to the child in his early years to the inevitable frustrations and depriva-
tions of responsible life in the village. There is sorrow and distress about
having to abandon the past, that freer more spontaneous world, in favour of
the contemporary landscape of pain and worry. Self-determination is
vigorously resisted, and responsibility for blame is evaded by the entire
apparatus of philotimo. The forces that shaped one as one moved from
childhood to adulthood are once again labelled, made concrete, made
external, and then subjected to continual attack as soon as something goes
wrong.
One feature of the old versus new perceptions seems to be a resentment
at the loss of idealism; the growth of distrust and the need to defend oneself
against unloving unprotective predatory people are deplored. Laments about
the present day— “‘we are demons ourselves”’ are not to be taken as identifica-
tion with the supernaturals or any feelings of closeness to the exotika; quite
the contrary “we eat one another”, “we take one another to court over ten
drachma” or, “people are not saintly here as they were in Asia Minor’—
these are cries of mourning. They reflect the grief that one’s idealism, nur-
tured in family indulgence or, in its absence, in the persuasion of the child
by the parent that he is being indulged while in fact he is not — we think the
latter exceedingly important in the villages — must be laid aside so that one
can survive the world’s real people.

The Good Old Days: Other Interpretations

Lest the preceding interpretations of the implications of the stories of the
greater days of yesteryear be too restricted, let us point out some other
significance to the latent content.
to
What was good about yesterday and is bad about today also seems
actual difficult y in
signify, for some, the fact of uninvited change and the
have learned one way of life,
which people, especially older people who
All
experience in adjusting to new locales, new ideas, new circumstances.
find the unantici pated or unsought change disconcer ting. It
human beings
ordinari ly met with resistanc e and anxiety. It means one must work to
is
fancied.
meet new demands and to protect oneself from new threats, real or
just recently touched by technolo gical
That is difficult and — in a land
among individua ls who value change and city ways as
revolutions — even
opportunities the distress of new adjustments is real.
do
The villagers are by no means unaware of Greece’s glorious past, nor
have ancient roots have a value in
they fail to believe that things which
234, THE DANGEROUS HOUR
themselves; there is merit in tradition. As a result, one finds them linking
the glorious past to the quite recent past in which one has oneself partici-
pated. “I am a part of that old glory” they seem to say, “you youngsters of
today have nothing so grand as that about you”’.
In this respect it is interesting to note that villagers did tend to overesti-
mate the rate of change, saying that people didn’t do or believe in such-and-
such old practice any more. And yet, in fact, there was no practice or belief
ascribed to a prior generation which was not affirmed by some of the youth
as theirs.
Revered ancient practices are also employed to justify present ones,
linking, in the sense of a propaganda technique which hopes to have
prestige rub off from one to the other. Thus one secures a testimonial from
history for the rightness of one’s otherwise idiosyncratic, unremarkable or
controversial acts.

Anxiety
Anxiety is a haunting sense of dread not consciously attributable to
specific events past or present. It is apprehension and uneasiness, nervous-
ness or wild panic issuing from one’s own unreachable depths. There has
been much in the narratives which speaks of it.
One finds individuals suffering from anxiety:
When they experiment, or deviate in behaviour.
When the local traditions do not prescribe carefully defined modes of
conduct.
When they become sceptical of the local traditions of healing, magic, or
religion. Anxiety is the cost of doubt, of rationalism, or of agnosticism. These
are exquisite luxuries; to enjoy them and the attendant anxiety, one must
be strong and favoured.
When they challenge authority without having matched power of their
own. When they protest the decrees of the powers while knowing still their
own weakness and insufficiency.
When they deceive the powers or renege on obligations incurred towards
authorities.
When they are faced with the strange, the unusual or the ambiguous.
When they meet individuals whose behaviour is not predictable.
When they are alone; when they suffer crises without the support of
family, or simply when they are in the wilderness apart from humankind.
When they believe that others hold malice towards them, that what they
are or possess is envied.
When they are faced with those fundamental crises in which their own or
some family member’s health or life is threatened.
When they must take a knowing step towards a critical and irreversible
adventure: bearing a child, baptizing a child, beginning the year, planting,
getting married, having intercourse, dying.
When they feel their own inadequacy in the face of the power of the
opposite sex: women fearing the temporal power of men; men fearing the
earthly power of women.
When they reckon with their own inadequacy and dependency in facing
 INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 235
any major decision, crisis, or challenge without the support of powers,
authority, family or community.
When one doubts the strength of the barrier that separates one from other
people; when those fusions of person with family and community from
which one draws strength and pleasure become a source of anguish because
one has privately thought or done something which would be disapproved.
Intimacy, then, means that one will be found out; for there is no secret self,
no private core, in which one can hide one’s misdoings.
When one confronts the powers and the multitudes, feeling one’s small-
ness and dependency; when one feels oneself unable to forfend demands
and exploitation, or feels the incapacity to gratify the private wish in the
face of the public requirement.
When one recognizes the alien as inevitable and grants that certainty
shall not be; knowing that intruders exist, be they nature’s giants or the
menaces of men, to disrupt the feeble superstructure of order and plan
which one has so mightily laboured to impose upon it.

- Preventing or Defending Against Anxiety

Much of what men do has as its purpose this end. Much of the narrative
material has clearly spoken of the means. The following are only sum-
mations; they do not encompass all that has been said.
One fends off anxiety through devices which appear common to much of
mankind, the “mechanisms of defence”, or “security mechanisms’’, des-
cribed by Freud, Sullivan and other psychologists. Illustrated in the
narratives are blame-throwing or projection (i.e., anxiety-avoidance through
externalization, substitution and displacement); denial and suppression of
anguish or discomfort and its causes; repetitive compulsive behaviour (such
as rites and rituals); derealization (i.e., putting emotional and cognitive
distance between oneself and the source of anxiety) ; counterphobic reactions
(i.e., challenging what is feared, seeking it out, or embracing it); and so
forth.
One achieves security by recataloguing the universe, redefining it so as to
bring as much of it as possible under the umbrella of familiarity. Thus it is
that the villager turns the inhuman into the human and tries to convert the
strange into the familiar. Through rituals which coerce, control, or in-
corporate, through thought processes which revise, reverse and rename, the
effort is continually made to convert the potential enemy and to neutralize
the dangers. What is familiar and human can then be handled by human
means; wilful beings, anthropomorphized suns and moons and winds and
waters can be talked to, bargained with, cajoled, entreated, bought off or
fooled.
One achieves security by making alliances with power. Weakness and
power are elements; the clever alchemist will seek to commute the one into
the other through the seductive chemistry of words uttered in a laboratory
of ritual.
One achieves security through action and experiment, through exploita-
tion, and manipulation, through the conversion and moulding of animal,
vegetable and mineral into resources and personal assets, through the
236 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

exploration of opportunity and alternative, and through, test and observa-

tion. Insofar as work leads to results, disaster can be forestalled and life
and health protected and enjoyed.
One achieves security through wishes, thoughts and words. The word is
the law and specch is its enactment. That is how the universe is described
and controlled.

Philotimo
Much that transpires between men or between men and women is
dedicated to enhancing one’s own philotimo and, given the opportunity, to
weakening the philotimo of others. In the narratives one sees how the speaker
either praises himself, describing his wit, his courage, his cleverness; or
presents his actions in such a way as to draw forth the praise of others.
Thus, in recounting how one has met a crisis, faced danger, met the exotica,
one is usually careful to allow the audience to see how fine one’s feathers
are; or, should one be confessing to fear instead of bravery, one tells of the
drama of the moment and one’s important role therein; not forgetting to
indicate that there were clearly extenuating circumstances which account
for any fall from the pinnacle of manhood. Thus it happens that the
narratives become an instrument for enhancing oneself, or for defending
oneself, creating if need be a myth. The myth serves to excuse one for what
might have appeared as witlessness or cowardice, but which, under the
circumstances, was clearly not that — for it involved an exchange with the
supernaturals or with magic; in that case the laws for philotimous conduct
do not apply.
One’s family too is remarkable and the conduct of its members beyond
reproach. In relation to the outsider, the maintenance of esteem applies to
one’s community or nation as well. One is good because one is part of some-
thing good; one is great because one has done something admirable. In
these stories one invites the praise of others and, bragging, may display that
hubris which — for some at least — is the most satisfying response to success:
overweening pride in its most virulent envy-inviting form.
The speaker seeks the good opinion of the listener and, at the same time,
would convince himself that there is no fault or, if such there be, it is not his.
It is not, for example, a shameful disease which has led to the death of one’s
relatives: it was sorcery. It is not one’s own greed in bartering, or one’s
daughter’s blemishes, which have led to the breakdown in the marriage
negotiations: it is sorcery. It is not one’s penny-pinching failure to seek
medical care that has led to the blindness of one’s wife: it is one’s propriety
in staying within the local traditions. It is not the blemish of being a cripple
that one draws attention to: it is the drama of having been struck by the
nereids. It is not cowardice that has led one to delay marching to battle: it
is only that one has been waiting for St. George of Nikephoros to lead one
into the fray. It is not that the mighty hunter has returned home with not a
rabbit in his hand: it is that he has seen and fired upon a hundred animals;
all of them fierce and awesome, for they have been the Dangerous Hour
which no hunter can kill. It is not the poor who are to be disdained but the
rich; for the king himself prefers to be with the former.
INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 237

The Light-Shadowed Ones

Philotimo may be considered a goal towards which the Greek male
reaches; it defines the direction of his personality development. It is an
element which can be used in personal descriptions, ‘“He does not have
philotimo” said derogatorily; or conversely, ‘He is a levendis’’. There is
one other basic category by which personalities are described in the villages;
people either are light-shadowed or they are not. The philotimo traits are
all “behavioural” in the sense that they emphasize the quality of a person’s
interaction with others. The light-shadowed category is concerned, on the
other hand, with internal psychic affairs; whether one does or does not see
the supernaturals. The quality of what the Jungians call introversion would
be represented in the latter; the quality of one’s extroversion would be
represented in the former.
In examining the narratives about the light-shadowed, the following
interpretations are offered: Light-shadowed people are naive and trusting,
and more subject to fear, distress and being hurt by the exotika; so say the
narratives. The correlation implies the susceptibility of trusting persons, of
idealists, to anxiety and symptomatology which local persons cannot
account for in terms of observed events. The implication is that the idealist
in the village must suffer considerable anxiety and, if this be the case, it
suggests the high cost of trusting in that setting. If there be a cost in anxiety
which needs be accompanied by idealism, one can argue that idealism is an
orientation which the person strains to maintain and which must be defend-
ed against unconsciously. Asking what it is that would disrupt idealism! one
can suggest it would be (a) recognition of hostility and exploitativeness in
others and (b) the abandonment of child-like relationships of dependency to
authority and peers.
Granting the foregoing, it can be further suggested that the naive and
idealistic are, in fact, expressing their fears in an indirect fashion through
reference to their experience with the supernatural world. If this be so, it
may be that the kinds of frightening or harmful events which are said to
happen in the company of the saints or exotika are symbolic recognitions of
the hazards of life which are displaced from humans to the not-quite human.
When used by the families and friends of the light-shadowed, the accounts
of their experiences are sometimes used to justify bizarre behaviour. What
would otherwise be very disturbing erratic conduct, is made familiar and
explicable. Nevertheless, the narratives suggest a concealed concern for
conduct that would otherwise be disapproved as stupid, cowardly, foolish,
or even possessed.
Some narratives also serve to ridicule the light-shadowed or to demon-
strate how they are deceived by their neighbours. Some of the more
humorous comments indicate what fun it is to fool the naive, to frighten
them with stories or with mummeries. Cynics in the community may take
such opportunities to prove how foolish it is to trust; and by that very sus-
piciousness prove themselves untrustworthy.
One may take this same phenomenon as evidence for the existence of two
Russell, Claire, and
1 An excellent and highly original discussion of idealism is to be found in
Russell, W. S., Human Behaviour (234).
238 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
groups, those who are initiated and those who are not. The initiated know
there are no supernaturals except when they play-act the part for the benefit
of the naive. The uninitiated believe in the supernatural world and accept
the tales and the miming presented to them by the initiates. In this respect
the light-shadowed do remain childlike, for they never mature enough to be
initiated into the “‘adult”” world of pragmatists. One is reminded here of
Jane Harrison’s discussion of the Cretan Kouretes (112) who were the
initiates. Curiously enough these initiates became godly through the rites,
afterwards play-acting themselves the part of the gods to others. Is this a
different explanation, a memory, a survival which bears on the view
expressed nowadays by adults that the other gods and demons are gone and
that they are the spirits themselves?
The light-shadowed people can still enjoy the orientation and fantasies of
childhood, living in a world which is rich in the imaginative and colourful.
Some of the villagers agree to this characterization, commenting on how
childlike the light-shadowed are and suggesting that they have indeed failed
to pass beyond childhood in their approach to the world; that they keep
themselves idealistic, fantasy free and open to a variety of ideas and per-
ceptions which many adults have abandoned. Some of this world of the
light-shadowed has characteristics which would conform to Eliade’s (77)
notion of a yearning for Paradise; one is spontaneous, one may talk to
animals, and one may have glimmers — if not demonstrations — of ecstasy.
The suggestion of the continuation of childlike ways need not imply
immaturity or fixation. Within the village, people can elect to remain
immersed in the local lore as an appropriate life style. Furthermore, such a
choice may be a very fruitful one for the enjoyment of inner experiences, for
creative and artistic expression, as a sensitive link to the world of healing
and mysticism, and as a direction for the expansion of a symbolic world
view and religious experience. Indeed, in the village where opportunities
for personal growth, in the sense of intellectual or artistic achievement, are
quite limited — especially for women — being light-shadowed is an acceptable
way to develop more within oneself. It is noteworthy that many more
women than men are light-shadowed, and that among them are many who
rank, according to our observations, as the brightest and most sensitive
within the community. It is from this group that some of the most reputed
healers are drawn.
While the light-shadowed may be laughed at as naive or made the butt of
tricks, there is also some feeling that they have special powers which are by
no means funny. The priest suggests that their qualities are due to an error
in the baptismal ritual, and that in consequence they still retain some
of the non-Christian qualities of the unbaptized child: being close to
the powers of earth and reproduction, having an undissolved link with the
untamed powers beyond man, and beyond the civilizing framework of
Orthodox dogma, and having within themselves something of the demon,
and from the “‘out-of-here’’. One sees the light-shadowed as gifted and fear-
some; they do “see” more than others, and theirs is a wisdom others cannot
gain. Once gained, one finds the phenomenon of the strange considered as
powerful and awesome — to be laughed at as long as one dare, but like
laughing at the wake (the parigoria), its function has little to do with
 INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 239
humour; rather it is apotropaic, serving to avert what is feared. The light-
shadowed do have something special; it is part of their healing power and
their power as seers. It is reacted to with mixed feelings, but nevertheless
they do have power.
In this regard it may be suggested that the term ‘“‘light-shadowed”’ may
be derived not from a quality of having oneself a light-shadow but, as
in ‘‘silent waters”, the quality of seeing those with light-shadows, i.e.,
being able to see the otherwise invisible or ephemeral creatures of the
supernatural world. This explanation is compatible with an etymological
explanation offered by a woman of Thera. On that island the word is not
“elafroiskiotos”’ as it is in Doxario, but is ‘‘elafrostichos’’.1 In ancient times, as
shall be discussed in a later chapter, the spirit which inhabited each house
was the ‘‘stoicheion”. We saw survivals of this belief in the house spirit in
the stories of the snake which lives in the house. Although such stories were
rare in the Doxario region, the belief in the “‘stoicheion” is much more
common on Thera. There the word is taken to mean “elafros’” — easy,
“‘stoicheion’’, — house-spirit; that is, someone for whom it is easy to see the
- house spirits, or more broadly, someone who can see all those creatures of
the second world.
The narratives about the light-shadowed also serve to point up a con-
ciliating function for the belief system. By positing those who see and those
who do not, one has an explanation for reports of experience which are
otherwise incompatible. Neither resolution of the two views nor pursuit of
their origins is necessary; instead, one has an accommodation which
avoids pitting one’s experience against another’s in a battle of dogma,
orthodoxy, or the nature of reality. What is the world like? Is it the world of
the mystic or the realist, the world of the introvert or extrovert, the world of
the thing or of the image? Quite simply it is both; for the light-shadowed it
is one kind of world; for the others, another.

Dreams
When the light-shadowed look out into the world of darkness they discern
much that is meaningful to humans. But one may look inside oneself as well
to find mysteries — and clues to their meaning as well. Of all the mysteries of
the inner man it is the dream which has received the greatest attention in
the narratives we gathered. The dream is taken to be significant as man
faces the crises of life and the certainty of death. Some of the functions of
dreams are listed below.
One takes pride and gains prestige in the ability to dream and to interpret
the dream.
One may use the dream, or the telling of it, to express what would other-
wise be unwise or unsafe to say. It is “unreal” enough to be a neutral
vehicle for the expression of strong sentiments, and the speaker need not
while
1 Elafros, éAaépés, means light, iskioi (from skia, oxid, shade) refers to the shadows;
stoicheion, orovxetov, spirit) refers to ghosts and to the protective house-
stichi (from
the
spirits. Abbott (z p. 176) considers the exotika and stichia as a major group of demons,
any such fine
shadows as a subgroup; however the villagers we studied did not make
these terms will
distinctions. In Chapter XVIII the etymology and the shifts in meaning of
be considered in more detail.
240 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

take responsibility for what he says; it is, after all, a message from beyond
himself which the dream conveys. By such means one finds narrators enjoy-
ing ethnocentrism, hostility, vengeance, threat and warning, and the
control of others.
The interpretation of dreams may provide ways of excusing or explaining
questionable behaviour. One may undertake the selfish under the sanction
of having received instruction from one’s dreams. Again responsibility is
removed from the doer.
The dream also presents, or is told so as to present, the wishes of the
dreamer and their fulfilment, as well as the feelings of the dreamer.
The dream interpretation is used to reassure the dreamer and those about
him; it gives guidance in times of uncertainty and reduces anxiety by im-
posing structure, approval, or direction.
The dream and its telling may be used to instruct, to educate, or to
moralize; it may do so either by veiled symbolism, or allegory, or by direct
statement in which the presumed supernatural extra-personal origin of the
dream is sanction for the instruction. Thus it is that the narrative which
tells the dream may serve exactly the same function as the narrative which
tells a story or contains a myth. Dreams and their telling can serve nearly
every function which other folk narratives serve, their latent content carries
a variety of observations and messages from the speaker to his listeners.
More than in the myth and story, the speaker is relieved of responsibility for
his choice of themes. It is the perfect vehicle for indirection; one which,
like an oracle, comes to the listener from powers outside.
Frequently one sees the dream used to reassure the teller himself and
those about him of the interest which the powers outside maintain in his
affairs; assuaging doubts raised by danger, change, deviation, pain, or
anxiety. One also sees it used in the telling to reassure the group that the
teller has done something correct, that he has received signal approbation
from the powers.
The dream provides a wondrous thread by which to weave the diverse
fabrics of the strange together. It is an integrating and co-ordinating device,
at least in its telling, which makes the varieties of the awesome as but one.
Symbols and powers, wishes and words, the range of the preternatural there
combine, showing how each may draw upon the other. It is a weighty
conjugation with a strong appeal to the listener. Hard realities fade and
precedence is given to the mysterious voices of the world of the awesome.

The Unconscious
Many of the inferences we have made about the latent content of the
narratives suggest that, at one level, the appeal of at least some of the
stories is to what is hidden within the speaker and the listener. That appeal
may be transmitted through tacit understanding, through contagious
vibrating emotion, or through allegory or symbolism, There is no need to
confine the wide scope of narrative to a limited band of interpretation; it
would be foolhardy to overstress the unconscious material to the exclusion of
what is patently of other significance. The stories and circumstances vary;
in some we believe the insights into unconscious process are considerable.
 INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 241
Let us use one, Chapter IX, No. 1, a very brief account (longer in the
original telling) of how the shepherd tears out his eye, as an illustration of
the acuity with which covert psychic processes are depicted.
In the account the shepherd finds his sheep dying. After exhausting other
possible causes he finally conceives that he himself may be the cause. Putting
this to the test he closes one eye and then the other to find that it is one of
his own eyes which is killing his sheep. Horrified, he realizes that to save his
animals he must destroy part of himself; he does this by tearing out his eye.
To begin with, one finds the shepherd pursuing the standard ploy: to
explain the unknown in such a way that a cause outside himself is identified.
But his externalization fails and the shepherd is forced to look within him-
self. What he must be concerned with are his own responsibilities for what
befalls those with whom he lives and who are in his charge. In the story they
are sheep, but an analogy to the human community or the family! in which
the ‘‘shepherd” is an authority figure is not hard to draw. Specifically, what
befalls his flock is suffering and death; afflictions which are found to be the
consequence of the power of the shepherd of which he appears to be unaware.
- But the lack of awareness is a convenience; one which is abandoned only
when his own welfare is threatened by events within the flock.
Once a threat has arisen and the ordinary explanations and defences fail,
the shepherd, faced for a moment of terror and pain with insight into his
own power and responsibility, is flooded with emotion. He is horrified by
himself, by what he sees within. And what is his reaction? It is complex.
What is responsible must be destroyed and so the impulse is a self-destructive
one. But it is not the whole self which is responsible; no, once again the
externalization mechanism comes into play — the repetitive defence against
understanding what one is and does to others. So the shepherd, seizing upon
the local lore and using it, can say it is not what he does, it is his eye which is
at fault. His eye becomes separate from himself, animated by itself, a will
apart which can be blamed apart (recall the Biblical injunction: “If thy
right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee,” Matthew 5:20).
He divorces himself from responsibility once again and to see to it that he
stays divorced, he tears out the offending organ, making sure he will repress
and deny the role he plays as a feeling, motivated, responsible human.
That it is the eye itself, “the devouring eye”’ as the villages may call it, is
not merely the accident of history which has provided the shepherd with an
organ to focus blame upon. The evil eye, as we have already suggested, is
itself symbolic of the intense and continuous judgement which villagers
render on one another; judgement of propriety and deviation, of good and
bad, of fortune and disaster. It is through the eyes that the villager watches
the success and hubris of others which leads him to that dire envy that
subverts the community. It is the eye which devours, which would gain for
oneself what others have. And therein lie the roots of cannibalism, not so far
in
1 That the shepherd and the sheep are equivalent to father and family is demonstrated
himself
Polish folklore in which this same tale appears except that it is the father who blinds
in order not to injure his children. (Reference to this Polish tale is made by Elworthy (72),
Homer
page 9, citing Woyciki, Polish Folklore.) Another example is Agamemnon whom
of the people” (xooppijrope Aawy, Iliad, I, 16. The larger community is
calls the “shepherd
is my
evident in the Old and New Testaments, for example in the prayer, “The Lord
shepherd, I shall not want... .”
242 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

removed as one might think from the civilized world. No wonder then that
from someone else one has heard that in the shepherd’s village, “‘we eat one
another”. Perhaps it is that biting envy, that incorporating lust, of which
the shepherd has become but fleetingly aware as the cause of the disaster to
his flock. That the flock in the story are sheep, sheep which will in fact be
eaten by the shepherd sooner or later, is a truth imposed upon a truth.
But the shepherd’s choice of the eye, that evil eye, as the organ to be
blamed has another significance. It is the eye after all which sees, and it is a
test of sight which the shepherd employed in order to come to his horrible
conclusion that he himself was responsible for what had occurred, that he
was no longer blameless, his philotimo unmarred by taint. If one takes sight
as understanding, as the instrument of awareness and insight, it is this
which has caused the shepherd pain. It is the instrument for insight which
must be destroyed. Let me cast out my understanding, he would cry, and
cast it out he does, quite literally — tearing the orb from its socket, removing
the internal cause and, in doing so, repeating the externalizing defence once
again. “That which was within me I denounce and would put away from
me.”
A good story, we have claimed, is one which offers a variety of interpreta-
tions to the listener. Let us then enjoy another significant point about the
shepherd’s dramatic act. Among the villagers there is the expression, “‘to
take his eyes out with (or upon) her.”’ It means to have sexual intercourse
and implies that covetousness, mediated through sight, is by no means
limited to desiring only the property of others. Their sex is desired as well.
Taken in this sense the damage which the shepherd has done to his “‘flock”’
might very well be conceived as related to the abuse of his authority in
having sexual relations with them. While one may take this literally — and
there is a Stringlos story (Chap. VII, No. 12) about how one kills sheep if one
has intercourse with them indicating that bestiality is both practised and
disapproved — the more widely applicable interpretation would stress the
destructive effects of sexual exploitation of the women by a man who has
power over them. Over what women does a man have power? The father
over his wife and daughters, the priest over his parishioners. The danger
then is to the woman and from the man. But as has been pointed out in the
nereids’ tales, the woman is not without her vengeance; and so the shepherd,
however much he may enjoy the sweetness of supremacy, is also aware that
he is losing something in the process; what is lost is harmony within the
family, easiness in his own conscience, and his future safety, should the
incestuously enjoyed women have an opportunity to return him as decreed
in talion law — “‘an eye for an eye’.
Look at the tale again. There are disasters in the community ruled by an
authority. After searching for their cause it is learned, by “‘seeing’’, that the
authority himself is responsible. What he has done very possibly has in-
volved envy, possessive acquisition, or sexual exploitation. If the latter, an
element of pollution is necessarily involved, for sex and pollution are in-
separable. After he realizes what he has done and for what he is responsible,
the authority tears out an eye, blinds himself — only partially in this case.
After this sacrifice, in which the authority has offered part of himself, the
story implies that all will be well with the community.
INTRAPSYCHIC AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS 243
Déja vu? Very likely. Substitute “king” for authority, elaborate the telling,
locate it among the shepherds and peasants of Thebes, and one finds ele-
ments of Oedipos Tyrannos. A living relic? Unlikely. More likely, a vital
theme which has endured for millennia; one which Sophocles heard and
used, and which is still told today for the very reason that it 7s a good story
which makes drama and sense to the listener at those several levels of mean-
ing at which it will be heard. Very likely it is an old tale, and as such it
is a survival. In Chapter XVIII we shall attend to other survivals revealed
in the collected narratives.
 XVII

COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS
HE we shall attend to the logical, and cognitive processes which
underlie the narratives.1 What do these narratives about life crises
tell us about how human beings think? This concern with cognition is
exclusive of the social or dramatic function of the accounts or what they
reflect about individual and community affairs.

Organizing Experience
One of the major cognitive functions of the accounts appears to be to
organize experience into some sort of coherent system in which events are
described and classified, and in which the interrelationships between events,
are either specified or implied. What might otherwise be private, uncertain,
isolated, and ambiguous aspects of experience are converted into shared,
clarified, co-ordinated and structured experiences.
It may be observed that the villagers, often noted for their concreteness
and practicality, seem very much at home in the construction and use of
abstractions when describing and accounting for crisis-related events.
Concepts (the Dangerous Hour, Stringlos, etc.) are readily created and
used with convenience — if not with consistency. When there is no observ-
able link between temporally sequential events, an intervening (hidden)
variable is postulated. Maria’s husband has gone hunting, has felt a touch
upon his cheek and shortly develops a painful swelling and paralysis. It
must be that the sequence of events has some determining characteristics,
and so the hunting has led him over the nereids’ table; the touch is their
hands. The pain is the invisible blow from the flirtatious nereid whom he
has spurned.
Providing a scheme for the interpretation of stimuli, the setting up of
categories — or diagnostic labels — serves to orient subsequent thoughts. If the
odd sensation which one has is called ‘‘dizziness”’, it not only serves to make
one’s experience communicable and to place it within a restricted category,
but it then limits and directs further thinking. Dizziness, for example, is part
of a category of ailments which are qualified by a set of attributes already
learned. It is “known” to be transient, not caused by the exotika or sorcery,
but may be caused by emotional distress, weather, grippe, what one has
eaten, or the evil eye. Thus establishing an initial category, immediately
relates it to other categories: ones of probable cause, expected sequel, next
steps in treatment, and so forth. There are then a set of primary decisions to
be made based upon available information. Once the decision is made, the
concept attained (47), a number of further steps are specified which are
greatly restricted in their range and direction. It will, of course, be possible
to redefine one’s pattern of sensations, but probably only if new information
1 In a later section of this chapter we deal with the reification and personalization of abstract
concepts subsequent to their creation.
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 245
is made available, some of which will be of a feedback variety showing how
the initial category and the steps attendant upon it have not been instru-
mental in achieving goals. In this case, for example, labelling the symptom
dizziness, has not enabled the sufferer to predict the duration of his com-
plaint or to take steps to reduce his distress.
Implicit in such “‘categorical ‘‘behaviour, that is, in assigning a label to
one’s experiences, is the fact that not only is ambiguity thereby reduced and
certainty increased, but qualifying information is immediately made avail-
able. If, for example, what one has heard is to be called “‘stringlos’’, the
right sound is placed in a context of other sounds, the mental file is searched
for the entry under “‘Stringlos”’, and a variety of supplemental information is
made available. In the mental file there will be the information that
Stringlos is an exotika, that he tries to frighten people, that he does not
hurt people, that he announces deaths, and so forth. One will then “know”
that the sound one has heard must be Stringlos because it has already
been frightening, but that there is no real danger to oneself. One will
predict the cry will be heard again, but probably not in the same place,
-for Stringlos has the characteristic of flitting rapidly over the land-
scape. If the cry is heard again, one’s prediction has proven correct, the
original decision on the category of experience is reinforced, and because
there is no massive present danger, one may expand one’s attention
to other matters and need not focus completely on the sounds being
heard.
The cognitive mechanism is adaptive. It provides much more information
about the world than would be present if there were no internal history of
the sort which can be tapped by the categorical entry-search system. It
provides guides to conduct, suggestions for control, and means for continual
modification as experiences are added and integrated. The adaptive func-
tion of cognition is no doubt emphasized by the nature of the narrative
materials; given the task of reporting how one maintains life and wards off
danger and disease, it is no wonder that adaptive and controlling mechan-
isms appear dominant. Their dominance is not to be taken as evidence that
all cognition is adaptive (i.e., helps people survive, or meet needs, or
demands). Other cognitive activities appear to be neither satisfying, gratify-
ing, nor adaptive; they seem to occur simply because the mental apparatus
is so built that sensations are continually filtered, matched and abstracted.
The engine, as it were, once designed and started cannot stop. Even when
idling it performs.
Within the narratives one sees evidence for concepts which are enjoyable
in themselves rather than practically useful. Categories can be constructed
and intertwined in ways which are simply aesthetic; the process of their
construction — as in telling a good story — being artistic and creative.
While those cognitive processes which are reflected in the narratives do
bespeak the adaptive capacities of the mental apparatus there are also
categorization
1 Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (47) suggests as “achievements” of human
the complexity of their environmen t, (b) identify the objects in the
that humans (a) reduce
in advance
world about us, (c) reduce the need for constant learning (d) provide direction
al) and (e) order
for knowing which actions are appropriate or inappropriate (instrument
and relate classes of events, that is, build systems.
246 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

represented a number of features of thinking which appear to interfere with

adaptation or, if not that, at least fail to be useful as men search for solu-
tions to life crises. Some of these failings appear to be associated with certain
assumptions made about nature, while other cognitive failings are associated
with information-gathering; they are failures to be concerned with in-
consistency, with tests of reliability and validity. Some of these cognitive
tendencies will be illustrated in what is usually described as “magical
thinking’’. Each of these will be considered.

Assumptions about Nature: equivalence of internally and externally derived

data
Inspection of the narratives, supplemented by observation, reveals that
there are several assumptions made about the nature of the world. One is
that an external world of things does exist and that these things are as they
appear. Rocks, ploughs and people are taken as real and identical in form
to that which the senses transmit. Their nature and attributes can be known
through sensory data; if further knowledge is desired, further observation
will produce it. But coexisting with this empirical approach, is another
assumption about the world. It holds that ideas, images, concepts, and so
forth are as ‘“‘real’”’ as are observable things. Thus, what is symbolic is taken
to be of the same order of reality and existence as is matter. Reality and
existence in this sense are not merely matters of awareness (i.e. that both the
idea of St. George and the idea of the healing rock of Panorio exist, or that
both have references, one historical-religious and the other substantive),
but that both exist, external to the mind of the thinker and independent of
him. Existence in this sense implies a physical existence; St. George may be
a “spirit”? but he can assume a corporeal form at will; a form which will
deflect light rays and occupy space as would any substance. Further, with or
without taking visible form, the saint is able to act upon substances, that is,
to have physical effects. He can tear down church towers, make noise,
produce headaches, saddle horses, make candles flicker, and wreck auto-
mobiles — to give a few illustrations.
As far as directing the actions of the thinker, there is no distinction drawn
between the realness of the ordinarily visible and the ordinarily invisible
components of the environment. One may spend an hour moving a rock ina
field and spend another hour preparing an ikon or an ex voto as a gift to the
saint. Neither visibility nor invisibility are necessary considerations for
determining whether or not something exists. Substances alternate between
both states; the sun disappears at night, the moon during the day; a bullet
in the hand is invisible while it travels fromthe gun muzzle; the nereids
were seen last year or last month, but one’s neighbour has heard them this
very night, and one’s niece will see them next month. One slept badly last
night and saw nothing, but this evening when one awakened, one saw the
black dog outside and knew it to be the Moros. One has no difficulty com-
prehending the idea of a microbe; it is there, but with certain exceptions
one will never see it; the same is true for the lamias.
Sensory evidence for physical presence is not required as proof of the
external existence of an entity. Furthermore, if a concept exists, an idea or
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 2447
its symbol, it is assumed, again by at least some of the narrators, that what it
refers to is also real. If one talks about Stringlos, he must be there; if one
hears one’s grandmother telling of the kallikantzari, they must exist too.
Reification is an important component in constructing a conceptual universe
which is taken as real. Since one’s own sensory experience is not a necessary
test of the existence of a class of references (the Dangerous Hour, the saints,
or elephants, to name a few), one is of course able to learn about the ele-
ments in the real world from others. It is enough that respected persons, or
a persuasive number of peers, convey the symbol to one, give instruction in
its function and attributes, and cite someone else’s sensory experience as
testimonial evidence of the empirical sort. Social instruction and consensus
are sufficient to establish the reality of the references to symbols learned.
This means that quite a wide range of phenomena are taken as real and
treated accordingly.
At this point one must stress that this intimately linked social learning and
cognition does not produce the same degree of credulity in all villagers.
Again a wide range of response from acceptance to scepticism and rejection
-is evident. The standards by which acceptance and rejection are decided
upon are equally wide; in one case the nereids will be denied because one
has learned about them from a distrusted source; in another case one has
never seen one for oneself; and in a third because any element of the old
traditions is rejected as either unsound or “‘not modern’’. Consequently, the
physician who instructs in contagious diseases and their communication
may be believed or disbelieved according to equally varying standards: one
villager rejected the information that flies cause disease by affirming that his
house had always been swarming with flies (an observation in which we
could only concur), and that he had never been sick; while another denied
the doctor’s counsel because physicians were distrusted city people. In con-
sidering the cognitive processes revealed in the narratives, one must reckon
on a wide range of individual differences, on individual inconsistencies, and
on the contamination of cognitive processes by the complexities of psycho-
logical (motives and conflicts) and social circumstance.
The fact that ideas and symbols are taken to exist outside the thinker
without any requirement for proof other than social consensus and the
existence of the idea itself, removes a large number of elements in this
“ideally” constructed universe from the necessity of immediate test. Never-
theless there is, over time, a tendency to test concepts, in terms of either the
symbolic-consensual or direct empirical approach, but either method may
be applied to any concept. For example, one may test the existence of the
nereids by either an appeal to one’s own sensory experience. “‘I have or
have not seen or heard a nereid” or by consensus, ““The people around here
agree that there are or are not nereids”’. Likewise a material referent may be
tested by either method, “I have or have not seen someone become sick
directly after they have eaten horse beans,” or “Horse beans are or are not
deadly because the people here say they are or are not”. The villagers do not
require that the test of a concept or material substance be consistent with the
level of abstraction at which it exists, nor that it be tested in terms of the
qualities which it is said to have.
As villagers evaluate events they need not give greater value to evidence
I
248 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

from sense organs in contrast to that derived from intrapsychic experience,

dreams and fantasies. The rock is real because I can touch it. The Stringlos
is real because I have heard it. The Panaghia, whom I saw last night, was
real because I dreamt of her. Each experience is taken as validating a
phenomenon, as proof of its existence. The implication is that the thinker is
a passive receiver of accurate information about the outside world, that the
sensations he receives do in fact convey proof of external entities; and that
there is no necessary difference in the probability for the resulting category,
label, or concept, whether it be experienced by others or by oneself. Nor is
there any challenge to the acceptance of the concepts so employed as to their
being workable, that they are a satisfactory approximation of some features
of the external universe as measured by tests of utility or prediction.
Consequently, if two people agree they have both dreamt of the Panaghia,
there is fully as much agreement on her reality as if they both work to-
gether day after day in the same tomato field and agree that tomatoes
exist.
While rock, sound, the Panaghia and tomatoes are all experienced within
the person, that is, sensations are interpreted and percepts and categories
formed within the mind, the identities thereafter established are uniformly
ascribed to the outside world rather than viewed (nominalistically) as
internal responses to patterns of stimuli. The same may be said for insanity
or epilepsy, which are conceived of as external entities (demons), as tem-
porary and alien residents within the person. Though they are for the
moment to be found inside the person, others categorize them — and perhaps
the sufferer himself — as outside intrusions. So too “‘the bad”? which one
suffers from the evil eye but which passes to the healer during the breaking
of the spell, illustrates the by now well documented tendency to view
unusual or undesired sensations as specific entities. These entities have a
locus outside oneself although they may occasionally intrude themselves,
possess, or be ingested by one, so that an internal domicile is established. In
the same way ‘‘the power’ which one steals and passes on in healing is
independent of the person. Other illustrations include tuberculosis (con-
ceived as a wilful jealous disease), fury (which possesses one), dreams (a
nightmare is possession by exotika or the Moros; a visitation is an appear-
ance of an external spirit), pain (recall the account of how it must be
washed away lest it grew roots?), a ridiculous big belly (remember
how Miltiadis the magician’s big belly was filled with the demons he
had gathered?), one’s fate, luck or life direction (the Vittora), and so
forth.
In sum then, one can say that in the narratives there is evidence for
perceptual-cognitive processes which treat input from proprioceptors,’ and
interoceptors! and the products of reverberating cerebral activity (dreams,
images, ideas, other products of cortical free-wheeling) in the same fashion
as input from exteroceptors.?

1 Proprioceptors are sense organs which are (generally) located in muscles, tendons and
joints. Body movements stimulate these; whereas interoceptors are located in, and stimulated
by the internal body organs, the stomach, intestines, uterus, etc. Exteroceptors are those
sense organs which mediate information from the external environment. ‘They are located
in the skin, the mouth, the eyes, and the ears and nose.
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 249

Anthropomorphism
Where illness, pain, danger and death are concerned, many of the agents
and causes are identified as being animated or wilful; as having some
qualities which are akin to human motives, consciousness or intent. Death
(Charos) will talk to one; God sleeps with women; cancer comes when its
name is called; the sun can be bewitched; the moon bewitches as it looks;
the earth cries for burials; the house snake assumes responsibilities as a
domestic guardian; the air spirits are much like humans, and so forth.
Whether this be termed animism, anthropomorphism, projection, personali-
zation, or generalization, the cognitive process appears to be one in which
categories generated (or accepted when taught) draw some of their
supplemental qualities from other aspects of the person’s own being. In
contrast to categories which are formulated on the basis of considerable
information derived from exteroceptors (and which are not charged with
emotion, ambiguity and socialimportance), these entities which are symbolic,
important, and about which there is no great amount of direct sensory
data available tend to be qualified by additions from the autochthonous
processes of the person using the category. Stated differently, it can be sug-
gested that the person who has identified a force acting upon himself, makes
the assumption that the now-named, and now externalized, entity must
be something like himself. One consequence of this assumption is, that
there will be a tendency to see as “like myself”? all non-human classes
of phenomena which are conceived as materially affecting the experiencing
person, and about which there is incomplete information. Thus, many
identified objects and processes in the world around the person will be
assumed to have human characteristics of awareness, responsiveness, and
motivation.
It is implicit that there is no necessary requirement to validate a category
conceived as external and as existing by soliciting further sensory data
about it. It would appear that one will rest content as long as qualifying
statements can be made about a category; that is, as long as one believes
that one has information about it which allows one to place it in context,
relate it to other categories, and guide one’s actions towards it. One may
conclude that setting up categories and making qualifying statements about
them which serve as information represents a complete cognitive process.
Unless some new factor alters the conceptual field, the villager considers
his present information adequate. The narratives do not tell us what such
new factors might be; although we may assume that if actions based on
initial information prove grossly maladaptive, incongruous or ugly, or non-
instrumental, that such a need for new information — or new categories —
will be created.
If the many features of the environment which are relevant to crises are
human-like, the question arises, how does one act upon them to further
human interests? Just as any category, or sub-member of a category (e.g.
the black dog, which is the Dangerous Hour, one of the exotika), can act
upon humans to create physical effects, so too the human may act upon these
entities to produce effects.
250 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

Energy and Power

Humans are believed to produce effects on one another by direct physical
action, by the use of symbols and signs, and — less frequently — by the mere
presence of wishes or fears which may not be translated into word or deed,
but which are, nevertheless, presumed capable of ‘‘willing”’ an effect. These
measures, which humans use, are the ones which are also employed by the
human-like entities. Influence, control, manipulation are all to be accom-
plished through physical action, words and signs, or silent wishes. For ex-
ample, one may try to ward off the Dangerous Hour through curses, silent
incantations, or by shooting a gun at it. One may importune St. Modhistos
by prayer, or punish him by a physical beating (of his ikon) for, as the proverb
goes, ‘“‘The saints need to be beaten too”. One seeks to control the stormy
sea by building breakwaters, by building a shrine to St. Nikolas or Aghia
Marina, by casting a cross into the turbulent waters, or by praying to the
sea itself. One assures the strength and speedy construction of a house by
using good materials, by having the priest bless the project - and when it
is built, by monthly blessing the rooms, and — in the old days — sacrificing
an animal (or human) to be buried in the cornerstone; a practice which has
its remnants in offering a chicken or goat to the saint as the cornerstone
is laid. And in the case of an epidemic, whether its cause is presumed
to be germ, curse or Koukoudi, one may seek protection through injections
and medication, through prayers and ploughed magic circles, or through
hanging Koukoudi himself, either in effigy or in the person of some luckless
human scapegoat.
Beyond the relatively straightforward methods entailed in direct physical
action, direct appeals through words, or direct wishes, there are the indirect
techniques which capitalize on the assumption of equivalence. Human-like
entities must be linked together just as human ones are; consequently they
may be manipulated so as to influence one another. All of the entities, being
animated and wilful, possess energy and power; but this is held in varying
quantities, and consequently the wise strategist will attempt to shift the
balance of power to ally himself with friendly forces which can be influenced
to control less friendly forces. One prays to St. Dimitrios to fend off the
Koukoudi; one prays to St. Nikolas to control the ocean or the earthquake;
one begs God to dispel tuberculosis ; or mixing human and not-human, one
begs the priest to intercede with Christ to bring a good crop; or one pays
Mantheos the magician to gather the nereids and force them to take back
the paralyzing stroke they have given to one’s husband.
This assumption that energy and power is unequally distributed through-
out the environment, and that it is under the wilful control of the object
demonstrating that power, is a very important one for guiding the behaviour
of humans towards human-like entities. It introduces a whole network of
potential relationships among environmental objects, each of which in-
fluences others and can be influenced by them using human techniques and
evidencing more human traits.
While inducing the powers to influence one another is a particular style of
jndirect environmental control, different devices for indirect influence are
seen in the assumption that both power and effects may be transferred from
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 251
one object to another. As humans gain or lose power depending upon such
factors as ageing, illness, cleverness, political alliance, access to means of
restraint or reward, so too may other environmental objects transfer power
and change their controlling potentials vis-d-vis one another. Koukoudi was
powerful until St. George and St. Athanasios felled him with a sword and
hung him to the nearest fig tree. The nereids were mightier than old Mr.
Lambaris, but under the coercion of a magician their demonic power was
restrained. God was powerful, but now he is old and pays little attention to
what is going on. Or, at the human level, the old wise woman was powerful
but now blind and feeble can heal no more. The healer has lost his power, for
it was stolen by another; the grandmother has lost her healing power having
passed it along to her children. ““The Bad,” strong enough to make one
woman nauseated, is sufficiently attenuated by the healing ritual and the
strength of the healer, so that when it is transferred out of the sufferer,
freeing her from pain, it causes only minor discomfort to the wise woman
herself.
It is to be noted that the assumption that power and energy can be trans-
ferred, means that power is in itself a category which can be divorced con-
ceptually from the person or object holding it. This is a fundamental
assumption that underlies certain healing, manipulation, and apotropaic
effects. The ‘“‘bad”’ passes from the sufferer by jumping on to the unpolluted
child walking by; the power leaves the healer to reside in her daughter; the
luck or guiding life force (Vittora) leaves the person before he dies and
searches for another owner; the tuberculosis looks for the healthy so that it
may enter them to make them ill; the clothing of the ill may be left at the
arched rock so that the disease, now attached to the clothing, is abandoned
in the wilderness and no longer afflicts the sufferer; or as another example,
the sign or token of the person is a satisfactory substitute for the person
himself.
The assumptions about equivalence and transferability lead to the notion,
seen in the last example, that influence may be exerted through substitution.
One acts as if a part of a thing satisfactorily represents the thing itself. ‘This
is true for the purpose of doing sorcery through tokens, of performing cures
through tokens, of making diagnoses through tokens, of relieving the dying
by providing him with a token of his beloved. These assumptions have been
well described by others, Frazer for example (95), as holophrastic magic. It
implies enduring connections between parts of someone or something and
the whole, between that which touches and that which has been touched.
In terms of cognitive processes, it suggests a certain difficulty in maintaining
the identification of entities; a readiness to transfer attributes from one part
to another, and to conceive of these attributes as independent of the original
entity from which they were derived or were part. There is also suggested a
certain irrelevance of boundaries of objects defined by sensory data; the
importance of these boundaries is less than the attributes of the internally
generated categories that are conceived as properties of the object. Here one
sees that the information sources which are given primacy for defining the
attributes of entities are social or internal rather than ‘“‘pragmatic” and
sensory.
The same assumption of equivalence and transferability is found in those
252 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
efforts to influence which depend upon performing an act on one object or
in one setting intended to have a similar effect upon another object or in
another setting, even though there is no physical connection between the
two events, the one performed and the other intended. To prevent mis-
carriage, the mother wears a lock around her neck. To bind the groom to
impotence, a curse is uttered whilst one ties knots in a string. To condemn
one’s enemy to death, one buries the “‘magia’’ in the graveyard saying, “‘as
these dead decay so shall you” or, hurling the soap in the river one mutters,
‘as this soap dissolves so shall you’’. The implication is that a demonstration
will produce parallel effect, as long as the two are linked in the mind of the
doer by his intent. This well known feature of sympathetic magic rests upon a
cognitive process that once again denies the importance of boundaries
reported by exteroceptors. It assumes that the identity of two “‘separate”’
objects may be established within the mind of the one who does the magic
and that the identity so established, one confirmed by intent signified by
words and demonstrated in an action, will conveniently serve to bring about
results desired for guiding action.
The range of operations and objects which can be termed “‘magical’’ can
be extended beyond the classical cases of sympathetic and holophrastic
magic, or to use Frazer’s terms (95) homeopathic and contagious magic.
There are a number of classifications which observers can impose on these
acts; Butler (42) speaks of astrology, alchemy and ceremonial or ritual
magic. Fejos (88) prefers a typology of sympathetic magic, divination,
thaumaturgy and incantation, and healing acts: those designed to cure
diseases caused by the intrusion of foreign objects, intrusion by spirits, and
troubles caused by soul capture and soul straying. As to causes of magical
ailments, Fejos divides them into sorcery and black magic, sleep and
dreams, and ritually bad states or moral delinquency. Mannhardt (163)
groups according to superstitions, wonder-working, occult spirits, black
magic, witchcraft and devil beliefs, astrology, necromancy and so forth. In
reviewing the narratives one could find illustrations which could be grouped
according to any of these categories; nevertheless, such an attempt to
classify is not relevant to our primary task. The question we would ask then
is, are there any cognitive processes which can be found to operate in the
other forms of magic which do not conform to one or another of the
descriptions advanced so far?
Take for example the ritual for simultaneously diagnosing and curing the
evil eye. If the oil dropped in the cup of water disperses, the diagnosis is that
now, with the act of dispersion, the person has been afflicted by the evil
eye; if the oil does not disperse, the diagnosis is that the affliction is caused
by something other than the evil eye. In this case one begins with shared
intent; both healer and sufferer wish for a cure. Next is the employment of
power in a ritual fashion, the power of the olive oil accompanied by power-
ful words which serve the intention of bringing the ailment under control
and to dispel it. There is, however, a further assumption of a validating
sort; if one’s ailment was due to bewitchment by the evil eye, then this will be
acknowledged by the counter-spell employed in the cure. The ‘‘acknow-
ledgement”’ consists of a crucial experiment in which the outcome is limited
to one of two known possibilities, the significance of each having been
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 253
determined in advance. If it is a spell, then it will be cured by a spell and
the oil will disperse; if it is not a spell, the oil will not disperse. A diagnostic
test will have been made which is predicated on a necessary sequence of
events of the “if. . . then’’ variety.
Very much the same processes can be observed in the gathering of the
exotika by the magician who, through words and rituals, coerces them to
reveal the harm they have done and to take it back. In this case there is an
additional feature which was only vaguely suggested in the evil eye ritual ;
it is that in response to man’s influencing efforts the human-like entities or
powers will “talk back’’ revealing what they have done or not done,
indicating whether or not they can or will do what is demanded. In the
same way one can affirm that if the water in the glass on one’s head boils,
then one has succeeded in bewitching the sun; or if one prays to the
Panaghia and she appears in one’s dream, then the dream will tell one of
the future. There is a reciprocity presumed. This reciprocity is the greater the
more human is the form which the animated environmental objects take;
but at any level of separate will, conceived to be resident in nature, the
expectation is that an informative response will be forthcoming.
The assumption of a wilful reciprocity between man and objects in his
environment suggests a reflection of a style of intimate living among humans
which is generalized to human-like entities; an intimacy which allows
neither to stand independent or unmoved in the face of actions by the other.
The world is conceived of as one in which entities created by man are in-
capable of aloofness; perhaps bowing to his will or no, but unable to fail to
acknowledge his efforts at influence and mastery.
The implication of the narratives of crisis is that it is man’s concepts and
will that are paramount in nature. In terms of cognition, one finds indi-
viduals seeking information, assessing the results of their own actions, and
striving for some kind of certainty. In terms of the mood in which these
efforts are made, there is a surprising optimism. In spite of the content of
crisis, disease, danger, pain, and death, man faces them all with an ex-
pectation that there will be response to query, and that there will be —
somehow — success; and if not that, solace at least.
If there is so much thought that strives after information and predict-
ability how can it be, one must ask, that there is so little self-correction built
into the system? How can it be that the thinking processes mirrored in the
narratives remain unmodified by experience that suggests their in-
appropriateness to the intentions stated; inappropriate at least in terms of
the logical or scientific standards which we as observers would apply? How
can a concept-building, information-gathering, prediction-making cognitive
system fail to concern itself with the gulf between intent and effect? Granting
the primacy given to information communicated by others rather than that
gathered by oneself, and granting the primacy of internally generated con-
ceptions over information derived from exteroceptors, there is ample
evidence from daily life to show that empirical data is valued. How does it
happen that sensory evidence makes no dent on the cognitive processes we
call magical?
The answer begins with the fact that information is gathered within the
magical system and that tests are applied within that system. One does not
254 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

test for effects beyond the set of rituals and expectations that comprise the
symbolic-intentional-consensus approach to influencing nature. One works
within a closed rather than open system. For example, in the diagnostic-
healing ritual for the evil eye cited a little earlier, the information about
one’s ailment and the kinds of intervention which will lead to cure is
derived from the ritual itself and from the prescribed interpretations of
events which accompanies that ritual. One bases one’s test and predictions
on the ritual outcome, not on any follow-up study beyond the ritual. One
does not systematically observe to see if the ailment really does go away,
when the oil does dissipate or, contrariwise, if the ailment hangs on until
one gets other treatment should the oil not have dissipated over the water
surface. There is no provision for determining whether the system succeeds
or fails in dealing with business that is decreed to be within its province.
To correct this error one would have to move outside the ritual prescrip-
tions and interpretations, to get beyond the “‘theory’’ so to speak, and to
apply a test of utility. But the fact is, as we have seen before, that final
utility is not the criterion of goodness by which the healing system is
measured. It is short term utility which appears to be the standard. Does the
system provide one with something to do, with a label for the ailment, with
hope for a cure, and with information about expected (rather than actual)
outcome? The answer to each is ‘‘yes’’, and as a result the cognitive system
seems to be rated a grand success by the local folk.
We see here an important difference in the standards by which prediction
is judged within the healing system in contrast to observations made by the
outsider. It seems unlikely that intelligent and sceptical villagers have not
thought about the long-range accuracy of the system; but if they have, these
thoughts have been put aside; perhaps because the long-range test is too
difficult to remember; perhaps because there is some awareness of the
myriad events which intrude to prevent anything like a controlled “‘scien-
tific’? study. More likely it is because there is satisfaction in feeling that one
knows and that this satisfaction is to be preferred, at least in matters of
crisis, to finding out that one does not know.
Another aspect of thinking which is seen in the narratives and which
contributes to the failure to recognize the inappropriateness of magical
methods, is that no red flag is raised to signal the danger of error when
discrepancies, inconsistencies, or lacunae are observed. Stringlos is supposed
to announce impending deaths by howling; yet a death occurs and Stringlos
has been silent. The belief is not discredited because a postulated relation-
ship fails to occur. ‘‘He may howl, he may not’’ a villager will say with a
shrug. The sensory evidence does not shake the concept, nor does the local
logic say that it should. A sorcerer binds a couple to impotence and sterility
but, a short while later, the bride happily announces she is pregnant. Does
the sorcerer abandon his belief in the efficacy of binding curses? Certainly
not; he wonders what his errors in ritual were, or what counter-magic the
wedding couple employed to protect themselves. Brother comes home with
the anemopyroma (facial erysipelas), and he is taken to the wise woman
who says the xemetrima while a red cloth is put over the face so that the
cloth will attract the “‘bad’’. His condition fails to improve, but does the
family give up folk medicine? Hardly. They try another wise woman, a
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 255
priest, a magician, a new batch of herbs and perhaps eventually a physician.
“Well, it doesn’t always work,’’ they will explain. A treatment failure is
rarely considered a crucial test of a healing system, nor are any crucial tests
designed which would put the methods or forecasts up against some standard
by which success could be estimated.
Even when a healing technique is seen to fail completely, the experience
is taken as giving information about one illness or circumstance but it does
not produce doubt about the conceptual system itself. Thus, when the
Saracatzani woman injured her eye with a reed and went to the wise woman
in Doxario, she was quite aware, as the hours went by, that her pain was
great and her loss of vision nearly complete. Within a few days, after she
had followed the rituals, heard the xemetrima and used the herbs and
compresses, she knew that the wise woman had not helped at all. She went
to the eye clinic in Athens and began treatment there. What did she con-
clude? That for traumatic injuries to the eye it is a mistake to go to the
wise woman. As for any other illness, the efficacy of local traditional
systems remained unchallenged in her mind. Each instance is separate and
each ritual insulated from the others. The villagers’ approach to healing or
prophecy is not based on any set of explicated common principles. While the
local traditional system is familiar and comfortable and works in accordance
with certain fairly stable cognitive processes, neither the local traditions nor
the thinking and assumptions which it involves are set forth as integrated.
Because crises are separate, and because the acts taken to prepare for or deal
with each crisis are also separate in time, in context and often in form, the
traditional acts of healing are treated as independent; and the failure of one,
even if acknowledged, need not colour one’s appraisal of the adequacy of
other healing acts. Asa result, much of what the observer sees as inconsistency
is not perceived by the villager as such. The villager’s thoughts and actions
are insulated because of his attention to one task and one problem at a
time. It is this approach which has led some observers to call the villagers
“concrete”’ or “‘stimulus-bound”’.
Another characteristic of the cognitive system which accounts for the in-
effectiveness of the villager’s experiences in correcting his assumptions, may
be referred to as accommodation and generalization. Accommodation
allows apparently unreconcilable issues or principles to be mediated, com-
bined, or glossed over, so that strains are reduced which would result from
potentially conflicting assumptions; strains that might lead to the criticism
or examination of one or another set of concepts or acts. By accommodation,
categories are expanded, so that hitherto diverse, or incompatible elements,
or evidence of inconsistency, are submerged within a new abstraction or an
expanded conceptual system.
Christ, the narratives report, said, “let magic exist’’ and thus by fiat,
magic is accommodated to Christianity in spite of the railing of the bishops.
“You're a better doctor than I am,”’ the physician is quoted as saying to the
wise woman after she had treated his wound with oil-of-mouse balsam. Lo
and behold, western medicine is accommodated to traditional healing.
“When my donkey was sick, I called the practikos and the veterinarian. It’s
all the same, isn’t it? Just a matter of technique.’ And so hand healing and
veterinary medicine have their differences resolved. “I warn you,”
1*
256 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

thundered the priest from the pulpit after the episode which shocked the
whole of Doxario when the “‘magia’’ were found buried in the cemetery.
“Our magic is stronger than theirs!’’ And so saying Orthodoxy offered a
smothering embrace to black magic.
While accommodation serves to combine diversity within an expanded
category, generalization acts to integrate discrepancies by transferring them
from one system to another. Something believed or performed as part of one
rite is generalized to a second rite and, in so doing, diversity is bridged as
common elements are created. The holy water employed in church services
is used in home healing as are the olive oil,. candles, ikons, incense, prayers,
and blessings of the priest, which generalize from church to the treatment of
illness, exorcising demons, warding off dangers, etc. Penicillin, found useful
in treating an upper respiratory infection (it is available without prescrip-
tion) may be tried out for gout, headaches or back pain. If either holy
water or penicillin seem to work in a variety of situations, i.e. are associated
with satisfactory outcomes, the belief in the power of both is enhanced.
Power is conceived as having the same essence, i.e. the capacity to bring
about desired effects; neither the specific effectiveness, nor the difference
between one kind of powerful substance and another is evaluated.
Information detrimental to confidence in the magical healing system
might be forthcoming if it were shown that a headache could be cured
through properly prescribed eye glasses without recourse to the xemetrima.
But a villager whose headache finally drives him to the doctor is very likely
to continue with xemetrima treatments as well and, when relief is found
after glasses have been fitted, he might well reason that both the xemetrima
and the glasses were necessary elements for his cure. In this instance
“thealing’’ is expanded to include local and technical traditions, and it may
be claimed that this particular healing requires both steps, neither of which
would be put to the test in isolation. In another case an infant with high
fever may be treated by penicillin (borrowed from the neighbour), while at
the same time the rituals for curing bewitchment by the moon are used;
clothes are burned, shades are drawn, the xemetrima are said for three
nights under the moon. As the infant recovers, the whole set of acts are
integrated and said to comprise the healing of moon bewitchment; the
penicillin no more and no less than clothes-burning.
A final feature, which may be associated with the lack of scepticism
regarding the magical system is that the intentional acts do work; that is,
events do fall out as one wishes, and predictions made are accurate. People
recover from the ailments treated by local traditional methods; others do
wither — and perhaps even die — as curses have doomed them to. There are,
of course, a number of ways to account for the success of a system which
outsiders would not expect to have utilitarian value. Given a belief in the
principles and rituals, there is, no doubt, a strong tendency to gather in-
formation selectively, and to perceive events according to need and
expectation rather than objectively. These are functions of perceptual
dynamics rather than “‘pure’’ cognition, All kinds of sensory data may be
altered through initial perceptual distortions, through faulty memory, or
faulty reporting. “I was cured of my sickness by the magician’’ (that he was
under treatment by a physician too is forgotten). ““When we read the
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 257
shoulder bone we saw that the guerrillas would leave — and they did’ (but
they left two years later). ‘I was standing right there in front of the church
when I saw the Panaghia appear inside’’ (it was twilight and in the flicker
of the candles it may have been but a shadow). ‘“The witch told me that I’d
been bewitched by those two neighbour women; I suspected all along they
had envied me”’ (as did everyone else in the village after your nephew sent
you money enough from Athens for two cows).
But aside from dynamic processes which affect perception, memory and
cognition, there are two elements which contribute to what even an
observer would agree is the success of the healing-magical-religious system.
One element is that prophecies are self-fulfilling; in a community in which
there is a considerable amount of interdependency and suggestibility, people
do perform according to other’s expectations and commands. If Tassia
tells her neighbour that she is very sorry but she has admired her and given
her the evil eye, the neighbour will believe it and will get a headache. If the
lechona’s mother-in-law does leave the door open so that the moon shines
in upon her, the lechona may very well feel anxious and suffer difficulty in
nursing her baby. If the groom finds the candles missing from the church
after the ceremony, knowing the significance of their oil in the binding
curse, he can be impotent that night because he believes as the sorcerer
believes. If I dream that the Panaghia visits me and tells me I shall name
my new baby “‘Georgio”’, I am very likely to do so.
Suggestion can also work to cure. In a community where emotions are
considered to be a major source of illness, and where observers would agree
that functional and psychosomatic disorders are found: muteness, hysterical
paralysis, ulcers, digestive disorder, headache, etc.) ;the sufferer who visits
the wise woman for treatment will often feel benefit from her healing.
Confidence in the methods, reassurance in the situation, the suggestion that
the headache will disappear, all work therapeutically and no doubt are
effective.
In addition to the self-fulfilling prophecies and responses to suggestion,
the success of the local system depends upon spontaneous processes. Given a
community in which most disorders among adults are either chronic ail-
ments which can produce day-to-day variations in discomfort, or are acute
that
non-fatal diseases which will improve on their own, the chances are
healing rituals will be followed, within a few days, by respite - in chronic
ailments; or by cure — for the short term, non-fatal, acute disorders.
great the
Reference to Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35), will show how
poten-
proportion of these ailments are in contrast to the lesser incidence of
such as typhoid, anthrax, tuberculos is,
tially fatal or fully disabling diseases
and so forth. As the latter are infrequen t and
amoebic dysentery, malaria,
of
the former are frequent, the healer and patient who observe the ‘‘effects’’
a high rate of success for
traditional healing efforts will be rewarded by
intent and outcome.
which
The cognitive processes which corroborate the local tradition and
describe s (usually with disappr oval) as “irratio nal’’, ‘‘mal-
the outsider
frequen tly support ed
adaptive”, 3 “magical’’, “‘illogical’’, or “‘primitive’’, are
that the system does work and
by experiences which allow the interpretation
or community
is correct after all. By seizing upon common human feelings
258 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

relationships (as was demonstrated in Chapters XII to XV) and redefining

these, referring to them symbolically or allegorically; by providing astute
observations of actual happenings and outcomes, the local lore can well be
correct. In a community of envy it is probably correct to indicate that
persons are uneasy when they are admired by others; the admirers very
likely are hiding possessive, destructive, jealous wishes. It may be allegorical
to speak of this in terms of “‘the evil eye’’ but the symbolism is grasped
because the feelings are real. And the effects are ‘‘real’’ too; real for reasons
of suggestion, for reasons of anxiety, for reasons of physically destructive or
socially malicious acts.
There are many illustrations of the success of intentional ritual acts and of
magical predictions if success continues to be defined as the occurrence of
the desired act following some human manceuvre designed to produce or
foretell it. The robbers who lived in the cave about the chapel of St. Nike-
phoros did read the shoulder blades of sheep and did anticipate the forays
of the police which they did escape — until the last search, which found them.
We suspect the scapulamancy was unrelated to the evasive action, but the
inhabitants thought the two were related and, watching the hide-and-seek,
saw the brigands’ game succeed. In the spring, when one takes care to plant
as the moon waxes to ensure the fullness of the growth of one’s crop one is, in
summer, ordinarily rewarded with vegetables or grain. And in the fall,
when one holds one’s festival of harvest to give thanks for bounty and so to
behave properly towards the powers, one not only “‘knows’’ one has done
that which is “right’’, but is rewarded the following year with large gifts
from the soil, a small portion of which are returned again to the gods as
thanks and offerings. In the spring one is careful to have the yeast blessed,
the leaven to be used throughout the year; one is ordinarily rewarded by
breads which rise throughout that year. Or, for warding off, when one
is very careful to do the funeral rituals correctly so that the dead will
not return, the probabilities are that these dead shall remain in their
graves.
Inherent in all the information which is applied as proof of the success of
one’s magical acts to enhance the human state, are two flaws. One is that
acts, which are antecedent, are taken as necessary. Now the villagers most
certainly do not presume causal roles for all antecedent acts; they limit
themselves to those tied into a belief system, i.e. to those expected from their
‘theory’. What they do not do, or more accurately, what the narratives
show that some do not do, is to test to see if that which is presumed neces-
sary, is in fact so. The reason they do not put this to the test, may be one of
lack of sophistication; more likely we think, it is because in matters of
importance, the affairs of life and death, one dare not take the chance. If
things are going fairly well, not only is there no need to rock the boat, it is
downright foolhardy.
The second flaw is that for expectations which predict near-perfectly,
unlike those where discrepancies must be ignored or accommodated, there
is never an opportunity to find the system in error. These days, for instance,
the dead rarely are found to return as vrikolakes. The funeral rituals can be
said to work almost perfectly in assuring that the dead proceed on their
journey. How would one ever know that the ritual might be unrelated,
 COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS 259
given the credence in the vrikolakes and prior ‘“‘knowledge”’ by social con-
sensus of what accounts for their appearance? Or, in the case of healing, it
would seem that all of the local therapeutic efforts to cure “‘the bad pimple’,
anthrax, have been effective in preventing fatalities. Why? It is our im-
pression that there has been no anthrax of late, and that all diagnoses of ‘“‘the
bad pimple”’ are in fact misdiagnoses — even by local standards — applied to
boils, carbuncles and the like. In the last forty years there has been no
Koukoudi (bubonic plague) in Panorio. The village is protected from the
plague by St. Dimitrios and by a magic circle. Until such time as Koukoudi
strikes again, there is no evidence that saint and circle have failed the people
of the town. In recent years no one is reported to have seen the kallikantzari.
This is not to say that they do not arrive regularly each Christmas-time; it
is only that the rituals of keeping up the fire on the hearth, wearing amulets,
putting on the skino bush, and throwing away the ashes on January sixth
are followed religiously. The apotropaic rituals work, and that is why no one
sees the kalkes. Things are going swimmingly; seeing no kalkes is taken as
proof of ritual success. It is certainly not taken as evidence that there are no
kalkes at all.
There enters here a rather neat problem regarding the cognitive processes
associated with the development of concepts to which the attribute of
existence is assigned, but where one aspect of their existence is that they are
not ordinarily visible. As concepts, they may be inferred, like viruses, from
sensory data; or as supernaturals, they are granted on the basis of consensus
plus the direct reports of experience from those who say they have seen
them. Indeed there is hardly any reason to want to disprove either that
microbes or nereids exist. But if there were, in a village without microscopes,
logicians, or scientists, the methods for satisfying one’s curiosity or scepticism
are not readily available.
In point of fact, one may make a case for accepting the presence of
nereids before accepting microbes. Reference to Health and Healing in Rural
Greece (35), will show that this is exactly what happens. Since an ordinary
middle-aged village sceptic can see neither — although he may find pictures
of both in books (if he knows how to read and could find a book, which he
can’t) — he may decide to take it on the word of authority ; in which case the
doctor will claim there are microbes but will, sometimes, discount nereids;
while the priest will claim nereids — and certainly saints — while rejecting
microbes. If he demands to ask the man who has seen one he will find many
who will tell him about the nereids, but none who can say he has seen a
microbe. And, if he asks for observations on effects, the sceptic will be
returned to the problem of isolating the necessary antecedents for either
pneumonia or muteness without benefit of laboratories. While we may take
the sceptic’s problem somewhat lightly — as it is intended — it is quite real.
Whatever his potentials for criticism and the correction of cognitive and
conceptual errors, the village culture does not provide him with any means
by which he may experience even one demonstration of a test of any concept
or of an ordinarily invisible entity. And indeed, given the problems of
modern scientists in defining concepts, be they serum toxins in schizophrenia
or the ego in psychodynamics, it behoves us to be sympathetic to the villager.
In concluding the chapter we would make reference to one other cognitive
260 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
process which we believe to be reflected in the narratives. It is related to the
processes of sharpening and levelling which abound in perception, in oral
communication, and in literary dramatization. It is essential to the combat
myths as described by Fontenrose (93). Sharpening consists in a tendency to
polarize, to express or describe extremes in actions or in qualities; poles
which are not independent but which, on the contrary, are both aspects of
the same phenomena. This polarity, which we employed, in Health and
Healing in Rural Greece (35) to describe life styles and themes in the villages,
has as its essence ambivalence. Contrary tendencies coexist in or as part of
the same process. Since the ambivalence .becomes a quality of objects or
abstractions which isassigned to them by cognition, it is ourinference that am-
bivalence is a feature of cognition itself. This statement implies a position
closely related to the Hegelian dialectic. That dialectic finds, in philosophy,
the possibility of contradictions merging themselves in a higher principle, or
which sees subjective events as occurring through the continuous unification
of opposites. We would concur, but would say that neither principles nor
contradictions are characteristics of world process, i.e. innate in anything
but man’s brain; but rather, that the merging into one and the subsequent
division into opposites is a characteristic of cognitive process; a process
which then imparts itself to objects and becomes, to the thinker, a quality of
those objects, rather than of his ways of conceiving them.
Greek literature and mythology achieved its dramatic excellence in part
through the passionately charged presentation of ambivalence. Apollo,
healer and destroyer; Artemis, virgin and goddess of fertility; in Rome,
Janus, the two-faced, still our symbol for ambivalence; all of them embody
the dialectic principle. And in modern lore the theme is the same: Panaghia,
protector of women and devourer of babes, St. George, protector and
avenger. For gods, for powers, for men, the qualities are double: contra-
dictory, oscillating, momentarily reconciled or synthesized, only to emerge
as opposites once more.
If this portrayal does reflect the way the villagers think, not just the
transient content of their thoughts, then it is within the thought process
itself that one finds the roots as well as the apprehension of the contrasts
which are ascribed to the outside world.t The tendency to shift the quality
of the object sensed to its opposite would be very much like the figure-ground
reversals one sees in visual perception. Cognition in itself might account for
the tendency both to see and to become polarities in the village world; the
polarities of magic for the good and for the bad, of priests benevolent and
evil, of nereids sweet singing and dangerous, of authorities protective and
exploiting, of authorities upon whom to depend and against whom to
rebel, of women nourishing and vengeful. Perhaps there is, in the process of
cognition itself, an oscillation between certainty and ambiguity, between
order and chaos, between interpreting attributes as approved or dis-
approved, or potentially harmful.
1 As any instrument, while observing processes, thereby modifies them.
 SECTION THREE
SURVIVALS AND PARALLELS
 XVIII
THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: METHODS
AND CONCEPTS IN THE STUDY OF
HISTORICAL SURVIVALS
wipes present chapter begins Section Three. The section is devoted to
comparing the themes found in the narratives presented in Section I
with themes found in the literature and accounts of ancient (pre-Christian)
Greece, and with the content of cultures adjacent to Greece as described by
social scientist observers. The goal of the section is to describe the extent to
which contemporary beliefs and practices — and by inference the style of
living and thinking — are similar to those found in antiquity and are similar
to those found in modern times among other near-by rural folk. The com-
parisons are, of course, limited to the major domain of our inquiry, healing
and death, crisis and mystery.
It will be the purpose of this and the following two chapters to begin the
task of the section by illustrating a number of contemporary themes which
parallel those of antiquity, to point out where historical changes have
occurred, to indicate which present themes are not represented in antiquity,
and to argue that many parallels are in fact direct survivals from ancient
times, and to discuss some of the reasons which we see for the continuities of
past in present in so many rich and wonderful ways.
There are two interesting aspects to the study of survivals. One is, that one
may learn more of human kind through them. One asks, which elements
survive? With what are they associated? How have they been modified?
And from the replies one can make inferences about constants in human
experience and human nature. The second aspect of interest is that the
discovery of survivals is, in itself, exciting. Most of us allow ourselves the
pleasure of wondering about the long ago. Those who have a special appre-
ciation for ancient Greece, its arts, its imagination, its intellect, have
created an imaginary landscape for that country and that time; one com-
posed, in part at least, of the creations of one’s own fantasy. It is a romantic
landscape which, by the act of being appreciated, enriches the viewer by
expanding his self beyond his timebound shell. When one learns that the
past is present, that elements of a glorious time live on — not as museum
relics but as viable elements in a living culture, it is to enjoy one’s fantasies
come to life. And at that moment one finds oneself linked personally and
directly to the past — and of necessity to the Greek present as well.
With regard to the latter aspect of survivals, the exhilaration in their
discovery and contemplation, we shall allow the reader his joy without the
bother of confirmatory annotations. With regard to the former aspect, the
value of survivals for understanding the response to life crises and mysteries,
we shall venture to comment.
In this chapter, as in earlier ones, our materials are the narratives. We
in
shall, however, supplement this by occasional reference to the data
264 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) and by frequent reference to historical
documents or scholarly commentaries. Our point of departure is, as before,
the crises of life with special reference to health and disability and the
mysteries: namely life itself and death. Our thesis is that the rural folk have
experienced these life crises and mysteries under relatively unchanged
conditions for the last several thousand years. As a consequence, we expect
that their response to crises, whether reflected and contained in institutional
structures, in individual attitudes and reactions, or in particular techniques
will also show but little change.

Methodological and conceptual difficulties

There are a number of methodological problems to be faced in a search
for survivals. Of primary importance is the system of categories to be
employed. Does one attend to the highly specific or the general? For
example, would one join with some archaeologists who, comparing lovely
red-figured vases from the 5th century B.c. with modern Greek pots, find the
two cultures unrelated? Or would one point out, regardless of the aesthetic
triumph of Sosias over unsung (rightly so) modern potters, that fired clay
vessels, sometimes decorated, were produced then and now to serve the
same very important and widespread functions as containers of water and
wine and bases for oilwick lights? It is our position that a general similarity
with many common elements and a common structure suffices to define a
continuity even though specific elements have been altered. So in the pottery
example we would contend, while regretting the aesthetic decline and grant-
ing a decreased variety of utilization for fired clay objects (no longer used
as toys and votive offerings, less often as religious figures, etc.), that the
forms and functions of village pottery show continuity with earlier times.
So it is that throughout this section, our definition of continuity will rest
on fairly broad categories; we may take note of differences in detail or
elements but we shall not employ such differences as the only test, for we
shall also inquire after structure and function and the patterns of elements
therein.
Another problem in appraising survivals is the estimation of the line of
descent, whether direct, indirect, or spontaneously regenerated. Let us
illustrate by noting that where Dhadhi stands an ancient town once stood.
Its crumbled wall can be seen from the town and a little farther on, winding
out of sight beyond some hills, a grand acropolis rises, its settlement going
back to Minoan-Mycenaean times. Beneath that acropolis there is a spring
and near it a chapel built on ground no doubt hallowed for centuries. That
is the spring and shrine to which the Dhadhi people repair, along with
others, to drink the purifying waters according to the adage, ““Come admire
me in May, drink me in August, and if you want to die, come taste me in
September.”’ It has not been possible to assign the origins of the adage, but
it is likely that it is ancient.
The present problem for methodological consideration is one of lineage,
for the Dhadhi people are not indigenous; their forefathers began migrating
from Greece to Asia Minor in the eighth century B.c. and to Pontos in the
sixth century B.c. Most certainly they did not bring the adage with them
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT 265
from Asia Minor; they have learned it from the indigenous folk near Dhadhi.
In adopting it they demonstrate the easy borrowing of a traditional practice
from others. While the recent migration of the people of Dhadhi! and the
collaborating testimony of the local people make it clear that this particular
prescription for the use of sacred waters is by lineage of place rather than by
group, other instances of cultural borrowing as opposed to inheritance can
be much more difficult to detect.
Traditions are not only borrowed and practices diffused from one group
to another or spontaneously generated independently in groups separated
by space and/or time, but materials can be reintroduced into a culture after
a considerable length of time in cultural ‘‘cold storage”’ ;that is, after having
been preserved in literature or museums without having been maintained as
viable elements in folk culture. To illustrate we turn to a narrative told by
a colourful Dhadhi woman, one not reported earlier.
‘Well now I think I should tell you about that boy from a village north of
here who got into so much trouble. When he was a baby they didn’t want
him, so they gave him away; and he grew up not knowing his father and
mother. Well, one day he came upon this woman and he found that he
liked her and, as things like that go, she decided she liked him pretty well
too. But then there was that husband. What to do about him? They didn’t
really know what to do about him until they finally decided to kill him; you
know how those things can be. So the boy did kill him and that woman took
him into her palace and sat him on the throne to make him king. I guess lf
forgot to tell you she was a queen. Well things went along well enough for
quite some time, and they had children together. But then one day some-
body, oh I don’t remember who it was now, but somebody — you know how
people are — somebody came to this man and told him he really had some-
thing to say to him. He told the boy that the woman he’d married was his
mother. Imagine! Oh my, but what happened after that. He committed
suicide, but first he killed that woman. And his children? His children never
saw the sun rise on a good day, I can tell you that. This is the way it
happened. I’ve seen the boy’s tomb myself.”’
A survival of Oedipus? Not really. After she had told us the tale, we
asked her where she had heard it. She explained that the teacher had taken
the village children and as many of the parents who had wanted to come
along on a bus ride to ‘‘Adelphos”’ (Delphi) and while there, the teacher had
told them about Oedipus. To give it that concrete veracity which means
so much to the village audience, the teacher had apparently conjured and
pointed out the tomb of Oedipus.
People can also distort their own history and the duration of practices.
That is illustrated by a comment from a Panorio woman who said that the
village had been established in 490 B.c. and that the origins for the magic
It is
circle which kept out disease (see Chapter III) dated back that far.
ancient site. Within the last few years archaeolo -
true that Panorio is on an
gists conducte d a search, after antiquiti es had been unearthe d during
ploughing (to the joy of local farmers they found nothing further so that
farming could be resumed). The villagers are closely attached to Panorio,
any
unlike the people of Dhadhi who feel their roots to be in Asia Minor. In
1 From Asia Minor in about 1922.
266 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
event it was with evident pride that the old woman told us how long the
village and its people had been protected by the invisible fence.
But the Panorio people are Arvanites; the best estimate of their arrival
time is the fourteenth century. How could they imply their origins to be
indigenous and antique? Easily. By wishing it to be so, and by associating
the age of the archaeological finds on their land, presumably as reported to
them by the archaeologist, with their own stock’s tenure there. It is glorious
to descend from ancient Greeks, but in an ethnocentric land where Albanians
are ‘“‘outlanders’”’ — even if theirs is the same Doric stock that has been
supplying Greece with new populations since several thousand years B.c. —
it is not so glorious to be an Arvanite. The lack of historical records, the
distortion of handed-down lore, the wish to identify with locale and history,
and the defence against being considered an inferior out-group all con-
tribute to misrepresentation.
There are, no doubt, many other false trails that may be taken in the
search for evidence for historic continuities; one more that must be men-
tioned is that the evidence for what was past is very restricted, while the
evidence for what constitutes the present is also incomplete. Although
Greece presents one of the grandest records of antiquity, in art, in plays and
other literary records and archaeological finds, one can be very sure that only
a fraction has been preserved. Consequently, if one is to base one’s evaluation
of survivals on records of things known in the classical period, for example,
and excludes any belief or practice found to be current which is not cited in
the records of classical times, one can be certain that there will be survivals
not recognized as such because one has no record of their prior existence.
A further difficulty in relating past to present is implied here; that of the
differences in culture-content among the several epochs in antiquity. At
what point shall we locate the past; for the past is itself diverse. What of a
practice that is recorded at an early period, but appears to have died out
before Christ was born? Burning the dead is such an example; as is shown in
Chapter XX, inhumation was the earliest practice. In about the ninth
century cremation became common, but later on another change took place
so that there was a return to burial — although cremation continued for
exceptional cases. When we hear about rare contemporary cases of burning
the dead are we to assume a continuity from proto-Geometric times or do
we assume instead only continuity of the exceptional case from classical
times? Are we facing a reintroduction or even a new introduction from
perhaps quite different sources? Or might we be facing the spontaneous
generation of a practice but recently independently invented? We cannot
say. For present purposes we can only acknowledge the diversity of the past
itself and affirm that that diversity as well as lack of sound knowledge of
intervening periods prohibits any simple inferences about continuity or
survival as such. But it is our thesis that there is continuity in history,
certainly in rural Greek history, and in general we think that it is reason-
able to assume that many present parallels are direct survivals from some
period in the diverse past.
Just as the records of antiquity are grossly inadequate as a measure’ of
beliefs and practices, so too many components of contemporary culture are
also unknown. In this volume we have seen the great variety of individual
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT 267
beliefs and acts within three tiny villages. Consider the problem of sampling
and cataloguing all that exists in modern Greece and trying to correlate it
with what is known, let alone with what is only to be surmised to have
existed in any one ancient period. The foregoing example of the handling of
the dead can be illustrative. The ordinary observer would report that burial
is the method for handling the dead in rural Greece. Burning is proscribed
by the Orthodox doctrine and would certainly not be practised often nor
openly. Various stratagems are employed to meet the conflicting require-
ments of local tradition and Orthodox dogma; the suspected vrikolax may be
“‘burned”’ by magical words first, then by pouring hot olive oil over the grave.
Only as a last resort will actual cremation be practised. The likelihood of ob-
serving cremation or even learning about it — and its magical disguises —is not
great, should one rely on observation or on small samples of informants alone.
We must grant the deficiencies in our methods and in our scholarship. It
will be these which may require us from time to time to speculate when we
should prefer to be able to make a more conclusive statement. Our approach
will be from the general to the specific and will follow the same topical
sequence as that found in Chapters II to X.

Living Conditions Compared

While it would be advantageous to give a detailed comparison of living
conditions, say in the time of Homer, with those of twentieth-century rural
Greece, the task is beyond our scope. The descriptions necessary for such a
comparison are, in part, already available. Mireaux (177) has described
Homeric life while sectors of contemporary Greece have been described by
Allbaugh (for Crete) (rr), Campbell (45), Friedl (97), Hatzimichalis (176),
McNeill (176), Sanders (237), and others. Even with the excellence of these
descriptions it is apparent that there is much more one could wish for,
especially in descriptions of the ranges or extremes in life styles, both in
contemporary and ancient times. It is clear that life in a rich Thessalonian
village differs remarkably from life in a poor Evrytanian one, just as life in
Hesiod’s present Boeotia differed dramatically from the warrior camps and
courts of kings presented by Homer. In either age it is clear that the comfort
and security which one experienced in life depended upon the locale in
which one was born, one’s social position, one’s family and kinship ties, and
the point where one was found in the cycle of history; a time of peace or a
time of war, a time of pestilence and famine or a time of health and plenty.
Comparing our own three study villages with a Homeric-period village,
it seems reasonable to conclude that crops, foods, agricultural methods and
the tempo of life have not changed dramatically. Social and political institu-
tions have altered considerably; slavery and serfs have disappeared, family
law and the blood feud have been largely (but not completely) replaced by
the intervention of the state; means of commerce and communication have
been altered radically; local or feudal loyalties have been partly supplanted
by allegiance to a centralized nationalistic government; clothing styles and
housing styles have changed; and, of course, the content of ideas and know-
ledge about the world has shifted.
As far as meeting the crises of life which illness and disability precipitate,
268 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

the changes would not appear to be so great; especially if one realizes that
recent advances in pharmacy, public health, and medical care which have
taken place in Europe over the last one hundred years have not yet become
fully available in the rural areas and indeed, in some areas, are hardly avail-
able at all. On the other hand, rural people do benefit by the apparent
reduction in the virulence of pathogens which has marked this last century
(69); by the predominance of chronic ailments and by the infrequency of
the acute epidemic disorders. Fundamental is the fact that peasants and
shepherds must still reckon with the likelihood of catastrophic disabilities
which deprive them of esteem, pleasure, work, and/or of their social roles
in the community. They still face uncertainty and attendant anxiety over
expected, but unpredictable, trauma: war and invasion, earthquake,
famine, accident, disease, abuse and exploitation. They still experience pain
and suffering and they face the inability to prevent the pain or death of
those upon whom they depend and whom they love. And very important,
the advances in science and technology which the Western world has
experienced, so crucial to the belief that man has power and can understand,
predict and control nature, have only very recently been introduced to the
peasant world. Until they experience the benefits of that rational and
material power, rural people will continue to use the traditional means —
magical or empirical — for ordering their lives, warding off danger, and
defending against anxiety.
One may compare the rural communities of the twentieth century with
those in earlier times by means of a health measure. Angel has studied
longevity in antiquity (15). He based his estimates on the age of death of
bodies found in graves dated to various periods, and has arrived at tentative
estimates of life expectancy! for a number of historical periods. In the Middle
Bronze age life expectancy, combined for males and females, was about
thirty-five years. In Myceaean times it was about thirty-six years; in the
early Iron Age thirty-six years; in classical times expectancy was forty-one
years; in Hellenistic forty; in Imperial Roman thirty-eight; in Medieval
times (circa 600) it was thirty-five; in Turkish times (circa 1400) it was
thirty-one; and in the Romantic period (circa 1750) it was again forty years.
Shifting now to statistics for the modern period, one finds a life expectancy
in Greece in 1930 of about fifty years. Certain regions had less, in Crete, for
example, in 1938 life expectancy averaged forty years for both sexes. In
1948 in Crete, life expectancy was forty-eight years. For the whole of Greece
in 1959, it was about sixty-six years. Using these data, one finds that the life
expectancy in Crete in 1940 was a trifle less than life expectancy in Attica in
Classical times; at the other extreme, the difference between Classical and
1958 expectancies showed a twenty-five year increase.
Life expectancies are of course the crudest sort of measure, combining,
as they do, a series of sub-rates for groups with differing morbidity experience
based on socio-economic position, sex, urban-rural residence, etc., into an
average in which these sub-group distinctions are lost. Gross life expectancy
1 Estimates are considerably altered by the exclusion of skeletons of persons dying before
the age of fifteen. As a result infant mortality is not reflected in the estimates, so that these
must be considered as high in comparison with modern statistics which include infant deaths
in the overall estimation rates.
 TLHEerPAST IN THE PRESENT 269
figures tell us nothing about the kinds of risks, prevalent at one or another
age, which lead to death. Nevertheless, Angel’s (admittedly limited) figures
do provide a crude measure suggesting there had been less change in
longevity between 680 B.c. and A.D. 1930 than between A.D.1930 and A.D.
1958. These estimates dramatize the technological revolution in public
health within the last few decades.
Because of the similarity which we assume for the crises of life in past and
present, and for the cultural context in which they appear, we expect that
the human responses to these crises will have much in common over historical
time.
We assume that there is great similarity in the human experience of rural
communities past and present. We assume that the cultural constancies in
life style and life orientation are great and that therefore not only the crises
of life but the response to those crises will be much the same in modern as
in ancient Greece. These assumptions are the basis for this section of the
book, they express its thesis. Nevertheless, that thesis cannot blind us to
change, we cannot ignore the technological — and associated philosophical
and sociological revolution of the last thirty years.
With the advent of improvements in public health and in all of the
associated activities of a people undergoing change, one must expect a shift
in attitudes towards illness and its treatment and a change in the methods
employed to safeguard life and banish harm. That expected constancy and
that evident recent change are primary revelations of the narratives. What
one finds in fact is that both exist, sometimes in independent compartments,
sometimes in accommodation, sometimes in conflict. On the one hand there
are the old healing-magical-religious traditions, the “symbolic system”’
is a convenient term, and on the other hand there is the new city-
outside authority-technological system that is essentially the ‘material
system’.
The conflict revealed in the narratives is also reflected in Health and
Healing in Rural Greece (35). There one sees the simultaneous use of tradi-
tional and technological means for diagnosis and healing. That study
showed considerable inconsistency as the symbolic and material systems
compete within the villager’s mind for his loyalty, time and cash.
Although we consider our data to reflect a crucial moment-in-time of a
rural society undergoing a very real change in its approach to life and death,
and its means for securing health, there is an important lag or discrepancy
which is observed when one compares the data in Health and Healing in
Rural Greece with the content of the narratives reported here. For example,
during the morbidity survey in which villagers told about their recent visits
to healers, it was found that trips to physicians occurred twice as often as
visits to folk healers, while visits to a priest or a nun for healing were very
infrequent. Between one third and one half of the families in the three
villages had made use of a magician, wise woman, hand practika expert, or
priest during the preceding twelve months. On the other hand, in surveying
the content of the narratives, there are less than a dozen references to medical
doctors while there are fifteen to magicians, ten to witches, twenty-five to
priests, and nearly a hundred to magical cures of one sort or another. The
narratives emphasize the wonderful and preternatural; these are to be
270 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

found within the local traditions, not in the work the medical doctor does.
Reviewing the narratives alone, one would conclude that villagers rarely
visit a physician but primarily patronize the folk healers.
The contrast is between what one would infer from the narratives — that
people use folk healers primarily — and reports of the “treatment activities”’
survey which indicate that in actuality they more frequently visit a medical
doctor. What the narratives reflect are traditions that are, we believe,
declining; while the survey reflects new practices that are emerging. In that
sense, the material in the narratives demonstrates a lag, a carry-over in
tales and reports of events that occurred more often in the past but which are
diminishing in frequency. The oral tradition is, as Whitman (260) has
pointed out, a vehicle for preserving memories.
The narratives, as vehicles for tradition should be, in consequence, a
richer source of survivals than are direct observations of practices. There is
an historical stability to the oral traditions which seems greater than that
found in daily practices — at least as far as reactions to crises are concerned.
The narratives memorialize the great events of the past, wonders and
miracles, as well as the tiny facts associated with them, lending to these a
contemporary air which may be misleading. It is for this reason that one
focuses on the narratives for the study of survivals; on the other hand, for
this same reason one must be aware that survivals found therein may be
memories rather than present-day deeds.
 XIX
CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS
AND MYSTERY
THE LIFE CYCLE, ITS DANGEROUS PERIODS

Infants and New Mothers: Present beliefs summarized

4 hee narratives show that among modern villagers the infant is believed
to be particularly vulnerable to supernatural dangers; that he is sur-
rounded by an awe, which implies that he himself carries some exceptional
power; that he is not a member of the human community until he has been
initiated through baptism and Christening; and that the creature which
appears to be a baby, may turn out to be a dangerous supernatural. Behind
these beliefs one detects an awareness of social and physical ‘‘realities’”’ ;the
infant is envied by those who desire children and he does run a high risk of
mortality, the latter from illness, or from infanticide and child abandon-
ment. In addition, one may infer genuine awe surrounding the fact of
procreation and the powers of fertility, a sense of insecurity and anxiety in
handling the newborn infant and in rearing it, and an awareness of the
complications introduced by a new family member about whom forces of
love and hate, lust and antipathy, competition and conflict, exploitation and
appeasement will revolve.
In regard to the new mother, the lechona, one also finds the expression of
awe and dread in association with that pollution of hers which is inherent
in reproductive power. The new mother is both in danger and dangerous.
She is vulnerable to supernatural threat but also carries a startling capacity
to harm others, especially to weaken (male) gods and men. Her confinement
is hedged about with taboos designed to secure her from harm and to secure
others from her harm. In birth itself she is assisted by a midwife, sometimes
by a saint, most commonly by St. Eleutherios. As a mother she is under the
protection of the Panaghia.* Behind the beliefs may again lie the recognition
of a social reality, the danger from the envy of those who would be mothers
and who are not. These women would possess or destroy infants born to
their neighbours. In addition, there is tacit recognition of the real dangers
of child-bed disorders and, perhaps, of the rising tensions between parents
as a baby competes with the father for the loyalty and attention of the
mother who, in rural Greece, must nurture both. There is also parental
tension during this period if the mother brings forth a daughter instead of
a son, if the infant is born deformed, or if — in the presence of extreme
poverty — another mouth cannot be fed and the parents must face either
partial starvation or the unpleasant decision to destroy or abandon the
infant.

to
In antiquity: The records of antiquity are not extensive when it comes
1 In Cyprus still called “Panaghia Aphroditessa”’ in 1935 (104).
272 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
describing the feelings about and the role of infants and new mothers.
From the hymn to the Delian Apollo one learns of the pollution of the
mother through childbirth and of the need to wash the baby in order to
purify him. Eileithyia presides over child-bearing; while elsewhere
one learns of Artemis and Demeter as the goddesses of childbirth or,
as in Boeotia, of combinations such as Artemis—Eileithyia. One notes the
risk to the infant when he was inspected by the father — in Sparta by
the elders — to decide whether he should be kept or be exposed to destruc-
tion.
The accepted child did not enter the community of humans until the
ceremony of the Amphidromia in which it was carried by a man running
around the fire. We learn from the Platonic Dialogues,! as interpreted by
Dawson (60), that its purpose was to ascertain whether the baby was real or
was a sham; a belief which may be related to the early Egyptian notion that
new babies were especially vulnerable prey to demons; and seen in change-
ling beliefs, documented only in European history, that a baby before its
baptism might be stolen by demons who substituted a spurious (super-
natural) changeling for the infant. In medieval Europe the test by fire was an
ordeal designed to distinguish real from demon babies (c.f. similar later
tests for witches in Europe and America).
In antiquity the new mother was not only polluted but vulnerable, as the
practice (180) of using special apotropaic herbs next to the woman in child-
bed indicated and, in Athens, the practice of her clothes being disposed of
by being dedicated to Artemis Brauronia. The lechona, in ancient times, was
excluded from the temple for forty days; visitors to the lechona were con-
sidered polluted by her in a contagious fashion; priests of the Eleusinian cult
were forbidden to enter the house of the lechona.
As for the social circumstances surrounding the acceptance of the infant
and the role of the mother, again there is little information. Certainly the
Homeric and Classical ages exhibited a patriarchal society in which men
were more valued than women, in which women’s lives were highly
restricted, and in which childbearing was an exceedingly important ful-
filment, and where (in small villages of the sort that Hesiod describes) one
could most certainly expect the envy of neighbours to be an important
social force. Dioscorides confirms this when he speaks of dangers to the
infant from the envy of others; it is to be remembered that it was out of
jealousy that Hera delayed Leto’s delivery of Apollo. As for actual dangers,
it is generally agreed that “‘the powers’? were held to be threatening at
critical life periods. It might not be incorrect to see in the fear of these super-
naturals a symptomatic recognition of social stress and jeopardy for both
babies and child-bed mothers during a period when threats to life and
health made them a “high risk’’ group.
Comparing pre-Christian and contemporary attitudes and _practices
associated with childbirth and the lechona, one must conclude that there is
continuity over two to three thousand years, for there exists a similarity in
specific practices, in the role of deities and sometimes in their sex, in the
regard for powers and pollution, and in all probability in underlying social
attitudes and reactions.
1 Plato, Theaetetus, XV. 160 E-161 A.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 273

Maidens, Marriages and Motherhood: Present views

According to observation and narrative, the threats to the maiden are
not supernatural. Her own sexuality makes her the temptress to which men
may succumb, blaming her all the while for her evil rather than for their
own desires. The dangers after seduction are to the girl herself, for if her
lover fails to marry her, the family is dishonoured and, should the girl not
flee, she will be exposed to the strongest censure — including, even in modern
times, that of being killed. Sometimes underlying the indignation of the
brothers and fathers, lies their own jealousy that their sexual prerogatives
over the family female have been usurped; or their own embarrassment over
a pregnancy to which they have contributed something quite specific —
namely its occurrence — and which can be corrected in time-honoured,
incest-concealing, blame-throwing tradition of making the girl scape-
goat.
Within the village code, rape is reprehensible because the man fails to
recognize that he is depriving the girl and her family of her primary asset in
marriage negotiations and fails to assume the obligation to marry her him-
self, having benefited from those pleasures which are reserved for fiancés and
bridegrooms. The problem is not one of law but of obligations overlooked,
and is a matter for negotiation — or vengeance — by the families. Although
outside authorities may intrude, the city-legal-code interprets the crime
quite differently from the country-obligation code.
While the crisis of maidenhood! is a very practical one associated with
virginity and marriage negotiations, the crises of courtship and marriage
itself are two: the threat that marriage negotiations once undertaken and
affirmed, will be disrupted; and that the marriage, once concluded, will be
followed by impotence or barrenness. Matters of status, economics, and
family security are involved in the first; while matters of pride, philotimo,
and life gratification and fulfilment — including, of course, social position in
the village — are involved in the second. In either case, whether threat to
marriage plans or to sexual capacity, the danger is conceived as coming
from envious, angry or even fun-loving people, who through sorcery disrupt
the marriage, its conjugal joys and duties.
The crises of motherhood are first of all barrenness, continued mis-
carriages, or infant deaths; all of which mean a failure in motherhood, plus
anxiety and suffering over the illnesses and disasters which afflict one’s
infants and children. {n addition there are the interpersonal conflicts which
pit one’s motherhood against other social demands — primarily those of the
husband for attention and the status as paramount chief of the family, but
y of the
1 An interesting but tangential detail arises in connection with the vulnerabilit
born of a
maiden to sorcery. In Chapter III, No. 24, we see that a girl whose “mother was
without a
mother” could not be harmed. We take it that a ‘“‘mother born of a mother” is one
we
father; that is, she is the product of an immaculate conception. In the New Testament
in the case of
find such a notion not only with reference to Christ but also (St. Luke)
wife Elizabeth
Zacharias (who was struck dumb by the angel Gabriel for his disbelief) whose
In Egypt Herodotus described the rays of light which had
conceived by the Holy Ghost.
Zeus who visited
fallen upon the sacred cow that gave birth to Apis; while in Greece it was
she conceived. No
Danae in the form of a golden shower (Apollodorus 2.4.1.) after which
the Near East children so conceived were believed especially holy.
doubt throughout
274 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
occasionally may also pit community demands against motherhood needs,
for instance in the obligation to risk one’s infant by offering it to the
Panaghia at Tenos for baptism, or in those wartime instances when crying
babies were destroyed to prevent the enemy from detecting a group of
hiding villagers. A different sort of motherhood crisis has been inferred
from the narratives as revealing the wish of the maiden-now-mother to
abdicate her marital state and to seek untrammelled domains of fantasy
away from the cares of motherhood and the tyranny of husbands.
The expression of these feelings takes various forms. The crisis of barren-
ness is attributed either to sorcery or to unkind fate; in the former case one
turns to magicians for remedy and in the other to the mother of mothers,
the protecting Panaghia. By promising the Panaghia the “‘first fruits’? of
one’s womb, usually through the offer of a Tenos baptism, one seeks her
bounty in one’s womb. The crises of motherhood surrounding sickness,
trauma and child loss are variously warded off through religious and
magical techniques which both invoke the aid of helpful divinities and ward
off the harm of unkind powers. The conflict of mother-love with husbands
and community codes are resolved primarily through succumbing to one’s
obligations and the power of others while rationalizing what one has had to
do. The crisis of rebellion — if one may call the mother’s desire to return to
maidenhood that — is only in fantasy. Perhaps occasionally it may result in
an adulterous affair or kitchen killing, but usually it is enjoyed vicariously
through the romps of the nereids.

In antiquity: Data from antiquity are once again sparse, especially in the
direct commentary on the problems of maidens and mothers. There is enough
to allow the inference that there is a basic continuity in that women are feared,
needed, and disdained. For example, in regard to the subordinate role of the
woman who is also seen as a source of temptation and trouble Hesiod says,
**... this beautiful evil thing . . . the breed of female women, and they live
with mortal men, and are a great sorrow to them... .’*! And again, “Zeus
established women for mortal men an evil thing.’”?

Incest: In regard to the incest potential of the maiden, one hint is given in
the myth of Adonis in which Myrrha, who was both his sister and his
mother, lusted after her own father, Cinyras the king of Paphos;* while
Nyctimene was seduced by her father Epopeus, king of Lesbos; according to
the tale told by Hyginus* and by Ovid.® He also mentions Oenomaus, who
lay with his daughter Hippodamia® and Erechtheus, the Athenian king’
who fathered Aglaurus on his daughter Procris. Homer’ refers to the
incestuous marriage of the daughters of Aiolos Hippotades, the wind king,
to their brothers; and Aristophanes® pokes fun at “‘the shameful tale’’,
referring to Makareus’ and Kanake’s incestuous wedding — both of them

1 Hesiod, Theogony, 585 ff. 2 Tbid., 600.

* Ovid, Metamorphoses X, 208-552; 708-739; and Apollodorus III. xiv. 4.
4 Hyginus, Hygini Fabulae, 204. 5 Ovid, Metamorphoses II, 589-95.
6 Hyginus, op. cit., 253; and Lucian, Charidemus, 19.
7 Homer, Odyssey X, 6-8. 8 Aristophanes, Clouds, 388.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 275
offspring of the wind king. In a more reverent vein Plato! speaks of laws
which effectively guard father and daughter, brother and sister, however
beautiful, from even desiring one another; incestuous acts are so ‘“‘unholy
and so shamefully shameful’, he says, that even an Oedipus or a Makareus
is willing to accept death as a fitting punishment for his “‘error’’. It should
be noted, however, that the written laws were not quite as harsh as Plato
would imply. Attic law exempted marriage between brother and half-
sister from opprobrium and, for that matter, marriage between niece and
uncle, providing they were related to each other through the father and not
through the mother. Indeed, the law of Gortyn (sixth-fifth century B.c.)
specified that an heiress shall marry the brother of her father . . . the eldest of
those living. Presumably the purpose was to keep the family fortunes intact;
a motive to which Aeschylus alludes (The Suppliant Maidens, 338), when
Pelasgus, the Argive king, remonstrates with them, who implore him to
save them from marriage with their cousins. He advises them shrewdly
that such marriage is profitable, for thus “greater grows the power of
mortals’.
As a matter of fact, there was no uniformity in the Greek marriage laws:
Philo Judaeus (Special Laws, VII, 3), after describing with horror the
Persian customs which permitted marriage to one’s own mother, mentions
that Spartan law, in contrast to the Athenian law, allowed marriage
between a brother and his half-sister from the same mother (homometrios).
Aside from the example set by the gods themselves — Cronus marrying his
sister Rhea and Zeus marrying his sister Hera — there are many historical
instances of unions sanctioned by law, which nowadays would be considered
incestuous; to mention just a few: Mnesiptolema, daughter of Themistocles’
second wife, became the wife of her half-brother — not of the same mother,
says Plutarch (Themistocles, 32) while the other daughter, Nicomache,
was given to Themistocles’ nephew in marriage. Philo Judaeus (Special
Laws, VII, p. 3) tells of Kimon’s marriage to his half-sister — on his father’s
side.
<
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Virginity and the Status of Women

The matter of virginity — as most things Greek — was also one subject to
inconsistency and historical variation and evolution. In classical times, the
risk of loss of virginity had certainly become a matter of deepest concern ;
one to be punished by brothers or fathers: “say a girl gets sick, here comes
big brother with his Euripides; ‘this morning greenness augureth no
maid .. .2”2 Or consider the fate of Demeter’s lover, Iasion, killed with a
thunderbolt by her jealous brother Zeus who was also her lover.® Tradition,
handed down by Suidas, has it that the poet Hesiod was slain because the
brothers of a seduced girl thought — mistakenly — that he had been the cul-
prit. However, as in modern Greece, it was the seduced maiden rather than

1 Plato, Laws VIII, 838, A. B, C.

2 Aristophanes, Ladies Day, 406-8.
on, Erdmann, (73)
3 Homer, Odyssey, 125-8. For other examples, see Menander, The Curmudge
p. 287; Glotz, (100), p. 36.
276 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

the seducer who most frequently had to bear the wrath of the head of the
family whom she had dishonoured by her indiscreet conduct. Aeschinest
recounts that Athenian fathers were so stern towards all shameful conduct,
and so precious did they hold the purity of their children, that “when one
of the citizens found that his daughter (Leimone) had been seduced and
had failed to safeguard well her virginity until marriage, he walled her up
in an empty house together with a horse, which he knew would surely kill
her — shut up as she was in there with it’’.
The fate of others, transgressing as Leimone did, is told in myths and
cautionary tales. The runaway witch, princess Medea, was such a one.
Her Phaeacian hosts, with whom she and her lover Jason had sought asylum
after having stolen the Golden Fleece from Colchis, discuss what to do with
her. Since Jason had solemnly promised to marry Medea, her hostess
advises against returning her to her father:
“Nor let the girl’s angry father do her some frightful mischief. Fathers
are much too jealous where their daughters are concerned. Remember how
Nycteus treated the lovely Antiope. She had to flee when she was with child
to avoid death at her father’s hands. Think of Danae too and what she
suffered on the high seas through her father’s cruelty.”
“Why, only recently and not so far from us, the brutal Echetus drove
brazen spikes into his daughter’s eyes, and now the miserable girl is wasting
away in a gloomy dell, grinding grains of bronze...”
At Ephesus there was a grotto dedicated by Pan to the virgin goddess
Artemis, tells Achilles Tatiust Only pure maidens might enter it. If any
suspicion arose against a girl, she was shut up in the grotto. If she was
innocent, Pan’s flute, hung up there, would sound loudly, the door opened
automatically, and the girl left, her reputation cleared. If not, a long-drawn
moan was heard; the door would then be opened but the girl would have
disappeared.
Many scholars have remarked that the status of women changed con-
siderably from Homeric days, when they enjoyed a relative measure of
respect and freedom; to the classical age, when women were neither to be
seen, nor heard from, nor be about, imprisoned as they were in the women’s
quarters:

‘and what’s worse still, our bedroom doors must now have special locks
and special keys, to keep us safe! And our houses must be full of great
growling wolfhounds from Molossus to keep us safe, and scare our lovers to
death...’ (Aristophanes, Ladies Day, 418-22).
The change in status is perhaps reflected in the shift from the groom pay-
ing a bride price to her father in the epic days and sometimes also receiving

1 Aeschines, Against Timarchus, 182-3.

? Her father Acrisus put the unwed girl with her infant into a chest which he cast into the
sea.
8 Apollonius, Argonautica, For further examples, see Glotz, ibid., pp. 33-34; Pausanias,
III.24.3; VII.48.7; Sophocles, Ajax, 1295; Pindar, Olympic, VI.31; Plutarch, Solon, 23.
4 Achilles Tatius, VII.6.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 277
a dowry with his bride, to receiving both bride and dowry without having to
pay anything; the latter custom has survived from classical times until
today, together with the double standard of behaviour.
Solon is reputed to have established prostitution on a legal basis
(Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, xiii, 569 d), when he founded the temple of
Aphrodite Pandemus. High class prostitutes, the social and intellectual
*‘companions”’ and lovers available to the political and social élite came to
enjoy great power and prestige in polite Athenian and Corinthian society.
Lais, Thais, Phryne and famous Aspasia, mistress of Pericles, and many
others enjoyed a brilliant lot, while the respectable but uneducated house-
wives and their chaste daughters were supposed to content themselves to
live meekly in their gynaikonitis, for ever legal minors. There was little to
recommend this destiny to a girl, even to one brought up in ignorance and
purdah; for her only role was to perpetuate the family line, and her usual
fate was to be replaced in the affections of her husband by a pallake (a
household slave) who would see to his bodily needs, or by a hetaira who
could provide not only the pleasures of the senses but also those of the spirit.
(See Demosthenes, In Neaeram, 122:) Society was for the men — and it still
- remains that way in modern Greece. It is no wonder that the Athenian girls
and wives of old, even from good families, attended schools run by hetairai
to learn the arts which might help them gain some small measure of power
over their menfolk.
While the extreme importance placed upon virginity is quite unequivocal
in present-day Greece, its value in pre-Christian days is rather difficult to
assess, in spite of the many examples, some of which are shown above. True,
chastity was important in marriage — if only to assure an incontestable
line of descent. True also that for certain priestly and ritual functions
chastity was a prerequisite (Fehrle, 87a). Legends also attest to the
occasional importance of chastity. To bring about favourable winds the
sacrifice of the virgin Iphigenia was required. Achilles’ son specifies that
it is the “virginal blood of the virgin” Polyxena that shall well dispose the
ghost of his father so that the fleet of the Achaeans may be granted a safe
homecoming.
On the other hand, unlike in modern Greece, virginity was not always an
unquestioned requirement in epic nor in classical times. A woman, whether
she was a prize won in battle or bought from her guardian to become a
legally recognized wife, could be widow, maid or divorced without there
being any prejudice felt. Demosthenes, Private Orations, XX VII, XXIX,
XXXVI) tells that his own father willed his wife to a friend and speaks of
the practice of giving away or willing one’s wife away to a friend or business
associate; while Isaeus (Orationes 3, 64) deplores the sad state of many hus-
bands who have been deprived of their wives (even of wives who had borne
them children) by the Athenian law which ordained that a woman whose
father had died without legitimate (male) heirs, may be claimed in marriage
by the next of kin. “It is evident that the widow usually expected to marry a
second time” (Savage, 238, p. 62; for other references see Erdmann, 73,
p. 408; Plutarch, Cleomenes, c. 6). Even unwed girls who had borne children
were by no means always excluded from the marriage market. Sometimes
such a child (parthenios) — if a son — was adopted by the man whom she
278 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
later married (Erdmann, ibid, p. 374; Homer, Iliad, II, 514; XVI, 177,
192).
a Sparta an altogether different situation existed. Begetting and rearing
strong warriors was the primary aim there. If premarital intercourse or
post-marital wife-lending were necessary to produce a hero-son, then such
behaviour was engaged in openly and without attendant reproach. At
Phaistos, in Crete, virginity was sacrificed to the hermaphroditic god
Leucippus.! In his honour the bride was bedded before the wedding night
at his xoanon? (Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoseon Synagoge, 17). According
to Nilsson (179, p. 370), the statue of the god was undoubtedly ithyphallic.
Herodotus reports that in Lydia girls would earn their dowry by prostituting
themselves for a while (Herodotus The Histories, I, 93). Summing up, we
may say that it is the consistency of the present-day rural Greek require-
ment of premarital chastity of girls that differentiates it from the ancient
pattern. It is likely that it was brought about by the adoption of Christianity
with its adoration of the virgin, with its institutionalization of holy orders
requiring celibacy, and with its accent on asceticism, concepts which had
been seeping only slowly into Greece from the Orient, but had not gained
universal acceptance until Christianity became the state religion.
That neither Zeus, nor Apollo, nor the neighbour lad accounted for all
the violated virgins but that father himself may have taken a hand in the
frolic may be seen in the legend of Thyestes assaulting his daughter Pelopia
(after which she committed suicide; whereas he exploited his offspring
Aegisthus to kill his brother and rival Atreus and became king; for this deed
he was driven into exile by Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon and Menelaos).
The legend of Clymenus, king of Arcadia, who debauched his daughter
Harpalyce is also relevant; although in this case the daughter had her
revenge by feeding her father his baby, after which Clymenus killed himself
(Hyginus, op. cit., 206).
That the punishment for rape was not a matter for the intervention of
outside authority is clear from the legends; indeed any personal crime
during Homeric times was a matter for family honour and adjudication.
Further illustrations of the handling of rape as an affair of families or clans
may be found in the Jliad (the clans gathered to avenge the insult to
Menelaus). Pausanias (Description of Greece, 1, xxi, 4 ff.) describes the sanc-
tuary of Asclepius, at the foot of the Athenian Acropolis, in which there was
a spring where, so legend had it, Halirrhothius deflowered Ares’ daughter,
Alcippe. Ares took retribution into his own hands and killed his daughter’s
ravisher — and, says Pausanias, was the first to be put on trial for the shedding
of blood.
1 According to Gruppe (103) p. 159, the Cretan Leucippus was actually the same as
Hermes. In other regions the cults of Leucippus were probably related to those of Hermes,
at Pharai in Messenia to those of Asclepius, and at Orchomenus to those of Dionysus.
2 A wooden image (179).
* For a comprehensive exposition of the historic development of legal process from family
vendetta to city administered justice, see Glotz, (100), especially pp. 19-25.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 279

Marriage and Intercourse

That marriage was dangerous in antiquity is evident from the require-
ment, cited by Mireaux, that selected Athenian girls had to serve Artemis of
Brauron to redeem their virginity and to forestall reprisals (for its loss in
marriage) from the goddess. Similarly, the legend of Protesilas provides
some evidence that the groom feared the retaliation or envy of the powers
because he had “‘inaugurated”’ a virgin by marrying her. It was probably
that fear which led the groom to hide after his marriage night; a practice
also paralleled in Sparta with the secret intercourse of bride and groom
(Athenaeus, Deipnosophisis, XIII, 555 c). As for the fear of impotence in the
groom one has evidence in the precautions taken to protect the bridegroom
from this fate; for example, in Cos he was dressed as a woman when he
received the bride (Plutarch, Greek Questions, 58; Fraser (95, vi, p. 260).
Nilsson (179, p. 371 ff.) suggests that the Coan disguise may have served
to fool the demons who might otherwise wreak some harm.’ Crawley
(57, II, p. 42) interprets the donning of female garb as a means of
neutralizing the dangers attendant upon first intercourse — notably
- the shedding of blood.? ‘‘Sexual shyness, not only in woman, but also
in man, is intensified at marriage and forms a chief feature of the
dangerous sexual properties mutually feared’? (Crawley, ibid., II, p. 42).
Many marriage customs are designed to avert these dangers; among
these are the exchange of dress as in Cos, taboos on speaking during the
wedding night, and on looking at each other; perhaps the songs in
front of the nuptial chamber and the watch held by friends of the
groom had an apotropaic function. A curious Athenian custom can
also be interpreted as serving a similar function of protecting the bridegroom.
On the morning after the wedding he moved into his father-in-law’s house;
there he spent the night apart from his new wife and returned to her the
following day after she had sent him a new garment (Bliimner, 36, p.
142).
one of the chief factors in sexual taboo, according to Crawley (ibid., I,
p. 251) is the belief that contact with women causes transmission of female
characteristics, effeminacy, weakness and timidity. Hesiod (The Works and
Days, 798) warns against washing in the water used by a woman. Hermes
(Homer, Odyssey, X, 301) advises Odysseus how to avoid being “unmanned”
by Circe, the witch, while they enjoy the pleasures of each other. Accord-
ingly Odysseus, skilled in all ways of contending, says to the enchantress:
“Now it is I myself you hold, enticing into your chamber, to your dangerous
bed; to take my manhood when you have me stripped’ (Homer, Odyssey,
X, 338-41; R. Fitzgerald trans.).
Alexander the Great is said to have recognized most clearly that he was
mortal and perishable during the time he lay with a woman or slept
“because sleep comes as the result of a yielding, through weakness, and all
fool the
1 See Gruppe, (103), p. 903 No. 274, regarding the various means employed to
demons.
2 See also Nilsson’s discussion (ibid., pp. 371-4).
3 For further references to nuptial songs, the Hymenaios and the Epithalamion, see Erdmann,
(73, P- 259).
K
280 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
h,
generation is the destruction of one’s own into something different’’ (Plutarc
Moralia, Book VIII, Table Talk 717, f. E. L. Minar trans.)
It is not so incredible, considering the dangers of consorting with women,
that sometimes! Homeric warriors abstained from them during the siege of
Troy; one may give credence indeed to proud Agamemnon’s contention
that he had not touched Briseis, the beautiful war-prize, whom he had taken
away from Achilles (Homer, Iliad, TX, 132-4).
Dioscorides? provides ample demonstration of the fear of bewitchment,
sorcery, and enchantment which could lead to disability, disease, and
distress. Even today Greek soldiers tend to be abstinent before going into
battle; perhaps for the same unconscious fear that otherwise their virility
could be impaired when they need it most.

Marriage, Motherhood, and Misery

As for evidence of the specific kind of tension in marriage negotiations
that were described in our study communities, no exact parallels in
antiquity are found. Tensions, problems and anguish did occur as witness
the reproaches Clytemnestra hurls in her husband’s teeth:
‘... I married you against my will after
You murdered Tantalus, my first husband,
And dashed my living babe upon the earth
Brutally tearing him from my breasts;
And then, the two sons of Zeus, my brothers,
On horseback came and in white armour made
War upon you, till you got upon your knees
To my old father, Tyndareus, and he
Rescued you. So you kept me for your bed.”
(Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, 1149-56.)
Aside from the problem of being a helpless pawn between father, brothers
and suitors, there existed for women a number of other causes of unhappiness
in marriage arrangements. Practical considerations, not love, dictated the
choice of mate and resulted frequently in coldness and marital disappoint-
ment. The procreation of children was the prime motive for marriage, and
to make suitable family connections was another. Thus Plutarch (Solon, 20)
describes Solon’s provisions which limited the dowry that a bride was
to bring to her husband so as to safeguard his independence from her.
It was thought that he might not be able to exert his lordly power over too
rich or too well-connected a woman. Marriages, in general, were arranged
between persons of the same station and wealth, the rich objecting to
dowerless brides, while the poor were expected to have scruples about a rich
alliance.? The system of dowry and marriages arranged between families
with the help of a matchmaker still survives in modern Greece from ancient
1 As Professor Fontenrose has pointed out, at other times Homeric warriors, including
Agamemnon, did couch with captive women.
2 For special examples see Dioscorides (Greek Herbal ofDioscorides Pedanius) 11, No. 156, No. 157;
IV, No. 2, No. 43, No. 58, No. 134, No. 151.
3 Cf. Becker (29, vol 3, pp. 309 ff.) for a summary of marriage customs.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 281
times; we have observed the difficulties of poor girls in making a desirable
marriage, just as in the old days; however, the concern over making an
unsuitably wealthy match was not voiced in our study-communities. Per-
haps such marriages for gain were not so frequently avoided in Solon’s days
after all, since he felt it was necessary to recommend specifically against
unions between young men and wealthy elderly ladies, praising the
provident lawgiver who would remove such a young man to a young
woman of proper age.
The crises of motherhood are plainer to see in times past. The fear of
barrenness and the belief that supernatural intervention may bring its
remedy are implicit in the various cults of the great mother, including that of
Artemis; all of which were dedicated to the importance of having children,
preferably sons. The mother’s natural anxiety and suffering over the fates
which afflicted her infants and children was a favourite subject of artists,
poets and tragedians in antiquity. Homer portrays the mothers of the
warriors on both sides of the ramparts of Troy as having cause for tears.
Even the immortal Thetis! must weep for her son Achilles, and Hecuba with
great anguish entreats her son, whom she will lose at the hands of Achilles,
laying her bosom bare and holding out her breast to him: “‘Hector, my
child, look upon these and obey and take pity on me, if ever I gave you the
breast . . .°?2 Her son dead, her daughter Polyxena led off to become a blood
sacrifice for Achilles’ unrelenting ghost, Hecuba groans: “Fifty children I
once had, and all are dead . . . I am the queen of sorrows.’’? Famed in art
and mythology are grieving mothers, Niobe turned to stone and weeping
for ever, Demeter roaming the wide earth in search of her lost daughter,
Aethra and Neaerea who killed themselves for grief over their son’s death,
and Clytemnestra avenging her daughter’s sacrifice with her husband’s
blood.

Child Killing
But women had other occasions as well to weep for their children,
and that was right after having given birth. It was the custom in historic
times that soon after the child was born and before it had become officially
recognized as a family member, the father (in Sparta, a council of elders)
inspected the infant to decide whether to accept it or to decree its death. If
it was weak, disabled or undesirable, i.e. a girl too many, he would order
that it be exposed. The mothers were understandably upset; apparently
this was so common that their anger could serve as a metaphor: indeed
Socrates suspecting that his pupil is about to give birth to a phantasm (a false
thought), tells him that his, Socrates’, role is to act as a midwife does when
his
she foresees that a child is about to be born misshapen. He compares
pupil’s disappointment to that of a young mother whose first child has
of
been got rid of and done away with and is “angry after the manner
women when their first children are taken away from them” (Plato, Theaete-
tus, 151 C).
1 Homer, Iliad, XVIII, 54-60.
2 Ibid., XXII, 79-89 (R. Lattimore trans.).
8 Euripides, Hecuba, 421-2 (Arrowsmith trans.).
282 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
In some of the foregoing citations the conflict of motherhood versus
community codes is reflected; particularly where a mother has to let her
child be sacrificed to propitiate the gods, as was the case of Iphigenia. Some
few women bore this nobly. Such a one was queen Praxithea who offered her
daughter to save the Athenians from defeat by the Eleusinians. The oracle
had foretold victory if one of the royal princesses were to be sacrificed. While
king Erechtheus refused to comply with the citizen’s demand to obey the
oracle, his wife spoke otherwise:
“T hate a woman who holds her child’s life above duty and advises
cowardice...
... take her citizens, take my daughter;
she will bring you victory, will save you!
Never shall the life of one be more dear to me than that of my people”’
(Euripides, Erechtheus, 360; 28 and 50).
Heroic sentiments were attributed in particular to the Spartan women.
Plutarch, who collected some of their bravest words (Moralia, Sayings of
Spartan Women, 240 ff.), tells of several mothers who killed their own sons
for having been cowards in battle or unworthy of them and their city:
“Sinner against our laws, Damartius, slain by his mother; he was a Spar-
tan, as was she!”’
Frazer (95, iv, pp. 160 ff.) discusses the ritual significance of child
killing which he believes occurred in pre-literate Greece. He mentions
the hero-cult of Melicertes at Tenedos, to whom babes were sacrificed.
At Halos in Thessaly, the eldest male scion of Athamas’ family in each
generation was to be sacrificed to Laphystian Zeus, according to divine
decree, in order to substitute for Athamas himself who had failed to be
sacrificed as a sin offering for the country. Frazer considers such sacrifices of
the first-born an ancient Semitic institution, practised by the Phoenicians,
Canaanites and Moabites in spring. He cites the ancient Roman “Sacred
Springs’? during which all first-born creatures, including infants, were
sacrificed to the gods; and he suggests that perhaps the tribute of Athenian
boys and girls to the Cretan Minotauros was a similar spring ritual.1
Reminiscent of the modern child offerings to the Panaghia in Tenos, in the
sense that it is the mother herself who sacrifices her child, are those tragedies
of the ancients which recount how a mother, possessed by the god, kills her
offspring in an orgiastic, religious frenzy, as did Agave, mother of Pentheus,
‘the sufferer’? (Euripides, Bacchae). She, obeying Dionysus’ command — a
“most frightful and yet most gentle god — carries out the god’s revenge upon
Pentheus, and with her own bare hands begins the slaughter of her son.
and, according to Plutarch (Greek Questions) No. 38, p. 164), “they say that
the daughters of Minyas, Leucippe, and Arsinoe, and Alcathoe became
frenzied and craved human flesh, and drew lots about their children. The
lot fell upon Leucippe and she gave her son Hippasos to be torn into pieces”’.
Halliday (277) comments that the story of Hippasos, like that of Pentheus
1 Perhaps Plato’s allusion to the activities of midwives (op cit.) echoes a practice of sacri-
ficial infanticide of the first fruit of marriage — possibly to the Eumenides — although the
passage is somewhat ambiguously worded; Plato could have referred to abortion rather
than to exposure of the infant.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 283
(above) reflects a rite in which a human victim was rent in pieces by the
votaries of Dionysus.! It will be remembered that Dionysus-Zagreus was
torn asunder like the legendary Orpheus; and that Adonis and Tammuz? as
well as Christ, are gods who through their own death and resurrection
become the symbol of hope to their worshippers.
Nowadays the Greek mother may dedicate and even sacrifice her child
to the Virgin; was Medea’s murder of her sons originally a similar sacrifice?
Indeed, she interred them at Hera’s altar on the Corinthian Promontory
and established there a holy feast and sacrifice for Hera, says the poet
(Euripides, Medea, 1377-82). In any event, Medea was regarded as a
benefactress of Corinth. There the pre-Euripidean version of her suffering
had it that not she, but the Corinthian women, killed the children at the
altar of Hera.
May one view the accidental injuries to children about to be dedicated
to the miraculous Panaghia at Tenos as attenuated echoes of child sacrifice in
prehistoric times? While there is no historical evidence that children were
actually put to death as an offering, and while legends are in themselves
neither fact nor evidence that such ritual practices were extant, one may
nevertheless wonder if they do not preserve in folk memory the traces of a
very ancient practice that later times may have wished to disavow and that
found expression only in mythology.
Further support for this interpretation can be found in the twelfth-
century passion play, Christus Patiens (51). Its unknown author borrowed not
only from the Bible but also from the Greek tragedians to compose his work.
It is his choice of quotes from the latter that is relevant, for in his selection
he reveals that he saw as similar the sorrow of the holy mother to that of the
legendary child murderesses. In his version of the passion of Christ, the
Virgin laments her son’s death in the very words that Agave uses upon dis-
covering that it was she who immolated her son: ‘‘Alas, whom do I now
carry in my arms, who is he whom I hold, dead, in my hands!”’ (Christus
Patiens, 1310 and Euripides, Bacchae, 1280). A few lines later she voices the
same regrets as Medea readying herself for the slaughter of her children:
“Let me kiss your limbs, child . . . let your mother kiss your right hand...
oh most beloved hand, beloved eyes, mouth that I have loved so much; and
mien and noble face of my child! Oh sweetest kiss of lips, and marvellous
skin and loveliest child’s breath . . .”’ Christus Patiens, 1314-25 and Euripides,
Medea, 1069-75). Three mothers are associated in the writer’s mind:
Medea and Agave on the one hand and Mary on the other. Is this the
result of unconscious juxtaposition, or of a recognition that there is a
to suggest a re-
1 Harrison (113) points out that the killing was done in such manner as
enactment of an initiation rite — and indeed certain formulaic phrases, even in the relatively
822 and 1236,
late Euripidean tragedy, would bear out her contention (Euripides, Bacchae,
do not share these
for instance). The reader must be warned, however, that some scholars
ions. Wilamowit z-Moellen dorff (26, I, p. 282), for one. would deny that the
interpretat
and considers
maenads “devoured Dionysus in the form of the deer that they had rendered”
“‘modern non-
the notion of transubstantiation of the sacrificially eaten totem animal
sense”’.
born’’, or resurrected
2 Tammuz is generally regarded, like Dionysus, as one of the “twice
ip is by no means unanimou s. In his study of the mytho-
gods. In this instance too, scholarsh
n.
logy of the ancient world, Kramer (143) casts serious doubt on this propositio
284 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
resemblance between child sacrifice as told in the legends that may reflect
practices of oldest antiquity, and such child-dedication rites as are still
extant in our times to the Virgin on Tenos? We leave the decision with the
reader.
As for the marital conflicts and duties which lead the woman to the edge
of rebellion and the plunge into fantasy, these are rather well depicted by
Aristophanes as he describes the war between men and women. In the
Dionysian rite which saw the women actually running footloose and fancy-
free as dangerous maenads in the night (see the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and
Euripides’ Bacchae )one finds a remarkable likeness to the nereids admired by
contemporary women. Indeed the modern nereid may be an historical
descendant of the women in the several cults of Artemis, Demeter and
Dionysus. The nereid may also be the functional equivalent in fantasy for
motives which were exposed in action in antique days.
As for the methods of mothers in dealing with crises, they are clearly the
same over the ages. Appeals are made to divinities female and male; use is
made of amulet, herb, incantation, offering, vow and the whole range of
magical and religious techniques and devotionals; whereas with problems
capable of social solutions, confrontation, dissemblance, deceit and homicide
can all be employed.
It is regrettable that the evidence from the past is so spotty; nevertheless
the kind of references made and the general tenor of the times regarding the
feelings about maidenhood, the preparations for and concerns about
marriage, and the problems of motherhood, all suggest a similarity as to the
kinds of crises experienced, the devices used for their prevention or resolu-
tion, and at least some of the associated social conditions.
There is also considerable evidence, well compiled by Nilsson and Dodds,
to demonstrate that in Homeric times and later, the psychological response
to failure and misfortune, especially in males, was to externalize and blame
others; whether gods,! demons, powers, sorcerers, Thessalian women
(witches), or one’s neighbours by name.

The Elderly
In contemporary times the dangers to the elderly, considered in the narra-
tives, consist of the following possibilities; (a) that one weakens and loses
one’s power to do things, to control others, to command respect, or to occupy
a gratifying position in family or community; (b) that one becomes ill and
enfeebled, subject to pain and misery; (c) that one must come to terms with
death, which is to say, that one must admit defeat in trying to cling to life;
‘The apparition of a god is often interpreted by romantic scholars as a symbol of good
triumphing over evil impulses. But since the gods seem to turn up most often when a hero is
about to commit some disreputable act (by his standards, not ours), a rather different light
is shed on these situations. Take for instance Athena’s prevention of Achilles’ assault upon
his war-lord. To stay his wrath and sword surely was an act of worldly wisdom and sage
temperance; but in terms of the warrior ethic Achilles should have avenged the insult
offered him by Agamemnon; even though the latter was his recognized superior and even
though revenge would have been neither practical nor wise. We have had occasion to
observe the modern Greek in similar dilemmas; he frequently resolves it by developing in-
capacitating somatic disorders. It was simpler for Achilles who merely obeyed the goddess’s
command, thereby salvaging his honour without having to pay the price.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 285,
(d) that one may be cast out by one’s children and so be humiliated and
scorned, as well as starved; (e) to find one has failed in one or more import-
ant aspects of life, that is, to find one has not reared children of whom one
is proud, one has not arranged the marriages of one’s daughters, or one has
not earned the good opinion of one’s neighbours.
None of the threats to the elderly are derived from supernatural sources.
One may, of course, attribute life failures to unkind fate, to sins of their
parents, to curses, to the envy of the gods or the deeds of the powers, etc., but
such attributions are not offered as explanations for the specific problems of
older people. Preternatural elements are to be found only in the concept of
power and its decline; for example, the healer’s power has been passed
along to another or stolen, or one’s personal demon, the Vittora, aware of
coming death, has flown off to find another host.
Solutions offered for problems of the aged are but pale and ineffective.
The weak continue to beg the assistance of the strong, turning to divinities
known through long association, to the community, or to powerful in-
dividuals. The chances for the supplications for the elderly to be answered
seem poor; perhaps it is partly for this reason that one finds a sense of
religious scepticism among some of the elderly villagers. For the most part,
the elderly bow to their destiny as it unfolds in the last miles of life’s road; a
few maintain the pleasure of spite, priding themselves on retaining at least a
truly evil eye; a few others putter with witchcraft and sorcery; some keep
busy to the end by rationalizing what they feel to be their failures and
launching defensive salvos at enemies hidden or revealed; for the most part
they seek but to learn the will of the gods through dreams or visitations and
accept the final crisis as it comes.

In antiquity: What the narratives tell us of the threats to the contemporary

villager is so applicable to elders in almost any time or place that it is
hardly necessary to search the libraries of antiquity for parallels. Neverthe-
less, a few striking parallels may be instructive.
Hesiod notes the possibility, for one who does not marry, of “a mournful
old age bereft of one to look after it” (Theogony, 604) and speaks of “‘him,
whose luck it is to have cantankerous children, lives keeping inside him dis-
comfort, which will not leave him in heart and mind; and for this evil there
is no healing”? (ibid. 610). Speaking of past idylls, the golden generation, he
wrote “no miserable old age came their way; their hands, their feet, did not
alter . . When they died, it was as if they fell asleep’. Describing his own
“iron”? era, he speaks of weariness and troubles, of children not agreeing
with the father, how “men will deprive their parents of all rights as they
grow old, and people will mock them too . . . not even to their ageing
parents will they give back what once was given’”’ (The Works and Days,
Lattimore trans.). He tells of the man who “speaks roughly with intemper-
ate words to his failing father who stands upon the hateful doorstep of old
nor
age’’. Sophocles says in Oedipus at Colonus, ‘““Gods alone have neither age
death. All other things almighty Time disquiets . . . the body wastes away,
faith dies; distrust is born . . .”’ (246, Fitzgerald trans.) and we hear of man
who “comes to strengthless age, abhorred by all men, without company,
unfriended in that uttermost twilight where he must live with every bitter
286 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
thing’’. Indeed much of Oedipus at Colonus is a lament on the plight of an
aged man, driven into exile by his sons and wandering, homeless, poor and
bitter, over the earth.

THE OCCULT ESTATE

In the present-day village one finds priests and magicians in positions of
power and prestige because they know how to interpret events, how to
petition and to intercede with wilful powers beyond the ordinary ken. In
addition, both have a moral role in that they speak for the powers and for
tradition in defining certain kinds of conduct as proper and likely to be
rewarded, while other acts are condemned as transgressions. The priest has
the more important role and enjoys the apparatus of a large institution
in his support, an institution in which all villagers participate to some
extent. His is a full-time occupation which he enters either by his own
choice, by an election in which the villagers choose him, or through
some family tradition or hereditary “‘calling’’. Our evidence suggests that
the. latter route to the priesthood plays but a minor role in the Doxario
region.
In comparison to priests, magicians have a less formal and institutionalized
role, for example, there are no community gatherings at which the magician
officiates. Nevertheless, traditions surround him even if his magic is only a
part-time job — at least in Doxario there are no full-time magicians. They
combine their vocation with farming. Both magicians and priests play
important healing roles — in which the powers at their command are used to
secure future benefit or remedy harms already done. They are also dangerous
because of this power; priests and magicians are both bringers of harm, as
well as good. For the most part magicians and priests will be men, but the
narratives speak of women who, while occupying social positions as witches,
nuns or aides to a saint, occupy an actual position with reference to their
powers and functions (on the informal organizational chart of the local
culture) as magicians, priestesses or oracular prophets.
Less powerful magically, having less prestige socially, but more frequent
in numbers are the lesser occult practitioners; the part-time witches,
sorcerers, mediums, seers, mantic persons (“manteis’) and the wise
women. Each of these partakes of something exceptional in nature, having
some power to influence events and persons or to divine meanings and
futures through the use of magical-religious methods. These methods are
most often applied to healing and to warding off expected dangers, but are
also used in divination and in bringing others under control or to harm
through sorcery.
Among the occult estate are also people who are not part of the com-
munity; gipsies, strangers and kings. Of these the stranger is most import-
ant, bearing unknown gifts, perhaps being a power not yet revealed. He is
feared, yet surrounded with hope; any impulse to ward off his ominousness
by destroying him is restrained by the strong obligations of hospitality
which serve not only to pacify the stranger but to obligate him to his host.
These rites also serve the host’s philotimo. As for kings, they do not exist in
any practical sense — the Athenian monarch was a distant political institu-
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 287
tion rather than a traditional figure. Nevertheless, the narratives reveal
recollections of kings who once were fabled in wealth and are associated by
legend and place with sacred localities. The third group of outsiders are
gipsies. They are feared and disdained; are considered to have remarkable
magical powers and are potent sources of pollution who must be excluded to
protect the welfare of the community.

Priests:

What of the past? Are these parallels for the position, functions, and be-
liefs associated with the priesthood? Clearly yes, although there are very
important differences too. The role itself has been continuous, for ancient
Greece had a priesthood, some occupying hereditary family position, some
elected to office, and some apparently choosing their career. The system of
priestly tenure varied by cult and by state. Elections by lot as well as by
vote were common, for example, the king-archon who officiated at the
Athenian festival of the Anthesteria was selected by lot (Demosthenes, In
Neaeram, 72). Also common was the purchase of such an office from the state
(Fehrle, 87, II, p. 75, Nilsson, 180 a, II, p. 16). On the other hand,
the priests of Zeus Teleios, the Buzyges, and of Athena in Athens were
hereditary (ibid. 170). We see that there has been considerable change in
paths to a priestly career, lots have disappeared from the elective system,1
the family or hereditary calling to the priesthood has, except for vestigial
remains, disappeared, while the free career choice method — no longer re-
quiring purchase from the state — predominates.
The major functions of the office have remained much the same. Then
as now the priesthood was a position of prestige surrounded by awe. The
priests performed the functions of intercession, were guardians of tradition,
contributed to the moral order of the community, were leaders of com-
munity rites and as mediators of the “symbolic system’’, served in a highly
institutionalized way to invoke the good and to ward off the bad. While the
ordinary priest in a state culture was merely a kind of magistrate, the
prophets, the seers, and the priests at incubation shrines had additional
duties. They interpreted events, foretold the future from the flight of birds,
from the condition of the liver, from that of shoulder bone, etc.; they used
dreams diagnostically and they healed the sick. What they did in antiquity
they do now, although the emphasis has changed. For example their healing
work has declined, at least in comparison with the priests of the great heal-
ing cults such as those at the Asclepion.
There are several specific parallels between past and present practice
which suggest survivals of particular curiosity and interest. For example, on
Tenos? the priests are described as jumping over the bodies of the ill in
order to bring about cure. This practice is an ancient one, related to
revitalization and rebirth. There is a great fear, for example, that if man or
1 At least in Doxario, but it has been discovered that lots are still used for property distribu-
tion elsewhere in Greece so it may well be that some survivals of the use of lots — as a
voluntary submission of man to the will of the gods — for the choice of priest also survives in
the hinterland.
2 See Hamilton (z0g) regarding similarities between incubation cures at Epidauros in
antiquity, and at Tenos nowadays.
K*
288 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

animal jumps over the corpse it will become a vrikolax. Jane Harrison (173)
discusses the early practice of leaping, referred to in the Hymn found at
Palaikastro in Crete. In the Hymn the god is asked to “‘leap* for wine jars,
and leap for fleecy flocks and leap for fields of fruit . . . leap for our cities...
ships... young citizens. . .”’ Jumping in ritual and invocation was associated
with fruitfulness and reproduction. The Bacchae echoes the Palaikastro
hymn as the maenadic chorus sings the surpassingly lovely strains of
Dionysian release and freedom, the song of “leaping in the green joy of the
meadows’? (Euripides, Bacchae, 862-76).
Sex seems always to have been a matter of religious as well as secular
importance and the involvement, if not the preoccupation, of priests and
church with matters of fertility and passion is a matter of record. One of the
most curious aspects of the joining of the sexual and the sacred has been in
the bi-sexuality, transvestism or hermaphroditism of priests. To Nilsson
(179, p- 369 ff.) this is one of the “darkest problems” of ancient Greek
religion. The cults of hermaphroditic gods featured the exchange of
male and female clothing at ceremonial occasions, and male priests wore
female garments. For example, the priests of Heracles at Antimachia on
Cos wore a female robe and a snood for the hair, thus resembling Heracles
outfitted as a woman while he served the Lydian Queen, the legendary
Omphale. Frazer (95, vi., p. 258) suggests that: “If we suppose that Queen
Omphale, like Queen Semiramis, was nothing but the Great Asiatic
goddess, or one of her Avatars, it becomes probable that the story of
the womanish Hercules of Lydia preserved a reminiscence of a line or
college of effeminate priests, who, like the eunuch priests of the Syrian
goddess, dressed as women in imitation of their goddess and were supposed
to be inspired by her.”’
Plutarch offers a different explanation (Greek Questions, 58): It was said
that when Heracles’ ship, driven by a storm, arrived at Cos, he was worsted
in combat by a multitude of Coans; to save himself he fled to a Thracian
woman and lay hid, concealing himself in woman’s clothing. Later he
married and donned flowered female raiment. Hence the female garb of
Coan priests. According to Halliday (op. cit., p. 217), such flowered robes
were forbidden to women under the sumptuary laws to any but courtesans;
but its specific prohibition to female worshippers in certain cults of Demeter
shows that its secular use by freeborn women was not universally forbidden.
At the Athenian vintage festival in honour of Dionysus and Athena, the
Oschophoria, a chorus of singers was led in procession by two youths dressed
as girls. At Eleusis the hierophant wore the old fashioned Ionian ceremonial
costume: a long-sleeved flowered robe? which had been the garment of
1 Since there is some controversy about the exact interpretation of the Palaikastro hymn and
in particular about the verb used, its various meanings are presented here. The verb used in
both the Palaikastro hymn and the in Bacchae is 0pwoxw. Liddell and Scott (241) give the
following meanings for it: (i) in poetry: to leap, spring; (ii) if followed by a preposition: to
leap upon, i.e., to attack, assault; (iii) the general meaning is: to rush, dart; (iv) the
transitive form @dpvyac means to mount, impregnate. It is not impossible that in the
Palaikastro hymn to leap, to come, to impregnate, are all implied in the invocation to the
god.
2 For further references to priestly garb see Little (154, p. 77), Frazer, 95, vi, pp. 258 ff.
Other references to change in dress can be found in Gruppe (103, p. 904).
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 289
Dionysus in his old cult forms. Dionysus, the “effeminate stranger’, is
indeed very ambiguously sexed; and he decks out Pentheus, his sacrificial
substitute in a woman’s robe of Asian linen, a curly wig and a snood.!
Halliday (op. cit., p. 218) comments that male religious functionaries some-
times wore the clothes of women, an example of which may be seen in
the sacrifice scene upon the (Cretan) Hagia Triada sarcophagus where
the lyre player wears woman’s robes. In this regard it should be noted that
Crete was a major centre of the cult of the mother goddess, that the
Euripidean Dionysus? had come from Asia where that same mother
goddess was of great importance® and where Christianity itself originated.
We think it not unreasonable to propose that sacred transvestism and
priestly eunuchs are more likely to occur when the concern with sexual
and nurturant power focuses on a female goddess (see Neumann,
270):
Having emphasized the sacred confusion over sexuality in ancient Greece
we now Call attention to its counterpart in modern times. The contemporary
Orthodox priests wear long hair and a long robe resembling a woman’s
dress. That it is understood as symbolic of an altered, more diffuse and more
powerful sexual role is illustrated by the comments of the villagers. One
said, ‘“‘Priests go (sexually) with men, and with women, and with children
because of their long hair and their beards and black dress (all of) which
makes them different from others.’’ The significance of the priestly dress,
and the beliefs about priestly sexuality, reflect, we believe, an important
continuity in conceptions of sacred sexuality.
The narratives demonstrate another curious feature associated with the
modern priesthood, the extent to which they are feared, distrusted, and con-
sidered to be harbingers of danger and bad luck. The modern sociologist
might interpret the villagers’ ill will in terms of the relatively greater power
and affluence of the priest and the ubiquitous envy of the villager of all
those who enjoy benefits to which the villager himself aspires. One might
also ascribe some of the hostility to a split within the “symbolic system”’
itself; the priests represent the city-controlled, organized dogma of
Christianity which, as so many narratives show, is in conflict with the older
pre-Christian beliefs and practices to which most Doxario area people sub-
scribe. Anthropologists on the other hand, might point to a different set of
reasons for the antagonism which villagers feel towards priests. For example,
Radin (227) contends that among non-literate people anywhere, there will
be resentment towards and distrust and jealousy of the magician-priests.
Radin accounts for this in terms of the priests’ willingness to use trickery,
their economic advantage, and the differences in personality and values

1 Euripides, Bacchae, 821-34; 915-18; 928-38.

2 Classicists, however, are by no means in agreement with Euripides’ version of Dionysus’
original homeland. Thrace, Phrygia and Crete have been proposed. For further discussion see
Farnell, (86, vol. V); Nilsson, (181, p. 564).
2 For more details of her worship see Lucian’s description of the Galli, priests of the Syrian
goddess (Lucian, Syria Dea, 51). He writes that during her festivities an elect young man
would give a great shout, emasculate himself, and then carry the severed member in his
hand through the town, throwing it finally into a house. He was then given his priestly
vestments, a woman’s robe and feminine adornments, by the household that had received
his sacrifice to the goddess.
290 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

which set them apart from others; differences augmented by their roles
which increase their isolation and suffering.
Do we find evidence in earlier times for the fear and distrust of priests,
prophets and seers? Consider the accusations hurled against the priesthood
by the Hebrew prophets, “For both prophet and priest are profane; yea in
my house have I found their wickedness” ;* and later in A.D. 842 Italy one
finds a Capuan bishop (pots calling kettles black) recoiling against monks,
saying that whenever he met a monk something unlucky always happened
to him that day.? It occurred in Greece as well, especially in connection with
the prophecy of seers or the priestly revelation of past offences as told in
poetry and drama: Oedipus was hardly pleased when he saw Teiresias, the
seer, advancing towards him, “He (Creon, Oedipus’ brother-in-law) sent
this rascal prophet to me!’’ The king’s irascibility was feared by those who
came with unwelcome news; both Oedipus and Achilles had to insist in
order to hear it, so afraid were the legendary seers to speak. They received
no thanks when they acquitted themselves of their task; instead their
integrity was doubted. Venerable Teiresias must swallow the disdainful
comments: “Who has taught you truth? Not your profession surely!’*
Oedipus describes him as a “juggling, trick-devising quack, a wily beggar
who has only eyes for his own gains.> Agamemnon hurled bitter insult at his
prophet Calchas after the latter had been persuaded to speak: “Seer of
evil; never yet have you told me a good thing. Always the evil things are
dear to your heart to prophesy but nothing excellent have you said nor ever
accomplished.’
The Greeks and their neighbours were right to believe in the unlucky
nature of their priests. After all, it was in times of disaster that a priest or seer
would be called in; his tidings were bound to reflect this. It is not to be
expected that a people distraught by pestilence, famine, or defeat would be
able to separate prophet from prophecy. We would suggest that the modern
day priest plays a somewhat different role; he need not see into the future
except in a very general theological fashion; instead he peers into the soul of
his parishioners. With this shift in vision, the reasons for detesting the priest
have also changed. With Christianization, there has been an increased
emphasis on the moral role played by priests, their part in what Dodds (68)
describes as a shift from a shame to a guilt culture in Greece. Insofar as the
priest stands as a reminder of standards of morality, his presence, as a kind
of institutional super-ego, leads the villager to some unflattering self-
assessments which serve to arouse feelings of discomfort, anxiety, and guilt.
Naturally, the priest is blamed for the reaction the peasant has towards him
and, further, the typical externalization mechanism is set into play through
which it is the priest who becomes the bad person, not the villager. If this be
the case, it would follow that the price paid for the transition over the
centuries from external shame to codes of personal morality signified by
Christianity, has been increased hostility towards those who are seen as the
innovators and reminders of those moral codes. Consequently, while there
1 Jeremiah, 23:11.
2 Valetta, N., Cicalata sul Fascino, Napoli, 1787; cited by Elworthy (72).
3 Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 705. 4 Tbid., 360-1. 5 Tbid., 387-9.
6 Homer, Jliad., I, 106-8. R. Lattimore translation.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 291
has been some continuity in the social role and activities! of priests, including
the basic orientation to and major methods for the prevention and solution
of life crises, there has been a very significant change in the moral and
political flavour of the priesthood. It may be suggested that there are
additional reasons nowadays for hating priests: the moral and economic
corruption among some of them, the envy which attaches to their relatively
greater power and affluence vis-d-vis the villager, and the suspicion which
accompanies the outside city tradition of church dogma unrelated to local
pre-Christian beliefs. Quite possibly the former were also operative in ancient
times; but we have no evidence for this. Certainly the feelings of some of the
contemporary villagers towards their priest are not so different from the
reactions of the people of Jerusalem to Christ, as anyone who has read
Kazantzakis, (140), will readily recall.

Magicians
With regard to wonders performed by magicians there is no richness of
data in the writings of classical times. On the contrary, the best minds of
that time, addressed themselves to combating the superstitions of their con-
temporaries, which seem to have been numerous, judging by the ridicule
heaped on them by the rationalists. With the decline of Greek supremacy
and the rise of mystery cults in the Roman empire, belief in supernatural
powers held by privileged mortals waxed stronger, or, at any rate, became
ever more openly acknowledged and perhaps more widespread. Pliny the
Roman, writing in the first century of our era did take note of the Magi
(Persian magicians). Basing himself on the authority of Democritus, who
lived about 460 B.c., he reported dutifully that these Magi were able to
raise the gods and to compel them to answer questions; a technique requir-
ing the use of wonderworking plants.” The empirically minded Pliny did not
put much stock in the doctrines of Democritus or Pythagoras, nor in those of
their followers. He called many of their assertions ‘“Magian deceits”’;*in-
veighing against them, he wrote: “It would certainly be wonderful that the
credulity of our forefathers, though it arose from most sound beginnings,
reached the height it did; ifin any matter man’s wit knew moderation; and
I were not about to show, in the appropriate place, that this very system of
medicine invented by Asclepiades* has surpassed even Magian nonsense.”’®
The faith in wonderworking plants was indeed a superstition at that time.
However, Pythagoras’ observations of the miraculous relationship between
the time during which some illnesses occurred and the blooming of certain
plants, has turned out to be not miraculous and therefore unbelievable, as
Pliny thought, but due to allergy. One of the most famous interdictions of
1 Rodd (227) and others have compared the details of Eleusinian services with the present
Greek Easter services, for example, and they find a wealth of correspondence.
2 Pliny, Natural History, XXIV, cil.
3 Ibid., XXVI, ix. 20.
4 Asclepiades of Bithynia was a Greek physician who practised medicine at Rome during
for
the first century B.c. He started out as a rhetorician and changed to medicine purely
gain, alleges Pliny, acquiring a great reputation using a modification of Democritus’ medical
doctrines.
5 Pliny, op. cit., XXVI.
202 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Pythagoras proved itself as well: that of eating beans. Whatever ritual
reasons were the basis for the proscription, it may also have been the
observation that the fava bean does indeed cause severe illness in many
persons that led to the taboo on beans in the beginning. Modern medicine
has discovered that a hereditary enzyme defect prevalent in the Mediter-
ranean people is responsible for fava bean poisoning.
In reading Pliny’s descriptions of the symptoms caused by various plants
used by the Magi, the hypothesis presents itself that they may have known
their business better than Pliny gave them credit for; nothing in the effects
of wonder plants reported would suggest “‘deceit”’ to the modern psycho-
pharmacologist, for they resemble almost point for point those of plants
which yield hallucinogens,! some of which were very well known in
antiquity (poppy, hemp, henbane, belladonna, and other plants in the
family of the nightshades), and some of which perhaps only the Magi knew
about. Quite conceivably they used concoctions made of different mixtures
to obtain a variety of effects, just as many a psychiatrist is doing today.
And so the fashions in science and magic change. What first was dis-
covered by shrewd observation became mere superstition to be rejected by
the rationalists, when the empirical basis for the discovery was forgotten and
blind adherence to dogma took its place among the true believers. Yet in
later times the discredited findings would be resurrected once again as
perfectly sound after all. Nowadays many of the drug manufacturers are
combing the ancient literature, as well as folk medical practices and
“magic”, to obtain new drugs. Turning now to rationalists before Pliny’s
time, we find Plato* mentioning magicians disdainfully. He calls them
‘professional soothsayers and begging priests who allege that they are
masters of spells and enchantments’’. Even earlier, Hippocrates,? in discus-
sing the “‘sacred disease’, epilepsy, refers in passing to magicians and quacks.
Evidently of magic there was much: wonders and divining, portents, omens,
curses, rites, the whole range of intent and techniques; but of historical
magicians themselves there is mention in the classical literature only in
casual and sceptical remarks from which one would infer that they did
indeed exist.
From the myths we get a more definite picture. What legendary men and
heroes could do in the way of magic was remarkable: Ulysses might visit
Hades to learn from the dead Teiresias prophecies of the future and forms of
conduct necessary to appease the gods; Chryses could employ Apollo
1 Pliny describes incredulously the supposedly miraculous ‘‘ophiusa’’ (snake plant) which,
“when taken in a drink causes such terrible visions of threatening serpents that fear of them
causes suicide’’. Dreadful visions can and do indeed occur with the more powerful hallucino-
gens (such as LSD, or morning-glory seeds) and suicide attempts, some of them successful,
have been reported.
Another plant, the ‘‘theangelis” (messenger from god), “confers divinitory power upon
the Magi’’; much in the same vein, no doubt, as the sacred mushrooms (the flesh of god), or
the peyote buttons in Mexico and the United States, by virtue of their hallucinogenic
alkaloids.
The gelotophyllis (laughing plant) ‘taken in wine, causes persistent laughter and all
kinds of phantoms which beset the mind’’. Uncontrollable mirth —a kind ofinternal tickle —
is a frequentsymptom when hallucinogens are ingested, as are of course the visions of phantoms
and similar deliria. The plant has been tentatively identified as cannabis (marihuana).
2 Plato, The Republic, 11, 364 B. 3 Hippocrates (Adams ed.), p. 347.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 2093
Smintheus, whom he served as priest, to avenge his wrong — and Apollo, so
directed, sent the plague upon the Achaeans.
A people sprung from the sea, the Telchines of Rhodes, were thought to
have been clever metallurgical demons; they were credited with the in-
vention of magical tools made of bronze and were the first to make images
of the gods; scholars consider them to have been fertility spirits as well.
Diodorus (Bibliotheca Historica, V, 55, 3) wrote that they were magicians
who could influence weather and change their shapes at will; “they were
jealous in the matter of teaching their arts” (suggesting a very early relation-
ship between envy and witchcraft).
The mythical protectors of Zeus, the Dactyls of Crete, were magicians.
Gruppe (op. cit., pp. 860-1 and p. 1522) believes that the Greeks derived
the generic name “‘Dacty]”’ from finger. He suggests that there is a relation-
ship between this name and ancient birth magic in which the laying on of
hands and the beating the earth with the hands during delivery was used.
Their personal names, as listed by Pausanias® do suggest healing activities ;
one of them, the Idean Heracles was indeed revered as a healer. The
Phrygian Dactyls were linked by name? and activity to magic.* They were
thought to have been the inventors of the dactylic metre — their names in
sequence read backwards from right to left, forms a hexameter — as well as
the composers of the Ephesian magic formulae, written in this metre. The
name of one of them, Damnameneus, was inscribed on the regalia of the
Ephesian Artemis, probably to turn away evil.
These then were some of the mythical magicians. But of individuals
identified by name holding down the job of magician as such, there are only
a few detailed descriptions even in legend and poetry. To be sure, Teiresias
was a seer as were the two Mopsi; Melampus, sire of a family of seers, was
reputed as a seer and was also famed for his healing, having learned from the
birds the cause and cure of illness. For example, he cured the apparent
impotency of Iphiclus when he learned from a vulture that the boy had been
frightened by seeing a bloody knife in the hands of his father, Phylacus, one
that he had been using to castrate goats. Amphiaraus, descended of Melam-
pus, was also a seer associated with healing; at Oropos an Asclepian-style
shrine was established where he was worshipped, for he was expected to
appear in the dreams of the ill, after they had fasted and gone to sleep there.
The legendary seers then would seem to have been magicians with healing
skills. Historical seers were generally not magicians; and Nilsson contends
that there were no magicians in Greece, nor priests of authority because
“every head of family was his own priest and magician” (1806). Halliday
takes the opposite view in a detailed discussion of theories which link seer to
magician and to royalty as the history of divination is traced backwards into
the dim prehistoric past: “Indeed, the kings of the legendary past were
1[t is doubtful, however, that the word is actually of Greek origin, Gruppe’s intriguing
theories not withstanding.
2 Pausanias writes: ““When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to
the Idean Dactyls, the same ones who are also called Couretes. They came from Cretan Ida
— Heracles, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Iasius, and Idas”’ (Pausanias, op. cit., V. vii. 6).
3 The following are the names of the Phrygian Dactyls: Aisia, Damnameneus, Tetrax, Aski,
Kataski (see Clemens Alexandrinus, str. V, 8. 46 and Hesychius (124) ),
4 Roscher, (230), 88 ff.
204, THE DANGEROUS HOUR
priests, and they possessed the other functions of that office no less than the
power of cleansing from the stain of bloodshed”. He cites among many
examples Andros, son of the Delian priest-king (who himself probably had a
healing dream oracle), as a seer, ruler and eponym of the island; prince
Helenos gifted with prophecy, son of the king of Troy, was ruler of Epirus
his sister, princess Cassandra, was also a prophetess. Many of the renowned
prophetesses and witches of myth and tragedy boasted of royal or divine
lineage: Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis had the sungod Helios for
grandfather, as did her aunt, the enchantress Circe. The famous healer
Melampus received one third of the kingdom of Argos and the hand of
princess Iphianassa in marriage as fee for curing the daughters of king
Proetus of madness — their punishment by Dionysus for impiety. Melampus’
great-grandson Polydos, king of Corinth (or Megara or, according to the
scholiast on Homer, of Argos) was, like his ancestor, a celebrated seer; he was
also a magician, raising the son of Minos from the dead.
We are not in a position to resolve the dispute among scholars concerning
the presence or absence of magicians; we may say that there is enough
evidence to suggest that in pre-Classical times at least, magic was practised
widely by groups bound by kinship ties or by cult bonds forged through
initiation; that there were individuals specially renowned for their magical
skills and that, among these, were a group of specialists, apart from the
priests, who as seers were closely associated with healing as well as with
prophecy. Those who could heal could also harm and, in consequence,
magicians were also known as sorcerers. What magicians could do was
preternatural, and it is not surprising to find them called demons themselves,
concludes Seyfert (242).
One of the problems in tracing continuities with regard to magicians is in
deciding whether a given individual was a man or a myth, a demi-god or an
eponymous hero. Asclepius, for instance, falls into several of these categories:
he was a magician for he performed miracles in bringing the dead to life;
however, gods also do this and there is some doubt whether Asclepius was a
mortal man as a magician would have to be.?
Among historical figures Hermotimus of Clazomenae was said to become
half-conscious while his soul would leave his body and roam abroad, and in
its wandering report to him from a distance many things that only an eye
witness could know of.° In later times, one of the most famous miracle
workers was Apollonius of 'Tyana. He was also clairvoyant, if Philostratus
(The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 8, 25-26) is to be believed. According to this
fanciful biographer, Apollonius witnessed the murder of the Emperor Nero
which took place at Rome, when he was himself far away at Ephesus.
Interestingly enough, the Ephesians whom he was addressing thought his
vision to be a fit of madness.
In our narratives we have instances of trance states similar to those of
Apollonius during which the dreamer or wise woman or gipsy learnt where
1 Halliday, (707), pp. 66 ff.
* For a comprehensive discussion of Asclepius’ nature see Edelstein (70).
* Pliny, op. cit., VII, lii, 174-5. The tale of Hermotimus, has a rather realistic ring to
it: one day, while his soul was abroad, his enemies burnt his body so that his soul had no
longer any earthly abode; that was his end.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 295
magia were hidden, how to cure, or how to deliver a child. However, any
other continuity from antiquity to the present remains uncertain for the
magicians. That there are survivals in terms of their power and position
being associated with awe and fear seems without doubt. Similarly, that
some were reputed to work for the good, and others for the bad seems a
reasonable inference; nor does there appear to be much question that
individual magicians, even though classed as seers, were important because
of their healing abilities. In specific details there are but a few corres-
pondences to be drawn; Mantheos for example, like Mopsus, could con-
verse with the powers; in the one case with the exotika and in the other, with
birds (birds were considered epiphanies of, as well as messengers from, gods;
the owl stood for Athena, the woodpecker for Zeus, for example). Mopsus is
reputed for his work with “‘functional disorders”, impotence and madness
were some, and it is with these that we must also expect modern Mantheos
to be most successful. Finally, becoming a demon is hinted at in Miltiadis
of Spathi, whose belly became full of them, while the Telchines simply were
demons, in the views of the ancients.

Other Occult Practitioners: Witches

Turning now to the secondary practitioners of the occult; the con-
tinuities are extensive, given the crucial qualification that there has been a
decrease in their importance as technology has invaded the rural areas. It is
apparent that ancient Greece had prophecy, magic and sorcery all used, for
good or evil, by gifted women (Circe, Medea, Cassandra). Plato’ and cer-
tainly Hippocrates? were sceptical of the powers of contemporary enchant-
resses, but the reputation of the Thessalian women for being able to bring
down the moon was well known to both of them. The teller of golden tales,
Lucius Apuleius, pretends that he is very apprehensive of the Thessalian
witches who do not respect even the dead, rifle their graves and pyres in
search of bones, mutilate corpses and gnaw bits of flesh from their faces for
use in their magical concoctions. Wachsmuth, (257, p. 34), who studied sur-
vivals of ancient Greece, reported in 1864 the continuing existence of these
famous witches and their great influence among the people; ‘‘Similar to the
ancient enchantresses they are able to interrupt the course of nature, to
make the stars rise and set, pull down the moon, and transform it into a
cow, milk it and use the moon-milk for irresistible magic . . .”

The Mothers as Wise Women

In ancient times, as today, more mundane healing or controlling activities
and the warding off of danger through the use of amulets, incantations,
herbs and what-have-you, was practised within families as part of the
motherly role, or within villages by wise women. For example, the nurse of
Phaedra? combined nursing with casting magical spells. As one reads
Dioscorides, one realizes that he might well have drawn his magic and
1 Plato, Gorgias, 513 A.
2 Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease, F. Adams, transl., p. 349.
3 Apuleius, The Golden Ass, R. Graves trans, pp. 37, 38.
4 Euripides (Hippolytus, 78).
206 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
pharmacy from observations in Panorio or Dhadhi made today; so closely
akin are the methods of the old mother or wise woman to his prescriptions.
It is in the area of the family practice of healing and apotropaic ritual by
the women, incorporating magic, religion and empirical medicine, that we
conclude that the continuities in response to crises are very great indeed.
Taking Dioscorides as a basis for comparison with findings reported in
Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) and in the narratives, one sees identical
assumptions, techniques and substances employed. There are, of course,
differences; Dioscorides is much more comprehensive than any wise
woman of Dhadhi, but then he travelled the whole of the Eastern Mediter-
ranean to gather his pharmacopoeia. But the significant parallels are in the
approach to healing through herbs, plasters, minerals, animals and magic,
done in keeping with moon phases, and done with regard for the powers, but
emphasizing the practical task of prevention and cure.
Dioscorides, an empiricist, presents only one segment of the materia
medica et magica of the wise women of antiquity; he makes no reference to the
power of words, the xemetrima, love potions, and the evil eye. We shall take
these matters up later. Suffice it to say now, the evidence is adequate for con-
cluding that all of the major activities of the nurturant woman with
reference to handling crises, especially healing and warding off danger, may
be detected in antiquity; not only that, but in the details of technique there
appears to be more correspondence than difference. We believe this to be a
very important circumstance attesting to the continuing and unchanging
magical, nurturant role of village women in Greece.

Strangers
As for outsiders among the occult estate, with regard to strangers the
continuities between past and present are great; with regard to gipsies and
kings there are practically none. The uncertain nature of the stranger in
ancient Greece is well established ;his person was responded to with awe, fear
and hope, for he might well be a god, or sent to do the gods’ will. In the well-
ordered life of the village the stranger came as an unusual and alien element;
his very presence disordered the routine of the community; an intrusion
which was met by elaborate rites of hospitality, that provided a structure
within which villagers and strangers might deal with one another safely.
A famous example is Ulysses’ hospitable reception by Nausikaa and her
parents: “Strangers and beggars come from Zeus: a small gift then is
friendly.’ What happens when the stranger is not respected can be read in
Euripides’ Bacchae. We have discussed earlier the terrible revenge of the
god Dionysus, who, disguised as a stranger, was manacled and thrown into
_a dungeon by the impious and lawless Pentheus, king of Thebes.
Today the sentiments and rituals surrounding the stranger have much in
common with those of 2500 years ago. However, the increase in commerce
and facilitated communication serves to bring the villager into greater
contact with more persons and to make the outside world less strange. In
addition, the supernaturals of today, whether Christian or otherwise, seem
* Homer, Odyssey, VI, 187-251, R. Fitzgerald, trans. The reader may recall that the small,
friendly gift offered to the ‘‘Master of the Seaways and Landways” consisted in the hand
in marriage of the princess and a large tribute, fitting for a god or a pirate in disguise,
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 207
less interested in travelling incognito; the result is that the powers which the
stranger has are more likely to be secular than occult. So it is that the threats
and benefits which the stranger poses are mitigated and mundane and less
likely to be perceived in terms of preternatural events; nevertheless, the rites
which surrounded the old concepts live on, their execution having become a
matter of pride and propriety.

Gipstes
As for gipsies, they are a modern innovation, having arrived in Europe in
the twelfth century a.p.1 The powers attributed to them, especially their
capacity to talk to the stars, reminds one of the Hellenistic beliefs about the
Chaldeans; it is not inconceivable, although it must remain speculative, that
an astrological link between the gipsies, who are of Hindu origin, and the
Chaldeans of Babylon, was forged in antiquity. If this were the case, then
the astrological, the fortune telling, and the magical capabilities of the
present-day gipsy in Greece rests upon her own link with Eastern astrology ;
in her coming westward, she occupied a place already prepared in the
Greek mind for eastern astrologists.

Kings
With regard to kings, the political changes over the centuries have been
such as to eliminate continuity, for by classical times kings had ceased to be
of any importance, at least to the Doxario region, except as they held
suzerainty in consequence of successful invasions (Alexander, The Roman
Conquest, the Turkish sultans). These kings posed real political threats, but
as persons they were not perceived as uncanny. Unlike kings elsewhere
where divine right and spiritual power (as for example in healing through
the touch) were long joined, the Greek villagers long ago seem to have
separated spiritual from temporal power.
There is only one element in the narratives which appears to be a
fascinating survival. Recall (Chapter III, No. 42) that a Byzantine king,
Nikephoros, was said to have been buried near the hallowed church of St.
George not far from Dhadhi. The legend says the king was buried with his
golden chariot, his horses and other treasures. The legend is associated with
the Minoan—Mycenaean sites near the church of St. George, a church which
figures in many stories of miracles, incubation, dream visitations, and so
forth, as illustrated in Chapter VI. Very recently, excavations near the
church revealed a splendidly preserved Mycenaean beehive tomb in which
were found golden objects and, in the ramp leading to the tomb, the skele-
tons of two horses which had been buried with the king!

Preternatural Conditions
Among the preternatural states and qualities of humans, we have found
2 Clebert (52) reports the tradition that a Sassanid emperor sent to India to import the
gipsies as entertainers to Luristan (Persia) around a.p. 640. Their first appearance in
Byzantium was in a.D. 855. They were found in Crete around a.p. 1322 and had spread to
Corfu and Serbia by A.p. 1348.
2098 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

the contemporary villagers to be concerned with pollution and purity,

with light-shadowed persons, with that “demonization” through which
““we have become demons ourselves”, with demon-possession, and finally
with the evil eye.

Pollution
Pollution is a power which resides in human acts or states but which is
awesome rather than human in its nature. Its effects must be controlled
through the acts of humans who are or might be contaminated by the
power. Pollution is associated with birth — both the mother and the infant are
polluted; with intercourse; with the dead; with contact with strangers;
with dirt — especially faeces, but also urine and “‘just plain”’ dirt; with blood
— either shed in violence or menstrual; with certain foods — especially flesh of
animals; with sickness and deformity; with drunkenness; with gestured
curses; and, by association, with objects and persons exposed to polluted
people or acts. It is in this way that boys before puberty are not polluted
while after puberty they are; girls, on the other hand, are never without
pollution.
One acts to control that contamination which arises from pollution in
several ways: (1) by avoidance of contact with polluted persons, (2) by
abstinence from acts leading to it: by continence, fasting, sobriety, etc.,
(3) by rituals of purification, including washing, blessings, the intercession
of priests, readings and incantations, ingestion of endowed sacred sub-
substances: cathartic spring waters, smelling incense; or (4) by acts of
apotropaic significance which ward off or expel: spitting, cursing, averting
one’s gaze, using magical protection.

In antiquity: Reviewing the practices of ancient Greek religion 68, ro4,

(112, 113, 138, 142, 180, 181, there seems little in the modern belief
about pollution that is not of antique origin. The importance of pollution as
a power is diminished, for the concept coexists with Christian and scientific
doctrines; but the nature of the belief, the acts associated with it, and the
means of avoiding contamination and for achieving purification appear to
be essentially the same as in pre-Christian times.
To illustrate, in antiquity the lechona was excluded from the temple for
forty days, those who had been in contact with the lechona were excluded
for two, and those who had seen a corpse were excluded, as were those who
had engaged in intercourse. ‘Then as now, priests were susceptible to weaken-
ing from pollution; those of Eleusis were forbidden to enter the house of the
lechona. As seen in the Iliad, the pollution of the plague was washed away
and the off-scourings thrown into the sea; Asclepius “wiped away”’ disease
1 For instance Pausanias (op. cit. II, 27. 6) relates that the Epidaurians were in great distress
because their women were not allowed to give birth in hallowed grounds of the Asclepion,
and that Antonius remedied this situation by providing a building where they could do so
without sin. After the 88th Olympiad the Athenians purified Delos and forbade women to
give birth on the island in the belief that otherwise the holy sanctuary would be polluted.
For detailed discussions see Nilsson, (r80b), pp. 82 ff., Thomson, (252) I, pp. 205 ff.,
Samter, (235), p. 22 n. 2, Ploss, (204), II, p. 12.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 299
(180). Recall too that Hesiod noted the worshipper must be pure and clean;
he warns against men bathing in the same water as a woman. Compare this
with Chapter IV, No. 18 where a man who has been swimming in the sea
with “unclean women” came home with a sore eye. That it was his eye that
was affected reminds one of the prohibition against seeing that-which-was-
taboo in ancient times; either because it was sacred or dangerous. For a man
to spy upon a goddess bathing held especially grave consequences. One
version of how the “seer” Teiresias lost his secular sight has it that he
observed Athena at her bath (Apollodorus, The Library, 111, vii, 7),
(Callimachus, The Baths of Pallas, 57-133). Frazer’ mentions that Ery-
manthus, son of Apollo, was blinded because he saw Aphrodite bathing;
while Oedipus blinded himself after he learnt that he had seen — and done —
too much. Madness or death were other punishments for seeing the goddess
without her consent. Remember how the virgin goddess Artemis made
horns sprout on Actaeon’s forehead because he surprised her and her
bathing nymphs, so that he was mistaken for a deer and torn asunder by his
own hounds! (Hygini Fabulae, 180 and 181; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3, 138-2523
Apollodorus, III, iv, 4). Athena visited madness upon the disobedient
daughters of Cecrops when they opened the taboo chest she had entrusted to
them and beheld in it the offspring of the goddess, Erichthonius, around
whom coiled a snake (Apollodorus, The Library, III, xiv, 6; Euripides, Jon,
273-4). The two men who found the image of the Brauronian Artemis went
mad, as Pausanias tells us (op cit.).
Seeing the gods without their assent was dangerous in any case. That the
bathing goddess (or her bloodstained image)? was particularly taboo may be
attributed to the purificatory significance of these ablutions. One need only
recall that it was after her first menstruation and before her wedding that a
young girl would be led to the near-by spring for a ritual bath. The cloths
used during delivery, called the katharmata, were thrown into a river to get
rid of their polluting powers. For the same reasons worthless persons,? also
called katharmata, were thrown into the sea at Athens to cleanse the city of
its accumulated guilt during times of famine or pestilence; a similar prac-
tice is described by Homer in the Iliad. No wonder it was foolhardy to
watch while a goddess purified herself. Since time immemorial, the men-
strual blood has been an object of greatest awe,‘ it is not surprising that
seeing it would blind the organ of sight with its destructive power.
The association between women’s genitals being purified in the sea as
found in our narrative (Chap. IV, No. 22), may be compared with Taurian
ritual in which the image of Artemis was carried by her priestess to the sea
to be cleansed of pollution. ‘“The sea is the absorbent of all evil” (Euripides,
Iphigenia in Tauris, 193) says she as she prepares to cleanse the ikon of contact
1 See Frazer’s commentary to his edition of Apollodorus, vol. I, p. 363, n. I.
2 As was that of the Taurian Artemis which Iphigenia and Orestes brought to Brauron.
mata
3 Aside from being called katharmata they were also known as: perikathar
;see
(mepixabdppara), peripsemata (repupipara), pharmakoi (fappaxo‘), demosioi (Synpdor0t)
Liddell and Scott (155) for references.
touched by it
4 Pliny writes that contact with the menstrua turns new wine sour, crops
trees falls off . . . to
become barren, grafts die, seeds in gardens are dried up, the fruit of
op. cit.,
taste it drives dogs mad (!) and infects their bites with an incurable poison (Pliny,
VII, xv, 64-65).
300 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
with the bloodstained hands of Orestes, the matricide. A yearly bath in the
river Canathus restored the virginity of Hera (Pausanias, op. cit., II,
XXXvili, 2); and after her marriage to Zeus a ceremonial bath was in order,
as it was for Aphrodite after her union with Adonis, and for Demeter after
intercourse with Poseidon.
These ancient conceptions of pollution are very persistent and the parallels
are so many that one may not take time to trace them all. Compare for
example the pollution attributed in the modern narratives to the dead; the
vrikolakes, “who come to befoul the food”’; and to the kallikantzari ‘“‘who
piss in the fireplace’’; with the old pollution of the dead, of which Photius
speaks, when on the first day of the Anthesteria the dead were rising up ina
day of pollution; or when Ulysses needed to purify his house with fire and
strong-smelling sulphur after killing the suitors. Compare this in turn with
the requirement in one narrative (VII, No. 37) that the visitor to the lechona
must carry or touch fire and be rinsed with holy water, or else “‘something
bad will happen’.

The Light-Shadowed
The belief in the light-shadowed, either as persons who have a light-
shadow and the gift of “‘seeing”’, or are able to see the supernaturals with a
light-shadow, is an intriguing one. Recall that the light-shadowed are those
free from pollution, child-like, and simple. A few conceive of them as
“sighted” only while insane, while others say they are related to epileptics,
are stupid, are close to death,? or have not been baptized properly so that
they are close to the non-Christian primitive power of the infant. In any
event, the light-shadowed have the capacity to see what others do not: the
world of the supernaturals, exotica and saints; and, according to some, they
have the capacity to prophesy the future.

In antiquity: The concept of the light-shadowed as such is not found in the

ancient literature. Reference to shadows is made by Pausanias (op. cit.,
VIII, xxxviii, 6,): the ground sacred to Zeus on top of Mt. Lykaion
must not be stepped upon, lest one lose one’s shadow and die within a year.
Plutarch (Questionum Convivalium, 59) doubts that the man who enters the
Lykaion casts no shadow, though he agrees that others are convinced of
this. He suggests that the reason for such a belief may be found in the Py-
thagorean saying that the souls of those who die do not cast any shadow,?
nor do they blink. He adds that the Arcadians have a puzzling expres-
sion: the man who enters the Lykaion is called “‘deer’’, elaphos. The words
elaphos and elaphros* are curiously close in sound and in meaning; both
indicate lightness, nimbleness, swiftness. Is it not possible that we have here
some link between past and present?

' For further discussion of purificatory baths see Frazer, (95) v, p. 280.
* Note that the word “fey” has as its primary meaning “doomed” and that among the
Scots, a sudden ability to foretell the future indicates that such a person is going to die.
® Contemporary usage is nearly identical (chapter IV. No. 45) ‘The dead have light shadows
. . . the shadow is related to death’’.
“Deer” (€Aagos); and “‘light” (€Aadpds), the antonym of heavy.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 301
The belief that those who are close to death have mantic powers already
existed in Homer’s days: Patroclus expiring foretells truly to Hector, his
slayer, that soon Achilles’ hand will seal his doom.1 At the time this prophecy
is fulfilled the dying Hector in his turn warns Achilles who gloats over him,
to take care lest it be Hector who brings down the god’s curse upon him on
the day that Apollo ambushes him at the Skaian gates.2 Unburied, the dead
still preserves his oracular gift. During his sleep Achilles is visited by the
ghost of his lifeless friend Patroclus who foretells his imminent destruction.®
We find the belief in the fey quality of the dying still vital in classical times,
as when Socrates turns to those who have condemned him to death saying:
““Now I wish to prophesy to you, my judges; for I am about to die, and this
is the hour in which men are inspired to deliver oracles.’’* But Plato tells us
even more about the association between the dying and the visionary; he
tells us about the link between purity and dying: ‘‘You see,” teaches
Socrates, ‘‘if this is not the conclusion from all that we have said, that the
soul is most like the divine and immortal and intellectual and uniform and
indissoluble and ever unchanging; and the body, on the contrary, most like
the human, and mortal, and multiform, and unintellectual and dis-
soluble. . . . If it (the soul) departs pure, dragging with it nothing of the
body, because it never willingly associated with the body in life, but avoided
it and gathered itself into itself alone, since this has always been its constant
study — but this means nothing else than that it pursued philosophy rightly
and really practised being in a state of death; or is not this the practice of
death?’’6
Perhaps we may learn about the concept of the “‘light-shadow”’ from
Plato, providing we assume for the moment that this quality refers to the
spiritual qualities of a person, those that Plato would designate as his soul
and that a villager might designate as his shadow. Not that Plato shared the
popular beliefs of his time, far from it, but he certainly made use of them in
his metaphors and alluded to them specifically when he wished to strike a
responsive chord in his audience in order to educate them by degrees to his
own point of view. Very likely they were part of the common imagery, and
if this is conceded, they may help us understand some of the puzzling
relationships between the notion of purity, guilelessness, ability to see the
supernaturals, and closeness to death which characterize the “‘light-
shadowed” in our villagers. How then does Plato describe the pure soul to
his listeners? We have already seen that he does so by opposing it to the
body: the pure soul is a “light” soul (kouphos—xov¢ds), for it is free of all
bodily contamination — or as our villagers would say, free of pollution. The
body is heavy (barys—Papus’ ; and a soul which has been entombed in the
body’s desires and pains is made heavy thereby, it cannot ascend to the
other world when the time comes for dying. The pure soul is closer to this
other world while the body is still alive for it has no hold on it, than the
impure soul is after the body’s death for it is dragged down, weighted down
(barynetai — Bapdverac) by the contamination of the body. A person with a
pure soul perceives the realities of the other world (the supernaturals as our
1 Homer, Iliad, XVI, 851-4. 2Tbid., XXII, 358. 8 Ibid., XXIII, 80-81.
4 Plato, The Dialogues: Apology, 39 C. See also Phaedo, 84 E and 85 A, B.
5 Plato, Phaedo, 80 A, B, E and 81 A.
302 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
villagers would say) more clearly the closer he is to this other world; that is,
the closer he has come to letting himself die in this world: ‘And, my friend,
we must believe that the corporeal is burdensome and heavy and earthly
and visible. And such a soul is weighed down by this and is dragged back
into the visible world’’, says Socrates of the souls which were not “‘set free in
purity’”’.1 Our villagers would know these to be the vrikolakes. The villagers
would also agree that the one who is childlike and guileless, addAos, as
Socrates? calls the philosopher who is able to discern realities beyond the
senses, can see the exotika. To the villager it is the person who is not em-
broiled in sensuality who is childlike; whereas Socrates ascribes to such a
one, a soul untroubled: “‘neither by sound, nor sight, nor pain, nor any
pleasure . . . and avoiding so far as it can be done, alJ association or contact
with the body, (such a soul) reaches out towords the ‘Reality’ . . .”’8; that of
the demons and spirits from the “‘out of there”’ as our villagers might visualize
Plato’s sophisticated suprasensory world of ideas and existences.
Not only closeness to death, purity of soul, and guilelessness make visions
possible. Plato’s Socrates was inspired by the muses in a “‘kind of possession
and divine madness” which takes hold upon a “gentle and pure soul’’.4
Another kind of inspired madness is mentioned by Socrates: prophecy, the
gift of Zeus and Apollo.> This too was a folk belief in classical antiquity. It
was thought that inspiration resulted from a god’s entering into the body of
a person. This was the case of an ‘‘entheos mantis”, such as the priestess at
Delphi during those moments when the god spoke through her lips. Rose
(232) tells of a related belief that the living may be possessed not only
by the gods but also by the dead. We begin to get a glimpse of a con-
nection between ability to see, foresee, closeness to death or actual possession
by the god, the dead, or by his shadow.
In Attic® speech one of the words for the dead or their ghosts was
“shadow” (skia). We shall give a few examples. For instance, it is the shadow
of Oedipus which the chorus addresses as it mourns his sons who fought and
killed each other in fulfilment of their dying father’s curse: ““Oh wretched
fate, giver of heaviness, awful shadow of Oedipus, black spirit of vengeance,
verily a spirit mighty in strength.’ Sophocles also uses the term shadow tc
describe the dead; however, the sense of the passage indicates that he wishes
to convey the impotence of that once powerful hero, Ajax, ‘‘now just a
shadow”’.® Such will also be the punishment for matricide: to be “‘forgotten,
without knowing where joy lies anywhere inside your heart, blood drained,
chewed by the powers of death, a wraith, a shadow’’, so the Furies forecast
Orestes’ end.® The notion of the shadow as ineffectual and unsubstantial is
very frequent; in the literary works it supersedes the earlier concept of the
frightful avenger, the wrath incarnate of god or murdered father. It is used
1 Plato, Phaedo, 81 C. 2 Plato, Phaedrus, 249 B. 3 Plato, Phaedo, 65 C.
4 Plato, Phaedrus, 245 A. 5 Tbid., 244 A, B, C, D.
® It should be noted that none of the words, for the dead, their soul, ghost, spirit or shade
used by Homer are “shadow” (oxia). He uses words meaning “image” (eiSwAov) or
“psyche” (uy) instead.
” Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes, 986-988: “ici, Moitpa Bapvddreipa poyepa, mérvid 7’ OlSizrou
oxid, péAaw ’Epws, 7 weyacbevis ris ef.”
8 Sophocles, Ajax, 1257: “és dv8pds odkér’ duros, GAN’ 45 oxras.”
® Aeschylus, Eumenides, 302: “dvaiwarov, Bocknua Saysdvev, aud.”
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 303
metaphorically instead, to portray the human condition: “an image of a
shadow, those who seem most devoted to me,”! and ‘‘what are we but
phantoms all, or light-shadows’’.? This last is the only instance we have been
able to find in the literature of the ancients in which the words “‘light-
shadow” appear. Unfortunately it is not in its modern sense of “‘second
sighted”’; nor did Sophocles use the adjective elaphros, but rather its synonym
kouphos. Reversing the search, we have discovered only one instance in
which the adjective “‘light’’, elaphros, was used to designate an altered state
of consciousness, when Dionysus beclouds the mind of his victim with a
“sudden” or “‘lightheaded”’ madness.* Perhaps an exact parallel will come
to the reader’s mind. We have not been able to come any closer. The
development of the meaning of the second of the two terms, the light-
shadowed (elafroiskioti) and the light-spirited (elafroistichi) and their
relationship to each other may give the inventive reader some leads.
According to Abbott (1, p. 284) there are few words which have had
as adventurous a history as the modern Greek word for ghost or spirit,
“‘stichio”’, — plural: “‘stichia’”. He believes that it is derived from the
ancient “‘stoicheion”’ grovyetov, which he considers to be a diminutive of
*‘stoichos”’, rod, which came to be applied to the gnomon of the sundial.
Diels (64, pp. 60 ff.), however, thinks that the earliest recorded use of
‘‘stoicheion”’ (in the fifth century B.c.) was to designate the length of one’s
own shadow — a simple peasant clock.* The philosophers Plato and Aristotle,
employed the term in the sense of element, irreducible substance, letter of the
alphabet. The planets were designated as stoicheia; and later on, with
revival of Orphism, the term came to mean the planets’ guiding spirits which
direct human action and fate. In Christian times it was believed that
consecration had succeeded in banishing the pagan gods into their own
statues, where they then became the indwelling spirits, the ‘“‘stoichia’’, of the
abode. In the first century of our era, one finds in Apollonius of Tyana a
miracle worker with power over genii; he was reputed to have charmed the
(genius of the river) Lycus to prevent it from flooding; he is also said to have
settled genii (stoicheia) in statues and crosses, in one of which the fortune of
the city was chained (147). The Byzantine concept of “‘stichio”’, indwelling
demon or protecting genius, is exactly the one which Santorini villagers and
modern-day peasants elsewhere in Greece still hold when they speak of the
spirit of the house that the ‘‘elafroistichi” are able to see.® Informants in one
village of Santorini told us that in older times it was the custom to bury a
¢ock or other animal into the foundations of houses; this sacrificial animal
then became the protecting — and sometimes the damaging stichio of the
house. There are many poems in Greek folk-literature which tell of this
belief.6 Garnett and Stuart-Glennie (99, pp. 390 ff.) relate the Turkish
belief in the “‘tellestim” (talisman), which is created by the act of build-
ing and which dies when its habitation is destroyed, to the Greek
1 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 840: “elSwAov oxvas Soxodvras elvar Kdpta. mvevpevets epol.”
2 Sophocles, Ajax, 125-6: “6p yap juas oddev dvras dAdo mAry eiSwr’ ‘courep Copev 7
Kovdnv oxidy.”
8 Euripides, Bacchae (Dodds ed.), 851: ““eAappav Adacav’’ see Dodd’s commentary, p. 180.
4 See also Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 652.
5 See also Politis, 219, pp. 126 ff.
6 Abbott, op. cit., “The Stichio of the Stream” (p. 178); “The Stichio of the Well’ (p. 180).
304 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

stichio. Bridges in particular must be secured against destruction by

sacrificing a human to its stichio, or by burying a person in the foundations
of the bridge so that it may become its supporting demon.’ Bridges so
secured are called “‘stichiathemeliomena”, ororyiabepedwpeva, “founda-
tioned” by the stichio. The same authors quote a still common belief in the
East that the man, whose shadow falls on the first-laid stone of a house or
other edifice, will die within the year, and his shadow remaining in the
building, becomes its stichio. A man wishing another one ill, will sur-
reptitiously take the measure of his enemy’s body (or shadow) and bury it
in a new foundation; as the tool used to take the measure decays, so will the
victim pine away and die. And so it was believed in ancient days. Dawson
(60) quotes the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite to the effect that the soul of
nymphs in trees will die as their tree dies; while Plato tells us how “‘at each
man’s death his demon . . . has the task of guiding him to some appointed
place’’.2 Both Harrison (172) and Lawson (147) contend that the concept
of a personal genius (stoicheion) or guardian angel, is an elaboration of the
notion of the Ker (plural Keres), the angel of death. ‘“The Death-Keres
carried him off to Hades’ house,’’ Ulysses says; while Hesiod speaks of
“when the dog star comes and shines . . . over the heads of men, Ker-
nourished”’.4 Harrison (172) has written at length of the importance of the
Keres as spirits in ancient times, physical beings “‘round about us Keres
crowing still’’ or, “Keres thousand-fold mortals attend” (writes Simonides),
responsible for all manner of “‘ill upon ill’ or, “woes and calamities”. The
Athenians believed that the Keres rose up from the underworld on the
“polluted day’’, the day of ghosts in the month Anthesterion. On that day
libations were offered to the dead; the living smeared pitch on the doors and
chewed cathartic buckthorn to protect themselves from a spirit-invasion.
‘Begone ye Keres, the Anthesteria are over,”’ shouted the citizens at the end
of the festival, hoping to banish the ghosts. According to Stesichorus, the
Keres were once called Telchines, that is, the spirits had been magicians.
Harrison points out that there were Keres of Old Age and Death, first
personified as Death and later symbolized as the spirit of death; in time they
became harpies, wind demons, angels and, says Harrison, Nereids, Fates,
Moirai, Gorgons, Sirens — and among the winged spirits emerges the
soul as a human-faced bird. From this Harrison sees the Erinyes evolve, at
first as vengeful souls of murdered men; the very beings which tormented
Orestes saw, ““These are no fancies of affliction. They are clear and real, and
here; the bloodhounds of my mother’s hate;’’® and, ““How they grow and
multiply repulsive . . . You cannot see them but I see them. I am driven
from this place ...’’ Not only Orestes but also Apollo’s priestess, the Pythia,
saw them. Thus, the Keres have persisted to this day in the notion of
demons, Fates and attending genii (stichia).
Lawson contends that the light-shadowed are conceived as persons whose
attendant genii are ill-balanced and sensitive, giving them occult power

1See Garnett ef. al., op. cit. “The Bridge of Arta’; ‘“The Stichio of the Bridge” (p. 70);
“The Bridge of Adana” (p. 71).
2 Plato, Phaedo, 107 D. 3 Odyssey, XIV, 206.
4 Hesiod, The Works and Days, 416.
5 Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, 1053 ff. (R. Lattimore trans.).
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 305
To be able to see one’s genius occurs only when one is dying, according to
tales Lawson was told, so that such vision “‘is a warning that the end is near’’.
We must quote Lawson here, for none of our narratives are exact on that
point; nevertheless, the Doxario region narratives do speak of the vulner-
ability of the light-shadowed and in No. 21, Chapter IV, the child who saw
St. Elias was considered near death, as was the cousin (in No. 31) who
‘“‘used to go to St. Athanasios’. In one case the death was prevented by
dedicating the child in what can be considered a substitute sacrifice, “‘we
dressed her all in black’’, while in the other case the child was polluted with
blood and donkey’s milk after which she died.
There is a fairly clear parallel between the ancient and modern notion of
the personal geni and the belief that this geni may be seen as one approaches
that death to which the genius (who has now become a saint in some cases, or
a Vittora in others) will guide one. In that sense, the light-shadowed are
closer to death and to the supernatural world of which death is a part. The
light-shadowed are like Ulysses who had his glimpse of the shades only while
he was a visitor to Hades; or like Orestes, who saw the avenging Keres while
the blood of murder still dripped from his hands.
Although the history of the concept of the “‘light-shadowed”’ in Greece
remains unclear, one may relate it more generally to beliefs still found among
non-literate people. The shadow is related to the soul, as has been well
demonstrated (95), (221); our own search leads us to believe that such a
relationship existed also in ancient Greece.! Frazer (190, IV, p. 384) is of the
same opinion, as is Halliday (217, p. 173). The fact of this continuity should
not make us less aware of the variety of implications in the modern usage of
“‘light-shadowed”’, nor should we overlook the absence of the use of the
term itself in antiquity. It would appear that, if anything, the concepts in-
volved are more important now than they were then in accounting for
vulnerability to harm and congress with the spirit world.
If one does assume with Radin (227), or modern Greek scholars (183)
that ‘‘seeing’”’ was once associated with shamanism and epileptic seizures, it
is possible that the present concept of the light-shadowed persons is derived
from very early Indo-European conceptions. These assumptions are, how-
ever, very tenuous.
That men who were not seers or shamans did have visions and apparitions
is established, Hesiod, for example, on Mt. Helikon (Theogony, 22 ff.); or
Philippides who saw Pan on Mt. Parthenion (Herodotus, 6, 105) or Pindar
who had his vision, the Scholiast said, during a storm in the mountains
(See Aristodemus, Scholia Pindar, Pythian ITI, 79). Dodds (68) notes that
these visions all occurred in lonely places; a circumstance well in keeping
with the predominant beliefs in the Doxario region today. It is worth adding
that two of the three visionaries above were poets; a class specially endowed
with sensitivities.

1 Viewed in this light, the mystical experience of
and the possibility that his infirmity “when I am
12:10) was epilepsy — and the Hebrew—Christian
may well be part of a widespread culture pattern
see and hear those “angels, principalities, and
(Romans 8:38.)
Saint Paul, his revelation at high noon —
weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians
phenomena of revelations and visions —
in which certain individuals were able to
powers” in which Saint Paul believed.
306 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

The Hippocratic literature takes note of the belief in visions and appari-
tions (On the Sacred Disease, F. Adams transl. pp. 347 ff.), ascribed by
conjurers to Hecate’s works. Hippocrates did not believe himself in such
supernatural illness causation; the fact that he felt it necessary to take up the
cudgels against this belief indicates its strength and prevalence. We may
take his references to the goddess of the underworld and to the apparition
of the dead (Heroes) as indicators for the persistence of the belief in the
presence and the powers of the dead, that is of ghosts and shadows. The
chthonic powers, of which the dead are part, were to be avoided and to be
averted according to early and continuing religious practice. One method
for accomplishing this was to avert the eyes, just as in the magical practice of
not looking backwards at magic done so as not to bring on doom (recall
Orpheus looking back and thereby dooming Eurydice to the underworld),
or pain (as in our narrative No. 31, Chapter VII where upon seeing the
Bad Hour, the villager had a pain in her eyes). Bowra! contends that the
ordinary person was forbidden to look at the dead or the gods of the under-
world.
It is this prohibition perhaps which separates those who “see’’ from those
who do not; the latter were not allowed to have such vision because it
exposes them to danger — like looking at the Gorgoneion and becoming
“petrified” ; while the former, the light-shadowed ones, are not so prohibited
perhaps because their purity protects them; perhaps because they are
gifted with divine powers (the gift of discerning, as St. Paul called it); or
perhaps because they are close to the dead already and may thus look with-
out further fear. Not that it works out this latter way in practice, for it will
be recalled that some parents respond with fear to their children’s visions
and pollute them preventively.
From the foregoing we derive several beliefs and two speculations. In
classical times there were a large group of spirits, conceived on varying
levels of abstraction and with diverse attributes which, while ordinarily
invisible, were physically real, were wilful, and could be seen by at least
two kinds of mortals: the first kind were persons exposed to their ill will or
destructive acts (Orestes) ; and the other kind were persons who were pure
(unpolluted) and consecrated (the priestesses). These could view them
without harm. An additional possibility is that a third class of persons could
see and deal with these spirits: the magicians. While not subject to harm
from the spirits themselves, the magicians were subject to punishment by
the higher gods; legend has it that the Telchines were struck down by Zeus
or Apollo. The mythical priest-king or ‘‘divine king”’ of Elis, Salmoneus, the
miracle worker who could imitate Zeus’ thundering and lightning, was
slain by the outraged god’s bolts for having usurped his name, functions and
sacrifices. Asclepius’ fate was the same; for returning the dead Hippolytus to
life, he was lightning-struck by Zeus. The punishment of one of the greatest
magicians, Prometheus the fire-bringer, has been well publicized in ancient
and modern literature. Those who revealed the god’s secrets were often
punished. Tantalus, admitted to their table and council, was subsequently
tortured in Tartarus for his indiscretions (of which tradition cites several).
The Thracian prophet-king Phineus foretelling men the future was blinded
1 Bowra (39, Pp. 133).
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 307
for this, according to one version; according to another this punishment was
for revealing to Phrixus’ children how they could sail from Colchis to Greece
(Apollodorus, The Library, 1, ix, 21).
In conclusion, we find ourselves drawing a close parallel with those who
have congress with the exotika in the Doxario region today. Those who are
pure in heart and unpolluted see the exotika, as do those who are harmed by
them. These encompass the major characteristics of the light-shadowed
persons. In addition, the magicians, Mantheos, Miltiadis and the more
sensitive wise women, Maria, for example, while not necessarily light-
shadowed (although Maria is), also see the exotika. Those who are insane
may also be temporarily light-shadowed (Orestes, Pentheus,! and the
lechonain our narrative No. 23, Chapter IV who had lost her mind) ; and in
this case being light-shadowed is also connected with the gift of prophecy;
not unlike the Pythia herself.

Demonization
An important question arises as we consider the related concept of
. “demonization’’: “‘we are all demons ourselves, which is why we no longer
see the exotika.”” We have already observed that in antiquity we have an
instance in the Pythia of one who is not polluted and has the power to see
the spirits (Aeschylus, Eumenides) ; while in Orestes, one polluted and vulner-
able to them may also see them. Why should it be in modern times that the
unpolluted still have the power of sight, whereas pollution specifically
destroys the characteristics of being light-shadowed?
Considering the demonization accounts, we find that the demons have
become invisible because ‘‘we are not as pure’’, because there is moral
corruption, sin, litigation, venturing forth after dark, the adoption of city
ways, the loss of fearfulness among men and the growth of fearfulness among
the spirits themselves (of motor cars, lights, etc.) and, very interestingly,
because “‘so many have been killed by thunderbolts ;”’ an explanation which
no doubt would have delighted Professor Harrison and which we shall
interpret as symbolic of the efforts of Olympian Zeus and the Christian
God to rid the hinterland of their earlier animistic and nature deity rivals.
A final explanation is that ‘people have walked on all their places, trod
their ground”. That land which has belonged to the gods and was inviolable
had been trespassed on and polluted, just as ‘‘foreigners” polluted the church
of St. George; we may presume that the sanctions against the trespassers no
longer availed; he who walked on sacred ground no longer lost his shadow
and died. The taboo has weakened and so it is that the remark describes the
passing of the local gods.
The answer to our query emerges from these peasant commentaries.
They describe a social and religious change; one which has been under way
for at least three thousand years. It is the old purity which is described, and a
new sense of pollution. The purity is faith in the old ways, adherence to
1 Pentheus, after the god has induced in him a state of altered consciousness (the lightminded
madness, éAadpa Avoca, now perceives Dionysus as he should; as a bull with horns sprouting
from his head, as the bestial epiphany of the god. Dionysus explains to him that this vision
is given to him since he made an alliance with the god and therefore can see, whereas
formerly he was (spiritually) blind (Euripides, Bacchae, E. R. Dodds (ed.) 920-4).
308 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

religious beliefs dating to Pelasgian times. The pollution is disbelief, having

oneself become a stranger to the old gods. One no longer observes the rituals
or adheres to the taboos, but one is not struck down; one walks without fear
in the night which was reserved for the demons, “Madness and empty
terror in the night. . . .”1; and it is the spirits who are repelled and must
retreat, ‘now... the exotika are the ones who are afraid” (Chap IV; No:
50).
The community is splitting into two, or more likely, its members are
coming to hold two incompatible views. One sector reveres the old ways,
remembers the old gods, and in their capacity to ‘“‘see” are religiously and
psychologically intimate with the gods and genii of place and person. The
other sector doubts or disdains; it usurps the sacred ground — already
softened by the artillery barrage of thunderbolts from Zeus and God (for
God still “thunders” as the locals say) — but that sector’s shadow remains
bold, unpunished, not growing lighter in dread doom for its human owner’s
blasphemy. The new sector dispossesses the demons by not believing in
them and they, poor demons, banished by doubt, disappear. The new
people are the demons after all, doing that which men once feared, doing
that which demons do fear; whether venturing in the dark or flying to the
moon.
So it is that the concept of “demonization’’, of the passing of the spirits,
reflects both survivals and discontinuity. It dramatizes the split within the
villager’s mind as old gods are submerged by new gods and new ways. Only
those true to the old ways can “‘see’’, because for the others there is nothing
to see; only those bound to the old can have light shadows, because only
they are intimate with the world of spirits and of shades, and only they can
be affected by the sacred laws which say that one who approaches death or
violates the sacred ground will have his shadow lighten until, like the flitting
Vittora, it leaves the person altogether.

Demon Possession
Demon possession is a different proposition. The narratives make it
clear that it explains temporary states in which the individual behaves
in ways ordinarily foreign to him. The stranger that accounts for this is
one inside the person and, for lack of a better term, he is called a demon.
Demon possession accounts for anger, for unusual physical strength, for
madness, for epilepsy, and for frenzies. It is interesting to note that the
word “‘genius” may be used interchangeably with “‘demon’’ in discussing
possession.
Dodds (68) has done a superb job of reviewing the beliefs about possession
in ancient Greece and, beginning with the Iliad, observes that supernatural
agencies were held accountable for rage, for mysterious energy, for madness
— including prophetic madness of the sort mentioned in our narratives, for
ritual madness — which we link to the current notion of frenzy — and for
epilepsy. Referring to Homer, Dodds summarizes, ‘‘all departures from
normal human behaviour whose causes are not immediately perceived
whether by the subject’s own consciousness or by the observation of others,
1 Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 285.
 CONTINUITIES IN RESPONSE TO CRISIS 309
are ascribed to a supernatural agency.’ Clearly our narratives reflect
survivals of these tendencies; the Homeric literature allows us to see that
typical mechanism of externalization, personalization, and blame-throwing
have been part of the psychological apparatus of the Greek culture for many
centuries.
There are, of course, changes. It would appear that there is the substitu-
tion of nameless deities for ones named; Homer might write of Hector “‘that
Ares entered him and his limbs were filled with courage and strength’’;
whereas now we find it said ofa man (Chapter IV, No. 55), “‘he is very power-
ful because he is possessed by a genius.”’ Part of the shift is the artistry of the
source; in the Jiiad, Homer evoked specificity and imagery by referring to
Ares; whereas in Dhadhi, villagers would have no such artistry nor a
vocabulary to support it. On the other hand, the old gods are gone — or more
correctly are travelling anonymously as demons or fashionably as saints (St.
Dionysios, St. Artemisios, St. Demeter, St. Eleutherios; or again as saints in
disguise, for example, St. Elias for Helios, St. Nikolas for Poseidon, St.
Luke for Asclepius, the Panaghia for Artemis or other mother goddesses,
etc.)! and are not available to take responsibility by name for the infusion of
- altered states within a person.
Whether or not there has been a change in the names of the deities held
responsible for altered states, there is every reason to believe that the inter-
personal dynamics and ways of thinking which determine this method of
assigning explanation — the cause of and responsibility for acts being
attributed to someone outside the person — have not greatly changed over
the centuries. Further evidence of stability in the suspicion-fraught types
of interpersonal relationships and individual envious response to others
as well as to one’s self is to be seen in the continuity of belief in the evil
eye

The Evil Eye

Recent archaeological evidence at Catal Hiiyiik in Anatolia (166)
suggests that evil eye beliefs date to 6000 B.c., while Elworthy’s survey (72)
shows how widespread through the Mediterranean world has been this
concept of damage through envious power emanating from the eye.
Heliodorus (17g) in the third century A.p. wrote, ‘“When anyone looks at
what is excellent with envious eye he fills the surrounding atmosphere with a
pernicious quality and transmits his own envenomed exhalations into
whatever is nearest him.”
The eye, in antiquity, was believed to be capable of doing damage with-
out the knowledge or against the ostensible will of the possessor ;women were
believed to be the more powerful fascinators while, as targets, women and
children and domestic animals were most vulnerable. Charms against the
eye were those in use today (eyes, beads and amulets, hands, phallic symbols,
incantations, herbs of which rue was primary, threads of various colours,
spitting). Its effects were believed to include misfortune, illness and dis-
comfort, the destruction of physical objects, and death to men and animals.
1 For a critical review of the relative correspondence between modern saint and his ancient
Greek counterpart see Hamilton, (ro), especially pp. 13-37.
310 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

There is nothing in the previous paragraph which does not conform to

beliefs now extant in the Doxario region, nor does this brief summary of the
concepts of antiquity about the eye leave out any important feature of the
evil eye notions now held by the villagers there. One may conclude that
present evil eye beliefs have survived without important changes over
several thousands of years.
 OX,
THE PAST IN THE PRESENT (continued)
The Other World
hapter V presented narratives telling of visitations and foretellings in
dreams and prophecy, of dying and death, and of the soul. Regarding
prophecy first of all, the beliefs were to the effect that one could learn the
future through divinations based on the interpretation of objects or events,
through intuition or personal revelations; for example, a villager could
“*know”’ his death was impending, or could be apprised of this by a visitor —
one coming in a dream or in the flesh. Narrative divinations deal with
subjects which are both important and uncertain; a special sort are those
sought by the ill who go to a holy place to sleep, there to learn what the
gods intend for them; and, if they be fortunate, what means ought to be
employed in the treatment of their ailments.
There are a variety of means and circumstances through which one learns
of the unknown, present, or future. Omens include: foxes, snakes, birds,
animal cries, the distribution of marks on the shoulder blade of the sheep,
the aspect of the stranger or visitor, or the symbols of the dream; oracles
spoken by those in touch with the supernaturals, visions, apparitions and
dream visitations; the wanderings of the dreamer himself to strange places,
the visions in mirrors, the oil acting on water’s surface, the activity of fires
and coals or direct communication with the supernaturals. There is no
common denominator in the methods; their unity is found only in the wish
of the person to know, the belief that unknown can be made known, and the
conviction that power, either human or superhuman, can be employed to
this end.
Referring to the past, it may be assumed that the psychological conditions
for divination and prophecy have been constant; but as for the techniques
and beliefs about specific routes to this knowledge, one observes both con-
stancy and change in comparing past to present.
Aeschylus! gives to Prometheus the words, “It was I who arranged all
the ways of seercraft, and I first adjudged what things come verily true from
dreams... I gave meaning to the ominous cries . . . set in order the omens of
the highway . . . I taught of the smoothness of the vitals . . . the flaming
signs of the sky . . .’”’ while in Homer one finds Odysseus relying on the over-
heard chance words of the suitors to predict the success of his own ventures
against them (Odyssey, XVIII, 114 ff.). Here are illustrations of what were
probably widespread beliefs and practices. That assumptions and methods
of divination have survived nearly intact is shown by Lawson (147) in his
comparisons of then and now, but what Lawson observed in his travels
over Greece at the turn of this century covers a great deal more than the
1 Aeschylus Prometheus Bound D. Grene transl.
2 The klidonas, a voice heard by accident and taken as a presage, is discussed by Megas,
(165), 137 ff.). He states that its meaning has changed somewhat in modern usage, and de-
notes divination by various means, often by “speechless water”,
L
312 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

limited content of our narratives and observations in the Doxario region. Of

that area we may say that survivals of omens and augurs are found in the
importance attached to meetings on the road ~ recall the ill luck in meeting
priest or stranger; in the significance attached to signs of animals and birds
in the action of foreign objects dropped in water and in the action of fire
and coals. For example in Theocritus' one hears, ““The dogs are barking
through the town. Hecate is at the crossways” while in Panorio,
“The dog howls because he knows when his master or the sheep are to
die.”
In Panorio and among the Saracatzani one of the most common means for
divining is to read the shoulder blade of the sheep. This practice was known
to the Byzantine Psellus, but according to Cooper (56), was not found in
Europe before the twelfth century at which time it was imported from Asia
where it had arisen. Thus, while the general practice of using animals for
divination was ancient, either their actions while alive or the entrails while
dead, the specific practice of scapulamancy is more recent, having been
fitted to a pre-existing conceptual framework. Conversely, other specific
divination practices have been abandoned. The major difference between
Classical Greece and modern Greece with reference to omens and augury,
according to Lawson, is the disappearance of the professional diviner. In
addition, we would say that the variety of forms of divination has decreased
as has the frequency and importance of its employment.
With reference to dream visitations, past and present seem much the
same. Dodds (68) in his discussion of dreams says that in antiquity the Greeks
did not “‘have’’ dreams but “‘saw’’ them as the dream “‘visited”’ or “‘stood
over’”’ the dreamer. There were three types of dreams: the symbolic which
must be interpreted, the vision dream which enacts the future, and the
oracle dream which was god-sent. Among the god-sent dreams, says
Dodds, one of the most common was that which prescribed a dedication
or other religious act. He cites Plato writing in The Laws, ‘“‘many cults of
many gods have been founded . . . because of dream encounters... .”’ A
special form of the god-sent dream was that sought through incubation; the
goals of which were either to communicate with the dead or to find relief
from illness. It was the latter which was used in the Asklepion when the ill
sought sleep next to the earth, in a ritually pure state, in the hopes that the
healing god would visit them.
Dodds’s discussion describes almost exactly the same kinds of dreams
reported in the narratives from Panorio, Dhadhi and the Saracatzani. There
is no difference in the forms of the dreams nor in the assumptions made about
their origins outside the dreamer. Indeed (Chap. V, No. 9), the visitor to the
dreamer may nearly kill him. As for incubation dreams, there is evidence
that these have continued in Panorio until recently; that they may still be
sought occasionally at the Church of St. George in Nikephoros; and that a
parallel practice remains immensely popular on the island of Tenos. Except
for those who go to Tenos, the seeking of healing through dreams obtained at
holy places is on the wane in the Doxario region.
In antiquity, as in the present, dreams and prophecy are intimately linked
with death and the dead. In examining the narrative and supplemental
! Theocritus, Jdylls, II, 35. J. M. Edmonds transl.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 313
material about death itself, a variety of beliefs emerge. For some death
appears to be the end with little likelihood of any continuity of conscious-
ness following. For others death is to be followed by an existence patterned
exactly on village life as it is in the present; for still others discussion of death
implies a shadowy underworld, while yet others accept the Orthodox Christ-
ian notion of Paradise or hell rewarding one’s conduct in life.
While the inevitability of death must prompt fatalism, the extent to
which man is deemed to control events varies considerably. Some villagers
reflected a passive orientation which assigned to fate, or to the three Moirai,
the full detail of unfolding life and the timing of death. Others saw events as
capable of some control, granting man freedom to forestall his death either
in practical ways by living sensibly, or through propitiation of the super-
naturals, requesting the intervention of powers in prolonging life. Among
these latter one finds that death itself is personalized as Charon with whom
one can negotiate at least some tiny measure of the when and how of
dying.
In preparing for death, the mood of the dying seems to range from relief,
through acceptance, to fear and despair; although there is a hint, in the
washing and dressing up, of purification and preparation which gives some
support to Lawson’s lovely interpretation holding that Greeks believed
death to be a wedding between man and the gods. That dying is conceived
as a communion not only between men and gods but as a link between the
living and the dead is illustrated by the belief that the dying person can
carry messages from the former to the latter. Nevertheless, dying is not easy,
especially if one has behaved badly in life without having been found out:
for such the soul will leave the body only with agony. Similarly, if one
is to die away from one’s family or a beloved, the dying will be especially
difficult.
The rituals which surround death are not described in the narratives —
except for the ‘“‘parigoria’’ during which time neighbours sit with the
relatives telling funny or dirty stories after the funeral. The funeral customs
need not be detailed here; they are much the same throughout Greece and
descriptions of them are found elsewhere (20), (147), (237). The mourning
period lasts three years. There are Feasts of the Dead on the ninth and
fortieth day after burial and on the yearly anniversary.” On these occasions
the grave is decorated with flowers and a food offering — of kolliva, a
mixture of wheat, raisins, barley, pomegranate seeds, nuts, etc. — is offered
in the church and twice yearly by the whole village in the cemetery. The
funeral rites include washing the body in wine — after which the bowl
is broken and thrown away, the funeral dirge sung by the women as
soon as death has come, a procession in which the coffin is carried open
and during which the women may beat or scratch themselves upon
the head and face. As the writers on funeral customs in Greece point out,

1 That bargaining with Charon was not unknown among the ancients can be seen in
Euripides’ play, Alcestis. The faithful wife agrees to follow Charon to the house of Hades in
Admetus’ stead when he, reluctant husband, fails to persuade his parents to die in his
place. ;
2 Strict observance requires the following funeral services: on the first, third, ninth and
fortieth day; then every six months for three years and each year on All Souls Day.
314 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
each of these rituals is found to be a survival of an ancient practice; the
“‘parigoria’’ for example being described by Demosthenes (XVIII, 288) as
the ‘‘perideipnon’’.+
As far as the dead themselves are concerned, there are several separate
concepts about them. It is clear that upon dying the soul does not leave the
earth immediately but rather hovers around the house for the forty-day
period, until, hopefully, the body is “‘dissolved”’, at which time the spirit is
free to leave the earth — or according to Lawson — to reunite with the body in
a Pindaric Paradise.? Nevertheless the link with the living need not be
severed, for another set of beliefs holds that the ghosts of the dead are
to be seen following behind the living at each funeral, that the extra-
ordinary dead (saints) remain in the neighbourhood to preside over the
affairs of the living, that the bones of one’s ancestors should accompany
migrating villagers, and that periodically the spirits of the dead return
to earth — as one aspect of the kallikantzari presence during the Twelve Days
of Christmas (165). In addition, there is the special case of the body which
does not dissolve or which is not buried, and for which reason the dead is des-
tined to become a revenant or vrikolax; a material visitor to the village whose
activities may range from polluting the food to marriage and having children.
In danger of becoming vrikolakes are those who have not been buried, who
have been cursed, who have been murdered, who have killed themselves, who
have been anathematized by the priest, who have been evil; those who have
died alone, those who have been jumped over by man or beast, those
who have taken too much medicine, those whom “‘the earth rejects’’, those
whose burial ritual has been imperfectly performed, and those who are
polluted.
As for the soul itself we have already seen that, according to Harrison
(113), it is a concept which has developed from that of the ancient Ker.
Other current beliefs about the soul are rather indistinct; there is some
spirit of self or consciousness that may be called the soul; it can control
others when projected out of the eyes in soul-throwing. There is evidence
for a belief in soul-wandering in the sense that the dreamer leaves his body
to venture forth while asleep. Elsewhere there is reference made to notions
of soul-capturing through mirrors or photography, although such beliefs
were not recorded for people of the Doxario region itself.
Many of these separate and inconsistent beliefs related to death and
dying, and in turn to prophecy and dreaming, are survivals from earlier
periods. Argenti and Rose (20), Guthrie (r0o9), Harrison (173), Lawson
(174), Nilsson (180), Rose (232), Schmidt (239), Summers (249), and
others may all be referred to in this regard. In brief, the ancient beliefs
include the shadowy underworld and the doctrine of Paradise and hell (al-
though not with the present Orthodox flavour), while the predecessor of the
notion of after-life as a duplicate of the present world is very clearly seen in
the Eygptian and Minoan—Mycenaean practice of burying utensils and com-
panions (horses, dogs, terracotta figures) for service in the next life (18r).
We may say that we have found in the contemporary beliefs ideas which
1 For further description and references see Pauly-Wissowa (188) Bestattung and Rohde
(228), pp. 162 ff. and p. 194, n. 79.
2 See Pindar, Fragments, 129, 95,
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 315
appear to be fully the same as many of those held about death in 1400-
1200 B.C.
The fatalism which sees the moment of death defined at the moment of
birth can certainly be seen in the myth of Meleager to whose mother the
Moira announced, seven days after his birth, that he would die when a
certain log on the fire was burned.! Charon is well known of old, although in
the Doxario region he does not figure as a ferryman but simply as death
himself; this concept of death is in keeping with that found in the writings
of Suidas.? Lawson argues that in antiquity Charon was death and not just
a ferryman of the dead. He points out that the notion of Charon as a mere
ferryman is a literary conception of comparatively late development and
that phrases occur which hint at other offices and functions: the “door of
Charon” was that by which prisoners went to execution. “Charon’s stair-
case’? was that by which ghosts ascended to the stage as if they were return-
ing from the nether-world. Several poems and epigrams of the Greek
Anthology relate how Charon seizes men and carries them off; just as
modern Greeks speak of him nowadays.
There has been a range of moods about death in the past as now. One is
the Homeric notion of an unpleasant, mouldering and bitterly cold abode of
Hades which reflects the despair over death then as now. On the more opti-
mistic side, the promise of the Eleusinian mysteries or of the Church of Christ
“biting the snake of death’? are much the same, an accommodation to the
chthonic underworld through the initiation of the person into the mystery of
rebirth. In this mystery he will share, as Isocrates wrote (Panegyricus Oration
IV, 28. G. Norlin, transl.) “Two gifts she (Demeter) gave . . . initiation,
participation in which gives sweeter hopes concerning the end of life and
eternity;’’ a sweet hope reflected in the joy of the modern Greek on Easter
eve when he cries “‘Christ is truly risen’’. There is no reason to contend that
these two moods, or the two sets of beliefs which they represent, the Homeric
versus the mysterious, or the Achaean versus Pindar’s Paradise, are incom-
patible just because they are inconsistent. Rather itis likely that the two moods
may alternate within a modern villager; and for each mood there is a set of
cultural, traditional, or institutional supports. So it was in antiquity that
several moods and historical traditions, with their ritual and institutional
trappings, coexisted — although presumably with varying emphasis depend-
ing upon period and personality.
One aspect of hope, if not of joy, in the approach to death is that which
Lawson argues for, in antiquity and the present, in contending that death is
a marriage to Hades. He draws upon Sophocles’ Antigone, upon Aeschylus’
Prometheus and upon Pindar, Aristophanes, Isocrates and Artemidorus in
support. He then links funeral and marriage rituals in ancient and modern
times, showing how they are much the same: the ceremonial ablutions, the
anointing, the bridal dress of women and girls, the wearing of crowns and
garlands (chaplets), the association of the pomegranate in both rites, and so
on. Lawson’s scholarship and observations are germane to the practices in
her
1 And to which his mother Althaea herself later set fire after Meleager had killed
as well as
brothers; suggesting the intensity of the tie between brothers and sisters in ancient
modern times.
2 Xdpov Odvaros, “Charon-Death” is the title conferred to him by Suidas.
316 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
the Doxario region; in the words of one of the Panorio villagers, “‘and sens-
ing they would die, the girls arose and washed, and putting on their best
dresses did prepare themselves.”’
It is here that we find a very specific parallel between an ancient myth
and a modern tale. Recall that (in No. 7, Chapter II), a Panorio woman fears
the death of her unbaptized babies saying that such infants are con-
demned in the underworld to carry water to a baptismal font which is
emptied by the demons before it ever can be filled. The story reminds one of
the futile labours of Sisyphus! but more closely resembles the underworld
punishment accorded to the unmarried. Lawson discusses this, and citing
Frazer, observes that the punishment of having to carry water in a sieve
to a broken jar? is suffered by the Danaids who were punished for being
unmarried by having to fetch water for their bridal bath in vain, for the
vessel into which they poured had holes in the bottom. Thus the ancient
equivalence of the unmarried with those uninitiated into Demeter’s rites is
found in Panorio in a story which condemns those uninitiated into
Christianity (unbaptized) to the same eternal underworld punishment that
affected those who had not passed through the Eleusinian mysteries.
Lawson links the marriage with the gods to human sacrifice and to the
belief that the dying would carry messages to the dead. He notes that
Euripides (in Hecuba, 422), as Polyxena is about to be sacrificed has her
ask, ‘‘What am I to say from you to Hector or your aged husband?” and
which Virgil echoes when Neoptolemus answers Priam (Aeneid, II, 547)
‘These tidings then thou shalt carry and shalt go as messenger . . . Now
die.’’? While in Panorio today we hear, ‘“‘My sister is about to die .
yesterday the old women of the village kept coming by to see her. They
would sit there and give her messages and greetings to carry to their relatives
who had died.”’
With reference to the difficulty the soul has leaving the body, either
because of the undetected crimes committed by the dying person or the
absence of his beloved, one finds the ancient Greek belief that the soul ofa
dead man returns from whom a favourite possession is withheld. Live or
dead, women frequently figured in tales in which they would not let their
men rest until they had been given the clothes for which they hankered.
Herodotus (V. 92) tells how Melissa, Periander’s dead wife, reproached her
husband from her tomb for not having burnt the clothes of which he had
robbed the Corinthian women in order to please her. Unburnt, they were of
no use to her in death. To prove that it was truly she who was speaking, she
made herself known to him by a sign that only he could understand, adding

' Sisyphus, because he told his wife not to bury him, was able to return to the upper world;
thus showing an early condition for being a revenant. (See also Sophocles, Philoctetes,
622-C, 959-6; Euripides, Jphigenia in Aulis, 1612-13, for other types and conditions of
revenants.)
2 Plato, Gorgias 493 B.
* In a more comical vein the same belief in the dead as carriers, not only of messages but
also of concrete objects, is portrayed by Aristophanes in the Frogs. Xanthias is getting very
tired of carrying baggage on his trip to the underworld and implores his companion to
“hire some of those who are being carried forth to burial” to take up the burden instead.
They encounter a funeral procession and address the dead man: “You, I say! you, the
dead man! Fellow, will you carry some small baggage to Hades?”
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 317
that he had ‘“‘put his bread in a cold oven’’. By this he knew it was Melissa,
for indeed he had had intercourse with her dead body. Once again he
set forth to rob the Corinthian women of their clothes and after duly
burning these on her tomb, she was appeased. Another story of a dead
woman’s longing for adornment is told by the witty Lucian of Samosata,
who lived in the first century of our era, ridiculing the superstitions of his
contemporaries. In Lucian, Philopseudes, 27, Eucrates tells his sceptical
guest that his dead wife appeared to him while he was reading and sat
down in person beside him “‘just as Eucratides here (another guest) is
sitting now’’, and started to chide him for having neglected to burn one
of her gold sandals on her funeral pyre. Eucrates, wasting no time,
searched for the missing sandal, found it, and burnt it as he had been
bid.
A discussion of beliefs about death, the dead and the soul must necessarily
mention funeral practices. The most interesting aspects of these is the allusion
to burning the dead, contained in some of the accounts. The question of that
practice as a survival has already been noted in Chapter XVIII, especially
the difficulty in establishing the period in antiquity which one wishes to
use as a base line for comparison. In most parts of Greece and the islands
burial was the customary practice from Neolithic times to the Minoan
and Sub-Mycenaean period. By the ninth century B.c., a change in
these practices had occurred; cremation became predominant, as recent
archaeological evidence has demonstrated; even though the oral tradi-
tion, Homer, reports this practice for an earlier period (Mycenaean) ;
and in some parts of Greece sporadic traces have been found, indicating
that here and there cremation was indeed practised in earlier days.
However, in historic times (after the middle of the eighth century B.c.)
both cremation and inhumation were customary, with some local and
temporal variations; although burial remained the method of choice in
Athens. In most other places burial was reserved only for unimportant or
polluted individuals, women, suicides, slaves, and children; while male
aristocrats (with the exception of Spartan kings) were cremated. In spite of
the local prevalence of inhumation in Athens, when circumstances demanded
it, cremation was used instead. For instance, the great Athenian lawgiver,
Solon, was cremated and, to make sure that the island Salamis whose
conquest he had inspired would remain securely attached to its Athenian
overlords, Solon’s ashes were scattered over the island.
In later times burial became once more prevalent all over Greece. Per-
haps the resumption of the earlier funeral practice was a result of the rising
costs of cremation and the shortage of wood caused by the denudation of the
forests. Perhaps it was also due to the emergence of the mystery religions,
which borrowed heavily from the early pre-Indo-European deities and rites.
Linton (153) suggests that one may consider the Olympian gods (imported
into Greece during the Doric invasions and of Indo-European origin) as
dead after the battle of Salamis. Their demise created a gap which was
filled by a return to the older tradition. In addition, the increasing urbaniza-
tion and the anonymity of the individual which resulted, the loss of extended
kinship ties and assurance of family continuity through the following
generations, could be compensated for by joining the new secret sects with
318 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
their lure of new affiliations and promise of personal immortality. The
mystery religions required that earth be returned to earth; thus the initiates
had to be buried, not cremated.
Although there is no complete agreement among scholars,? it seems likely
that cremation was a northern import; its first appearance coincides with
the third Doric invasion into Greece. It is known that these nomadic
warriors did follow the Indo-European custom of cremating their dead.
Scholars have advanced a variety of theories regarding the significance of
the change in burial customs; many believe that it reflected a profound
change in concepts regarding the nature of the soul and its after-life. Just
exactly what the nature of this change was, is hard to determine. Nilsson
(180a) who did an exhaustive study of the subject, does not commit himself
to any single explanation. It would appear that the various practices and
belief-systems of invaders and invaded fused, or survived side by side, with-
out anyone being disturbed by inconsistencies. Concepts of a separate abode
of the soul from which it could not return (the Homeric view) blended with-
out apparent conflict into concepts of the lasting power and influence of the
dead in the neighbourhood of his grave-site (a view connected with hero-
cults and associated with inhumation). It is possible that the constant
mixing of races, tribes and customs in pre-historic Greece opened a number
of choices to the Greeks of historic times, multiplying the available rationali-
zations.
Thus, in the Vedic tradition (Indo-European) cremation was essential to
let the soul depart to the God Yama, conveyed by the fire God Agni and
purified by him of death’s pollution. Inhumation of the intact body was
deemed essential among the Egyptians and those people (the early
Greeks, for example, who had cults to the dead heroes) who believed
in an after-life of the whole person, and not only of that of his soul or
shadow. The Greeks did not give up concepts derived from the hero-cult
when the idea of an incorporeal soul banished to an inaccessible realm
was introduced. Cremation was not irreconcilable with appeasing the
dead by offering them food and drink; nor was it contrary to the notion
that the dead could be invoked by proper sacrifices to help and to wreak
vengeance.
By 458 3.c. an Athenian theatre audience saw no contradiction in
Aeschylus’ explanation that “‘when the fire burns and tears with teeth at
the dead man, it cannot wear out the heart of will. He (the dead) shows his
wrath in the afterdays’’ (The Libation Bearers, 324 ff., Lattimore trans.).
Orestes and Electra, standing at the tomb of their father Agamemnon,
address him, who according to Homeric legend had been safely cremated
and whose soul therefore would be presumed to dwell impotently in Hades;
1 For more details on the complex subject of changing funeral customs and beliefs about the
soul, see Rohde, (223); Frazer, (95), i-101; iii-51, 106; iv-12, 68, 199; xi-18,174; Harrison,
(112), pp. 70, 509 ff.; Nilsson, (r8r), pp. 595 ff.; Whitman, (250); Burnett, Soul, in
Hastings, (115) II, 7738-42; Hall, (105), pp. 188 ff.; Pauly-Wissowa, (188) 3, 311; Ridge-
way, (226), pp. 74, 85, 119, 150 and Chapter VII; James, (138). Wilamowitz-Moellen-
dorff (261, p. 299) suggests that cremation became more expensive than burial and there-
fore fell into disuse.
* For instance Whitman (260), suggests that cremation may have arisen independently in
Attika.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED _ 319
they invoke him as though he were present and could hear and advise
them.
As time went on and inhumation became once more general, cremation
could be expected to be reserved for extraordinary situations only. Indeed,
that is the case today, in spite of the burial rites required by the Orthodox
church. Cremation is the last resort to banish once and for all the returning
dead. In the 1800s Summers (249) cites observers viewing ritual cremations;
in our own narratives we have evidence for the burning of corpses suspected
of being vrikolakes.
The presence of the dead on earth for a period after death may be pre-
sumed from the practice of providing offerings of meals of food and drink at
the funeral in Minoan-Mycenaean times and, later, on the second, eighth,
and thirtieth day after burial on the grave itself. The “perideipnon’’ or
gathering of friends after the funeral — at which time the bereaved family and
friends ate and drank, sending some of the food to the grave, also suggests
an awareness of the presence of the dead. As Harrison (72) has pointed out,
ghosts were feared and ceremonial offerings of food and wine were made as
part of rituals of riddance and aversion. In addition the spirits were con-
sidered prudes to be warded off with profanity. Obscenity was connected
with the rites of Demeter and Dionysus (63) while phallic references have
been associated not only with worship but with aversion rites (235). Given
these beliefs, and lacking any further description of the perideipnon itself, it
is not unreasonable to propose that this feast of consolation had not as its re-
ligious purpose (apart from its clearly supportive social function) the easing
of the bereavement, but rather the appeasement and riddance of the ghost of
of the dead through feeding, praise, and possibly even profanity. In this case
we find ourselves using a present practice as a means of deducing the past.
Certainly the power of the dead, issuing from the underworld, is one of the
fundamental convictions of the classical world. The invocation of dead Aga-
memnon by Electra (Aeschylus, op. cit.) is illustrative. Agamemnon’s ghost
was an “alastor” an avenging principle; a notion first given that name by
Aeschylus. An ‘‘alastor” was the blood feud incarnate, the murdered dead
who haunts the living throughout the generations until new shedding of
blood has appeased his thirst.
Another example of the fear with which the “‘living dead’’ inspired the
people is the custom of depriving the murder-victim or the executed criminal
of the wherewithal for retribution by cutting off his extremities and string-
ing them on a chain around his neck. Then the rope would be drawn under
the armpits of the dead man, hence the name maschalismos (from pacydAat
armpits) for this practice.t
That the dead did not rest in their graves is also illustrated by the sig-
nificance of the Anthesteria as a series of ceremonies of purification and for
the warding off of the returning dead, much like the present Twelve Days
of Christmas during which time the kallikantzari return (173), (165).
With reference to the vrikolakes, one encounters a number of survivals, to
which beliefs are added that are clearly innovations from Slavic or Christian
1 For a detailed discussion see Rohde (228) Appendix II where references to classical
authors mentioning the maschalismos are cited. Lawson (147) cites a survival of this very
custom at Santorini when he visited it.
ithe
320 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
sources. The detailed discussions by and Lawson (147) Summers (249) are
highly informative; in brief, one may say that the conditions which were
believed to produce revenants in ancient times included lack of burial and
suicide; persons cursed or murdered, or those who were evil, or polluted
returned from the dead to haunt the living. From the first century A.D. on,
such superstitions flourished luxuriantly and Lucian of Samosata has many a
satirical remark to make about the credulity of the citizens. He tells how at
a gathering at Eucrates’ house, the host vainly tries to convince his friend,
the unbeliever Tychiades, that spirits, phantoms, and the souls of the dead
wander about. An impressively bearded philosopher comes to his host’s
aid, suggesting ‘‘Perhaps what Tychiades (the sceptic) means is that only the
ghosts of those who died by violence return: if a man hanged himself, or if
his head was cut off, or if he was impaled, or if he departed from life in some
such manner; and that only those who died according to the decree of the
fates do not return. For if this is what he is saying, we cannot reject it
altogether.’’+
The Christian innovations appear to be the conditions of having been
anathematized by a priest or having the burial services incorrectly per-
formed (although this is but a variant of the lack of burial notion that was
antique); the Slavic injection is the notion that a man jumped over by
animals will become a revenant. In this case one cannot overlook the very
early significance of leaping or jumping over (173) as a means of revitaliza-
tion or rebirth; in consequence of which one must suggest that the later
Slavic notion may well be built upon a primitive substrate found in Greece.
The idea that one who takes medicine and dies, subsequently will return,
seems to be a recent notion.
With reference to the soul itself we have already noted that the idea of
Ker which becomes a spirit of death and a guiding personal spirit is an
ancient one. Socrates had his genius, a spirit both of and apart from him.?
The genius which possesses the peasant today, either as Vittora (the word
itself is Slavic as Schmidt points out (239) ), as demon, or as soul may be
traced to the Kers and demons of old. As for the other beliefs which connect
the soul (or shadow, or self) with death and with dreams, these too are very
old. Soul-wandering and soul-capture are ideas extant among many non-
literate peoples, Fejos (88); the relationship between sleeping and death is
also commonly posited by them. It is such a relationship which is observed
in the modern Greek usage which speaks of the “‘sleeping’’ of the Panaghia
to describe her death, reminding one of Hesiod, who wrote of Death and
Sleep as twins, the children of Night.®
In summarizing the parallels between the past and present in regard to
beliefs about man’s ventures into the other world; whether through
divination and oracle, through sleep and dreams, or in death itself, one must
join with Schmidt, Lawson, Guthrie, Nilsson, and others in concluding that

1 Lucian, Philopseudes, 29.

* Aside from his own, very special ‘daimon’ which told Socrates only when not to engage in
certain actions, he also believed in a different kind of ‘“‘daimon” or genius, one that is
possessed by every person. That genius guides each person at his death to the other world.
Plato, Phaedo, 108 A, B and 113 D.
5 Hesiod, Theogony, 212, 756; and The Works and Days, 116.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 321
many of the beliefs and practices of rural Greece are identical with those in
pre-Christian times and that there is as much in these practices that is
continuous over time, as is novel or recently introduced. What is new is the
Christian dogma and ritual which has overlaid as well as absorbed the pre-
Christian. Christian priests, institutions, and services have made the funeral
rituals more elaborate and have imposed Christian names and images upon
some of the supernaturals with whom one communicates in that other world.
These are very important additions and rich in Christian tradition. Never-
theless, these elaborations and substitutions do not represent any significant
departure in orientation to the other world. The attitudes and feelings and
the functions of rituals remain much the same.

The Extraordinary Dead

What has been said about the continuity in attitudes towards death is
supported by the examination of the narrative material with reference to the
nature of the extraordinary dead; those once human beings who retain a
spiritual — and sometimes physical presence — in the community. In the
Doxario region these are the members of the Christian pantheon of whom it
would appear that the Panaghia is the most important followed, if one bases
ratings of importance on frequency of allusions and appeals, by the saints,
Christ and God.
We have already indicated (Chapter VI) that to the folk of the Doxario
region Christ is a powerful supernatural, although by no means omnipotent,
with attributes of the magician-sorcerer, the light-shadowed, the healer,
and vrikolax. He visits people in dreams, may appear in the community,
intervenes personally to punish or to reward, and has made local appear-
ances demanding the establishment of a church. By no means all villagers
subscribe to any one attribute or function of Christ; there are some who
would not classify him as a supernatural at all, contending he may never
have existed and implying that he is an invention of that outside city
tradition which the church represents. In any of his attributes he can be
found to have early predecessors. In addition, as a risen god promising the
return of spring? and rebirth for men, he can be compared with Dionysus-
1 Asclepius, the healing god, was also reputed to have raised the dead, for which Zeus killed
him.
mentioned
2 As Pausanias has remarked, nothing is consistent in Greece: Not all the divinities
as Spring gods. For example, Dionysus had four major festivals in
were always worshipped
extended from winter to spring. He was a winter god at
Athens, during a season which
and winter
Delphi where he ruled in the coldest months; he had a number of autumn
his festivals, the An-
festivals in various other parts of Greece; on the other hand, one of
in February
thesteria was celebrated at the beginning of spring. While the Anthesteria began
of the month
when it is still cold and stormy, the ancients nevertheless derived the name
began to
(Anthesterion) and of the festival from the word blossom (dv0y) because the earth
m Magnum
bear flowers, and because flowers were offered during the ceremonies (Etymologicu
on; some con-
Graecam, s.v.’Av§eor}pia). Modern scholars, however, dispute this interpretati
a primeval ghost festival, lasting for three days,
sider the Anthesteria to have been originally
been no consensus
which was appropriated by Dionysus at a later period. There has
derive it from the
regarding an alternative interpretation of the festival’s name which would
a), which makes it a feast of revocation, as proposed by
verb to revoke (dvabéccac8
the dead if not of
Verral, (248), XX, 115. This brings it close to the notion of a return of
Farnell, (85) vol. V,
resurrection, as discussed by Harrison (112) pp. 47-49); and by
322 ' THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Zagreus, Orpheus or Adonis, Osiris-Serapis; or as a healer his predecessors
are to be found in Asclepius and Apollo; as the son of the Panaghia (herself
having attributes of the great mother) he may be compared with Attis;
and among minor deities, with Priapus.
It is beyond our scope to compare Christ, especially as presented in
Pauline Christianity, with other saviours preceding him. One may rest on
Professor Edman’s conclusion, cited by Chamberlain and Feldman (46) to
the effect that there are striking similarities among the saviours of the several
mystery religions.
Of special interest is the importance of the folk conception of Christ, one
inferred from the narrative materials arid supplemental discourse. It is a
very personal one with the familiar attributes drawn from local tradition in
contrast to the religious or cult aspects of Christ as propounded in Orthodox
dogma. It is the latter which presents Christ as the risen saviour, an aspect
which is undeniably important and to which the rural people enthusiastically
subscribe during the Easter ceremonies. Nevertheless this aspect, itself
having strong elements of the Eleusinian and other mysteries, is an in-
stitutional one demanding community participation. Just because the
participation of the peasants of Panorio and Dhadhi, and of the Saracatzani
shepherds in the community Easter festivals is limited to two or three events,
this aspect is necessarily less salient in their lives. One may view the Easter
ceremonial as a spiritual revival which reinforces a conviction that there
will be rebirth in the afterlife. But those convictions, which are revived at
Easter, are by no means maintained in any constant state of belief; rather
they must coexist with the more familiar local conceptions of Christ and
orientations to death. In consequence one finds that local practice tends to
recapitulate historical developent; the familiar localized supernatural
with magical powers is the basic figure. Upon this image is erected the cult
figure of a saviour who has risen from death. And upon that image is
constructed the profound moral, spiritual and philosophical framework of
Christianity. The villager subscribes to all three levels of interpretation, but
the orders of priority in thought and religious action decrease as one moves
up the ladder of elaboration.
The Panaghia is the most important single deity for those concerned with
the achievement of health and fertility. It is to her that the women turn for
aid, because it is the women of the village who are the family healers and
nurses, their patroness must necessarily receive the largest number of pleas.
For the women of Dhadhi and Panorio the Panaghia is a mother, a healer,
a bestower of children, a giver of health. But she is also demanding and
naught is given for which something is not offered in return. As one who
demands, she is capable of ferocity should promises made to her not be kept.

pp. 224 ff.), among others. A holy marriage between the queen-archon and Dionysus was
accomplished on the second day of the festival — the Choes. Some scholars believe it to
have been a spring-fertility rite to ensure crops and fruit and offspring for the coming year.
This interpretation is by no means shared by all [see Deubner (63) and Wilamowitz-
Moellendorf (267)].
The Great Dionysia in Athens took place a month later, when the air was getting quite
warm enough, at least for the ancient Greeks, to sit out of doors at the dramatic performances
in honour of the god.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 323
Her spiritual geography is both local and general. There is one Panaghia
but she has many forms. Her primary healing centre is Tenos, yet many a
village, including Panorio, has its own Panaghia, personified in the ikon in
her church and perceived as protecting the women of her village. She will
perform miracles in her local centres, but for those whose needs are pressing
the pilgrimage to Tenos — there to sleep on the hallowed ground — is
recommended.
This figure of a nurturent fertility-producing mother goddess, one
demanding an offering of the first born in symbolic sacrifice, one suggestive
of savagery in her vengeance when denied, is hardly novel to the Mediter-
ranean world. In Greece, attributes of Artemis, Demeter, Hera are hers,
while outside Greece her similarity to Astarte, Cybele and others is recogniz-
able. Similarly, the fashion of a general deity worshipped at a primary cult
centre but having specific local forms or epiphanies was characteristic of
pre-Christian Greece. That the goddess, for such she is, is no longer re-
presented as a statue but now by the ikon which has godly powers, does
of course represent a change in practice. Finally, the fear of the Panaghia’s
vengeance for vows unkept, returning the affliction to the sufferer, is an
established ancient theme. Such conduct is attributed, for example, to
Asclepius (739).
And to Asclepius then, as to the Panaghia now, ex votos of the parts
healed or to be healed, were brought by sufferers. As for the present cult site
of Tenos, it was not a site of worship for a mother goddess, at least as far as is
now known. However, it was a holy place with a healing spring and a
temple dedicated to Poseidon, who was there worshipped as the Healer, and
to Amphitrite.+
With reference to the saints they present a varied group including ortho-
dox canonized historical figures, well-known ancient gods transformed to
Christian respectability, and otherwise unknown local heroes and super-
naturals whose ancient worship continues in a more modern guise. Among
the healing saints in the Doxario region are Saints Kosmas and Damianos,
the Anargyroi “‘moneyless ones’’ who take no fee for healing, St. Modhistos,
who cures the animals, St. Paraskevi (Saint Friday) and St. Panteleimon for
the eyes; Saint Marina, whose holy springs are purifying, Saint George
of Nikephoros who gives guidance in dreams for healing men and animals,
Saint Antonios, who could gather the exotika and command them to undo
the paralytic damage they had done, St. Dimitrios who calms the upset,
Saints Athanasios and Dimitrios and George who are credited with warding
off and killing the plague, Koukoudi; St. Serafim, who protects the wheat,
St. Eleutherios for childbirth, and many others.
It is difficult to trace these saints to individual deities in antiquity, for
then as now the attributes of a supernatural varied by place, period and
worshipper. We may, however, see general similarities either in function or
in location. Saints Kosmas and Damianos as twins bear a resemblance to
Castor and Pollux. St. George of Nikephoros as a healing dream visitor is a
direct descendant of Asclepius and Amphiaraus, whereas his church is built
near a Minoan-Mycenaean site holy to some as yet unknown deity of that
period. As a localized St. George he also slew the dragon; his nuns offer
1 See Lawson (147) and Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (261).
324 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
oracles bearing the word of the saint; a saint who is a patron of healing and
prophecy. There is in this St. George an unmistakable and dramatic
survival of Apollo himself.
Saint Marina of the holy springs has her church next to the ancient site of
a temple holy to Themis while St. Paraskevi of Dhadhi has her chapel built
upon an ancient Mycenaean-Minoan site. In her church are venerated
bones which the locals say “‘are very old and are those of a local St. Para-
skevi who is from here; not the St. Paraskevi from outside’’. This veneration
for bones — implicit in the transport of the bones of one’s ancestors which the
Asia Minor people engaged in — and the associated belief, seen here in the
limited local power assigned to the saint, that the dead saint could wield
effective power only in the neighbourhood of his tomb, is one encountered in
ancient times (237). It would appear that this site of St. Paraskevi offers the
continuation of a hero cult from ancient times. It may have been holy to
Athena or Demeter, for these goddesses were guardians of eyesight (e.g.
Athena Ophthalmitis).1 The St. Eleutherios? who aids the women in
childbirth is very likely descended from that Eileithyia “‘she who comes’’ to
the aid of women; she who, as seen in the drama of Apollo’s birth, was the
midwife of old; while Saint Antonios bears a resemblance to Artemis who,
on Keos (modern Zea) as St. Artemidos protected the children and
undid the mischief wrought by nymphs. A good instance of this is reported
by Theodore Bent :* To St. Artemidos’ church are brought the children who
have been “‘struck by the Nereids’’ and are wasting away in consequence.
The child’s clothes are stripped away and left behind at the church and
new ones are substituted. In his child-healing function, the Saint perpetuates
the role of Artemis, Nurturer of Children, of Boys, and of Lads and Lasses
(7avdoTpdgos, Kovpotpddos, diAopetpag). St. Dimitrios in his name
represents a survival of Demeter, while as a sword slayer of evil he can be
compared to Apollo or Perseus.
While the names and characteristics of the saints represent admixtures of
the pagan and Christian, there can be recognized in the specifics of worship
and supplication a variety of survivals. The offerings of course are outstand-
ing among these: sacrifices of goats, sheep or bulls; gifts of money or objects
of value; or the practice of giving ex votos representing the sought-after
object. For example, a peasant with a leg ailment will attach a silver ex voto
of a leg to the ikon of the saint. Similar too, to ancient ritual is the attach-
ment of a (waxed) coin to the image of the god; nowadays, if the coin
pressed upon the ikon stays there, this is taken as a sign of the saint’s favour.
While continuities may be extensive, dissimilarity between past and
present is impressive. Whatever their origins the saints are an integrated
1 See Pausanias, op. cit., xviii, 2.
* Eleutheria means freedom in ancient and modern Greek. This resembles the use in
English of “delivery” and in German of “Entbindung” for childbirth. Nilsson (18r) believes
that the etymology of ‘‘Eileithyia” is related to the name “‘Eleusis” and not to the verb “‘to
come’’.
§ Although Lawson (147) underscores the link between St. Artemidos and Artemis quoting
Bent, The Cyclades, to that effect; it should be noted that Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (261)
p. 2, n. 2) puts little faith in this thesis. However, he fails to present any documentation for
his scepticism. One need not accept that scepticism, however, since it is apparent that he
has not read Bent, or at least not carefully.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 325
part of the Christian system, their worship far more affected by general
practices than varied by specific local ones. The places of worship have
become fairly standardized throughout Greece; the design of the Orthodox
church is fairly constant whether it be large or small and the paraphernalia
of the church — the candles, incense, holy table, ikons and so forth — speak of
an institutional religion supported by a system of dogma and ritual, much in
contrast to the diversity of temples, cults and practices during classical and
especially hellenic or roman times.
In Chapter VI two magicians figured among the extraordinary dead:
Solomon and Cyprian. Of the two Solomon is by far the more important; to
him is attributed the Solomonaiki which apparently is the Key of Solomon, the
book of magic that has been so well discussed by Butler (42). Reference to
Solomon’s magical book describing how to summon demons appears in the
first century A.D.; while Psellus in the eleventh century speaks of Solomon’s
treatise on stones and demons; by the fourteenth century the Key of Solomon
was a handbook for European sorcerers and their apprentices. Its contents
offer power over the spirits, over nature, over men; the techniques for trans-
forming physical substances, and achieving invisible states, and for divina-
tion. These magical goals can be found expressed in early Babylonian and
Egyptian texts and may be assumed to have been present in at least some
Greek rituals. Spellbinding words to compel the powers are of course the
Solomonaic key; the magician to be able to use them is required to be with-
out pollution, again a tradition with early origins.
As for Cyprian, who wrote his Confessions around 380, he had been a
famous magician before he was converted to Christianity. His training in
magic had been thorough, as befits a responsible professional. Since tender
childhood he had been dedicated to Apollo and was an initiate in his wor-
ship. Before he was seven he went to the mysteries of Mithra; at the age of
ten he carried the torches of Demeter at her mysteries and also became a
temple servant of Athena. He learned to understand the interpretation of
oracles made by sounds on Mt. Olympus, the dwelling place of the gods. He
writes that there he saw trees and herbs performing miracles, and bands of
demons, gods and goddesses. His parents were anxious for him to know the
secrets of earth, air and sea, so at the age of fifteen he went to Argos at the
time of the Mysteries of Hera to be initiated in them and to Lacedaemonia to
be taught those of Artemis. Other crafts he learnt from the barbarians:
interpretation of omens, of the flight of birds, of various sounds, including
the
those of the dead and of many others; the Phrygians instructed him in
art of inspecting the liver of animal sacrifices. Not content with these
preliminaries he went to Egypt when he was twenty. At Memphis he hoped
he learnt
to obtain the key to all mysteries. There, in underground temples
which
about the relations of demons with matters of earth, what they abhor,
magical bindings and which objects please them, how one can
stars, which
the darkness, how they
rid oneself of them, in what manner they live in
produce
snvade bodies and souls, and many other secrets by which demons
years learning this and then went on to Chaldea
their effects. He spent ten
this
where he received instruction in astrology. Only after he had completed
He stated: “‘Nothing
schooling did he feel that he was master of all sciences.
me, neither in
on the earth, nor in the sea, nor in the air was hidden from
326 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
the way of apparition (phasmatikon), nor in the way of knowledge; no
changeful thing (polytropon), no mechanical, no artificial things, not even
legerdemain with the text of Scripture, and all such things.”
In summarizing continuities and discontinuities with reference to the
extraordinary dead it is apparent from our materials and observations that
survivals recognized elsewhere in Greece exist in the Doxario region as well.
In the saints may be seen attributes of Olympian gods, of mythical figures
and of cult heroes, themselves emerged from earlier cults of the dead.
The concept of a saint is certainly evolved from the cult of heroes,
persons presumed once to have lived who, upon dying, come to be vener-
ated as supernatural powers and who remain in spirit —- and sometimes
materially —in the neighbourhood of their burial. The veneration of relics
and the holiness assigned to the tombs are but illustrations of these early
practices.
While these pre-Christian elements are fundamental to current practice it
must once again be stressed that the Christian fabric is a most important
innovation. The brotherhood of saints, the dogma and institutions of the
church, and the importance of priestly intermediaries and their rituals have
wrought dramatic changes in the Greek religious composition of which the
early elements are but a part. It may be that there has been no great change
in the attitude of a villager towards the consecrated doctrinal supernaturals
whether these be heroes, Olympians or saints; in their respective heydays all
have been consecrated, institutionalized, respectable and relatively “‘safe’’,
which means that they are or were treated by means of ceremonies of
tendance and obligatory exchange, and were conceived as human in their
own thought and feelings.
On the other hand it does appear that religious growth has not only been
philosophical and moral, but that it has also been administrative; which is to
say, that the worship of saints is likely to have been affected by centraliza-
tion, bureaucratization, the doctrine of the necessary priestly intermediary
and dogmatic authoritarianism. While no substantial data on village
religion in antiquity exists, one suspects that the rural folk are, by virtue
of institutional intrusions, one step farther removed from collective worship
of saints than they were from the worship of heroes and Olympians. On
the other hand, the steadfastness of informal religious practice in the
home can be presumed, and it is in these family attitudes and services
rather than in the institutional ones that one expects the greatest degree of
continuity.
But the informal patterns are changing too, and if one may compare the
narratives and recollections therein with contemporary observations, one
concludes that the present last half century is one of immense transition. It is
of course easy to over-estimate change; Schmidt visited Greece in the 1860s
and spoke of disappearing practices which nevertheless remained to be
seen by Lawson at the end of the century. Lawson in turn saw these as fast
fading and yet there is little reported by Lawson that contemporary
observers, Argenti and Rose for example, have not seen in recent years.
*'Translated by M. P. Nilsson, (182), vol. III, pp. 106 ff. For a comprehensive bibliography
on Cyprian, including the relationship of his legend — even more marvellous than his re-
markable history — to that of Dr. Faustus, see Festugiére, Trismégiste, vol. I, pp. 369 ff.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 327
Nevertheless, in our investigations,! especially our observations of the
villagers’ response to life crises, we cannot help but note that physicians are
not only competing with saints and priests for the attention of the villager in
times of duress but that if present trends continue, the extraordinary dead will
cease to be salient in the lives of the rural folk. They will no doubt continue
to play a role as subjects of story telling and moral-religious education, but
as actual local resources their importance is fading. It is necessary here to
emphasize “‘local’’, for there is no evidence of a decrease in the significance
of cult centres such as the Panaghia of Tenos or Christ of Spata.
The special importance of Tenos and the Panaghia leads to one further
comment. As practical resources the saints may be losing ground while
Christ, at his major centre of Spata, is holding his own. But the Panaghia
shows no signs of diminishing importance. Her worship is sustained by
womenfolk, although by no means excluding men, and the forms of that
religious fellowship between mortal women and the Mother of mothers are
essentially personal. That intimacy is conservative and, except for its
revitalization by pilgrimage to Tenos, does not require any collective action
or formal institutional support. We suspect that survivals of the worship of
the mother deity are least likely to be eroded; indeed that in rural Greece
even with the advent of great progress in public health and provision of
medical services and increased human environmental controls, they will not
vanish. We presume that the Greek rural woman will continue to rely on the
Panaghia as long as she is anxious and in need of a powerful friend of the
same sex. Her needs and anxiety are not likely to change as long as she
remains in a subordinate social status which evokes considerable strain, as
long as her own fulfilment depends upon her capacity to have babies, and
as long as poverty and an arduous life threaten not only her own functions,
social and physiological, but threaten the health and security of her children.
In time, of course, these conditions will also change as education and increas-
ing standards of living become available to rural people. But these changes
are likely to follow rather than precede the provision of medical care and
environmental control through government welfare programmes; that is
why the Panaghia may foresee long years of love and loyalty from her many
Greek children.

Powers and Dominions

There are many supernatural beings who are not conceived of as having
lived once as humans but rather, while in possession of one or more human
traits (albeit sometimes exaggerated considerably) as having always been
among the immortals. Among these in Chapter VII were considered the
myriad nameless demons and genii, the ordinarily more restricted class of
exotika (comprising for the most part spirits of woodland, wild, and
water), the specific demons ordinarily conceived of in human form — the
nereids, Koukoudi, angels, moirai, Charon, the lamias, the kallikantzari,
and the Christian God; and those specific beings ordinarily conceived of as
animal or interchangeably human and animal: the Dangerous Hour,
Moros, Stringlos, the Devil and devils.
1 See the data presented in Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35):
328 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

We have already observed that the names and classes of some of these
beings are somewhat ill-defined and interchangeable among the peasants.
The supernatural spirits, whether general or specific, do have in com-
mon characteristics which link them intimately with human affairs; they
are wilful, powerful, capable of being seen, talked to and influenced by
particular humans; they are sources of danger and benefit depending upon
the actions and state of the human with whom they have contact and
depending upon the supernatural beings’ own mood and perception of
events.
That the concept of supernatural beings having these characteristics was
well-known in ancient Greece hardly needs emphasizing. There is no
characteristic ascribed to a contemporary class or person of supernatural
powers that was not ascribed to such powers in pre-Christian times. Further-
more, among these classes and individual supernaturals there are none
whose individual characteristics were not either fully developed or at least
anticipated in the Greek religion.
Specific correspondence is to be observed, as many scholars have noted,
in the names, abodes, functions, targets, and styles of action for the
demons and genii, the nereids, the Moirai and Charon. While dissimilar in
important ways, one can also find common elements in the conceptions
which link the Christian God to Zeus; for example, neither are omnipotent
nor omniscient, both have human foibles, both hold rather loose sway over a
motley collection of principalities and powers, both are older males asso-
ciated with weather and the sky (rural people say ‘“‘God is thundering” or,
“God is pissing’’) ;and in worship both must compete with so many other
deities and powers that the proportion of time which village folk spend
thinking about, serving, or petitioning the paramount deity is but a small
fraction of the total of their religious action. Limited but important
correspondence is to be observed in the similarity between Ker and angel
(112) and between the angel! and Assyrian winged figures (94), and between
the Lamias and the ancient Empusa (147).
Among the woodland spirits the nereids are the most frequently men-
tioned today. They correspond directly to the nymphs of old, although their
domain is, as Lawson (147) points out, far more widespread than in the
ancient world. Nevertheless, clear survivals in their traits exist; for example
their capacity, along with other exotika, to transform themselves into other
shapes, is the same as the nereid Thetis showed in her struggle against
Peleus.? Likewise the magical scarf, which is a key to power, is encountered
in the Odyssey* in the gift of the sea nymph Leucothea to Odysseus. That the
nereids do harm, seizing or striking, is reflected in Socrates’ whimsical use
of being “‘nympholeptos’’4 (caught by the nymphs) to make fun of his own
1 The word angel is derived from the Greek “‘aggelos” (ayyeAos) meaning messenger and
indicating a function or office rather than a nature, as St. Augustine had noted. It has been
assumed that the Greek word was borrowed from the Persian ‘“‘mounted envoy”’. According
to Boisacq (37) “‘aggelos”’ is related to the Sanscrit “‘angiras” a mythical being, probably of
divine nature, and a mediator between men and the gods. However, Frisk (98) points out
that there is no firm evidence that the ‘‘angiras” was ever such a mediator. The derivation
of ‘‘aggelos”’ from ‘‘angiras”’ remains uncertain.
? Apollodorus, op. cit., IIT, xiii, 5.
3 Homer, Odyssey, V, 346 and 459 ff. 4 Plato, Phaedrus, 238 D.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 329
rapturous flow of words. It is significant that while thus ‘‘nymph-caught’,
he is sitting under the shade (!) of a tree, in a place holy to the nymphs,
during the most dangerous period of the day: noon. A few moments earlier
he had dismissed superstitions as none of his business, but his very mention
of them indicates his awareness that others of his time take them seriously.
On this occasion Socrates’ scepticism is once again clearly demonstrated ;
it was to cost him his life. In his discourse Socrates warns Phaedrus
to remain silent on the ground that the place is holy. On the basis of
present lore we may presume that the ancients well knew how the nymphs
might strike one dumb. In this regard we may also note that Pan, no
longer known by name but occasionally seen in his old form (Chap. VII, 13)
and certainly absorbed into the general class of exotica, was reputed for his
noon-time assaults, causing ‘‘panic’’ and disaster. In Medea! one finds a
sudden illness ascribed to ‘‘some seizure of Pan or another god’ while in
the Odyssey? a wasting illness is attributable to being struck by a hateful
god.
Stringlos is complex and is presented in a variety of guises. As human-
headed snake his predecessors are to be seen in the sons of Earth, king
Cecrops and Erichthonios; while Stringlos portrayed as the tormented
ghost of the unburied warrior has clear parallels in Patroclus (Iliad) or
Elpenor (Odyssey) demanding burial. Stringlos, the dancing half-man, seems
a close approximation to Pan or the satyrs, while Stringlos, the bird-sound
announcing death; appears to reflect the divine and ill-omened sacred birds.*
Stringlos, the changeling demon, hearkens to a belief in the infant’s taint
which we infer from the purificatory aspects of the Amphidromia ceremonies
(60). Stringlos, the transformer into many shapes, resembles Empusa and
Hecate, who are addressed as ““The Many-Shaped’’ (zroAvpopde). Empusa
frightens Xanthias and Bacchus during their descent into the House of
Hades.‘ She appears to them as a huge wild beast; dreadful, for she takes on
every shape; at one time that of an ox, now that of a mule, and at another
time she becomes a most beautiful woman, and then a dog, just as the
Dangerous Hour. Stringlos, in his transformations, shares some of the
attributes of Dionysus revealed to his ecstatic worshippers: “Appear, appear,
what-so-ever thy shape or name; oh mountain bull, snake of the hundred
heads, lion of burning flame; oh God, Beast, Mystery, come !’5 Stringlos, the
child of necrophilia, once again resembles Dionysus, born of Zeus’ thunder-
bolt which destroyed Semele, his mother ;while Stringlos, who has intercourse
with sheep, reminds one of Poseidon in his congress with women in animal
form, with Demeter® for instance, who transformed herself in vain into a
mare to elude his passion. Stringlos, who suckles the teats of goats only to kill
them, recalls the ravages of the devouring Empusa among the flocks at noon-
time (93).
1 Euripides, Medea, 1170.
2 Homer, Odyssey, V, 395-6.
3 Hesiod, The Works and Days, 745.
4 See Aristophanes’ portrayal of the Empusa in the Frogs.
to
6 Euripides, Bacchae, 1017. Other examples of transformation of gods are too numerous
:
cite; Zeus, as the many shaped lover, is one of them and so are the various water-deities
Proteus and Acheloos.
6 Pausanias (189) VIII, xxv, 4-6; and VIII, xlii, 1-5.
330 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
The word “‘Stringlos”’ itself is derived from the verb stringizo, ozpuyyilw,
to scream, screech, and the Latin strix.1 In Italy the strix was considered to be
a blood-thirsty bird, but by Ovid’s time it had become a winged witch who
drank the blood of children. Pliny notes the superstition but does not share it.
Elsewhere in Greece the Stringlos, the male Stringla, still is said to be a
dangerous witch preying on children, women, or animals. While elements of
this belief are seen in the Doxario Stringlos who kills the goats, the general
tenor of his conduct is quite un-witch like. One source of confusion is the fact
that one night owl is called the “stringlopouli”? and while the bird itself is
real enough, one of its attributes is that it is linked to Hades and Charon and
is known elsewhere in Greece (147) as Charon’s bird. It may be this link
which renders it capable of announcing death.
We have not encountered Koukoudi elsewhere in the literature of folklore
or antiquity; but since a “koukoudi” is also a pimple, bump or nodule, it
may be taken as simply descriptive of the lymph node swellings or of bubonic
plague. On the other hand the personalization of disease dates to ancient
times. For example, the Sphinx at Thebes was responsible for the pestilence
there; it was Charila at Delphi who brought the plague; Medusa, Sybaris,
Psamatha are other pestilence bringers (93).
In modern times cholera, smallpox, and plague have been personified in
Greece, and elsewhere in Europe, as women (220). The rituals designed to
ward off Koukoudi, ploughing the magic circle around the town with the
twin calves which are buried when the circle is completed, is also en-
countered elsewhere in modern Greek lore (220) ; in antiquity the use of the
magic circle is seen in the Anthesteria festival when, in order to exclude the
returning dead, Athenians surrounded their temples with a red thread which
the dead could not cross. According to Nilsson, at Methana a cock, cut in
two, was carried around the town by two men who, when they met, buried
the pieces and thereby made the town immune to the entry of evil; and
Hermes carried a ram on his shoulder around the walls of Tanagra to ward
off the plague, as Pausanias? tells us.
The sword-slaying of Koukoudi is anticipated in the stories of Apollo and
Perseus, and as is hinted in the graphic details of when and where the
Koukoudi was hung upon the fig tree — in the sacrifice of a scapegoat hung
upon a tree, the latter an ancient Athenian tradition.
That it is the fig tree upon which the Koukoudi is hung, is certainly no
accident. Fig trees have long been sacred; nymphs were wont to abide in
them in antiquity; the fruit of the tree was holy in Minoan-Mycenaean
times (112), (181). One finds, according to Frazer (95), a Fig Dionysus; in
Asia Minor, when plague struck a city, the human scapegoat was given figs
to eat and then beaten about the genitals with a fig branch after which he
was burned. A phallos fashioned of wood from the fig tree was carried in
procession at some of the Dionysian festivals, and baskets of figs were offered
to the god. The Athenian scapegoats wore a chain of figs around the neck as
they were driven out of the city to purify it during the festival of the
1 A species of owl — a night bird so called for its shrieking cry. In ancient Greek it was called
strix (gen. strigos), whereas a striglos and a strigla were, respectively, a wizard and a
witch.
2 Pausanias, op. cit., LX, xxii, 1.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED _ 331
Thargelia. A number of scholars! have discussed the meaning of these
ceremonials. The consensus is that they were probably designed to promote
fertility. The generative powers of nature and of the gods were to be re-
vitalized; partly this was accomplished by purification of evil, specifically
the evil of barrenness and impotence had to be got rid of; and partly it was
accomplished by means of symbolic fertilization. Frazer suggests that the
chains of figs around the victim’s neck may have had that purpose, by
analogy with the annual caprification ceremonies which took place just
about a month before the Thargelia. Chains of wild figs were hung upon
cultivated fig trees in the belief that this would serve to fertilize them. On the
island of Thera faith in the fertility promoting powers of figs survives to this
day: There the villagers feed their donkeys a snakeskin stuffed with figs
before mating them, to ensure success.
The kallikantzari’s origins are subject to dispute by scholars (147),
(165), (220), (239). Megas holds with Politis that they are a neo-Hellenic
specification of previously unnamed spirits of the dead which returned
during the Anthesteria festival. Lawson contends — and by the way presents
a much more complete version of our narrative (Chap. VII, No. 97), which
he heard in Skyros? — that they represent the Satyrs and Sileni who attended
Dionysus and that these, in turn, represented Centaurs who, in turn, were
mythological descendants of Pelasgian peoples inhabiting the Mt. Pelion
region; a tribe reputed as sorcerers and believed to be capable of turning
themselves into wild beasts, just as Dionysus himself was believed to be able
to do. Examining the content of our narratives, it is quite possible to
acquiesce in both speculations, although Lawson’s thesis is considerably
more tenuous. There is no need to insist upon a logical resolution resting
upon a single identity; it is quite apparent from the analysis of the attributes
of saints, Stringlos, and the demons, that a contemporary semantic classifica-
tion is very likely to be composed of a number of inconsistent elements
representing a fusion of heterogeneous historical origins. The kallikantzari
are the result of the same tendency.
It is interesting to see how specific may be the survivals in this material.
Compare Chapter VII, No. 96 and No. 100, in which the person who
intends to harm the kalke® gives as her own name “I Myself”’ after which,
when the harm is done, the kalke proclaims it is “‘I Myself’? who has per-
petrated the deed, with Odysseus and the Cyclops. Polyphemus the Cyclops
asks his visitor’s name to be told, ““My name is Nobody”’ after which, when
he has been blinded, he roars to the other Cyclopes — just as it was done
with the kallikantzari, ‘““Nobody ruined me’’.*
If the origins of the kallikantzari are an amalgamation of old beliefs so
too is the Dangerous Hour. One does not find specific reference to the
Dangerous Hour in the ancient literature; what one does find is the
association of Pan with the noontime, as Theocritus in his Jdylls® indicated.
Pan aroused from his noontime slumbers would wreak terror round and
1 Among those who have commented on the significance of the use of figs are Mannhardt,
(163 pp. 113 ff.; and Frazer, 95, ix., pp. 252 ff.); as well as Deubner, (63, pp. 179 ff.) and
Harrison (r1r2, pp. 95 ff.).
2 (147), pp. 169-71. 8 Kalke is another name for the kallikantzaros.
4 See Page (186). 5 Theocritus, Jdylls, I, 15-16.
332 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

about. As a nature spirit Pan need not be fearsome; for example, he is said
to have appeared to Philippides near Mt. Parthenion above Tegea in
Arcadia to indicate his favourable disposition towards the Athenians prior
to the coming battle with Persians. But the thiasos of Pan was feared ;
especially at noontime when the woodland spirits were raging. The Empusa
was such a noontime demon. It is she who resembles the present-day notion
of the Dangerous Hour most closely. Many are the tales and pictures® of
how she appears, sometimes as a winged female of some attractiveness to the
sleeping shepherd who carelessly sought the shade of a tree to take his rest.
The Empusa appeared at midday because that was the time when
sacrifice was offered to the dead, for she herself was one of the creatures of
the underworld where she was known as Hecate.®
As for the Devil, his traditional characteristics according to Western
illustrators must also remind one of Pan himself; bearded, shaggy-haired, two
horns and goat’s feet. But again the particular Devil becomes, in most folk
usage, a hodge-podge collection of demons and genii notoriously un-
distinguished from one another or from demons past. The Christian Devil,*
despite his goaty patina, has one attribute which is definitely new — it is his
incarnate evil. He is not a contradictory, two-sided creature, but a con-
sistently vile fellow, and as such is very definitely a recent addition to the
pantheon.
So too with the Moros, at least that Moros which is personified as a
black person (Chap. VII, No. 2). Argenti and Rose (20), pointing out
that Aeschylus (The Suppliant Maidens, 154), speaks of the Egyptians as
“blackened’’, suggest that its use refers to association with Armenians,
Arabs and Moors during fairly recent times and has, in tales at least, taken
on the familiar ring of ethnocentric deprecation of the outsider. On the other
hand the ‘“‘Moros’’> who disturbs sleep represents the traditional assignment
of illness or dream disturbance to an independent outside source or demon.
Its use in the Doxario region corresponds to the ‘“Vrachnas’’ described by
Lawson; a malicious spirit which sits on the chest of the sleeper to cause
discomfort. In its by-form this creature may also be called ‘‘Varichnas’’é
which relates it to the “heavy’’ quality (“‘varis’’, Bapvs is ““heavy’’) so often
associated with illness, unpleasantness and bedevilment. In this second form
we see, once again, the amalgamation, under one class, of disparate concepts
from quite different historical periods.
1 Herodotus, VI, 105.
2 For an interpretation of a bas-relief depicting the noontime demon see Vermeule, 254 pp.
323-41; and in particular p. 334, plate 104, figure 24.
8 See Rohde (228), Appendix VI, for a discussion of the relationship between Hecate and
various female demons, including the midday appearance of the Empusa, and the midday
offerings to the dead.
4 Christian literary devils, such as Goethe’s Mephistopheles, C. S. Lewis’s Wormwood, are
rather more Zoroastrian in conception in so far as they — “‘the spirits that negate”’ — affirm
and abet in the final outcome their opposite principle.
5 Hesiod (Theogony, 211) calls Moros a child of night: ‘But Night bore horrible Moros,
and Black Ker, End and Fate, and Death and Sleep, and she bore also the brood of
Dreams...”
6 In modern Greek (Demotiki) nightmare is called ‘‘ephialtis” ;the word is the same as the
name of the giant Ephialtes: “che who leaps one”’, a mythological figure who had vowed to
rape Hera.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 333
Summarizing the survivals among the powers and dominions it is
evident that pre-Christian supernatural beings have survived either in name
or in form, and usually in both, to be incorporated into present beliefs. The
incorporation is into the Christian pantheon by direct adoption, that is the
deity moves from a pagan to a Christian sanctuary; or by the imposition of
a mantle of early attributes upon the shoulders of a later Christian power.
Incorporation into the local non-Christian pantheon — and it is sometimes
difficult to tell who Christian powers are, so tolerant and embracing are the
beliefs of the priests and people — seems simply to be a matter of continua-
tion with modification over the ages.
As for the method of man’s approach to the powers, one sees considerable
continuity. As long as those who are weak are in need or in danger, and as
long as the powers may be influenced for the good or defended against doing
bad, it is likely that the weak shall approach the strong with those devices
which their culture inculcates: promise and prayer, gifts and offerings,
aversions and shunnings, and the appeals to influence through friends and
intermediaries. There will also be those reassuring repetitions which bring a
sense of accomplishment if not of mastery: the rituals and ceremonials, the
festivals and mysteries. Herein too will be seen the elements of initiation and
allegiance, of obligations exchanged, of trickery and slyness, and of hate,
love and devotion.
The powers themselves have and have not changed with time. Certainly
the variety of their forms and domains remains as great as ever: gods local
and universal, gods male and female, gods petty and great, gods healing and
hurting, gods of the sky and nature and of the dark realms below. The
characters of the gods seem also to have continued, with the greatest
similarity being in their own humanity on the one hand, while among the
powers not named as gods, there is the awesome undercurrent of no
humanity at all; these latter man treats with aversion, and purification,
and propitiation; while with the former he may banter more lightly,
begging and bargaining, vowing and threatening, serving and forgetting.
But as with man so with the gods; their polar oscillations are best not
forgotten. Inconstant by character, all of the deities may bring ruin as well
as joy.
It has been a Christian innovation, it would appear, that the powers are
more constant; they may reward good but need not punish the bad except
by the denial of succour. Christianity itself is not of one mind about this;
nevertheless the Western city dweller thinks of the Devil as constantly evil
and of Jesus as constantly good. But not so the rural Greek. Devils are bad,
of course, but as the identity of Satan is lost among the demons, one finds
more action than evil; whirlwinds, waterspouts and unusual phenomena
happen; the devil is their spirit, but no evil need occur; indeed, as one saw
in the narratives, when all else fails, one may — as did medieval men at a
Black Mass ~ turn to bargain with the Devil himself for a fairer share of life’s
supposed goodness. And with Christ his character in rural Doxario is also
broad; we have seen him as healer, sorcerer and revenant. In his more
exalted role he remains tied to a given locality; it is Christ of Spata to whom
one goes, not the less potent Christ of some other town. And evil he may do
as well, bringing death to those who oppose his will; sending illness to men
334 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

and animals; seething, he can be a vengeful force to which disaster may be

ascribed. In this he is like the gods of old. And so it is with the Panaghia as
well.

The Exceptional in Nature

The content of the narratives shows that among the animals some serve as
omens; others, the exotika, are inhabited by spirits with human traits. Of the
latter, a few have the magic ability to transform themselves into other shapes
or creatures. There are those animals that have magical properties or signify
preternatural power, and those that aré powers in the sense of dread or
pollution. To illustrate: the rooster is connected with death and the
domain of night; the dog is sensitive to impending death, or the presence of
spirits, or may himself be a spirit; the bear is a source of pollution or
danger; while the snake evokes the greatest interest and diversity of beliefs.
The snake is an omen of good or ill, a source of magical healing; his
presence is a deadly danger or a guiding spirit of the house; he may be a
changeling with a human head, he can also be the source of a magical force,
and the symbol of dread power and death. The liokra, or horned snake, is a
particular source of magical power for healing.
Reviewing the list of animals and animal powers revered in modern day
Greece, there are none for which ancient antecedents may not be found. In
antiquity, the cock was sacred to the chthonic deities; recall dying Socrates’
last words: ‘“‘We owe a cock to Asclepius’’! which, as Guthrie? and others
have noted, points to the chthonic character of the healing god — as does his
association with the snake — later evolved into the caduceus. We have earlier
noted the old association? between the howling dog and impending death;
the sacred nature of the bear is suggested by the sanctuary of Artemis
Brauron, Artemis of the Bear. Harrison, following Frazer, proposes that the
bear was a holy demon, the “‘vegetation spirit’? which brought the luck of
the year. As for the snake, its importance in antiquity is established. As
house demon, as spirit of the dead, as the body of a human-headed spirit,*
as guardian, or as dread power, or epiphany of the underworld it was familiar
and its healing potential is fixed in its association with Asclepius. In all of
these aspects we find the snake present today.
For the magical skin of the horned snake, the liokra (or liokrino as it is
more generally known throughout Greece), we are unable to find an exact
early Greek precedent. There are resemblances however; Dioscorides
recommends the snakeskin medicinally ; Elworthy (72) notes that a powerful
charm against the evil eye has been the figure of a snake shaped into the
1 Plato, Phaedo, 118. This line has been interpreted as Socrates’ figurative expression of
thanks for now being delivered of the ills of the body.
21It is, of course, no surprise to see a power of the dead appealed to for guidance,
or cure of illness; ‘‘the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” and he who is associated with
death may also forestall it. In addition the belief in the capacity of the dead to prophesy, i.e.,
necromancy, antedated the Asclepian cults and provides a link between the incubating
dream that visited the sleeper lying upon the chthonic earth, and the visitation of the mantic
Asclepius and his snakes (see, for example, Aristophanes’ The Plutus).
3 See Theocritus, Jdylls.
4 See Harrison, (113), p. 281.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED _ 335
horns of a crescent; and Pliny (Natural History, XXXII, xviii, 50) speaks of a
horned frog or bramble toad (¢pvvoy) about which the authorities relate
marvellous tales of magical power. Lucian (Philopseudes, 12) mentions a
number of snakes, asps, vipers, darters and “horned snakes’’ (kepdorat).
There exists still nowadays in Southern Europe a horned viper, the
vipera ammodytes, which has one horn at the tip of its snout. It is almost
extinct, but the variety ammodytes meridionalis can still be found in small
numbers in Greece. During classical times, two types of snakes with horns
over each eye were probably known to the much travelled Greek historians
and sailors; the vipera cerastes and the vipera cerastes cornuta, both natives of the
Sahara, extending to Palestine and Arabia." It is possible that the villagers’
tales of a ‘‘horned snake’’ represent actual experiences with the ammodytes,
or perhaps hearken back to some folk memory which has survived since
antiquity. For instance, Schmidt and Inger (240, p. 263) suggest that the
Palestinian vipera pseudocerastes fieldi may be the horned snake mentioned in
the Genesis.”
The name liokrino itself (Avoxpivo) is probably derived from the Italian
“unicorno’’, having one horn.? The unicorn, a fabulous beast, was first
described by Ctesius, a historian of the fourth century B.c., as a wild ass of
India, having on the forehead a horn a cubit and a half in length, coloured
white, red and black; from the horn were made drinking cups that were
believed to prevent poisoning. The faith of the ancients in the unicorn’s power
against poisons persisted as late as the eighteenth century in France where
instruments made of the “‘unicorn’s horn’’ were used to test the king’s food.
Among other animal objects or substances which are preternatural in
quality one finds the fleece, into which the ill are placed for healing; birds
ground up for medicinal purposes; donkey’s milk and tortoise blood used to
pollute and destroy the seeing ability of the light-shadowed and, in addition,
animal faeces, porcupine, wool, cheese, milk, pig’s hair, mice, and so forth.
Again one finds ancient antecedents. Reference to Dioscorides will show
recommendations for the use of porcupine, birds, the milk of cows, sheep,
goats, and of women, cheese, wool, the blood of the tortoise and ofhorses, and
the dung of dogs. Dioscorides is empirical ; rarely does he suggest magical uses
for his medicaments; nevertheless, it may be assumed that substances held to
have healing power may also have been employed indirectly in magical ways.
One does not find in Dioscorides any reference to donkey’s milk or pig’s hair.
Pliny (Natural History, XXXII, xiv) attributes a number of useful
properties to the tortoise: he considered it a remedy for the sacred disease,
epilepsy; and said it is good for warding off magic. Its blood is of service
against toothache and against the poisons of all serpents, spiders and frogs.
Its gall can be made into an eyewash and an antidote to scorpion bites. Of
the many marvels that can be accomplished with different kinds of tortoises
and their offal, Pliny is doubtful only of one; that vessels travel more slowly
if the right foot of a tortoise is on board.
The fleece is of special interest. Its early potency is implied in the legend of
1 Personal communication from Dr. Robert Stebbins, University of California.
2 See also, Ditmars (67), and Mertens (170).
8 The corrupted form of the word “unicorno” was “‘liocreno” and could have reached Greece
during the Venetian invasions.
336 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Helle and Phrixus who travelled through the air to Colchis! on the back ofa
ram; his golden fleece was dedicated there in a sacred grove. It was Jason,
reared and taught healing by the most famous healer, the Centaur Chiron?
who retrieved the fleece, the story of which is told in the Argonautica. There is
evidence, cited by Harrison in her discussion (112), that magical fleeces of
newly sacrificed animals were wrapped around the ill as part of a ceremony
of riddance. This practice was associated with the healing rituals at
Amphiaraus where the ill slept on the magical fleece awaiting the dream of
revelation; a fleece which ridded the wearer, one presumes, of the pollution
of illness by taking it upon itself. The same practice was part of the incuba-
tion cures at Epidaurus.
It is almost exactly in the ancient fashion that the fleece had been used in
modern times (Chap. V, 29), the skin of the newly-offered lamb being
wrapped around the ill person so that it will magically purify him of his
ailments.
The use of the mouse in healing is also an ancient one. In Doxario the
wise woman uses the baby mice to prepare an healing “‘balsamo”’. The fore-
runners of this practice do indeed appear in the distant past.
According to Dawson (60), the mouse is one of the most ancient medi-
cines; evidence of its use in drugs dates back six thousand years. An
Egyptian prescription of 1500 B.c. calls for cooked mouse to be taken in-
ternally, while the bones are to be placed around the neck in a knotted
cord.’ Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen refer to its use, which continued
through medieval times in Greece, and elsewhere in Europe till today.
Herodotus‘ describes how the Egyptian Sethon had his prayers answered
when the god Horus sent the mice to eat the bowstrings and shield straps of
the threatening army of the Assyrian Sennacharib while that army slept.
Dawson notes the association of the mouse with Oriental religion from
early times. He contends that it was eaten secretly by the Jews along with
swine (the “abominable things”’ of Isaiah 65, 3) as a survival of the incor-
porative rituals in which divine animals were ingested; he also cites a ritual
in which the Babylonians ate mice sacramentally. In addition one finds the
offering of the golden mice as a form of ex voto, made by the Philistines
(Samuel 6, 4) in response to the plague which ravished them. The Baby-
lonians also ate them sacramentally.
To the Greeks Apollo was, of course, the god of healing under whose
aegis Asclepius worked. But it was also Apollo who wrought destruction
and, as an avenger, sent the plague which decimated the army of the
Achaens during the siege of Troy. As Apollo Smintheus, Apollo of the Mice,
he was worshipped in Ceos, in ‘Tenedos, in Asia Minor, and was associated
with Troy. The mouse was also important to the Romans; Pliny® listed mice
1 During the passage Helle fell into the sea; for this reason the waters were called the
Hellespont.
*'The name indicates that Chiron (Cheiron) was a hand-practikos; cheir (yé/p) means
hand in ancient and modern Greek. Cheiron corresponds to “‘cheirurgeon” whence the English
word Surgeon is derived; whereas Jason’s (Iason) name shows links with the name of the
healing goddess Iaso. The verb “‘iaomai” (‘dojat), to heal is directly related, as is the word
“tatros’’ meaning healer or physician.
3 Berlin Papyrus No. 3027, 8, 203.
4 Herodotus, The Histories, Il, 41. 5 Pliny, op. cit., VIII, lxxxii.
 THE PAST IN -
THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 337
among the prophetic animals, a classification which assumes their intimacy
with the plans of the gods. However, Pliny also held that mice originated
from the humours of the earth (not unlike the Egyptian belief of their
spontaneous generation from the mud of the Nile) and that the filaments of
their liver changed to correspond with the number of moonlight nights in
the month.1 In this way the mouse is seen to have been associated with the
earth itself and with the moon. Indeed its associations with earth, moon and
sun,? suggest the intimacy with which the mouse was linked to important
religious objects or, according to Harrison’s scheme (113), to the phases of
Greek cult evolution at Delphi and Olympia.
One final possibility regarding the mouse; in the folklore of Germany,
France, Switzerland, Transylvania and the Finno-Ugrian peoples (54,
251) the soul may take the form of the mouse. We do not find this notion
expressed by the modern Doxario folk, nor does it appear, to our know-
ledge, in the ancient literature. Yet we would not rule it out as a possible
belief in Greek antiquity. Our grounds, admittedly remote, are the corres-
pondence in many instances between the Greek lore and the Finno-Ugrian,
an illustration of which is the notion common to both that the soul wanders
until the corpse decays. These and other soul-beliefs — the soul leaving one
body and entering another, or the trance which attends soul wandering —
have a widespread modern distribution (54), (95) and very likely a wide-
spread ancient one. The idea of soul loss, which is intimately connected with
belief in the mouse as a soul carrier, is traced by Clements (54) to Paleolithic
times; and its distribution suggests to him its origins in Central Asia. Its
antiquity (recorded in pre-Christian times among Persians and Semites),
and its past and present patterns of diffusion do allow the speculation that
the mouse may have had soul significance in remotest antiquity and that in
its association with Apollo, Apollo was very likely the latecomer. If so, it is
the older element that has lingered. Apollo, the god of light, has disappeared
(although St. Elias, his close kinsman through his relationship to the ancient
sungod Helios? survives) but the mouse, divine Eastern rodent, creature of
earth and moon, object of magic and medicine, lives on in the lore of Dhadhi.
Among the human substances employed magically or in healing in the
Doxario region narratives, one finds clothing, the bones of the dead (fore-
fathers or saints), hair and fingernail clippings, blood (including menstrual
blood), faeces and urine. These objects were not only commonly employed in
the magic of antiquity — or medically in the case of blood, urine and faeces,
according to Dioscorides — but are still in use among many non-literate
societies. _
Of the trees (plants and vegetable substances encountered in the narrative
as employed in magic) one finds predominantly the fig tree, with its very
dangerous, “‘heavy’’, genius; and rue, olive oil, wine and vine-leaves,
incense, honey, garlic, bread, etc. All of these will be found in pre-Christian

1 Tbid., XI, xxvi.

2 In this connection it is probably significant that the wise woman of Dhadhi, in preparing
the healing balsamo, insisted that the mouse-oil preparation be placed in the swn for at least
a year to become effective medicine, the longer thus exposed, the better the balsamo.
3 The relationship between Apollo and Helios was probably established firmly only
relatively late, after Aeschylus’ time.
338 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

times in magical use. For instance the rue, which the narratives indicate is a
powerful substance to be used in rituals of riddance, warding off the demons,
the Dangerous Hour, etc., is described by Pliny? as particularly valuable,
a plant with a liking for the fig tree, one that confers innumerable benefits ;
not without being dangerous if an overdose of its extracted juices are drunk.
Properly taken, it is a specially powerful antidote against poisoning from
plants such as aconite, mistletoe and poisonous mushrooms; it counteracts
animal bites of poisonous snakes, insects, weasel, salamander and of mad dogs.
Buckthorn (sduvos) was chewed by the Athenians during the Anthesteria
to ward off the spirits of the dead. It was considered a powerful cathartic.
Dioscorides? recommended it for driving away the enchantment of witches,
and as a charm against evil men and devils, a herb which he said must be
gathered with the waning of the moon.
Among the natural objects, substances, and phenomena encountered in
the narratives and having preternatural significance are the moon, the
stars, the sun, water, salt, gold and silver, iron and copper, earth and stones,
arches and caves, fire and smoke, and the echo. One need not look far in
the practices of any Mediterranean or Near-Eastern peoples — and many
groups elsewhere as well — to find these elements of the natural world
inspiring awe and wonder, and being employed (or being considered as
active) magically, therapeutically and/or religiously.
Among the Minoan-Mycenaeans (112), (181), the moon was of religious
importance; although Nilsson, in contending that moon and sun appeared as
mythological but not as cult deities, disagrees with Harrison, who holds that
in early Greek religion the moon was a cult goddess. In any event we may
take it that early cosmological deities had their importance reinforced as
Chaldean astrological concepts entered Greece (58), so that the notion of a
wilful moon as demon or deity influencing the affairs of men, implied in the
contemporary beliefs, is certainly not a new one. In the fourth century it was
Plato (201) who described the sun and moon as “‘great gods and demanded
that prayer and sacrifice be made to them’’.
That the effects of the moon are primarily destructive, at least as far as
infants and mothers are concerned, is another matter. Here one finds an
equivalence between threats from Artemis and from the moon. Artemis was
held responsible for plagues, mental and nervous disorders, and sudden
untimely deaths and disorders; the latter among women especially.
Macrobius® refers to women so harmed as ‘“‘Artemis-struck” or “moon-
struck’’. In these dangers from the moon goddess one finds a clear parallel
to present beliefs.
Artemis was also an averter of evil and alleviator of suffering, a typical
instance of the polarity of supernatural power. She could cure the ills which
she inflicted with magic and herbal; she was in fact linked to Hecate (139),
the latter herself a sometime moon goddess (172). This link between witch-
craft and the moon which was established early, is seen later in the power of
witches over the moon as noted by Plato, and in the necessity for healers
and wise women to gather herbs with an eye to the proper phase of the moon
as stressed by Dioscorides.
1 Pliny, op. cit., XIX, xlv; and XX, li.
2 Dioscorides, Greek Herbal, I, 119. 5 Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, xvii, 77.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 339
As with the moon, so with the sun — but to a lesser degree — for there is
bewitching in it, to give or to receive. And what is believed in Dhadhi today,
that a wilful sun offended may intrude in human affairs to cause illness,
would have been no news to Hesiod. “‘Never urinate,” he warned, “‘facing
the sun.’*! Disease was ascribed to the sun, or to Apollo? and those sick were
referred to as sun-struck; a concept extant not only in Dhadhi but in our
own “‘sun-stroke” usage of today.
As far as specific survivals are concerned, it is interesting to speculate on a
connection between the Panorio ritual which employs the archway —
whereby one passes under an arched rock, which may symbolize rebirth;
leaving behind a piece of one’s clothing and never looking back to see what
happens to it — and the rituals of initiation and rebirth in antiquity. In
classical antiquity one who had been absent long and therefore was believed
to be dead, or one who had been falsely reported to have died, would have
to be symbolically ‘reborn’ upon his return before he could be admitted to
the community. Accordingly, he was not allowed to enter his house by the
door but had to creep through a hole made into the roof. Then he had to go
through a pantomimic ceremony during which he was passed through a
woman’s lap, washed, dressed in swaddling clothes and put out to nurse.®
Hesychius mentions that the one who had been believed dead was not allowed
ever afterwards to enter the temple of the ““Reverend Goddesses”’ (the Furies,
euphemistically called the Semnai Theai in Athens), who had presumably
some claim on him as representatives of the underworld. Apparently a taint of
the underworld continued to cling to the “‘second-born’’.4 Adoption rites and
some initiation rites also employed symbols of birth: passing through the
clothes, or through the lap, or under the legs of a seated woman, and by ex-
tension through arches (or holes). Farnell> interprets the myth of Dionysus’
second birth from the thigh of Zeus as such an ancient adoption rite, during
which the adopted son had to pass from underneath his new father’s thigh
to be admitted to the clan.
There is one important spring in the Dhadhi region, an ancient shrine
nestled beneath the crags and walls of a Minoan-Mycenaean founded
citadel. Associated with that spring, as we noted in Chapter XVIII, is the
saying, “Come admire me in May, drink me in August, and if you want to
die, come taste me in September.” We can only speculate on the antiquity of
the adage or of the beliefs represented therein. Perhaps it reflects, as one of
the Doxario priests suggested, an association between drinking and the
belief, found in Doxario and Dhadhi, that more people die in September
than in other months. This beliefin turn may be derived from the association
between the Dog Star Sirius* and pestilence.”
1 Hesiod, The Works and Days, 729. 2 Macrobius, ibid., xvii, 15.
8 See Halliday, 108, p. 42, and Frazer, op. cit., i, p. 74.
4 See Hesychius (124) s.v. Deuteropotmos (Aevrepdmorpos) hysteropotmos (dorepdrotpos) ;
and Plutarch, Questiones Romanae, 5.
5 Farnell, (85), V. See also Rohde, (228), Appendix XI, for a description of, and ad-
ditional references to adoption and initiation rites.
6 Sirius means “Scorcher” from the verb “‘cepudw’’, to be hot and scorching; and to suffer
from seirisis, a disease to which children were said to be susceptible (Dioscorides, IV, 71).
In Hesiod’s time Sirius could be observed to rise at dawn from August 24 to September 24.
7 Homer, Iliad, V, 4-8; and as sign of impending evil, Ibid. XXII, 29.
340 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Hesiod notes this relationship, for one of Sirius’ daughters was that Sphinx
which brought the plague upon Thebes;! whereas two others sacrificed
themselves to save Boeotia from the pestilence (242). The “Dog Days”
are when “women are most lascivious but the men’s strength fails them
most, for the star Seirios (Sirius) shrivels them, knees and heads alike, and
the skin is all dried out in the heat”’.2 Omens were drawn from the aspect of
Sirius rising with regard to the salubrity of the coming year at Ceos in the
Aegean (as had been done in Egypt 3,000 to 4,000 3c.) Incaiagig
September 1 was appointed as the beginning of the New Year and is still
celebrated in many parts of Greece. A great many people believe that on
this day the Angel of Death writes down the names of those who are fated to
die within the coming year. Megas? ascribes to rural Greeks the belief that
the pernicious fevers of this season (which afflicted the Greek countryside
until the recent eradication of malaria) was caused by Herodias’ unholy
crime of claiming the head of St. John the Baptist whom some call St. John
the Feverish (Thermologos). Other than these relationships between illness
in September we have not discovered any precise analogies in antiquity
with our proverb.
As for the feature of leaving a token behind, without looking back,
signifying the leaving of the illness behind, the contemporary practice may
be compared to that of the ancients who thought that pollution — by ritual
impurity, by illness, by death, or murder, and by childbirth — must be left
behind or, as Eustathius® noted “be sent away”’. Gruppe suggests that in
antiquity the offering of clothes to Artemis by women who had given birth
was a rite to banish the daemoniacal substances that still resided in what
they had worn during this period. Thus the cult of Artemis Chitone
(xereivn — Artemis of the Tunic) to whom tunics were dedicated, developed
from this custom. A related custom seems to have prevailed in Sicyonia,
where Pausanias’ found the statue of Hygieia in Asclepius’ sanctuary at
Titane so bedecked with strips of Babylonian raiment and locks of women’s
hair that one could not see the healing goddess herself underneath these
coverings.
The injunction of not turning around to look at what transpires during the
casting behind of the polluted article recalls the ceremonies of purification
during which household refuse was swept out of doors and left at the cross-
roads as offerings to Hecate, one’s face averted, without a backwards glance.
Eustathius® cites the taboo on looking back (recall the story of Lot in the Old
1 Hesiod, Theogony 325. R. Lattimore, transl. The Theban sphinx was the offspring of an in-
cestuous union between Sirius (also known as the dog Orthros) and his own mother Echidna
(spider) ;this genealogy alone would be enough to cause pestilence and drought, just as
Oedipus’ unwitting incest
2 Hesiod, op. cit., 587-92.
8 Frazer, op. cit., vi, 35-35. Regarding more detail on the relationship between Sirius and
the plague one may consult the following authors: Apollonius of Rhodes, II, pp. 500 ff.;
Diodorus Siculus, IV, 82; and Hyginus Poeticon Astronomicon.
4 Megas, op. cit., p. 151.
5 Fustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam. See Gruppe, op. cit., p. 1272, n. 7.
* Rohde, op. cit., Appendix V, presents data for the belief that materials can absorb pollution
thereby ridding the person from its contamination. Wool, the skin of animals, and eggs were
used for this purpose. Eggs were called ‘‘katharsia” for this reason.
7 Pausanias, op. cit., 11, xi, 6. 8 Eustathius, op cit., XXII, 481.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 341
Testament, and that of Eurydice whom Orpheus lost for a second time to the
underworld as he turned longingly around to see if she was following him in
their journey towards the light). His children may not witness the descent
of Oedipus into the house of Hades!; nor Theseus be polluted by the sight
of his own son’s death.?
The manufactured articles which are employed in magical rituals asso-
ciated with sorcery, healing and the warding-off of danger are but few.
Nevertheless among them are many of relatively recent origin, which cannot
represent survivals. On the other hand, one recognizes clothing, fish net,
beads, a mirror, as instruments or devices with past magical employment.
For example in the Jdylls of Theocritus? Damoetas spat upon himself after
observing himself in a mirror so as not to suffer from the evil eye; while at
the shrine of healing Demeter in Patrai, according to Pausanias,4 a mirror
was employed to learn the outcome of illness. Other instruments include
string and rope, writing, rings, coins, nails and pins, knives, drawn symbolic
figures, bracelets and necklaces and pottery.
In the modern narratives the three major measures of time which are
significant for man’s relationship to the supernatural world are day and
- night, the three-phased moon month, and the two-phased year. There are,
of course, important calendarial periods, the Twelve Days for example
when the kallikantzari congregate, and festival and religious occasions.
Nevertheless, the occurrence of calendarial moments is to be differentiated
from a sense of time based on important divisions of the day and month
and year. Viewed in terms of the latter the sense of time, of its major divisions
and their relationship to man’s welfare and to the activities of the powers,
the orientation reflected in the narratives is clearly a survival of a very
ancient tradition. With reference to day and night, Hesiod remarks “For
Nights belong to the Blessed Ones’’,> an euphemism indicating that it is the
time when the demons, our ‘“‘exotika’’, are abroad.
The moon month of three phases which guides the Dhadhi wise woman in
her gathering of the healing herbs, which dictates when the jaundice must
be cut or when the seed for ground or woman shall be sown, was a time-
keeper for the ancients as well; this is evidenced by the three (moon)
Seasons portrayed on the Acropolis (172) and possibly by the three Moirai
which, according to Orpheus* were the three seasons of the moon. Dio-
scorides recommends that one be guided by the moon’s phases in the
administration of healing herbs. And in the same way the two season year,
still observed by the Saracatzani, was the division of the pastoral Greeks of
old (172).
As to the division of places in the narratives, the local sacred geography,
one finds the delineation of those which are relatively safe — and that is
where the village is — and those that are unsafe — and that is the wilderness
where the exotika roam. Of particular danger are water sources, whereas
among the man-made spots the crossroad and the cemetery are spirit-ridden.
Caves and grottoes are also exceptional places.
These present divisions correspond quite well to the supernatural mapping
1 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1640 ff. 2 Euripides, Hippolytus, 14.35 ff.
3 Theocritus, op. cit., VI, 34-40. 4 Pausanias, op. cit., VII, xxi, 12.
5 Hesiod, The Works and Days, 731. 6 As quoted by Harrison (113) p. 389.
342 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
of antiquity. It was in the wilderness, that is outside the village, where the
Nymphs, Dryads, Oreads, Naiads, Pan, the Satyrs and other spirits lurked.
Water sources were particularly dangerous, while in caves chthonic holies
were often practised. The cemeteries were clearly the gathering places for
the dead, as Plato mentions. He describes the qualities of the impure soul
which cannot leave the vicinity of its dead shell because it is contaminated by
the corporeal which is burdensome, and “‘heavy (!)1 and earthly and visible”
and drags the soul back once again into the visible world: ‘“Those thick and
gloomy shadows damp, oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres, lingering
and sitting by a new made grave are loth to leave the body that it loved.’”?
Crossroads were sacred to Hecate — and it was at the crossroads where
stonepiles* were most often raised to which the traveller contributed his
stone of riddance.

Affliction and Deliverance

It is exceedingly difficult to assess the correspondence between disease
conceptions in ancient Greece and those which are revealed in the material
of Health and Healing in Rural Greece (35) and the narratives. Hippocrates
provides the point of view of a rational innovator, a man of genius; he does
not tell us what was the content of lesser rationality which preceded (and
survived) him. Dioscorides enumerates disorders believed treatable with his
pharmacy, but these are limited. Perusal of other texts produces occasional
reference to illness, either by designation, symptoms, or consequences, but
there is no such thing as a 600 B.c. survey of conceptions and designations of
afflictions.
It would be desirable to contrast contemporary folk conceptions with
those of antiquity for specific disease entities. While the evil eye does provide
an illustration of a specific survival, it is not possible to determine whether
other diagnoses, such as the wandering navel or the korakiasma, were em-
ployed. One may of course speculate on the wandering navel itself.

Powers and Words

From the narratives one learns that the healing power, conceived as
entity, or force independent of the persons of the healer but one affected by
1 Plato uses the term “‘Bapds” which villagers nowadays employ to designate heaviness in
the sense of oppressive, malignant, illness and evil bringing.
2 Plato, Phaedo, 81, C, translated by D. Halliday, (108) who mentions that the revenants of
the fifth century 3B.c. were black, or skeletons, and that it was wise to steal past tombstones
in silence for fear of irritating the occupants to emerge and attack one. (ibid.) p. 48
3 Nilsson (180, p. 109) considers Hermes’ name to be one of the few that are etymologi-
cally transparent, meaning “he from the stone heap’’. Not all scholars would agree, but
a number of them, notably Farnell, (86), Vol. V., Brown (40), and Wilamowitz-Moellen-
dorff (267) relate these stone piles to herms which are crude, often ithyphallic, single-stone
images representing the god.
4 One might wish to do a content analysis of Dioscorides as a measure of concern about
illnesses. It could be assumed, for example, that the most frequently mentioned were the
most worrisome among the illnesses observed to be responsive to treatment (or at least not
terminal or epidemic, for none such seem to appear there). On the basis of impressions, not
tabulations, stomach and intestinal disorders, genito-urinary disorders, barrenness, the
desire to achieve miscarriage or contraception, rank high.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 343
his interest and state of purity or pollution, is intimately connected to the
use of words, gestures and ritual accoutrements. This power, which is
associated with folk healing and the magico-religious traditions but which is
not applied to medical technology, can be transferred from one person to
another either by its being stolen; that is, by one person overhearing the
words of the healer; or passed on by teaching, in which case the student does
not acquire healing capabilities until his teacher dies or declines in old age.
The peculiar advantage of stealing is that both the original owner and the
thief may practise the art at the same time; while for the taught rituals there
can be no simultaneous capability in student and teacher.
A second feature of the transmission of the healing power is that for many
of the specific forms of healing, usually the “‘xemetrima’’, but apparently
also for some of the hand practika and herbals, power must be transferred in
a zig-zag alternate sex chain; that is, from father to daughter to son, or
variants, such as merely male to female to male. The question arises as to
the antecedents of the concept of healing power and of the transmission
techniques of stealing and zig-zag sex-generation chain. Can these be found
in ancient Greece?
Again it is unfortunate that no “‘annals of folk medicine’ were published in
the year 1200 B.c. by the Mycenaean Press, nor were there any how-to-do it
handbooks for handling life crises. In the ancient world the Old and New
Testaments come closest to our need, but their religious emphasis obscures
the daily devices for healing, warding off evil and securing safety. In
Corinthians (12:9 and 10) healing, along with prophecy, miracle working
and the discerning of spirits,! is described as a “‘gift’? implying its specific
and portable attributes. Again in Luke (g:1—6) Jesus transmitted the healing
power, “‘gave them (his twelve disciples) power and authority over all
devils and to cure diseases’. In Acts, in the first of the Apostolic Miracles,
Peter and John cure a lame man by looking at him, speaking in the name of
Christ and lifting him up; a cure which the apostles ascribe not to themselves
or their own skill but to the power of God which they can employ. Later Peter
(Acts 10:38) describes how “God anointed Jesus. .. with power; who went
about... healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him”’.
From these excerpts it can be inferred that the belief in healing as a
power capable of being transferred from one person to another without any
need to learn an art or science was extant two thousand years ago in the
Near East. That such a belief was also found in Greece, is a reasonable
assumption, for there is evidence for the existence of a conception of
“power”? as such, complex and changeable though this notion was. At times
it was envisaged in its most compelling and impersonal aspect as destiny, or
due fate, or appointed lot (afoa, wempwpévy, jrotpa) to which mortals and
immortals alike were subject, in varying degree. Even Zeus, the highest god
on Olympus, who could change the course of human events was not per-
mitted to extend his domain beyond that which his destiny had allotted to
him to that of his brothers, equal in station. Poseidon, ruler of oceans, was
quick to point this out to him.?
1Jt is not impossible that St. Paul had in mind a gift akin to that possessed by the light-
shadowed when he spoke of the “‘discerning of spirits” (8vaxpicevo mvevpdrwv).
2 Homer, Iliad, XV 209.
M
344 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
At other times the ineluctable power of the “‘allotted portion” was en-
visaged in human form, as Moira or the Moirai (Fate or Fates), according
to the tendency of Greeks, both ancient and modern, to personalize abstract
concepts.
Besides the “‘Lot’? there were many other, lesser powers, some relatively
independent, though subject to the will of the gods and, ultimately, to the
approval of Zeus. There were Strife (Eris), Blind Folly (Ate), Fear (Deimos,
Phobos), Uproar (Kydoimos), the Destroyer (Ares), and many others. In
addition, the magic attributes of the gods themselves were “powers” that
could lead a quasi-independent existence insofar as they resided in pos-
sessions, such as the magic zone (girdle) of Aphrodite; the winged sandals or
hatand the rhabdos (the enchanter’s wand) of Hermes; Athena’s gorgoneion,
(a goatskin with the petrifying Medusa’s head surrounded by snakes, that she
wore on her breastplate or shield) ; Zeus’ aegis (the storm and thundercloud
around his head, imagined by Homer as a shining shield fringed with tassels
of gold with the gorgoneion in its centre, which thunders and lightens when
it is shaken); the helmet of invisibility which the Cyclopes had given to
Hades who held sway over the powers of the infernal regions. These objects
could be transferred (as the aegis); or borrowed, as the girdle that made
any woman irresistible; or taken by stealth, as Apollo feared his farshooting
bow and newly acquired tortoise-lyre might be stolen from him by Hermes,
trickster supreme.
Anything out of the ordinary, a sudden passion, an inspiration, an
unusual invention, or wonderful skill could become imbued by, or attributed
to supernatural powers and thereby acquired qualities of the divine (70
Sayoviov) and godlike (7d Sefov). Nilsson contends that the sense of
undefined “‘power”’’ is central to the meaning of “‘daimon” and can denote
anyone of the gods. Stealth, trickery, lying, stealing and innovation — if
done with amazing skill - were among the extraordinary “‘daimonic”’ and
magic phenomena. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes abounds with these.
Apollo’s question to Hermes is illuminating: The god wants to know if it
was by birth, or if a god or man had given thievish Hermes the noble gift of
wondrous song (favwa épya) which had so astonished and enchanted
Apollo of the silver bow.! Such an innovation, for Apollo vows that no
mortal nor immortal but Hermes has ever heard this new-uttered sound,
had to be due to some power, most probably divine. The sequence of events
illustrates how and why power could be transferred: Impressed and spell-
bound, Apollo accedes to Hermes’ demand for equality (even though
Hermes was then only an infant) ; in return for an oath of friendship and a
promise not to steal from him, he presents the prince of thieves with the
wonderworking golden wand that will put to sleep those who are touched
by it and has power over the living and the dead. He also gives Hermes
access to the art of divination practised by the venerable, winged maidens —
probably sacred bees — who are inspired to tell the truth when they have
tasted the honey of Mt. Parnassus. However, there were limits on these
gifts: Although Apollo is himself a mantic god, he cannot confer the power
of divination without higher confirmation by Zeus; nor is he willing to let
Hermes have a share of his very own, far more important, prophetic powers.
1 Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 440-6.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 345
An example of borrowing “‘power’’, once again by trickery, is to be found
in the lad, when Hera wishes to seduce Zeus into lovemaking so that he will
not pay attention to the conduct of the Trojan war, and give the Greeks a
chance to improve their position. With this in mind she visits Aphrodite to
whom she tells a lie, and succeeds thereby in borrowing her elaborate
girdle on which were wrought all ‘“‘beguilement, passion of sex, and the
whispered endearment that steals the heart away”.
Healing power was also believed to be a gift of the gods. “Remedies for
toil-frought mortals Apollo gave to the sons of Asclepius.”? The Magnesian
Centaur, kindly Chiron, passed on to Asclepius the knowledge of medicinal
plants and roots; how to heal painful ills inflicted by farhurled stones, and
wounds made by bronze; how to deliver men from wasting illness and from
pain by “kindly incantations”, soothing potions, simples, or by surgery.®
Athena did even more; she provided Asclepius with the blood of the Gorgon
— a double edged magic — for “‘that which flowed from her left side he used
for the perdition of mankind ;while that which flowed from her right he used
for their salvation, and by that means he raised the dead’’.4
We need not multiply our examples, for Asclepius illustrates admirably the
still prevalent practice of intermingling the empirical medical techniques,
which are transmitted through instruction from teacher to student, with
magical and supernatural inverventions acquired directly from one who is
in close touch with the divine, or is a healing ‘“‘daimon’’ himself. We have
seen that direct acquisition of powers can be by borrowing, stealing, or by gift.
There was probably also another method, that by claiming descent from the
healer and adopting the name of the healer if it had connotations of
magical powers, as names frequently did. No doubt the name of Asclepius
possessed in itself a healing virtue that could be invoked by its bearer. His
temple priests and physicians, later on most physicians, called themselves
Asclepiads, but were not necessarily related to each other; although in some
temples the office of priest was hereditary, in others it was not. The ancients
were at great pains to prove that Hippocrates was in fact in direct line of
descent from Asclepius, disagreeing only on whether he was 17th in line,5 or
18th,® or 19th.”
As to the transfer of healing itself through stealing, we are not on firm
ground. That stolen objects are powerful in magic is a folklore motif (251)
outside Greece.§ We have seen that in ancient Greece the god of stealing is
also the god of magic, the trickster Hermes. His son Autolycus was a
magician and thief as well; he, like his father could make himself invisible
and the stolen objects unrecognizable. Hermes’ greatgrandson was another
trickster, ingenious Odysseus, master of the spellbinding lie; and master of
the enchantress Circe; his epithet (zroAvtpozos’)® suggests that his ingenuity
1 Homer, Iliad, XIV, 215-17. R. Lattimore, transl. Note that trickery, beguilement,
whispering, and stealing were in themselves integral parts of magic.
2 Euripides, Alcestis, 965-71. 3 Pindar, Odes, III, 45-67.
4 Apollodorus, op. cit., III, x, 3, 8-9. 5 Toannes Tzetzes, Chiliades, VII, 944-6.
6 Hippocrates, Epistolae, 2 (IX, p. 314, 5 ed. Littré).
7 Soranus, Vita Hippocritis,t.
8 See Hartland, (14), III, p. 201; and Feilberg, “Stjaele” III, 576 a; and “‘Tigge”’ III,
793 b (as quoted by Stith Thompson (215)).
® Ingenious, changeable, trickster, resourceful.
mM*
346 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

was, if not magical, at least closely akin to it; it is the same epithet that
Apollo uses in addressing the crafty rogue and deceiver Hermes.’ To
modern man, accustomed to specialization of function and ordering the
universe into separate categories, it seems hard to understand what possible
relationship there could exist between stealing, lying and magic. It is other-
wise for rural folk who know reality as those events which recur predictably,
monotonously and boringly; and who recognize the supernatural by its
novelty, drama and awesomeness. The bard, who will entertain, cannot rely
upon the happenings of everyday life, of reality; he must sing of the yet un-
heard; inevitably it is a song of the supernatural, a song of lies with which he
asks the muse to inspire him. Nowadays the villager, hungry for excitement,
asks the stranger: ‘“Tell me the news, tell me anything, tell me a lie, but do
tell me something.” As for the relation of thieving to magic, Linforth (152)
proposes that stealing, as generally conceived in folklore, is not a rational
device for acquisition but itself a manifestation of magical power (just as we
would suggest that the lie is not a rational device to deceive, but a sign of
divine inspiration and a means of conveying the supernatural). In this connec-
tion it is worthy of note that the xemetrima, the ‘“‘words” which are stolen,
are sometimes referred to by the wise women as “‘lies”. In one sense this may
represent the concealment of the sacred by the profane. Nevertheless,
Hermes, the god of magic, was himself the god of lies as well as of theft, and
it may be more than coincidence that he was also the sender of sleep and
dreams, the guide of the dead and a healer. His magic wand became
transformed over the years into the snake-entwined caduceus, the snake
itself having — as indicated before — powers associated with prophecy,
dreams, healing and magic.? It was this same caduceus that Asclepius him-
self is sometimes portrayed as holding (139) and which remains to our day
the symbol of healing power. In legend Hermes is referred to as a healer on
several occasions: once when he aided Athena in curing the daughters of
Proetus of madness, (86) (139); another time when he aided in the birth of
Dionysus; and once when he halted the plague at Tangraa by carrying a
ram on his shoulder while he made a circuit of the walls.
Later development saw Hermes Trismegistus (the Greek name for the
Egyptian god Toth) as its most powerful deity. The ‘“Thrice-greatest’’ was
invoked by witches, wizards and alchemists as recently as the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance (42). Toth was the scribe of the gods and, in addition,
he was the patron of healing, of magic, of astronomy and all the arts and
inventions dependent on writing. Herodotus in the fifth century B.c. had
already identified him with Hermes, and by the third century B.c. the
identification was official.®
There is one more link between theft and healing. The skills of the healer
(those arts and techniques that can be transmitted by instruction) were not
divulged to just anyone. The Asclepiads, the priest-physicians who claimed
adoption or descendance from Asclepius, held that their knowledge was
hereditary from him and their law was that ‘‘sacred things may be revealed
only to the elect, and should be confided to the profane only when they have
1 Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 439.
2 See Apollodorus, op. cit., I, ix, 113; III, iii, 1; vi, 7.
3 See (go), I, ch. 4.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 34.7
been initiated in the mysteries of the science”’ (139). The vow of silence so
enjoined is seen in the Hippocratic Oath.
One may speculate that this aura of secrecy may also be functionally —
rather than magically — related to the development of the belief that theft
was a necessary means for a non-initiate or non-kinsman to acquire the
healing skill. If this were so, one would expect that in the beginning at least,
transmission by teaching would have been a characteristic of kinsmen;
whereas transmission by theft would have characterized the extension of the
healing role outside the family.1 This may or may not have been the case
before; in any event observations and the narratives of the contemporary
scene do not show evidence of such a division.
With reference to the zig-zag sex chain for passing along the healing
power we are unable to find any parallels, either in history, or in the perusal
of anthropological accounts. It is our hope that other scholars may be able
to shed some light on the phenomenon. Conceivably it may be related to the
legend that Asclepius had a daughter, Hygieia; perhaps the father to
daughter tradition was reflected in that mythical pair, although we can
draw on no substantiating evidence.? Whatever the origins for the chain,
contemporary folk have no rationale for it. One can speculate that the
practice once served to prevent inheritance of a real social power in one sex
alone; the practical consequences of the pattern are that neither men nor
women secure a lineal claim (some) healing prerogatives. In this sense it is
a compromise between matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance. It is also
possible that some rather liberal beliefs about cross-fertilization are implied
(like crop rotation in modern agricultural practice), the power being re-
inforced or infused with female attributes or powers for one generation, and
then benefiting from male powers in the next; each generation providing a
kind of sex-linked nourishment to replenish the healing energy.
Turning now to the contemporary belief that illness passes* from the
sufferer to the healer, that the “‘bad”’ passes out; one sees that conceptually
the “‘bad”’ is an entity much like a demon or genius. The notion that the
‘‘bad’’, whether it be spirit, substance or pollution can be removed from one
person and placed within another — or in or upon an inanimate object
such as the sea, a rock, or an arch — is fundamental to much of the ritual of
healing in the Doxario region.
It is this same idea which underlies the practice of scapegoating, as found
in antiquity; a criminal for example, was heaped with the “bad” of Athens
and, becoming the pharmakos, was driven outside the city. It is this belief
which underlay the use of the fleece in cures — then and now. It was a con-
cept also found among the Hebrews “.. . all their transgressions . . . putting
them upon the head of a goat, and shall send him away . . . And the goat
1 The myth of Prometheus, the fire-thief, the first magician, may be interpreted in this vein.
Clearly he was an outsider, of the race of the Titans, the very ones who had just been feuding
with the Olympian gods. As a Titan, Prometheus was surely a most unlikely candidate for
initiation into the Olympian fire-magic. His recourse, quite reasonably, was to steal it.
* Hygiecia was associated with other healers as well: with Amphiaraus at Oropos and with
Hermes (Gruppe, op. cit., p. 1337, n. 2). Heracles as a healer was associated with Auge,
who may have been, like Eileithyia, a goddess of birth.
3 While yawning or sneezing are means by which the bad passes out, these are not necessary
for the cure.
348 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

shall bear upon him all their iniquities . . .”’! and which is found — then and
now — in the belief that Christ would do the same, ‘“‘Behold the Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sin of the world”.? Taking the sin and the
“bad” upon himself, makes Christ understandable to the villagers as a
healer; for this is also what the village wise women do; they take the pains
and the “‘bad”’ of the sufferer upon themselves. As Frazer (95) points out,
this form of riddance by which evil is diverted has characterized healing
rituals in places as diverse as India, New Zealand, Ceylon and Scotland.
Nevertheless, we do not have direct evidence for the passing of the ‘“‘bad”’
from sufferer to a human healer in ancient Greece and can only presume
that — with all of the material so consistent — it was most likely a folk
tradition long ago.
In this regard one may once again note the association with Hermes.
When Hermes was tried by the gods for the murder of Argus Panoptes, the
hundred-eyed, all the gods flung stones at him as a way of ridding them-
selves of the pollution of blood; the stones made a heap, so the etiological
myth had it, which was one reason offered for passers-by adding a stone to
the cairns or herms® on the roadside and in special places (95). One may
take the stone piling as a magical device for securing good luck which, as one
aspect, takes the “‘bad” from the passer-by and places it upon the herm.
The essence of the power for healing is language. The words of the xeme-
trima are the magical core about which the wise woman builds her healing
repertoire. The incantation is rhythmical and unvarying; its content need
not be understood by either healer or sufferer and, in theory at least, should
not be overheard by the latter. Given the practice, can it be said that the
incantation too is a survival from pre-Christian times? The answer is “‘yes”’.
Pindar,® in describing healing, refers to the use of surgery, pharmacy and
‘the charm’s enchanting sound’? when speaking of Asclepius’ cures; while
among the Orphics® magical incantations were an ingegral part of the heal-
ing rituals for expiation and riddance. Of course that which had power to
help could also be used to harm; and so one finds the formulary of words
employed in sorcery, the ““Ephesian Grammata”’ mentioned by Menander;?
and inveighed against in Plato’s discourse on the binding curse® in which he
speaks of “magic, incantations, and spells’, and by other writers.®
There is every reason to consider that the ancients were as profoundly
convinced of the power of words as are the moderns. To invoke a person’s
1 Leviticus, 16, 21. 2St. John, 1, 29.
3 See Footnote ° on p. 342.
4We say “in theory” because observation suggests that many wise women utter the
xemetrima loudly enough to be heard. The choice of whether to steal or not to steal is then
left up to the listeners.
5 Pindar, Odes, Pythian IIT, 47-53.
6 It is not within the scope of the book to discuss in detail the scholarly dispute regarding the
existence of a unified set of Orphic beliefs, practices and systematized ritual as such. For a
searching criticism of the evidence see Linforth (752). In view of the unsettled state of affairs,
we employ the terms “Orphics” and “‘Orphism’’ loosely to designate the various sects,
thinkers, and brotherhoods associated with the name of Orpheus.
7 Menander, The Slave, Fragment 371 K.
§ Plato, Laws, 909 B and 933 A-E.
® For review see Dodds (68); and for an interesting Egyptian how-to-do-it text in Greek,
see Elworthy, (72), p. 396.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED — 349
name, for example, by writing it on a tablet and burying it with a curse in a
grave, was common sorcery in the fourth century (68). Hesiod feared to
name “‘the Blessed Ones’’, while Odysseus, as we have noted, wisely avoided
giving Cyclops fis name and thereby avoided later danger. It was that
power of the name which was used in invoking — or averting — the gods and
demons in Greece and elsewhere (85), (95). But to invoke one must know
the “silent name of the divinity”.1 As a ritual precaution the divine name
was secret; for as Farnell? explains, in primitive psychology “‘nomina sunt
numina’’, a principle that was valid in all the old religions of the Mediter-
ranean area. The name is part of the personality — as we have discussed
earlier — and the soul or power of the individual inheres in it: therefore he
who has the name of the person, whether human, superhuman, or divine,
can exercise a certain control over him by means of its magical application.
As for averting malevolent “‘daimons”, one method was to avoid their
fearsome names and either to rename them, or give them a new and re-
assuring epithet: Zeus the Thunderer would be invoked as Zeus the mild;
the Erinyes (the Furies) would become the Eumenides (the Gracious
Ones). In any event, the ritually correct name, the one pleasing to the
divinity, must be used. The chorus invokes Zeus in this manner: ‘‘Zeus,
whatever he may be, if this name pleases him in invocation, thus I call upon
him.”
There is a close relationship between speech and supernatural power.
Humans invoke and avert the gods and spirits (and one another) through
names or euphemisms and control their actions through promises, threats
and formularies; all of which are words. The gods, on their part, may strike
at man by depriving him of his speech and thereby rendering him helpless or
even dead. Such are the beliefs encountered in the modern narratives.
These emphasize how the exotika strike men dumb who speak unwisely,
while men more wise hold their tongues when in the company of unfriendly
powers.
Was it so in the days gone by? Probably, but the evidence is not clear.
Certainly there was an awe of powers and gods which made men reluctant
to speak, as Murray observed, “in great moments we (the ancient Greeks)
must avoid speaking any words at all, lest there should be even in the most
innocent of them some unknown danger.” Those who beheld the final
spectacle at Eleusis were bidden to hold their tongues, ‘A great awe of the
gods holds back the voice”® and even the names of the priests of Eleusis
were forbidden utterance whilst they lived.* The sacred objects carried by
the women during the festival of the Arretophoria were supposed to be
secrets which the participants must not reveal. The name of the festival
itself indicates the carrying of “sacred things that may not be named”’,” arretos
(dppnros) signifying that which is not to be spoken.
1 Euripides in (Fragment 781) Phaethon, 13: da71s ra avyOvr’ ovdpar’ olde Sayovev.
2 Farnell, 85, p. 32 and p. 184. See also Frazer, op. cit., ii, pp. 382 ff.
3 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 160, R. Lattimore translation.
4 Murray, (173) p- 32. 5 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 4.79.
8 Lucian, Lexiphanes, X.
7 See Harrison, (113), p. 266; for the text of the scholiast on Lucian’s The Dialogues of
Courtesans, II, 1, in Greek with English translation; see Harrison, (rr2), pp. 121-2. A dis-
cussion of the etymology of Arretophoria is to be found in Deubner, (63), pp- 9-14.
350 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
In addition the voice itself had power. There were some of whom it was
said that they were able to kill with their voice alone (72); and of this, one
might be deprived as Pliny describes an Italian belief: a man seen by a wolf
before it was itself sighted would lose his speech.
But these fragments of belief do not a document make; and while it is
reasonable to propose that the Greeks, like the Hebrews” would have included
being struck dumb among the danger from the powers, there is none among
the writers who say so. That such was the case is implied in the scene
between Socrates and Phaedrus on the banks of the river Ilyssus at a place
sacred to Pan and the nymphs.
Hesiod® comes close when he introduces his set of warnings on how to
avoid offence to the powers with the admonition, “The best (reserve of
resource) that men can have is a sparing tongue.”’ While his warning is in
keeping with his general counsel of moderation and is consistent with his
later discussion of avoiding gossip, the warning appears in an introduction to
taboos; its association may well be more than coincidental. Callimachus*
describes how once the nymph Chariclo, mother of the seer Teiresias, and
the goddess Athena were bathing in the river Hippocrene during the noon-
time (!) calm. Teiresias came to the spot to quench his thirst and “without
wishing it”? beheld what was not lawful for him to see. Athena angered,
spoke to him and “night fell upon the youth’s eyes. He stood speechless, for
sorrows glued his knees and helplessness withheld his voice”. Elsewhere in
folklore it is also found that dumbness is the punishment for breaking a taboo.®
As a final element in the narratives for which early antecedents can be
sought, we come to the emphasis placed upon numbers. The magic numbers
most mentioned today are 40, 12, 9, 7, and 3. Turning first to Dioscorides,
we find that 40 and 3 are the magic numbers which he associates with heal-
ing rituals. The potency of the magic number 40 can be traced back into
deepest antiquity. It is frequently mentioned in the Old Testament; in the
Babylonian religion it was the number which stood for the god of Magic, Ea.
For the Pythagoreans all numbers took on exceptional and preternatural
significance, but among them 7 seems to have been particularly important.
As for ritual days in ancient Athens, the third, ninth and thirtieth (the
latter of which is no longer significant) were important; with the importa-
tion of Chaldean astrology into Greece the number twelve, for the Zodiac,
became significant; whereas seven and nine were redefined as astrologically
important as well (58). One concludes that each of the magical numbers
emphasized in the rituals of the Doxario region today was also magically
significant at one or another period in pre-Christian Greece.

Survivals or Innovations. Some Unresolved Issues

There are several contemporary beliefs with which we have already
dealt in the last two chapters that deserve further attention. The question
1 Pliny, op. cit., VIII, xxxiv, 81. 2 See Luke, 1:20.
8 Hesiod, Works and Days, 179.
4 Callimachus, The Bath of Athena, 72-89.
* See Stith Thompson, (257), XX XIX, No. 100, C 944, who gives references to Feilberg,
Bidrag til en Ordbog over Fyske Almuesmal (4 vols, see “stum’’) Kobenhavn, 1886-1914.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: CONTINUED 351
about them is whether or not we are dealing with survivals, with recent
cultural acquisitions, or — as is so often the case — with concepts which com-
bine both the old and the new. For us these issues are particularly interesting
because of our own inability to establish their antecedents; these are con-
cepts which for the most part have received little or no mention by other
students of ancient or modern Greece.
Among the phenomena already mentioned are the two characteristics for
the transmission of healing power; the one passed on through the alternate
sex zig-zag chain over the generations; and the other having different
consequences to the healer when power is “‘stolen””, which means that both
thief and healer may work and be efficacious; and when that power is
taught. If taught, regardless of when the rituals are handed over, the power
depends upon the decline or death of the old healer before the younger one
will be effective.
Also uncertain in origin is the widespread dumbness which is said to
occur when one is struck by the exotika. With the magical significance
attached to words — and the immense social significance of speech for con-
gress with spirits as well as with mortals — it is likely that being struck dumb
was very well known in ancient Greece. Nevertheless, only the few docu-
ments mentioned earlier have come to our attention.
A third feature of interest is the local concept of Christ as magician, healer,
light-shadowed and revenant. That he is also a risen saviour, according to
the Orthodox doctrine, is true and it is as a saviour that Christ has been
compared in antiquity to the other mystery deities: Attis, Osiris, and Adonis.
While this aspect is crucial to his worship one suspects that the tendency to
define and understand the new in terms of the familiar existed in antiquity
as well as today; if that be the case, Christ’s attributes would have been a
mixture of those preternatural powers and qualities familiar to rural folk.
We are also uncertain about the development, as we deduce it, of a
concept of pollution based not upon awesome chthonic powers or acts or
substances surrounded by taboo, but of a pollution existing in disbelief, i.e.
‘““we are demonized”. It is possible of course that such a notion is but one
side of the early fear that the gods would strike the insolent, that hubris
would be avenged. If so, it is not that disbelief is a pollution but only that
there is danger surrounding the person who expresses it. Blasphemy must, it
can be reasoned, call forth retribution and it would be an unwise man who
associated with one so much in jeopardy from the gods. This interpretation,
while consistent with early beliefs, does not satisfy the circumstances in
which contemporary villagers describe how they are now themselves the
demons driving other spirits away. It is as if, in the process of partially
abandoning the pagan deities and taking upon themselves the former
attributes of “barbarians” and strangers, the villagers not only have felt a
sense of sorrow and loss but have concluded that their embrace of Christianity
has put them beyond the pale, deprived of the benefits and intimacies with
the very old traditions and gods just as though they themselves were polluted
in the traditional sense. We await the comment of others upon this inter-
pretation.
A fifth point about which we are unclear is whether or not the disdain
expressed by the moderns for the priesthood is really explained by our
352 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
postulates — to the effect that the priest is a walking “super-ego’’, a con-
science incarnate, generating guilt which must be attributed to the one who
has produced it; a reaction reinforced by the priest’s association with what is
still an outside city tradition marked by actual corruption. Nor are we
content with the Radin notion that the priest-magician as trickster in fact,
or isolated, sensitive, sometimes-possessed, innovator is necessarily the
object of suspicion, fear and dislike. Radin’s notion and ours are based upon
contemporary observations. What is lacking is material describing the
reaction of the ancient Greeks to their priests.
On another issue, Lawson’s suggestion that the ancients believed, in one
sector of their being, that death constituted a marriage to the gods, while a
very beautiful conception, seems to us neither proven nor disproven for old
times or modern ones. Lawson cites the evidence of antiquity and now, and
has allowed us to make the same comparison. In our narratives — and in
practice — there is evidence to support his thesis. But with the variety of
beliefs about the after-life, including an immense uncertainty, vagueness
and even disinterest twenty-five hundred years ago and now (suggesting
that Greece has finally recovered from the “failure of nerve” of which
Professor Murray accused the Hellenes) one cannot feel comfortable in
what may be an overinterpretation of the available information. A sherd is
a sherd and not a pot; literary fragments do not make a world-view.
The final point about which we have the most intense curiosity accom-
panied by the least satisfactory information has to do with the historical
antecedents for the notion of the light-shadowed. Politis, Lawson, Argenti
and Rose, perhaps other scholars have given the light-shadowed a passing
glance. Perhaps in their travels the concept did not loom as large as it does
in the Doxario region where it forms a crucial personality distinction. We
must accept the likelihood that the present notion, like so many other Greek
categories and concepts, has little internal consistency, being a collection of
beliefs associated in one or two central ways but reflecting quite an accretion
of diverse periods of history and thought. Even so, we find it difficult to
come to terms with any of its origins. Souls and shadows, seers and revela-
tions, initiates and the naive, epileptic shamans and stolid laymen, those
returning to Paradise and those far away, those near to death and far away,
the imaginative and the dull, the tricked and tricking; all seem to enter in.
Nevertheless, the term itself must have had a beginning and that beginning
in turn required a foundation of beliefs and experiences. How welcome it
will be if someone — perhaps himself with a light-shadow so that he can truly
see — will elucidate its origins.
Finally we have found only a little enlightenment in modern or ancient
sources for the use or origins of the liokra, the magical “horned snake’’ so
important as a healing fetish in the Doxario region.
 XXI
THE PAST IN THE. PRESENT:
COMMENTARY AND SUMMARY
HERE is ample evidence compiled by scholars, notably Argenti and
Rose (20), Lawson (147), Megas (165), Nilsson (180), Rodd (227),
Schmidt (239), Wachsmuth (257), and others to show that a wide range of
beliefs and customs in modern Greece (or at least in late nineteenth and early
twentieth century rural Greece) are direct survivals from antiquity; some
dating beyond Minoan-Mycenaean times, others from Classical and more
recent periods. When the material from observation and _narrative
drawn from our study in the Doxario region is examined for evidence of sur-
vivals, it confirms the findings of these great classicists and folklorists, and
shows that much of what occurs in-Dhadhi and Panorio is found elsewhere
in Greece.
Having limited ourselves primarily to the material which emerges from
the consideration of crisis and mystery, that is, to preternatural phenomena
associated with maintaining life and health and to avoiding pain and death,
our findings are much more limited than those of wide-ranging travellers
such as Lawson and Schmidt. On the other hand, its limitations in scope
may reap some advantage in depth; we believe we have a representative
sample of the beliefs in these villages associated with periods of crises.
Examining these, we find that for the general categories upon which our
chapter structure has been based there is no major orientation or set of
assumptions about life, death or the supernatural which cannot be found to
have ancient antecedents. On the other hand, within these broad categories
there are many specific practices which were more recently introduced.
One finds elements in common over at least twenty-five hundred years fos
the notions of vulnerable periods in the life cycle and the sources of danger
to each, for the nature of the social roles which require, or permit contact
with the supernatural world and the membership in the occult estate.
Continuities were seen in the ideas about the preternatural conditions and
qualities of human beings, the style and meaning of contact with the other
world — including death’s own adventure; in the ideas about the return of
the dead and their powers, the range and characteristics of the gods and
demons — and how one must deal with them. Parallel beliefs were described
about the extraordinary objects, subjects and phenomena in the natural
world — and how they influence and can be influenced; about the concepts
regarding affliction and deliverance, their cause and cure; and about the
remarkable powers embodied in words and speech.
There is no one of the foregoing sets of beliefs which is not of great im-
portance to the understanding of how the Greek shepherd and peasant —
whether today or yesterday — would view the world about him and would
to
act to secure himself from disaster or seek relief from anguish. Were we
single out those sectors of belief and action which appear to us to show the
wt
354 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

extensive continuity between the ancient and the modern world, not only in
the details of the structure but in the continuing significance, indeed
intense importance, to the conduct of life, we would remark upon two
areas.
For one, there is the role of the older woman in protecting, healing and
giving succour. Her function is intimately linked with her reproductive
capacity, with her ties to a mother goddess, with her own motherly love,
with her treasury of lore — in which the secrets of nature and the powers are
stored — and with her position in the family and community. To bear life and
to protect it, this has been her charge through the ages, and in responding to
it she has (in spite of the zig-zag transmission) managed to preserve the
magic, the rituals, and the knowledge of the ways of the preternatural
forces that have been bequeathed over the generations.
The second sector of belief which we would remark upon as rich in sur-
vivals and significance is the broader concern, involving awe, dread,
terror, reverence, hope and cunning exploitation, about man’s relationship
to the demons, gods and powers. It is the religious experience which is
profound and continuous and which, in its emotions, expressions, dynamisms
and conceptual structures (as distinct from content) has also preserved a
rich and varied heritage. The relationship of man to more-than-man still
allows for a division of approach into that which involves taboo, propriety,
pollution and riddance and — less frightful and more elaborate — that which
involves service, morality, exchange and communion. Within both sets of
relationships man attempts to maintain an order, command events, and act
so as to gird himself about with precautions and transform, as best he may,
his weaknesses into strengths. In his feelings and his doings he has preserved
forms of relationships, a content of experience, and specific styles of conduct
— magical, ritual, moral — nearly intact over millennia.
Both of these important sectors require, at least in part, that individuals
experience pain and anguish, and become aware of uncertainty, human in-
adequacy, and the loss, or threat of loss, of that which is loved or needed.
Both sectors provide that experience and awareness are interpreted in terms
of local traditions and views of the world, ones mediated through family
sharing and informal community instruction. Both are concerned with
protecting, healing, understanding, and mastering; both provide for hope
and enrichment, and for styles of human relationship based upon support
and recognized interlocking needs and obligations. Both sectors involve
experiences that are intimate, personal, and emotional; neither require
consistency, rationality, or the presence of elaborated integrated and
impersonal institutional, technological, or intellectual structures.
It is most probable that constants must exist within and outside man if
there are to be constants in his beliefs in the spheres of crisis and mystery. If
that be so, then the characteristics which have been set forth as common to
the two sectors upon which we have focused as particularly important in
their continuity over time must have been the same in antiquity as now, and
in their sameness must reflect parameters within the personalities of peasants
and shepherds, and within their culture and economy. To what extent these
parameters are genetically derived or are a function of environment,
necessarily then being matters of learning, one cannot be sure. One can be
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: SUMMARY 955
sure that both genetic [in the sense of psychic capacities and structures
which are biological givens] and environmental [both physical and cultural]
determinants play a role in the evolution and continuation of these sig-
nificant beliefs.
Having spoken of continuities, we may next inquire, what are the
changes? They are, of course, manifold. There is no major set of beliefs
which has not: been subject in one detail or another to modification or
qualification over the years; for many concepts the alterations have been
profound. The flux of Greek history did not cease with the advent of
Byzantium; the rural village is no cultural fossil preserved intact as a memorial
to the glory of ancient Greece, immune from the new ideas and instruments
of invaders, traders, travellers and returning sons, or resisting the inventions
generated spontaneously from among its own people. Indeed the villages are
new themselves: Dhadhi founded on ancient site by Asia Minor refugees;
Panorio’s ancient land occupied by fourteenth-century Albanians, and the
Saracatzani, however direct their lineage from Achaeans or even Pelasgians,
have driven their flocks to the Doxario region only within the last two
generations.
So there has been change; but it is of a different order than that which has
survived. Within the terms of reference of this volume we postulate that the
most important changes have been formal and institutional, in contrast to
the continuities which have been informal and personal. What has developed
has been a national state with its attendant bureaucracy, centralization and
rationally-administered pressures towards conformity. Simultaneously there
has been the advent of Christianity whose dogma and apparatus have the
same features as the state itself.
The effect has been to complicate village life; to add to the informal and
personal elements a superstructure mediated through political, educational,
military and religious, and commercial institutions. This more impersonal
superstructure may strive after greater regional or national homogeneity,
but what it provides in the village is heterogenity, as individuals are made
aware of diverse ideas, tools, and options. It also leads, we believe, to that
division reflected in the narratives, and in the comparison of actions versus
beliefs, whereby the local healing-magical-religious traditions are in conflict
with city-authoritarian-technological traditions.
Thus there occurred an extension of the national state and the national
church, an extension which is an on-going process through history as govern-
ments deploy their institutions and representatives throughout rural areas
and, in turn, recruit the rural folk to participate in that government. In
spite of this, the villagers have not abandoned the healing of the hearth, nor
the religion of personal experience; instead they have augmented these by
incorporating and accommodating additional elements: the content of
Christianity, knowledge of empirical medicine; the broad — and necessarily
contradictory and ambiguous ~ structure of theory and fact which constitute
the ‘greater traditions” of which Redfield speaks.
Following the extensions of the church and state there have come, within
the last century and more dramatically within the last generation, the great
upsurges in industry, commerce, science and technology. These have been
slow to make their impact on rural Greece, but within the last few years —
356 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
and in the next few — have had and will have effects more dramatic than any
other change within the last two thousand years. At present technology is
merely competing with the old traditions; a competition which, as we noted
earlier, has been relatively free from stress. Presumably this is because inter-
personal organization and village values are still sustained; in addition the
peasant’s own willingness to be inconsistent,1 open-minded and modern is
a considerable asset. Nevertheless rapid change in any social system is likely
to prove disruptive and today’s easy competition between tradition and
technology will probably be followed by more stressful ones — as the nar-
ratives themselves imply.
If advances in medical care and public health, in agricultural technology
and cash crop farming, in communication, education and commerce con-
tinue at such a pace as to alter the composition, intimacy, and network of
obligations within the family and within the village; if life styles, child-
rearing methods, and community values are challenged by massive in-
trusions from the city world, one must expect that a study of survivals done
twenty-five years from now would provide quite different results.? Even
those sectors with the strongest links to the past must be expected to give
way to the outside technological practice of religion and healing.
Such changes would of course be psychological and moral ones as well as
institutional and sociological. The direction of the former can be anticipated
by attending to the seeds that have been lying fallow in the rural soil ever
since the introduction of Christianity and, more recently, of European
technology. These seeds carry the doctrines of sin and individual responsi-
bility. The one is embodied in the Protestant Devil, the other in the
Protestant Ethic. The Devil as a single-mindedly evil fellow has not made
much headway in Greece; neither has the notion of individual responsibility.
The one has been ignored in favour of multi-faceted, ambivalent deities;
the other has never been even considered. In villages where the individual is
submerged in family and community ties, and where personal pride is a
matter of one’s capacity to participate socially and biologically — with a
liberal sprinkling of unblemished philotimo and hubris if the opportunity
1 Inconsistency itself is certainly a constant over the ages. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De
Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 182, lamented it, noting how in his time people urged the in-
evitability of fate but nevertheless asked for good fortune, prayed to the gods, and used
omens as if by knowing they could shape their fated events. Indeed Hippocrates recom-
mended it (De Insomniis, Sec. IV, Ch. II, 87), ‘“While praying to the gods a man ought also
to use his own exertions”. Traditionally Greek healing has combined several approaches.
2 Robert Redfield, in his truly superb book, The Primitive World and Its Transformations, calls
attention to this transition from the ‘‘moral” to the “‘technical” order. It occurs, he says,
when a folk society organized about the organization of judgements about what is right
among men is replaced by one in which the coordinating bond is based on utility and
necessity. The transition takes place when an intellectual religion is developed which the
folk cannot understand, one in which the moral order comes under public and state manage-
ment. It is then (and here Redfield cites Toynbee), that disintegrating forces compete with
integrating ones, that intellectual rebels arise to proclaim rationality and scepticism, where
faiths compete, where no one system of belief commands the loyalty of the people. It is this
which Redfield calls a civilization; its very disintegration generating new ideas and further
transitions which may in turn form new but technical bonds among the people. Redfield
places peasant communities mid-way on the continuum; they combine, he says, the
primitive brotherhood of a folk with the economic nexus of civilized society; the pecuniary
spirit assuring peaceful relationships with the city folk with whom commerce is conducted.
 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: SUMMARY 357
arises — there is no room for either Satan or painfully guilt-ridden in-
dividuality.
But the Devil and the Ethic are ready and waiting. If the anticipated
institutional changes take place, and if they have their typical effects on
life styles and values, one can expect to see the Devil and the Ethic proselytis-
ing successfully among the increasingly anonymous city dwellers and
especially among the rootless and alienated organizational and soon-to-be
automated men which a modern society both spawns, entraps and super-
ficially rewards. There is evidence that it is happening already.*
Until such time as these two bedfellows — and their many associates in
urbanization and technology — make their triumph, it is not likely that the
present moral structure of the peasant village or shepherd encampment will
alter. Until recently at least the institutional innovations of state and church
had not marred the intimacy of the hearth, nor changed the basic attitudes
of the villager towards life or death; nor had they replaced his age-old ways
of dealing with crisis, nor his pervasive and richly endowed sense of the
mysterious. But change is in the air, and what the intrusion of the state could
not perform seems likely to be accomplished by the technological revolution
of the last half of the twentieth century.
1In recent years Protestant sects, especially fundamentalist, have been making converts in
Greece. Even in isolated tradition—centred Panorio one man has been secretly converted.
Who? A young man, a deviant because he is a bachelor and without a family, one who has
served time in prison for a rape of which fellow villagers do not accuse him. Who else but a
man without the support and obligations of family, one who has known punishment based
on city law rather than village traditions, would be a candidate for the Ethic of individual
responsibility and the Satanic persuasion of sin? If family life dissolves in commerce with the
city and if city law intrudes on the informal village codes we may expect more of his
villagers to join him in the banned and secret rites of Protestantism (in his case the Seventh
Day Adventists).
 XXII
PRESENT PARALLELS
T will be the task of the present chapter to illustrate a few of the parallels
|yet contemporary rural Greek beliefs and practices and those of
other Mediterranean or Slavic ethnic regions.
In the two previous chapters there were occasional references to parallels
between ancient Greek beliefs and those found elsewhere in the Mediter-
ranean and Near Eastern worlds. Recall that in illustrating the magical
concepts, the use of the binding curse, the prevalence of witchcraft and
sorcery, the styles of belief in gods and spirits, chthonic or aerial, and in
man’s congress with the supernatural, the power of words and the force of
ritual, the nature of death, and the substances and ways of healing, one saw
similarities between Greek culture and Sumerian, Egyptian, Hebrew,
Babylonian, Minoan or Roman cultures. These were, of course proximate
cultures continually exchanging — as long as they survived — ideas and tools
through commerce and conquest. Their environments and ways of life were
not greatly dissimilar and they shared, at least for some portion of their
populations, common origins. It is no wonder then that scholars have
demonstrated their communalities as well as their differences (30, 47, 48,
49; 50, 55, 138, 153, 169, 225, 263).
Beyond the parallels of proximate people there were similarities among
those more distant. The elements of magic and religion, the empirical
methods for healing, or the structure of community life and values for
peasants and shepherds of ancient Greece would be, by no means, strange
to their ancient contemporaries in the Indus Valley, on the Persian plains,
on the North African littoral, or the steppes of central Asia. It was beyond
the scope of these chapters to consider those similarities, or to acknowledge
the important divergencies among and within these ancient civilizations. It
is sufficient to point to the fact of similarity and to recommend it to the
reader’s consideration and further study.
Among the contemporary Mediterranean ethnic areas one may select
Morocco, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, South Italy and Spain as containing com-
munities which have been objects of anthropological study relevant to the
concerns of these volumes. We will begin with Morocco.

Morocco
In 1926 Westermarck published his scholarly work, Ritual and Belief in
Morocco of which a considerable part is devoted to religion and to healing.
One of the most important features of Moroccan belief which is described is
that of “baraka’’, holiness or blessed virtue. Beneficial power is attributed to
persons, plants and things; the power is not a function of their real property,
but rather involves a sense of the mysterious, the notion of wonder-working,
the idea of the preternatural. It is “‘baraka’? which a medicinal herb has
beyond its pharmaceutical effects; it is baraka which resides within a
 PRESENT PARALLELS 359
person and allows him to work miracles or otherwise perform acts in viola-
tion of the ordinary rules of nature. Among humans Mohammed possessed
more baraka than any other; this was his power as healer and magician.
Baraka not only resides within persons, particularly the saints, but in
words as well. Prayers, for example, are efficacious as are incantations. As
for the saints, they may be living as well as dead and are, in fact, defined as
such by the power they hold. Their power may be harmful as well as bene-
ficial; they may heal by prayer, incantation and laying on of hands; but
they also do harm, causing disease to those who have aroused their ire.
The healing virtues may be specific for a given disease. Particular families
are reputed for the ability of certain of their members to cure one or several
ailments. During the healing ritual the healers take care to protect them-
selves from the transfer of the sickness from the ill to themselves; a typical
move is to fold the gown about oneself so as to shut out the evil force.
Death serves to increase the baraka of some saints. These persons do not
disappear but rather return, in spirit guise, to continue their miracles. As
time goes on they become specialists, renowned, just as are the living
healers, for their ability to heal particular ailments. To the shrine of the
saint the ill — or in the case of children, the mothers of the ill — will wend
their way, staying there until such time as the saint appears in a dream,
advising them, and telling them they may leave. Should the saint not appear
one presumes discouragement will eventually drive the supplicant elsewhere.
At the shrine, some of which are equipped with rooms for the supplicants,
the ritual calls for an offering to the saint (something white rather than
black)! and the invocation of his name. Gifts of money or of food (egg, milk,
bread, corn, honey, olive oil), of candles, or of live animals offered in
sacrifice are traditional. Sometimes the petitioner will not give a gift but
will promise one in return for the saint’s granting of his desire.
Every dead saint, Westermarck says, resents a person who approaches
him in a state of uncleanliness; “‘baraka . . . is extremely sensitive to external
pollution”. Some shrines forbid women entrance; unbelievers — Christians
or Jews — can injure the power of the saint by their proximity to his shrine.
The saintly place may have a beneficial influence; the water, for example,
which flows from a near-by spring will be conceived to have curative or
protective powers, or a cairn of stones, whitewashed for purity,” will possess
preternatural power.
There is power within the bad as within the good; evil spirits exist as
“djinns” (“nuns”) or devils. They will attack humans unless warded off
with sacred words, spoken or written charms from the Koran, Holy Writ, or
by talismans.
Power is by no means a constant with which one is endowed. ‘Too much
prayer will weaken one just as pollution will attenuate. The primary sources
of pollution to personal baraka are to be found in women, especially men-
struating women, those who have recently engaged in sexual intercourse,
those having a bodily discharge (including post-parturant women who are
unclean for forty days) or bodily impurity. Murderers are also polluted. A
to the
1 One is reminded of the ancient Greek practice by which white offerings went
Olympians and black to the chthonic powers.
2 “ETerms” in Greece are still painted white and serve as guardian markers.
360 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
full stomach is also considered a pollutant, as is excrement, blood, breath,
and earth. Fasting, washing, and abstinence are means of purification.
The djinns habitually live underground and are said to resemble human
beings, indeed will have intercourse with them if given the opportunity.
They also live in trees, caves, springs and streams, and in fires or fireplaces.
They live in darkness and fear light. They can change their shape and may
appear as monsters of one sort or another. Their most frequent act is to
cause illness, usually sudden illnesses such as convulsions, sudden pain,
erupting madness or, among groups, epidemics. Westermarck cites an
instance in which a djinn was said to have caused cholera by shooting
arrows at his victims, and thereby entering their bodies.+
Those most vulnerable to the attacks of the djinn are as follows: the very
good or religious persons, those susceptible to strong emotions such as anger
or fear, little children and those undergoing rites of passage, newborn,
women in childbed, brides and bridegrooms, and the dead before burial.
The djinn, it is noted, are to be found wherever there is blood.
Should ordinary devices for dispelling the demon djinn fail, such as
incantations, herbs (coriander), salt, blood, iron, silver coins, tar, strong
smells, or sounds, or a sacrificed black animal which binds the djinn to leave
the victim alone, then one may seek the intervention of more powerful
humans, or of the sainted dead. In the former case one may use male or
female exorcisers, “haunted women” (presumably ones possessed and
magically empowered), while in the latter one prays to the saint or visits
his shrine.
While the ordinary Moroccan shepherd or peasant avoids the djinn at all
costs, there are two classes of individuals who employ the demons for
benefit. One class consists of magicians who can summon the demons and,
through magic, bid them act in their behalf; the other class are local
Negroes (in contrast to the Berbers and to those population elements
derived from South-western Asia or elsewhere in the Mediterranean) who
worship the djinn and sacrifice to them — again with black animals. Never-
theless, whatever the practice of the Negroes, most of the local people
associate the demons with feelings of uncanniness, with the fear of unknown
powers and danger, and with a force which works primarily for the bad.
This force is associated with baraka in that both belong to the world of
mystery.
While the djinn are members of a general class of beings, there are among
them individuals with more distinctive features. Some cause specific diseases;
others may be employed in witchcraft, one is known to live in a particular
spring and to try to seduce men or to kill bathers. Sitan (Satan) is the most
famous of them, chief of evil, tempter supreme. According to Westermarck,
he is the one who is blamed when someone-is “‘possessed” by anger or
“overcome” by fear; he misleads in dreams; he is responsible for lustful,
quarrelsome or irreligious behaviour. This Satan also goes under the name
of “Iblis”? which is etymologically related to the Greek Diavolos.
Not all danger comes from djinn or angered saints. The evil eye also
causes misfortune. Westermarck observes that the beliefs surrounding it,
and the devices used to ward it off, are much the same in North Africa as
1 As in the Jliad when Apollo’s arrows bring the plague.
 PRESENT PARALLELS 361
they are in Europe and as they were, in antiquity, in Egypt, Babylon,
Phoenicia, India, Etruria, Chaldea and Greece. Among the counter
measures one finds charms, mirrors, numbers, gestures, counter-eyes, horns,
crescents, etc.
Another source of preternatural danger is to be found in curses and oaths,
both in word and gesture. Among the curses, that of the parent upon the
child is the most terrible and indeed is more powerful than the words of the
saint. Women too are very dangerous in their curses; their power is drawn
from their pollution. Westermarck observes that even the most terrible of
curses will not hurt the innocent but that the degree of harm increases with
the guilt of the one accursed.
The stranger is surrounded with preternatural possibilities. He is met with
fear and awe, and the rites of hospitality are designed to place him under an
obligation to avoid harming his hosts. A conditional curse, “‘Ar,” serves to
bind the stranger guest to his obligations. It is the unknown power and
intention of the stranger which is associated with his uncanniness ;he may be
a saint in disguise; in any event he is a potential doer of good or evil. Much
of what constitutes social hospitality contains, observes Westermarck, an
undertone of magical ritual. There is, of course, because of the danger they
pose an element of what moderns might call “preventive war” in the host’s
intention towards his guest. To protect the stranger from being killed,
superior powers are placed about him. As Zeus Xenios worked in Greece of
old, so does Allah today serve as guardian.
The “Ar” which emanates from preternatural sources also serves in
function to bind humans to social obligations and to personal desires; in this
sense it may be likened to a binding curse, implicit in which is assumed to be
the natural law, the inevitable retribution. Thus it is that by an offering of
sacrifice one obligates a saint to one’s wish, or may employ his power in
one’s own protection. Westermarck cites in this context the warning of
Apollo: “terrible both among men and gods is the wrath of a refugee when
one abandons him with intent”’.?
Withcraft is practised in Morocco. Its aims can be benevolent or wicked;
it can function to ward off dangers, a supernatural prophylaxis, or to bring
about specific damage. It is believed capable of producing impotence,
barrenness, love, illness and death. Some of the magic of witchcraft is to be
found in the naming of names, or in the like invoking like; one may produce
illness or death by speaking of it; one may control another by writing his
name on a charm; one may transfer a disease from one person to another by
means of a spell. Disease may also be cast out by means of a rock added toa
cairn of a saint.
Dreams come as visitors to the sleeper, and what is seen in dreams has
preternatural significance. Dreams may foretell the future, as may other
omens and signs; they may also influence the future. Prophetic dreams are
especially associated with shrines of the saints, and with sacred caves where
the petitioner may sleep while he awaits the visitation which will answer his
questions.
With reference to the dead, it has already been noted that the exceptional
dead continue to effect and to communicate with the world of the living.
1 Aeschylus, Eumenides, 5, 232.
362 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
For all of the dead there is the implication in ritual that the spirit remains on
earth for a time; this is seen in the meal which is taken at the grave on the
funeral day and in the practice of the rites there on the fortieth day after
death. Should an unmarried girl die, she will be dressed as a bride. The
funeral rituals are, according to Westermarck, much the same as those
found in Greece and in Semitic lands. There are violent demonstrations of
grief with wailing and lamentation, rending of clothes and cutting of hair.
Water is sprinkled on callers to wash off pollution, and the house is purified
with incense. Mourners are considered death-polluted and thereby con-
tagious. The non-saintly dead may appear to the living and, if angry, may
punish them. The corpse contains magical powers which are employed in
sorcery, and it is believed that curative powers reside in the place where a
man has been murdered.
As there are periods in life when one is particularly vulnerable to danger —
marriage, childbirth, infancy, death — so there are year times which are
dangerous to all. Both life cycle and year cycle times are surrounded with
protective rituals designed to ward off the dangers from the supernatural
world or, as in the case of wedding couples, mothers, and babies, from the
evil eye of their neighbours. Of the year times it is the mid-summer which
Westermarck notes as most dangerous, while it is August which is the month
of sickness and death.
It is hardly necessary to mark these parallels which the reader can see for
himself. If the Moroccans called their djinn “‘exotika’’ and recognized within
them the subclasses of “‘nereids” and ‘“‘kallikantzari’’, while if the Greeks
spoke of power as “baraka” and binding rituals and obligations as ‘‘Ar’’,
certain correspondences would be nearly exact, even to the words employed.
Because Westermarck did not seek to identify all of the phenomena of
interest to us, nor did we seek to identify Moroccan beliefs in the design of
our inquiry, it is not possible to perform any quantitative exercise which
might allow us to report a percentage of agreement or disagreement between
the beliefs of the Doxario area and those of Westermarck’s Morocco. What
does appear dramatically evident is that the world of the preternatural, the
approach to crisis, the content of mystery, the conceptual modes employed
to harness power to desire, the ambivalence of power and the forms of
supernatural danger; these are all as close to corresponding as one might
expect between any two contiguous culture areas, let alone between two
which are divided by eighteen hundred miles of ocean, a dramatically
different recorded history, and the quite separate institutions of Christianity
and Mohammedanism.
In some ways Morocco of the 1920s appears to have been more like
ancient Greece’s hinterland than is Doxario today, but Morocco of 1920
and Schmidt’s Greece of 1870 were probably the same. If these assumptions
were to be true, it would merely serve to confirm further the dramatic
change which has overtaken rural Greece these last few years. It would also
confirm what anthropologists interested in pre-history have already de-
scribed; a common cultural origin for the peoples of South-west Asia and
the Mediterranean; a culture that shows its unity in the stable peasant and
shepherd life styles, relatively independent of the intellectual or institutional
changes and ferments in the great cities which were centres of grand and
 PRESENT PARALLELS 363
idiosyncratic but short-lived civilizations. Based simply on the comparison
of three phases of culture: classical Greece, modern Doxario and 1920
Morocco it can be suggested that rural life in both Greece and Morocco is
permeated with beliefs and practices that must have their origins (assuming
now no dramatic innovations in folk culture in Morocco at least since
Phoenician-Carthaginian days) prior to the rise of Greek civilization. This
suggests that much of what has survived is at least neolithic, and that the
contemporary parallels draw on this pre-historic substrate.

Spain
J. A. Pitt-Rivers has made an absorbing study of an Andalusian village,
The People of the Sierra. His emphasis has not been on the content of beliefs
but on the social structure of a rural community. He begins by observing
the heterogeneity within the village; people do not all hold the same beliefs.
The primary division is between the local values and the demands and
regulation of the central government, or to put it in the terms we have
applied to Doxario, between the informal local system and the outside-
authority-technology system.
Within the village, which has 3,000 citizens, there is a general sense of
solidarity as members of a self-contained community, and within each sex
group. There is a chasm between the sexes, and there is one very important
sex-linked psychological attribute: manliness. It is a trait and a virtue
defined by fearlessness, sexuality, aggressiveness, and the defence of one’s
own and one’s family pride. The female quality which is central, ““verguenza”’
is essentially “shame”. According to Pitt-Rivers, it is a sense of propriety,
the capacity to blush.
What is moral and what is legal are not identical; the latter is defined by
government and may be pitted in conflict with the former, which is defined
by community usage. Outside both systems are found the gipsies, “shameless
ones”? against whom the sanctions of shame are ineffective.
A central figure in the informal system of the community is the “‘sabia’’ or
wise woman. In a town of 3,000 there were two such women. A sabia is
believed to possess supernatural powers, her “grace” is a gift and a personal
attribute. Sights of such a gift include being a twin, being born on Good
Friday, or having been visited by the Holy Virgin in one’s dreams; in
addition to the signs, a sabia must be trained to her role. Her skills include
the ability to find lost or strayed objects, to discover the name of a thief, to
learn whether persons absent are well, to make people fall in love, or end
quarrels, or pacify a violent husband, to protect from acts of God, to ensure
that one dying without receiving the last unction from a priest does not go
to Hell, and midwifery and healing through supernatural, “‘pseudomedical’”’,
and medical techniques. In their work the sabias ordinarily invoke the aid of
the Christian powers but occasionally call on Astarte or Venus as well. They
believe themselves able to harness the miraculous powers of the saints; they
also employ herbs and minerals which are believed to have magical powers
residing within them.
While the sabia uses her magical powers for the good, the witch or “bruja”
employs the same powers for the bad. It is the bruja who can make people
364 THE DANGEROUS HOUR

lose things, who gives the thief protection, who hides a wife’s unfaithfulness
from her husband, can arouse illicit passions, cause madness, or produce
illness or death through sorcery. While the two roles, witch and wise woman,
are potentially separate, the villagers know the powers are the same and
that the appellation depends upon how they are employed. As a con-
sequence, Pitt-Rivers says the villagers are ambivalent about their sabias.
With reference to healing, the sabia is only one of several alternatives to a
physician. A variety of male and female healers, all called “curandero” (or
“‘curandera”’ in the case of females) offer their services. Some are simply
patent medicine vendors, some are bone setters, and some are magicians.
Pitt-Rivers notes that natural and supernatural techniques are mingled, but
there is an important distinction: men can never have the grace of the
sabia’s power so they must heal through skill. Consequently they are bone
setters and the like; a skill which, although learned, is passed down a
family line. There is one exception; the effeminate man may have the grace
of powers. Priests are present too, but the people, while trusting the saints,
are anti-clerical.
Sorcery is more often ascribed to men than women; the most common
motive is jealousy. To accomplish sorcery one ordinarily reads a book of
magic; one of the how-to-do-it techniques is to direct the spirits to do the
harm.
While men are more often prone to use sorcery, it is women who have the
evil eye or who, during their menstrual period, possess involuntary des-
tructive forces. A few women have a special power, “‘calio”’, secret and
dangerous, associated with their sexuality, but again independent of their
will and, in this case, unrelated to the period of menstruation. The evil eye
produces, as its effects, sickness or death. Gipsies are particularly dangerous
in this regard, while young children are most vulnerable. Generally it is the
women who control or contain the powers of the supernatural world.
The sabia is admired and considered a good person. She charges no set
fee for her services but acts out of ‘‘goodness” and gladly takes whatever
payment the patient wishes to give. The physicians and the pharmacists, on
the other hand, are disliked; a sore point is their charging of fees which the
local folk speak of as extortion. Nevertheless, it is to the physician that they
are said first to visit when ill and only if he fails, will they seek the healing of
the sabia or curandero,
Pitt-Rivers finds it useful to categorize two separate controlling systems
within the community: the ruling group tied in with government and law,
and the “‘infrastructure” representing the sentiments and sense of local
solidarity and values. ‘Thus he sees the sabia deriving her power from the
moral order while her competitor, the priest, derives his from central
governmental authority. This same conflict pits curanderos against the
doctor, and the country midwife against the trained nurse. Even though the
systems are conflicting, it is Pitt-Rivers’ observation that all villagers
participate in both; the tension between the two systems is reflected in
unstable relationships in the town. In this setting he finds that confidence
and deception become very important with the former, locally spoken of in
terms of “‘the state of the heart”’, as a final source of interpersonal stability.
It would appear that there are parallels between the Doxario region and
 PRESENT PARALLELS 365
Andalusian Sierra, although important discrepancies also are to be seen.
They hold in common the roles and some of the functions of the wise woman;
the split between local and external values and authority; the distance
between villager and doctor or priest; the belief in magic, sorcery, spirits;
the manipulation of the saints and surviving pagan deities; the fearful role
of the gipsy; the presence of the evil eye; some concepts of pollution with
reference to the female; and the importance to individuals of propriety and
pride. Nevertheless, as Pitt-Rivers describes it, his village seems to have less
in common with the substrate of beliefs found near Doxario than does rural
Morocco. The Latin, and at one-time Hippocratic health concepts of hot
and cold, exist in Spain but not in Greece. There is no evidence of spirit of
woodland, stream or wild, nor do the ancient division of powers (chthonic
and aerial) emerge. The wise women range far more afield in their work in
Pitt-Rivers’ town, are fewer in number, and much more specialized in their
role. Similarly their opposite, the bruja, is not to be found in Doxario in the
dedicated-to-evil sense that it — and the corresponding English word of
“witch” — imply. Concepts of pollution and purity seem less important and
less elaborated; one gains the impression that the Christian church in its
priests and practice is closer to the formal Catholic traditions and less
infiltrated by local lore than in the case in Orthodox Doxario. To conclude
from this somewhat limited evidence, for Pitt-Rivers’ study attended to
somewhat different concerns than ours, it appears that the parallels between
Greece and Spain are considerable, and that the content of folk beliefs
about healing and magic are sufficient to indicate that the parallels existed
prior to, rather than being a result of, Roman and then Christian dominance.
Some of the many differences may be attributed to the greater size and more
elaborate institutional structure of the Sierra village; there seems to be more
specialization, more integration with city traditions, and very much less
intimacy with the world of supernaturals or with an animistic nature.
Whether these supernaturals, and the accompanying sense of intimacy and
personal mystery, have been lost over time with the growth of Spanish
urban civilization, or whether the Iberian settlers failed to possess such
orientations and gods, remains a question.

South Italy
Phyllis Williams, in her book South Italian Folkways in Europe and America,
provides considerable information on religion and healing in South Italy,
of
which allows us to compare aspects of the beliefs of that region with those
the Doxario area. She begins by pointing to the lack of integrat ion or co-
dence
operation between village folk and the central government. Indepen
character istic. The village itself
from and suspicion of outside authority is
of life with consider able isolation from and
is the social centre and focus
. A bond ties people of the same town and district, and
distrust of outsiders
sets them aside from others.
found
With reference to rural religion she observes that Christianity
never in anythin g but name in remoter
acceptance in larger towns but
“‘paganus”’
regions; she notes that the word “pagan” was derived from
the implica tion of
meaning peasant or country dweller; and she points out
366 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
conflict between city Christians and country non-Christians as important
in the earliest Christian period. The conversion of the peasants, says
Williams, “‘came gradually and never involved much more than changes in
outward form”. The religion of today contains many pre-Christian elements,
as well as Mohammedan, and Christian components. Objects such as
statues and stones are worshipped, individual saints are thought to have
specific powers and qualities, for example St. Rocco is effective against
illness, St. Lucy for the eyes, St. Anna for childbirth, etc. The early saints
were derived from or substitutes for Greek and Roman deities and the nature
spirits. She cites Laing, Survivals of Roman Religion, describing an ancient
statue of Ariadne revered under a new name as Saint Venere and a torso of
Juno worshipped as Saint Helen. Each child is believed to be born with a
guardian angel, while a house spirit is invested in each dwelling. The system
is polytheistic with each village having local deities; the most popular of
which is a female goddess considered the local Madonna.
The approach to men and gods is the same; gifts and threats are employed
to cajole, coerce and obligate. There is preternatural power among men as
among the gods; witches and wizards exist (““maghi’” and “‘maghe”’ from the
Greek “‘magos’’ and “‘mayissa’’) and the “strix’” (from the same word in
Greek, which has become “‘stringlos”’ and “‘stringla” in modern times). The
magicians can heal illnesses, dissolve spells or — if seeking the bad — can harm
and kill. Spirits, like the strix, may also harm; the notion of the demon
substituted for the baby, the traditional changeling theme, is encountered in
accounting for babies with enteritis or ailments derived from malnutrition.
Against supernatural dangers and trickery one may employ magic and
ritual; salt or garlic is a powerful protective agent; the sign of the cross is
apotropaic, etc.
The evil eye is prevalent and is, says Williams, symptomatic of the blame-
throwing assumption that misfortune is to be attributed to the envy of other
humans rather than to accident or natural process. Distrust of the actions of
his neighbours is fundamental to his interpersonal orientation.
There are several healing specialists: witches, barbers, midwives and
herbalists. These provide service without set fees; diagnosis is made on the
basis of external characteristics. Tuberculosis is believed to be transmitted
through the blood. For children chronically ill a treatment is to dress them
in black in the habit of St. Anthony, the patron of children. Diseases are
attributed to excess of acid, or salt, or too much blood in one place. A
certain fatalism is encountered; each illness is thought to have its course
which inevitably will be run. Medicaments include olive oil, wine, vinegar,
garlic, onion, and other herbs; animal substances including wolf, chicken,
viper, frog, pig, sea horse, and mouse are used; while other substances
employed are saliva, salt, sulphur, mother’s milk, urine, and blood. Bleeding,
cupping, and scarifying are also treatment techniques. These folk remedies
are used concomitantly with medical care and the physician is used in
addition to local cures.
Erysipelas and cancer are particularly dreaded; the name of the former is
never invoked for fear it would conjure the ailment. The disease is considered
to be an evil spirit which enters the body. Mental illness is also thought due
to spirits, ones which possess the sufferer and are to be exorcised by abuse of
 PRESENT PARALLELS 367
the patient’s body. Hospitalization is resisted because one who dies there
will not receive the immediately necessary funeral rituals; the consequence
of which is that the soul will be delayed in its passage to Purgatory. Those
so delayed may become ghosts who abide on earth; in particular hospitals
are ghost-ridden. Patients in delirium are thought to be talking to the
ghosts.
Williams’s excellent book is in the form of a survey of general beliefs and
does not focus on details, nor on observations in any particular community.
Nevertheless, the generalizations are sufficient to enable us to identify
many parallels with rural Greece, in particular the survivals of earlier
religious beliefs, and the conflict between local and outside traditions and
sources of authority. Important parallels are: substances used in healing,
the practice of magic, the presence of witches and folk healing specialists,
the notion of diseases as separate animated spirits which attack and possess
the ill, the evil eye, simultaneous employment of folk and technical medicine
and the fear that those who die without proper ritual will linger on earth.
Discrepancies appear to exist in the greater specialization of folk healers and
in the assignment of barbers to a healing role, in the diagnostic and disease
cause notions, and in the reasons offered for antipathy towards hospitaliza-
tion. For many areas of belief, especially with reference to the local pantheon
of spirits, beliefs about death, preternatural qualities, healing words and
powers, and other important areas, there are no data which allow us to
compare rural Greece with South Italy. The parallels that do exist are
sufficient to conclude that both regions draw on a common pre-Christian
culture; that the developments in peasant societies have been similar enough
to maintain many early survivals and to generate a social system which, in
its emphasis on local traditions, its distrust of outsiders, its emphasis on
manly virtue (‘“omerta” in Italy) and local solidarity - compounded by
strong ambivalence towards one’s neighbours and an awareness of their
potentially damaging wishes and acts, is much the same in rural Italy as in
rural Greece.

Yugoslavia
Patience Kemp has reported on Serbia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Montenegro
and Macedonia in her 1935 book, Healing Ritual: Studies in the Technique and
Tradition of the Southern Slavs. Hers are a most important set of observations.
Her primary conclusion is that the majority of customary rites, whether
small or great, were connected in some way with the achievement and
preservation of health. Health is a central issue and a prime goal for
magico-religious activities among the rural Slavs.
The forms and content of rituals vary considerably; it is difficult, she notes,
to distinguish those that are institutional and traditional from those that are
spontaneously generated, sporadic, and necessarily idiosyncratic. The
implication is one of heterogeneity of practices within a general framework
of belief, and of individual or family freedom for improvisation on cultural
themes.
With reference to beliefs, Kemp remarks upon the difficulties attending
the observer who would impose order on concepts which are disorderly, for
368 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
among the rural Slavs there is no standard for logic, coherence, or con-
sistency against which local beliefs must be tested. Nevertheless, Kemp does
identify certain prevalent sets of beliefs. Among these are concepts of bodily
organs as semi-autonomous and animated, each possessing independent
qualities, likes, and directions. Organs, of which the stomach is the most
important, are attributed ghost personalities so that the heart, while
anatomically real, may also be conceived as a non-anatomical spirit; the
organs then, and the fluids, are “‘spirit-bearers”. These beliefs are submerged
among a larger set of concepts of soul and spirit which include doctrines of
transmigration, and which are employed in individualizing qualities, days,
and other objects, animating them. Strength, for example, may be a quality
of a person, but it is not integral with the individual; rather its nature and
origins are external to an individual and linked with an animated entity, a
separate force, which the person may call upon from time to time.
These animating, individualizing tendencies extend to illnesses; in con-
sequence, many ailments are believed to be caused by spirits, by ghost
animals, or animals corporeal. Cures vary. One offers food so as to bait and
catch the demon or animal which has caused the illness that, once captured,
is then destroyed or passed along to someone else. Magical manipulations
may, for example, require a frog to be killed in order that a goitre may be
cured, for it is held that goitre is a real frog in the throat. Hence, like affecting
like, the frog inside will die as does the one in the hand. Ex voto offerings are
made to saints, for the saint is believed responsible for ailments caught on
that saint’s day; the ex voto returns the afflicted part to the giver. What can
give an ailment can remove it; consequently the Plague, personified as a
woman, may cure as well as kill, “only he whom the Plague wishes to heal
can recover”.
Guilt figures in the interpretation of illness, for sickness of whatever
nature is seen as a punishment inflicted upon the evil doer or his descendants.
The punishment may be offered by God, by a saint, or by other humans.
Nevertheless, at particular periods in life persons are more vulnerable; for
children, for brides, and for pregnant women the risk is greatest. To protect
oneself from the onslaught of illness there are health taboos, their number
being multiplied for the vulnerable ones. Taboo, of course, implies dangerous
powers; it is not surprising that taboo violations result in illness nor that
taboos surround death and birth. Consequently, particular dangers are
associated with the spirits of the dead and with birth; for example, many
illnesses are believed to be contracted in utero.
Taboos are specific and are to be observed at times of crisis or special
occasions. Nevertheless, the instructions of the taboo, that is the prohibitions
and constraints, are widely generalized so that a few general sets of instruc-
tions describe the kinds of taboos for which. observance is required in a
variety of settings.
There is magic of curse and magic of cure; most link the spell to an act or
an object, demonstrating and tying the wish of the person to a deed. But
magic is not without its dangers; rural folk are aware that power may go
awry and produce untoward effects. Thus, the direction of magic is a
matter of intent; the folk healer seeks a cure, while the witch may seek
either the bad or to remove the effects of earlier sorcery, but since the same
 PRESENT PARALLELS 369
person may do either, the roles are by no means always separate. Any
healer is, in consequence, suspect and whether he is villager or physician, the
patient will wear an extra charm when he seeks their aid.
As magic can do harm, so illness may be caused by the evil eye. It may
also result from the unkind intentions of spirits; whether these be of the
wind or of the water, the latter taking the form of water nymphs. At a very
different level one may cause one’s own ailments, for strong emotions are
considered pathogenic. Tuberculosis, for example, is attributed to anxiety,
sorrow, unrequited love — or over-work.
Among the disease spirits Plague and Cholera have been predominant,
and the former of these is ranked by Kemp as a disease goddess in close
association to a personified Death. It is to be noted that male spirits of
disease are rare; the females take the honours in doing harm. Among the
healing spirits there are males; among these is St. Elias, the Thunderer,
who, in legend, divines and cures through the use of “‘thunder arrows’’.
Kemp identifies the following forms of healing ritual: propitiation,
exorcism (compulsory transference), disposal or destruction of disease, rites
of passage, cathartic rites, and rituals of divination and identification. There
is among these much transference and interchange. Among the sacrifices
which may be offered are libations, blood offerings without fire, laying
objects at a shrine, feeding creatures or spirits, alms-giving, sin- and scape-
offerings, communal meals, and burnt offerings. Most frequently employed
in healing are sacrifices directed to spirits of nature.
In considering the rituals employed in healing, Kemp observes that these
are practical and private in contrast to religious rituals, which are cere-
monials involving the whole community. Healing is expedient and personal,
whereas religious ceremonials are obligatory and matters of morals or
propriety. Nevertheless, the forms of religion: rituals, devices, and powers,
are employed in healing. What does not enter in, is any feeling of awe or
reverence. There are exceptions when the community does engage in healing
ceremonies; these occur when the entire group is threatened by the out-
break of an epidemic and at these times, in the presence of others, the serious
religious sentiment makes its appearance.
Divination is important in healing for several reasons. By employing it in
diagnosis, that is, by naming the illness and its cause, anxiety is relieved.
Secondly the name determined, the healer gains power to manipulate it.
Thirdly, a divination which produces propitious signs for cure is believed to
facilitate the outcome.
There is no consistency in healing methods; all possible devices and anti-
dotes may be employed sequentially or concurrently. The physician will be
employed along with prayers to Christian powers, with folk medical sub-
stances, and with magic and spells. The usual sequence is one of convenience ;
one does the easiest things first and in so doing, if both a spell and a drug are
available, the peasant will neither know nor care which accomplished the
cure. Kemp contends that this approach reflects uncertainty, a lack of
knowledge as to probable outcome or therapeutic effects, and pessimism;
ancient
1 These are apparently the same as the thunderbolts of Zeus, the “thunder axes”’ of
which
times, which Harrison (Epilegomena) discusses; they are the celts of prehistoric times,
modern Greek peasants speak of as “lightning axes” (astrapopele kia).
370 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
the peasant does not expect a happy result and, of necessity, will try
anything and everything which appears reasonable, convenient, or hope-
ful.
With reference to physicians, it is deemed crucial that the patient have
faith in the doctor and his methods. Scepticism is an offence and a danger,
for magical forces are at work; one who treats them lightly, or doubts their
efficacy, exposes himself to hazards most dire. Implicit is the concept,
already met in discussing healers and witches, that powers of magic may
move for good or bad depending upon the intent, disposition, and ritual care
of the worker. Given these several possibilities for the results of the operation
of magical power, it is not surprising that spirits of any kind may cause
good or ill. As the Plague can cure, other illness-producing demons may do
so as well; indeed some may even teach men how to heal; one chosen
by the nymphs may learn her methods. Similarly, those who have been ill
and who recover are, by virtue of their intimate exposure and eventual
mastery of threat, believed more capable of healing others ill with their
past ailment.
In any case the healer, whatever his role, has a special attribute, some
special secret or knowledge or experience that qualifies him; this is the case
for the technical healer, the user of herbs or manipulations, or the sorcerer.
Natural gifts may enter in, talent in the sense that it too is a separate power
with which one is endowed. Special healing skills are found in one who is
friendly with the demons of disease, or in one who has the power to separate
the soul from the body. The healing knowledge once acquired may be
passed along to others, although if its content is magical, it will be handled
secretively.
Among the healers there is a strict code of conduct. The sense of obliga-
tion to one’s neighbours is great and, in matters of rational and empirical
treatment, information will be passed along. Specialization is usual; each
healer has particular techniques useful for particular ailments; no one
healer employs a wide range of the substances or rituals available; rather
each limits himself to a potent few. With most healers the treatment aims
for symptom relief; diagnosis and cure are not combined into any system,
nor are the approaches internally consistent. For the most part the empirical
and the magical will be employed together, and individual inventions, or
spontaneous efforts will be interlaced with ritually prescribed and medically
learned methods.
In reviewing the curative methods, Kemp concludes that the major ones
are borrowed from sources outside the village; especially important are the
“debased traditions of ancient science”. She recognizes Oriental (Near
Eastern) magic, presumably spread through Greece to the South Slavs, and
the maxims of medicine from Greek and Roman times, and presumably
from more recent medical knowledge as well.
In concluding the review of Kemp’s findings, several other observations
should be recorded. One is the magical importance of the stranger who, as
guest, may bring or carry away evil, and who has a place of great import-
ance in the social code. Associating oneself and family with the stranger, and
with others in power, is done through rituals either of hospitality, or — if a
more lasting tie is sought, through adoption and formal alliance. As with
 PRESENT PARALLELS 371
men, so with the gods; the ritual of redemption from death is identical in
form and anticipated effect as that employed in adoption or alliance.
Another observation is on the content of legends and stories. Kemp states
that the primary theme appearing there is one of the invulnerable hero and
the means through which such power and security may be obtained. How
to be strong, how to maintain life and fend off pain and death are the
central features of the stories to which Kemp listened. And it is magic which
is the method of choice; the hero is protected by a talisman; he has been
born of supernaturals; he has undergone a change of sex; or his strength —
with its independent resident spirit — is secreted from harm. Typical of these
is the Greek myth of Meleager? which she finds in Slavic lore,
Kemp’s descriptions demonstrate the existence of parallels in belief, in
custom, and in cognitive styles between rural Yugoslavia and the Doxario
region. They also suggest some very important differences. The former
revolve about healing rituals, magical operations, the role of healers and
strangers, the critical periods of vulnerability and taboos surrounding
them, the presence of saints, spirits, demons, and disguised pre-Christian
deities as powers to harm and heal, the social and motivational context of
healing versus the community religious ceremonies, and the inconsistency
and simultaneous employment of various “‘systems” designed to cure ail-
ments. Among the differences are the concepts of bodily organs as in-
dependently animated with ghost forms, the identity of disease name and
causative spirit animal name, the role of animals or spirit animals as disease
causes, the emphasis upon guilt and sin as the basis for punishments which
take the form of disease, the restriction of illness-causing spirits to females,
the preponderance of ancient science in current folk practice, the lack of
awe associated with healing rituals, the degree of specialization and
restriction in the work of folk healers, and the emphasis in folklore of the
theme of the invulnerable hero. In at least two respects the strong hero, like
Meleager and the female identity of Plague, the rural Slavs are more akin to
ancient Greece than are the modern Doxario region folk. In the other
matters the beliefs appear to be quite distinct, not only in form but in
orientation, from those found in ancient or in modern Greece. Admittedly
the evidence is insufficient; Kemp’s study was broader in area and more
restrictive in focus than was ours. Further, as we indicated earlier, there is
no way of being sure what rural Greeks in 1200 B.c. or 600 B.C. might have
believed. Nevertheless, with the data on hand we would venture to propose
that while the parallels unquestionably suggest elements drawn from the
same cultural reservoir — as well as life styles among shepherds and peasants
similar enough to maintain these as constants over time — the differences are
so pronounced as to indicate contact with, if not partial population origins
derived from, a culture distinctively separate from that which was and is
Greek; or more carefully stated, from that out of which the Greeks them-
selves had their beginnings.
Siberian
1 One is reminded of the power of the shaman which is attributed, among the
churches for example, to the man who becomes a transvestite.
live as long
2 The moirai had told Meleager’s mother, shortly after his birth, that he would
from the fire,
as a certain log remained unburnt. Accordingly, she snatches the flaming log
at him for
extinguished it and hid it, for the time being. The day she burnt the log, furious
killing her brother, Meleager was mortally wounded (see p. 315).
372 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Bulgaria
Balkan Village by Irwin Sanders presents a description of a small town
(population about 1,600) near Sofia. The emphasis is on the style of life,
and on social and political structure; nevertheless, it provides some in-
formation on the response to crisis. The psychological portrait which emerges
is of a well integrated, stable community without known crime, divorce, or
internal tension. The peasant is pictured as “‘secure, stolid, practical’’, as
well as penurious and intimately conscious of his place in the community.
Neither uncertainty nor anxiety are noted, nor polar extremes, nor oscillat-
ing ambivalence are met. It is a village iri which the priest, at least until the
coming of Communism, was highly respected and, as God’s intermediary,
his company and good opinion were prized. The priest’s aid is invoked in
times of drought, severe illness, or sterility in the wife. When someone is ill
prayers will be offered and candles burned, holy water will be sought from
the priest and a few may rely on miraculous powers of an ikon.
According to Sanders, the peasant takes a dualistic view of the universe.
God symbolizes the forces for the good which must be propitiated. The priest
is identified with these. The forces of evil are identified with the Devil and
these must be placated. In the village are a few old women “‘babi”’ (grand-
mothers or, in the Greek sense, wise women) who are “‘priestesses of super-
stition”’, whose incantations are considered to work wonders, and who give
advice on averting the evil eye. One infers from Sanders’s account that their
role is unimportant and their functions not subscribed to by all the towns-
folk. The peasants do not discuss “‘white magic’’ in the priest’s presence, nor
is it incorporated in the Orthodox ritual, “‘so complete is the dichotomy
between the Good and the Bad”’. Religion, as it is practised in this Bulgarian
town, is neither personal, nor pervasive, nor awesome; it 7s a matter of form
and ceremony to which all subscribe.
The religious ritual which comprises the funeral rites does apparently
involve informal non-Christian elements, but these “‘superstitious practices”
are not described except to indicate that the priest does not perform them
and may even avert his eyes so as not to see them done. Death is conceived as
a continuation of earthly life in another, but invisible world. The family are
obliged to prepare the dead, who are called “‘travellers”’, for a journey, and
for that reason they are buried in ordinary clothes. One’s guardian angel,
which everyone has from birth, will guide them (the dead) after the funeral
to every place on earth which they have ever visited. This journey must be
completed within forty days; after that a great river must be crossed, for
which passage money must be paid, and the other world entered. Those who
are about to die may be visited by neighbours and given messages to deliver
to those already dead who reside in the other. world.
Some of the dead may not go to the other world. Should the funeral
ritual and family preparations not be done properly, the travellers may
wander about lost. Should a cat or dog jump over the corpse the danger is
that they will become vampires, and as such return to terrorize the village.
The corpse suspected of being a vampire will have a stake driven through
the heart.
There are omens which announce death; a meteorite presages disaster;
 PRESENT PARALLELS 373
while the owl hooting at sunset or the appearance of a snake in a dream, are
announcements of coming death. Pre-Christian elements are also found in
some preparations of the corpse conducted by the “babi” and in the funeral
rituals which involve wailing and the offering of food (boiled wheat) at the
grave.
Birth is also surrounded with pre-Christian beliefs. The post-parturant
women are considered unclean for forty days; at the end of this period they
undergo a purification ceremony in the church. During the forty days they
dare not go outside after sunset unless they carry fire, ostensibly against the
devil. The babies’ clothes must be brought in before sunset; it is important
that babies’ wash water should never be thrown out of doors in the night.
Should the baby be born deformed, it is attributed to the parents’ inter-
course on the forbidden nights of Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday; these are
the evenings before holy days which individuals are supposed to approach
in a state of purity, free of the contamination of recent intercourse. Sanders
notes that this explanation for abnormality in an infant is not really a matter
of conviction, but provides only a convenient device for explaining an
unusual occurrence.
During pregnancy the woman is given whatever cooking food she smells
and desires; it is thought that her failure to receive what she wants will lead
to miscarriage. At the birth, which is usually assisted by a midwife, folk
medicine is employed, reflected in the use of herbs, garlic, cloves, and holy
water and incense. A sick infant will be rubbed in urine. Should this, or
other home remedies not work, the neighbours and the “babi” will be
consulted, and should their advice be to no avail, then the physician is
sought. The reluctance to use the doctor is attributed to the desire to save
money. It is rationalized in part by fatalism. ‘The peasants say that if God
has given the child days, he will live; if God has not given him days, he will
die.
Sanders does not discuss illness concepts in any detail. He indicates that
cause is frequently assigned to God, who punishes humans for their sins. On
the other hand, when the “babi” work as healers they use methods designed
to diagnose and cure ailments derived from the envy and admiration of the
evil eye. One typical method is to incant while dropping hot coals into
water.
The people of the village which Sanders studied derive their origins, no
doubt with liberal admixtures from other ethnic groups, from the Pechenegi
peoples who were Mongol nomads from Central Asia; a people who prac-
tised parricide, polygamy, human sacrifice, who burned widows at the
funeral of the husband, who stole brides and who worshipped fire. These
practices are neither present nor remembered except for bride stealing,
which remains one way by which wives are chosen ;and for parricide, which
figures strongly in folklore. These nomadic folk intruded upon the earlier
resisted
local stock and were in turn dominated by Byzantium, which they
ineffectively, and by the Turks, who were considered less oppressiv e and less
offensive than the Greeks.
parallels
In comparing Sanders’s town, Dragalevtsky, with Doxario we find
On the basis of Sanders’ s account the viewpoi nt of the
and differences.
mized view of good
Bulgarian peasant, his certainty, security, and dichoto
374 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
and evil does not correspond with our view of the Greeks near Doxario. To
identify God and the priest with the good and to keep one’s work, and one’s
own practice of Christianity free from any taint of pre-Christian ritual, is
certainly not the approach of the people of Doxario. Similarly, the un-
importance of the wise woman, her very limited healing role, and the failure
of all village women to share in such a magical-nurturent activity is very
different. Marriage customs and the folk stories recollecting the nomadic
past also stand in contrast to the Doxario way. Guilt over illness and the
prevalence of its attribution to God’s punishment as well as certain death
beliefs and the concept of the bloodthirsty vampire also are not paralleled.
There are Bulgarian beliefs which do’ not correspond to contemporary
Doxario although they do correspond to ancient Greek notions (and to
some found elsewhere in Greece today). Among these is the one to the effect
that the dead must cross a great river and be prepared to pay their passage;
identical, it would appear, with the ancient notion of Charon ferrying the
dead for a fee over the Styx.
Parallels, some of them quite attenuated by the Bulgarians’ apparent lack
of involvement in magic and pre-Christian beliefs, are nevertheless quite
striking. They are seen in the vulnerability of infant and mother (although
not reported for the marriage couple) and the dead (which is limited to the
vampire concept and the Bulgarian-Greek idea of reyenants being produced
by animals jumping over the corpse). Implicit in the taboos about the new
mother and baby are ancient moon goddess beliefs, although these are not
reported as consciously associated with the moon in the minds of the
Bulgarian villagers. Pollution and purification are encountered in the
abstinence requirement prior to holy days and in the purification ritual for
the forty-day post-partum mother, but again the unimportance and very
limited scope of these concepts in the Bulgarian town is remarkable.
The presence of omens, the role of owls and snakes as death forerunners
(although the meteorite as presaging disaster was an idea not encountered
in our Greek villages) the symbolism of dreams, the amulets against the
ubiquitous evil eye, the practice of sending messages to the dead (but not
the belief that the dead must revisit each earthly place they have been) are
also parallels.
We have the impression that pre-Christian beliefs and present social
customs are so similar, in some respects, that Doxario folk and Dragalevtsky
people must have drawn on similar pre-Christian cultural stores; perhaps
sharing the same origins with reference to some of their stock or, lacking that
intimately exchanging ideas over the millennia. On the other hand, the
differences are such that they do not only demonstrate the much greater
urbanization and Christianization of Dragalevtsky, but suggest the partial
origins of its folk in a culture not recognizably.akin to that of the ancient or
modern Greeks,

Conclusion
In concluding this chapter it would appear necessary only to affirm the
existence of important parallels in the structure of concepts, the psycho-
logical approach to crisis and mystery, the social institutions and activities
 PRESENT PARALLELS 375
associated with healing, death and the critical life periods, and the specific
details of magical and religious beliefs for peoples in the Balkans and about
the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The parallels are so great as to confirm
not only the relative similarity of peasant life in a variety of settings, but the
probability of intense contact over the centuries, and origins derived from
a common cultural base; a conclusion much in keeping with archaeological,
anthropological and historical evidence.
These similarities are not to be stressed at the cost of overlooking
differences. The differences are crucial, demonstrating the importance for
matters of belief with regard to life and death, of the imposition of varying
religious heritages (in these instances Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox) of
the stages of urbanization or the extent of contact with urban centres, of
presumably differing (prehistorical) cultural origins for some or all of the
local populations (most apparent in Spain and Bulgaria; least in Morocco
and South Italy); and of what appears to us as a matter of attitude and
intensity: the variations in the intimacy with which each individual and
family approaches nature and the gods; the sense of mystery, excitement
and enrichment which derives from immersion in local lore and legend -
and with magic and religion; and the intensity of life itself and the ensuing
polarity or moderation which characterizes styles of life. With reference to
these latter psychological characteristics, the evidence is not sufficient, due
no doubt to the varying interests and personality dispositions of the ob-
servers, to draw any certain conclusions. It is our impression that the Greeks
of Doxario are immersed, intense, excited and enriched by their lore and by
the challenges of life itself. On the basis of our reading the reports of other
investigators it would be our impression that the Bulgarians and the
Yugoslavians are much less so.
It is of course evident that the study of parallels suffers extreme de-
ficiencies of methodology as we have here approached it. What is needed is
a series of studies in each of these cultures, each of which employs similar
sampling methods within the culture and within the community. When
comparable samples have been drawn, and inquiries focused on the same
issues, Comparative studies will achieve that degree of sophistication and
replication which will replace our speculations and impressions with facts.
 XXIII
EPILOGUE
KE trust that we have shown the richness and demonstrated the function
of narrative material in rural Greek culture. We have indicated how
these narratives may be employed to derive inferences about relationships
within the community, about intrapsychic operations and cognitive pro-
cesses, and about the distribution of beliefs within and among peasant
villages and shepherd encampments. We have also shown how accounts
which deal with the central issues of life and death, which tell about pain
and its healing, of illness and its prevention, demonstrate the continuity of
belief over historical time and may be presumed to demonstrate further its
continuity at least from the Neolithic period if not before. These survivals,
and the accompanying study of parallels among other ethnic groups, have a
useful employment in the study of culture history as well as psychic processes.
It is clear that peasants and shepherds living far apart from one another in
the Balkans and around the Mediterranean share many specific beliefs.
Beyond that, they have in common similar general concepts and techniques
of magic and rituals of a religious nature. But the similarities are not limited
to peasants and shepherds; while our own style of life may be much re-
moved from field and village, our own ways of thinking, of dealing with
crisis and of anticipating death will be found to have much in common
with these people. The study of survivals and parallels must not be limited
to the rustic heirs of ancient Greek greatness; it must be extended to our-
selves.
We have, of course, hidden much of ourselves behind the machinery of
technology, and we conceal more beneath our vaunted rationality. Yet our
humanity is the same as theirs, whether we refer to biological endowments,
psychic structures, family and community networks, or a distant common
Neolithic past implemented by the heritage of the Classical age. And s0 it is
that when we look about us — or within us — that we find something of the
same man, or woman, that we have seen in rural Greece. We too must face
uncertainty and death, must know pain and illness, must cope with weak-
ness and desperation. And more fortunately, we may also enjoy beauty,
appreciate complexities understood, and feel strength in powers greater
than our own. We too have our priests and healers, our magic and rituals,
our omens and prophets, and our religions with their immortals and extra-
ordinary dead. The extent of our commitment to the irrational and the
degree to which we may be filled with enthusiasm or capable of flights of
ecstasy depends of course upon our personal predilections — and the current
state of our anxiety and need; nevertheless even within this technological
organized apparatus of an urban society we shall find, as our own crises
occur, or our Own mystery approaches, that many of us have more in
common with a Greek shepherd than with the twentieth century model of
the fully rational man. For all our civilized superstructure there is much of
the primitive within.
 EPILOGUE 377
One says “‘primitive” with hesitancy; it implies something that should be
behind us, wisely abandoned as we elaborate our science and social control.
Yet anyone who senses awe or dread, who probes within himself in the
psychotherapist’s office, or fantasies how the faeries dance among the mush-
room rings deep in the encircling wood, will recognize — and perhaps enjoy —
that primitiveness which is not so easily escaped. It is perhaps our nature, as
numerous studies attest (95, 96, 144, 146, 149, 224, 233, 248, 265), to rest
our reason from time to time, and the more the stress and the greater our
weakness, to unleash our primal selves.
In this sense the Greek peasant is more fortunate than are we. He need
not be ashamed, at least among his neighbours, of his demonology, of his
magic, nor of his sense of intimacy with preternatural powers. ‘These are not
just aspects of his private self, but acknowledged elements of his world; for
his culture not only accepts the irrational, but it provides a convenient
structure for it. There are many demands upon him, many painful obliga-
tions; but to be a rational man is not one of them.
In America and Northern Europe on the other hand, especially in those
sectors peopled by the beneficiaries of education, materialism, and urbaniza-
tion, the social demands may be much less pressing — for example the envy of
our associates less evident, although not necessarily less of a fact — and the
frequency and intensity of personal crises less great, but that we must be
rational is not to be denied. In consequence, when our moments of un-
certainty and inadequacy do arise, especially those surrounding tragic
events, we are required — in the best Anglo-Saxon tradition (266) to suffer
our pains in silence and to maintain, unflinching, the mask of reason. Since
our unreason begins at birth, since primal process accompanies us through
life, and since much of our commitment to irreversible irrationality is
reckoned from a time before we were equipped to forfend it and even before
we knew it to be disapproved — it is asking rather a great deal, even of the
exceptional man, to be what his modern role demands. In consequence,
our Western irrationality is more often private and perverse, practised
in the secret recesses of our minds or chambers, unsupported by moderating
social structures, and without the ordinary pleasures of a shared human ex-
perience.
Hence our irrationality must be in itself a source of discomfort above and
beyond the events which have led us to it. Without cultural sanction it is
painful and aberrant, reluctantly admitted on the psychoanalytic couch,
denied in common congress. Spontaneously seeking remedy for this private
distress, striving to make a private demonology into a public worship, many
seek to establish fellowships of the irrational where expression, direction,
approval, and perhaps aesthetic elaboration are allowed; and so arise the
cults of the West, for the most part ephemeral doings that wither and die
under the cold blast of an unsustaining milieu or survive through perpetual
transformations and disguise.
Our own irrationality is denied elevation to a dramatic folklore since few
dare speak it and few dare listen. Nevertheless it exists, inherent within our
psychological structure, and clearly emergent in response to life stress. If
social institutions are at all functional and satisfying we must expect them
our
to accommodate that irrationality. We must anticipate that many of
378 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
cultural offerings cater to that irrationality, even though by necessity in
disguise! or even by purporting to counteract it.
The second point can be made that the individual may not only be
somewhat at a distance from his fellow in an urban society — “‘alienation”’ is
the presently fashionable way of describing this individualization and
insulation — but he is also required to be at a distance from some important
aspects of himself, or better stated, he is required to repress, denounce or
rationalize his inevitable irrationality. Thus we not only engender painful
feelings about it, but generate institutions — and procedures — to help
individuals cope with the result. Psychiatric care is, in some small part, one
of these; the cult of the artist is another, the “drug movement”’ (34) (the
use of hallucinogenic drugs) is a third. Perhaps the paradoxical institution of
humanistic or rational ‘‘religions”’ is another.
A third point is that rationality is a luxury. It can flourish only when
protected and nourished; people who live in misery can hardly afford it; its
magnificent edifice cannot be ordinarily sustained even in urban man, when
support is withdrawn, nor when there come those awful challenges of dire
disease, social disorder, or the deprivation of love. Only a man with tre-
mendous character strength — and that presumably the product of earlier
nurturance — and dedication to his own twentieth century image can cling to
the rocky crag of reason in the face of even temporary disaster; others will
fall into the jungle, rampant wild, and disordered growths of superstition;
with blind emotion, prejudice, and the propitiation of powers outside to
replace those that clearly no longer exist within. In a sense then rationality
can be sustained only by power: either the power of the individual to control
events and thereby protect himself, in a sense shaping his environment to
affirm the omnipotence ordinarily sought through magical means — and we
may see modern science and technology as devoted precisely to this goal, or
the power to control himself, foregoing the pleasures — indeed the demand
for primal extrusions — and opening himself without deception to the
immensity of his suffering.
If we are to draw a moral from the lesson of contemporary Greece it
would be to state that the study of contemporary culture offers more than
knowledge about history and rural culture, social structure and personality;
indeed, offers more than aesthetic rewards and the excitement of being
involved with an intense and dramatic people. It offers, especially through
its narratives, insight into our own inner life. When Freud took it upon him-
self to study Sophocles, he knew this; so did Jane Harrison when she
examined ancient Greek religion to find the themes in Everyman’s religion;
and so did Gilbert Murray when he observed that Greece has had in nearly
every arena of thought the “‘triumphant but tragic distinction of beginning
at the very bottom and struggling, however precariously, to the very
summits”. ‘The Greeks, so Murray saw, expressed the most primitive depths
and aspired — to achieve — the greatest heights. Not only our past, but some
portion of our present, even of our future, may better be understood from
the experience of Greece.
1 Benjamin Paul, paraphrasing Francis Hsu (187) states that “the common man in China
will accept science if it is disguised as magic, whereas the common man in America will
accept magic if it is disguised as science’.
 APPENDIX
IRECT questions put to each family in the three study villages:
Many places in Greece have stories about healers, priests, saints,
mayissa, mayeftra, doctors, or others who have had truly remarkable powers
to fight illness or to combat death itself. Do you remember any such
stories or legends about a man with power to combat death or sickness or
chaos?
Do you remember any stories from the old times, or perhaps even not so
long ago, of wonderful or miraculous events where a man or woman from
this region fought with death and won, or even came back from the dead?
We have also heard from others stories from the old days, or some from
not so long ago, of strangers or nymphs, lamias, or spirits who have come
bringing death or danger, and how there has been someone who understood
their ways, who was able to protect the village, or a threatened person from
harm. Do you know any such stories?
We have also been told stories of revenants who have returned to punish
someone or to bring illness, or danger to a village. Have you heard such
stories?
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
E have adopted the following conventions for use in this bibliography:
The style is according to the Modern Language Association (see the
MLA Style Sheet, compiled by W. R. Parker) with a few changes that were
necessary to make the differing approaches of classical and scientific
references compatible. For classical references, when the works of an author
appear in a number of volumes, the complete reference is given only to the
first volume of a given series. It is often the case that later volumes have
different editors, translators and publication dates. When citing a later
volume, we shall refer only to the translator (if any) and the year of
publication.
For scientific publications, when the same author has several publications,
these are listed in the sequence of publication.

1. Abbott, G. F., Songs of Modern Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1900.

2. Achilles Tatius, Greek with English translation by S. Gaselee, The
Loeb Classical Library, E. Capps, T. E. Page, W. H. D. Rouse, eds.,
London, William Heinemann, 1917.
3. Aeschines, Against Timarchus, in Speeches of Aeschines, Greek with English
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1 Frazer’s index system to the volumes is used as follows:

i. The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. 1.
ii. The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. 2.
ili. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul.
iv. The Dying God.
Vv. Adonis Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., vol. 1.
vi. Adonis Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., vol. 2.
Vil. Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, vol. 1.
Vill. Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, vol. 2.
ix. The Scapegoat.
xs Balder the Beautiful, vol. 1.
xi. Balder the Beautiful, vol. 2.
Xii. Bibliography and General Index.
xiii. Ibid
dedea Aftermath; supplementary volume.
ddan
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197. Plato, ibid., Phaedo, 1917.
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 INDEX

Abbot, G. F., 239 n. 1, 303 guardian, 304, 366, 372

abortion, 223, 282 n. I of death, 304, 340
abscesses, 159 anemopyroma see erysipelas
Achaens, 277, 293, 336, 355 anger, 24, 160, 169, 215, 229, 360
Acheloos, 329 n. 5 animals, 123-4, 146, 189, 311-12, 334-5,
Achilles, 277, 280, 281, 284 n. I, 290, 301 366, 368, 371, 374
Achilles Tatius, 276 and cures, 129-30, 208, 360
aconite, 338 ghosts of, 368
acquisitive drive, 221 animism, 249
Acropolis, 26, 127, 278, 341 Annunciation, 46
Actaeon, 299 Anthesteria, 160 n. 1, 287, 300, 304, 319,
Adams, F., 292 n. 3, 306 330, 331
Adelphos see Delphi Anthesterion, 304.
Adonis, 274, 283, 322, 351 anthrax, attitude towards, 16, 35, 143, 1553
adoption, 339 257, 259
adultery, 223 in sheep, 98
Aegean, 340 treatment of, 138, 155
Aegisthus, 278 anthropomorphism, 249
aerika, 14, 23, 25, 50, 54, 95, 103, 107, III, anti-Semitism, 211
114, 194 Antimachia, 288
Aeschines, 276 Antiope, 276
Aeschylus, 275, 302 n. 7 and 9, 303 n. I, 304 Antoninus Liberalis, 278
Nn. 5, 307, 308 n. 1, 311, 315, 318, 319, anxiety, about children, 228, 230, 271, 2735
281
332, 349 n. 6, 7, 361 n. I about strangers, 37, 234
Aethenaeus, 277
Aethra, 281 attitude to, 3
Agamemnon, 278-80, 284 n. 1, 290, 318, 319 between sexes, 216, 219
Agave, 282, 283 cause of TB, 369
aggression, sexual, 216, 218 defences against, 228, 235-6
Aghia Marina, 250 due to change, 211, 233
Aglaurus, 274 due to fear, 216
Agni, 318 due to vulnerability, 11, 12, 237, 271, 273
agnostics, 185, 195, 234 in narratives, 5, 199, 201, 223, 225, 228,
Aiolos Hippotades, 274 230, 231, 232, 237
Ajax, 302 persistence of, 225
Albania, 3, 176, 266, 355 reasons for, 5, 234-5
Alcathoe, 278 reduction of, 240, 369
alchemy, 252 Aphrodite, 299, 300, 304, 344, 345
Alcippe, 278 Homeric Hymn to, 304
Alexander of Aphrodisius, 356 n. 1 Apis, 273 n. I
Alexander the Great, 38, 279 Apollo, and Hermes, 344, 346
Allbaugh, L., 276 birth of, 272, 324
allegory, 240 Delian Hymn to, 272
Allport, F., 8 disease ascribed to, 339
alum see copper sulphate punishment by, 306
Amphidromia, 272 Smintheus, 292-3, 336, 337
Amphiaraus, 293, 323 thé destroyer, 260
Amphitrite, 323 the healer, 260, 322, 345-6
Apollodorus, 273 n. I, 274 n. 3, 299, 307;
amulets, constituents of, 34, 110, 121, 134,
140, 165 328 n. 2, 345 n. 4
Apollonius, 276 n. 3, 294, 303
against the evil eye, 145, 309, 374
Apollonius of Rhodes, 340 n. 3
against the exotika, 109, 110, I
Apostle’s Creed see Credo
against kallikantzari, 121, 259 apotoropaism, 24, 239, 251, 272, 279, 296,
to ward off danger, 284, 295 298, 366, see also magic, ritual
anathema, 25, 72, 75 127, 314, 320
Andros, 294 apparitions, 51, 311, 326
Angel, J., 268-9 appendicitis, 101
approach, symbolic-intentional-concensus,
angels, 107, 122, 327, 328 n. 1
derivation of, 328 254
394 THE DANGEROUS
HOUR
Apuleius, 295 Austin, G. A., 245 n. I
Ar, 361-2 authorities, supernatural, 217, 226, 272
Arabia, 128 n. 1 authority, and family, 215-16, 219, 230, 232
Arabs, 332 and attitude of villagers, 213, 215, 225,
Arachova, 24 233, 234, 237, 242, 259, 365
Arcadia, 278, 322, 332 nature of, 225, 260, see also dependency
arches, 138-9, 168, 251, 338-9, 347 awe, 63, 80, 132, 141, 205, 207, 209, 270,
Ares, 278, 309, 344 287, 294, 295, 299, 349, 354, 369,
Argenti, P. P. and Rose, H. J., 166, 314, Bie
326, 332, 352, 353 Azande, 43
Argive, 275
Argos, 294, 325 “babi”, 372-3
Argus Panoptes, 348 babies, before baptism, 11, 271, 272
Ariadne, 366 as strangers, 42
Aristophanes, 274, 275 n. 2, 276, 284, 304 n. clothing of, 12, 15, 135, 373
4, 315,
316 n. 3, 329 n. 4, 334 n. 2 in antiquity, 272
Aristotle, 303 in narratives, 12-15, 83-4, 135
Armenians, 332 protection of, 134-5
Arretophoria, 349 purification of, 272, risked, 219-20, 228,
Artemidorus, 315 282, see also baptism, changelings,
Artemis, and childbirth, 272, 309 Panaghia, vulnerability
and fertility, 260, 281, 323 Babylon, 297, 336, 361
as virgin goddess, 260, 276, 299 Babylonians, 336, 358
mysteries of, 325, 338, 340 Bacchus, 329, see also Dionysus
Artemis Brauronia, 272, 279, 299 “Bad”, 17, 103, 137, 145, 164, 248, 251,
—Eileithyia, 272 347-8, 368 :
Ephesian, 293 “Bad Ones”’, see kakiades
temple of, in Ephesus, 89 n. 1 ““balsamo”’, 129, 130, 160, 337
Taurian, 299 n. 2 baptism, and consecration, 24
Arsinoe, 282 and the Panaghia, 59, 83-4
Arvanitiki, 149, 266 dangers of, 234, 238
asceticism, 278 importance of, 13-14, 51, 59, 82, 174,
Asclepiades, 291 188, 219, 234, 238, 316, see also vulner-
Asclepion, 62, 287 ability, strangers
Asclepius, and healing, 294, 298, 322, 323, baraka, 358-60, 362
334, 336, 345, 348 barbers, 366, 367
and incubation, 62 barrenness, 273-4, 281, 331, 342 n. 4
“elafis” of, 127 n. 1 basil, 61
fate of, 306, 321 n. 1 beads, 123, 140, 309, 341
functions of, 294 beans, 60, 159, 247, 292
sanctuary of, 278, see also zig-zag chain bears, 37, 111, 125, 334
Asia, 358 Becker, W. A., 280 n. 3
Asia, Central, 337 beliefs, healing-magical-religious, 182-4,
Asia Minor, and emigration, 3, 43, 82, 86, 209
131, 212 Hellenistic, 297
migrations to, 264-5, see also Apollo Orphic, 348
Aspasia, 277 parallels, 358-75
asphodel, 159 survival of, 2, 6, 183-5, 238—43, 263-4,
Asphodel Valley, 159 n. 1 266, 289, 291, 367, 373, 376
assault, 223 belladonna, 292
assenters 184 Bent, T., 324
Astarte, 363 bestiality, 98, 223, 242
astrology,
252, 297, 325, 338, 350 bewitchment, 15, 18, 256-7, 280, see also
Ate, 344 spells
Athamas, 282 bigamy, 223
Athena, 284 n. 1, 287, 288, 295, 299, 324-5, binding curses see curse, binding
344, 345, 346, 350 binding spells see spells
Athenaeus, 277, 279 birds, 123-4, 129, 295, 311, 325, 335
Athens, 127, 287, 299, 339 birth, 6, 11, 19, 37-8, 234, 271-2, 281, 298
Atreus, 278 n. I, 324, 368, see also lechona,
attention, 203, 271, 273 vulnerability
Attic laws, 275 bishops, 27, 88, 290
Attic speech, 302 blame-throwing, 215, 220, 225, 228, 238,
Attica, 268, 272
273, 309, 366
attitudes, 206, 207, 211, 213, 214, see also blasphemy, 351
change, community bleeding, 366
augury, 58, 63-4, 189, 312 blindness, 85, 91, 242, 299
 INDEX 395
blood, and disease, 16, 31, 208, 366 Chamberlain, R. B. and Feldman, H.,
concepts, 131-2 322
feud, 17, 267, 319 change, 211, 269, 356
menstrual, 17, 22, 23, 131, 170, 299, 337 changelings, 12, 37, 231, 272, 366
offerings, 369 chaos, 260
power of, 50, 79, 129, 131, 132, 337, 345; Chariclo, 350
360, 366 Charilia, 330
shedding of, 279 charms, against the ‘“‘Bad Hour’’, 50
taboos, 299 against the evil eye, 145, 309, 361
ties, 192, 212, see also pollution, ritual against evil spirits, 50
(healing against illness, 137
Blum, R. H. and E. M., 3 et seq., 24, 131, against the nereids, 186
133, 143-4, 269, 327 at weddings, 19
Bliimner, H., 279 constituents of, 50, 98, 133, 138
Boeotia, 267, 272, 340 power of, 34, 116
boils, 106, 157, 259 Charon, and night owl, 330
bones, 22, 63-4, 131, 257, 324, 336-7 concepts of, 95, 315, 327-8, 374
Bowra, C. M., 306 personification of, 98, 223, 249
bread, 12, 20, 45-6, 51, Ji, 113, 122, 134, springs of, 45
139, 258, 337, 359 chastity, 46 n. 2, 276-8
breath, 360 cheese, 12, 139
bride price, 276 child killing, 281-4
brides, dangers surrounding, 18, 19, 24, child-rearing, 230-1
169, 206 childbirth see birth
dowry, 28 n. 1, 271, 276-7, 280 childhood, 5, 203, 231-5, 238, 285, 361
stealing, 373, see also curses, vulnerability, children, 203, 206, 271, 281-2, 284, 305,
marriage 317, see also vulnerability, babies,
Briseis, 280 baptism
brothers, 215-17, 315 n. I Chiron, 336, 345
Bruner, 245 cholera, 330, 360, 369
bubonic plague, 104, 143, 259, see also Christ, and magic, 81, 165, 255, 351
Koukoudi and soul-wandering, 78
buckthorn, 338 and illness, 208
Bulgaria, 2, 372-5 belief in, 185, 194, 210, 321-2, 327, 333
burial, 72, 75-6, 249, 258, 266, 317-20, see power of, 79-81, 217, 333, 343, 348,
also death, funerals, ritual 351
Butler, E. M., 252, 326 in narratives, 62, 70, 77, 78, 80-2, 255
Buzyges, 287 resurrection of, 70, 80, 81, 283
Byzantine, 38 Christ of Spata, 55, 81, 82, 137, 156, 333
Byzantium, 38 Christianity, 105, 183-4, 195, 217, 278, 289,
290, 307, 321, 323-6, 333, 362
Calchas, 290 Christmas, 120-2, 259, see also Kallikantzari
Callimachus, 299, 350 Chryses, 292
*‘calio”’, 364 Circe, 279, 294, 295,3
Campbell, J. K., 267 Classical age, 266, Soa.ae 276
Canaanites, 282 Clazomenae, 294
cancer, 45, 48, 144, 165, 249, 366 Clébert, J. P., 297 n. 1
candles, 18, 31, 139, 141, 256 Clemens, T. F., 393 n. 3
cannibalism, 241 Clements, F. E., 337
Cappadocia, 46, 79, 91 cleverness, 207, 221
carbuncles, 259 clothing, babies’, 12-13, 15, 135, 324, 373
Cassandra, 294, 295 and dead, 316-17
Castor, 79, 323 sick people’s, 139, 147, 324
Catal Hiiyiik, 309 in magic rituals, 251, 288-9, 337, 339-41
cats, 30, 48, 54 priestly, 288-9
caves, 13, 138-9, 338, 341-2 used to control exotika, 130-1, 219
Cecrops, 299, 329 used to maintain power, 130
cemeteries, 34, 73, 90, 133, 141-2, 190, 256, used to ward off danger, 341
41-2 cloves, 373
centaurs, 331, 336 Clymenus, 278
Ceos, 336, 340 Clytemnestra, 280, 281
este haemorrhage, 186 cocks (roosters), 54, 71, 113-14, 122-4, 141,
Ceylon, 348 169,330, 334
chaimali, 116 cognition, 199, 225, 244-70 passim
Chaldea, 325 Colchis, 276, 294, 307, 336
Chaldeans, 297 combat myth see myth
Chalkis, 29, 33, 36 Communion, Holy, 69, 75, 77-8
396 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
community, activities, 19, 192-3 culture, 4, 195-7, 203, see also beliefs
attitudes, 195-7, 204, 213, 221, 281 cupping, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 366
beliefs, 182-4, 208-9 curse, binding, 11, 18, 19, 28, 31, 75, 169,
crises, 222 188, 216, 252, 254, 257, 358, 361
demands, 206, 219, 271-4 and counter-measures, 19, 31, 137, 156
diversity within, 184 reasons for using, 216, 361
life, 220-5 methods of invoking, 252, 257
of the dead, 224 God’s, 56
outside influences, 212-13, 224-5, 356, of fig-trees, 52
priests’, 72, 166
protection, 287 written, 34, 165
relationships, 192, 199, 204, 211-14, 376 curses, 19, 28, 75, 165-7, 190, 208, 229, 250,
reputation, 179, 212, 236 256, 361, 368, see also words, magic,
rites, 287 power of
solidarity, 211-13, 221, 235, 363, 367 Cybele, 323
support, 185, 224-5, see also values Cyclops, 331, 344, 349
communication, unconscious, 232 cypress, 52, 133, 141
competition, 271 Cyprian, 325
conception, immaculate, 273 Cyprus, 271 n. I
concepts, 177, 183, 194, 244-5, 373, 376
conflicts, around new babies, 271 Dactyls, Cretan, 293
in diagnosis and healing, 269 Idean, 293 n. 2
in narrative, 7 Phrygian, 293
intrapsychic, 227 Dalmatia, 367
marital, 284, see also beliefs Damartius, 282
conscience, 224, 232 Damnameneus, 293
consciousness, 249, 303, 308 Danaids, 314
Constantine, King, 38 danger, 7, 11, 123, 212, 249, 253, 271, 353
content code analysis, 185-7 Dangerous Hour see under Hour, Dangerous
content, latent, 205, 206, 208, 213, 219, 233, daughters, 215, 230, 273, 276-7
240 David, star of, 159, 162
continuities see under beliefs Dawson, W. R., 304, 336
Cooper, J. M., 312 dead, bones of, 314, 337
copper, 32, 138, 164, 338 concepts about, 189, 224, 302, 313-14,
copper sulphate, 138, 155, 156 316, 372
Corfu, 88, 162 disposal of, 266, 317-20
Corinth, 167, 283, 294 extraordinary, 79-94, 314, 321-7, 361,
corn, 359 37
corruption, 214, 218 messages to, 68, see also burial, pollution,
Cos, 279, 2 revenants, vulnerability
courtship, 6, 11, 17-19, see also marriage Death, 96, 249, 304, 315, 320, 340, 369
cows, 60 death, concepts about, 1, 3, 46, 57-8, 208,
Crawley, E., 279 223-4, 253, 312-17, 320, 352-3, 357-8,
cremation, 266, 267, 317-19, see also burial, 372, 376
dead and animals, 123-5
Creon, 290 and baraka, 359
Crete, and mother goddess cult, 289 and dying, 72-5
experiences in, 48, 73, 86, 92, 127 causes of, 249
life expectancy in, 268 continuity of beliefs, 263-4, 284, 301-2,
virginity in, 278 352-3
criminals, 191, 223, 319 defiance of, 4, 181-3
cripples, 25 in narratives, 66-76, 223-4, 311
crises, 1, 3, 4, 8, 228, 253, 264, 267-9, 353, parallel ideas, 361-2, 371-5
374 priests and, 24
of motherhood, 81, 278, 284 prophecies of, 64-6
Cronus, 275 Stringlos and, 254, see also burial, ritual,
cross, 29, 33, 50, 156, 366 words
crossroads, 15, 97, 141, 142, 341-2 deceit, 207, 214, 284
Ctesius, 335 defence, 212
cults, bond of, 294 deformity see pollution
deities, 58 Deimos, 344
Eleusinian, 272 Delphi, 18, 24, 36, 64, 188, 265, 330, 337,
great mother, 281 see also oracles
of Artemis Chitone, 340 Demeter, 272, 275, 281, 284, 288, 315-16,
of Demeter, 288, 325 323, 324, 341
of mother goddess, 289 Democritus, 292
Roman mystery, 291 demonization, 42, 53, 55, 298, 307-8, 351
 INDEX 397
demons, and the newborn, 11, 366 Dragalevtsky, 373, 374
behaviour of, 18, 33, 55, 108, 143, 156, ‘drakos”, 14
164, 332; 341 dread, 141, 203, 205, 209, 354
belief in, 308, 344 dreams, foretelling death, 58, 61, 311
counter-measures against, 117, 118, 368 functions of, 239-40, 248, 285
described, 107, 111, 186 god-sent, 312
exorcism of, 20, 55, 117, 256 guiding, 59, 60
illness and, 370-1 healing and, 317
metallurgical, 293 in narratives, 58-62, 75, 188, 311, 314
possession by, 43, 55-6, 156, 248, 298, incubation, 312
308-9 interpretations of, 60-1, 75, 240, 287
summoning, 325, 360 preternatural significance of, 361
synonyms for, 95, 295, 308, 327, 341 prophetic, 188, 253, 356, 361
wind, 304, see also light-shadowed revelations in, 4
Demosthenes, 277, 287, 314 visitations in, 57-62, 312
dependency, 207, 231, 233, 235, 237, see also warning, 59, IOI
authority drought, 61, 372
desertion, 223 drugs, 212-13, 296, 336, 342, 369, 378
“despotis”, 75 dryads, 342
Deubner, L., 321 n. 2, 331 n. I, 349 Nn. 7 duality, 24
Devil (Diavolo), 17, 20, 72, 99, 111, 208, dumb see muteness
327, 332; 333, 356-7, 372 dynamics, 2, 227, 199
devils, behaviour of, 111, 117-18, 133 dysentery, 257
in narratives, 14, 24, 33, 49, 54, 60, 111,
117, 186, 191 Ea, 350
synonyms for, 107, 327-8, 359 ear ache, 129
treatment of, 33, see also light-shadowed earth, 23, 32, 138, 293, 318, 337, 338, 366
Dhadi, 3, 8, 29, 43, 173-8, 264-5, 312, 339; and dead, 70-2, 249
Eastern, 63, 126, 193, 322
S55
diabetes, 39-40, 129, 169 Echetus, 276
diarrhoea, 12, 134, 135, 153 echo, 140, 208, 338
Diavolo see Devil ecstasy, 218, 219, 238, 376
diavolosynerghies, 115 Edelstein, L. and E., 294 n. 2
Diels, H., 303 Edman, I., 322
Diodorus, 293 Egypt, 273 n. 1, 325, 340
Dionysus, 282-3, 288-9, 294, 303, 307 n. I, Egyptians, 82, 87, 272, 332, 336, 337) 358
321 n. 1, 329, 331; 339 Eileithyia, 272, 324
Dionysus-Zagreus, 283, 322 “elafroiskiotis” see light-shadowed
Dioscorides, 280, 295, 339 n- 6, 342, 350 elderly, 11-12, 21, 220, 284-6
and animal substances, 296, 334, 335, Electra, 318-19
electricity, 43, 127, 147
336 Eleusinians, 272, 282, 315, 316, 322
and human substances, 337
and plants, 104 n. I, 115 n. 1, 159 Nn. I, Eleusis, 288, 298, 349
160 n. 1, 296, 338, 341 Eliade, M., 238
travels of, 296 Elis, 306
diphtheria, 61 Elpenor, 329
disease, 41, 47, 65, 253, 280, see also illness Elworthy, F. T., 241 n. 1, 291 n. 2, 309; 334;
disorders, epidemic, 268 348 n. 9
functional, 295 emanations, 80, 132
psychosomatic, 257 emasculation, 289 n. 3
displacement, 220, 228, 235, 237 “emorphia”, 155-6
dissenters, 184, 185 emotion, 5, 6, 181, 183, 199, 208, 214, 224,
Ditmars, R. L., 128 n. 1, 335 n. 2 240, 241, 243, 249, 257, 369
divination, 252, 293, 310, 311-12, 344, 369 Empusa, 328-9, 332
divorces, 99, 372 enteritis, 366
“djinns”, 359, 360, 362 envy, and evil eye, 221, 241-2, 258, 366,
156,
doctors, 25, 32, 133 1. 1, 135) 143-4, 225, “her
160, 174, 181, 192, 209, 211-14, and gossip, 169
dangers of, 207, 258, 279, 285, 360, 377
227, 256, 259, 269-70, 327, 364, 366, in family relationships, 220, 236
379, 374 in narratives, 201
Dodds, E. R., 284, 303 n. 3, 305, 307 0. I,
of motherhood, 271-3
308, 312, 348 n. 9 of possessions, 234, 271
dogs, 20, 30, 102-3, 107, 109, III, 12374,
propitiation of, 207
130, 188-9, 246-9, 255, 312, 334 Ephesus, 89, 276
Doric stock, 266
dowry see brides Epidauros, 287 n. 2
Doxario, 3, 43, 212, 286, 339, 355 epidemics, 41, 250, 268, 369
398 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
epilepsy, as a sacred disease, 292 behaviour of, 30, 50, 51, 53, 80, 108-10,
concealment of, 223 114, 183, 195, 341
explanation for, 43, 56, 248, 305, 308 belief in, 49, 121, 184-6, 195, 204, 229,
remedy for, 335 231
epileptics, 51, 55-66 defences against, 51, 109, 110, 121, 133
epiphany, 62, 295 described, 107
Epirus, 294 domains of, 133, 141, 142, 341
Epopeus, 274 in narratives, 12, 25, 51, 54, 55, 65, 72,
Erdmann, W., 275 n. 3, 277, 278, 279 n. 3 07, 108-12, 114, I9I, 231
Erechtheus, 274, 282, 329 magic and, 23, 25
Erinyes, 304 meaning of, 12 n. I, 23, 95; 107, 124, 204
Eris, 344 muteness and, 80, 109, 116, 165, 166, 229,
Erymanthus, 299 349
erysipelas, 46, 135-6, 143, 149, 154, 163, protection against, 49, 53, 108, 110, 253,
187, 254, 366 see also aerika, Hour, Bad, nereid,
ethnocentrism, 211, 212, 240, 266 Stringlos
Eucrates, 317, 320 experience, ecstatic, 216
Euhemerists, 79, 349 intrapsychic, 248
Eumenides, 282, 349 externalization, 29, 212, 241, 308
Euripedes, 275, 280, 282, 283, 284, 288, 296, eye beads, 121, 140
299, 307 n. 1, 316
Eurydice, 306, 341 factionalism, 185, see also community
Eurytania, 176 faeces, 101, 125, 129, 132, 152, 157, 188,
Eustathius, 340 228, 232, 337, see also magia, magicians,
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 43 pollution
event-structure theory, 8 family, and the community, 220-2, 235, 273
evil, 372 continuity, 317
evil eye, ailments caused by, 101, 143-9, disruptive acts within, 201, 227, 273
243, 248, 257-8, 369 esteem, 236
attitude towards, 143, 146, 194, 208, honour, 11-12, 15, 17, 273, 278
221-2, 241, 285, 296 relationships, 215, 320-2, 235, 267, 273,
causes of, 43, 257 317, 356, 376
charms against, 121, 127, 139, 140, 145, symbolized, 241
146, 309 tensions within, 220, 273, see also blame-
counter-spells against, 30 n. 1, 40, 47-8, throwing, philotimo, husband, mother-
117, 125, 139, 145-9, 165, 252, 254, 361 hood, women
diagnosis of, 23, 252 fantasies, 6, 216, 218, 248, 263, 274, 284, 377
forms of, 43 childhood, 231, 232
in narratives, 35, 39, 40, 47, 106, 145-9, Farnell, L. R., 289 n. 2, 321 n. 1, 339, 342
186, 188, 241 Nn. 3, 349 Nn. 2
in other countries, 30 n. 1, 309, 360-8, fatalism, 214, 285, 313, 314, 366, 373
372, 373 Fates see Moira
notions of, 309-10 father see family, incest, authority, women
possessors of, 145-9, 296 fear, ailments caused by, 153
power of, 48, 131 in stories, 7
substances used for, 133, 139, 145, 146, of cemeteries, 141
147, 148, 341 of disrupting communities, 33, 222
symbolism of, 221, 241, 258, 366, see also of ghosts, 92, 319
survivals, xemetrima of ridicule, 38
ex votos, 53, 85, 86, 93, 138, 246, 323-4, 336, of strangers, 36, 296
368 of Stringlos, 97
excommunication, 75 “‘fectia”, 146
excretions see faeces, urine feeble-minded see retardation
exorcism, and transference, 164, 369 Fehrle, E., 277, 287
by magicians, 117 Feilberg, H. F., 345 n. 8, 350 n. 5
by priests, 75, 115, 256 Fejos, P., 252, 320
methods of, 75, 94, 97, 115, 117, 125, 168, fennel, 115 n. 1
360 fertility, 115-42, 271, 288, 293, 323, 331
exotika, ailments caused by, 143, 149, 156, festivals, 174
243, 248 Festugiére, A. J., 326 n. 1
and favours asked, 35, 102-3 fig-trees, 338
and changing ideas, 53-5, 194, 199 and illness, 208
and light-shadowed, 50, 53, 237, 302, 307 and the Koukoudi, 89, 104, 133, 251,
and other shapes, 123, 124, 248, 328-9, 330
334 fertility and, 330-1
and the hearth, 140 danger from, 50-2, 93, 132-3
and lechona, 134 heaviness of, 52, 80, 132-3, 337
 INDEX 399
figs, 60, 330-1 goitre, 368
fire, 104, 120, 139-40, 208, 311-12, 338, gold, 44, 85-7, 105, 138, 291, 338
_ 369, 373 Golden Fleece, 276, see also fleece
Fischer, J. L., 200 Goodnow, J. J., 245 n. 1
fish, 60 Gorgon (pl. gorgons), 304, 306, 345
fish-net, 137, 140, 341 Gortyn, law of, 275
flattery, 213 gossip, 15, 168-70, 204, 207, 350, see also
fleece, 65, 129, 335, 336, 347, see also envy
Golden Fleece graves, 20, 27, 32, 34, 138, 223, 268, 295, see
flowers, 52, 134, 146 also burial, dead, ritual
flu, 105 greed, 43, 117, 149
folk healers see healers, medicine, folk Greek city states, 38
folk tales, 203 Greek Turkish War, 43
folklore, French, 337 Gregorian calendar, 106
German, 337 grief, 106, 227
Greek, 3 grooms see husband
Polish, 241 n. 1 Gruppe, O., 278 n. 1, 279 n. 1, 288 n. 2,
Fontenrose, J., 181, 260, 281 n. 1 293 . 1, 340, 347 n. 2
foresight, 49, 60, see also prophecy guilt, 212 n. 1, 228, 231, 290, 296, 299, 352,
fortune, 100, 125, 221 368, 384
foxes, 311 gunpowder, 50-1, 76, 117, 121, 140
France, 99, 335 Guthrie, W. K. C., 314, 320, 334
Franks, 99
Frazer,J.G., 251-2, 282, 288, 299, 300 n. 1,
305, 316, 318 n. 1, 330-1, 334, 339 0. 3, Hades, 80, 292, 304, 305, 315, 318, 344
340 n. 3, 348, 349 n. 2 House of, 329
Freud, S., 235, 378 haemorrhage, brain, 114, 186
Friedl, E., 267 Hagia Triada sarcophagus, 289
Frisk, H., 328 n. 1 hair clippings, 29, 32, 34, 130, 337
frogs, 335, 366, 368 Halirrhothius, 278
function, atropaic, 264 Hall, H. R., 318 n. 1
funerals, 68-73, 313, 317, see also ritual Halliday, W. R., 282, 288, 289, 293, 294 n.-
Furies, 302, 339, 349 1, 305
hallucinogens, 292, 378
Gabriel, angel, 273 n. 1 Halos in Thessaly, 282
Galen, 336 Hamilton, 287 n. 1, 309 n. 1
Galilee, 80 Harpalyce, 278
Galli, 289 n. 3 harpies, 304
Harrison,J. E., 238, 278, 283 n. 1, 288, 304,
garlic, 50, 134, 135, 337; 366, 373 307, 314, 318 n. I, 319, 321 N. 2, 324,
Garnett, L., and Stuart-Glennie, J. S., 303,
304 n. I 331 N. I, 334, 336-8, 341 n. 6, 349 n. 7,
gello, 46 n. 2 369 n. 1, 378
generalization, 255 Hartland, E. S., 345 n. 8
Genesis, 128 n. 1, 335 hatred, 30, 201, 207, 271
genius, 56, 303-5, 308-9, 320, 327-8, 332 Hatzimichalis, A., 267
Germans, 25, 26, 46, 61, 70 headaches, 50, 86, 135, 146-9, 156, 163,
“shiallou’”’ see gello 256-7
ghosts, 51-2, 76, 92, 110, III, 124, 190, healers, as story tellers, 178-81
208, 302-4, 306, 315, 319, 367, 368 attitude to local, 209, 225
etymology of, 239 n. 1, 302, 303 characteristics of, 180-1, 238-9, 270, 370
gipsies, 286, 296-7 code of, 370
astrological link with, 58, 136, 297 fear of, 369
fear of, 36-8, 105, 125, 222, 287 folk, 194, 195, 269-70, 366, 367
in narratives, 37-8, 190-I in antiquity, 345—
Spanish, 363-5 in families, 178-81, 295-6
Turkish, 37, 136, see also strangers in other countries, 364
Glotz, G., 275 n. 3, 278 n. 3 magical, 23
Gliicksburg, 38 methods of, 129, 135, 145, 146, 368
pantheon of, 321-3
goats, 76, 99; 347-8
God, as a protector, 117 priests as, 24
as a supernatural, 208 reputation, 179-80
behaviour of, 107, 249 role of, 286, 366, 371
belief in, 105-7, 177, 185, 188-9, 194, 251, skills, 129, 180
specialization of, 327, 359, 366, 370
321, 327, 372, 374 sympathetic discomfort, 16
illness and, 208
punishment by, 105-6, 368 transmission of powers, 161-4, 180, 343-
relationship to, 232 7> 351, 354, 37°
400 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
healers—cont. holy water, 22, 85-6, 104, 137, 146, 147,
wise women as, 22, see also doctors, 256, 372, 373
practika, xemetrima Homer, 241 n. 1, 247, 267, 275, 278-80,
healing, attitude towards, 207, 225, 254-6 290 n. 6, 296 n. 1, 299, 302, 308-9, 311,
magical, 22, 139, 178, 222, 225, 227, 256, 323 0. 3, 329 N. 2, 339 N. 7, 343 N. 2,
269, 371 344, 345 0. I
methods, 3, 177, 179, 186-9, 195, 312, Homeric age, 267, 272, 276, 278, 279, 281
359, 369-70 warriors, 280, 299
modern, 268-9 homicide see murder
parallels, 350, 375 homosexuality, 223
powers, 345 honey, 337
religious, 2, 81, 106, 369 Horus, 336
saints and, 79 hospitality, 36, 212, 286, 296, 361
substances used in, 131, 135, 160, 256 Hour, Bad, and anger, 55
success of, 210, 370, see also “‘balsamo”’’, and night, 54, 103, 111, 123
Panaghia, power, medicine, folk as a bear, 103
heart attacks, 97 as a dog, 20, 102-3
hearts, 368 behaviour of, 55, 97, 101, 102, 104, 111,
“heavy”’, quality, 84, 332 116-17
fragrance, 133 charms against, 50, 133, 138
shadowed, 132, 302, 337 cure of, 112, 151, 169
Hebrew culture, 358 death and, 188
Hecate, 306, 329, 332, 338, 342 description of, 95, 97, 103
Hector, 281, 301, 309, 316 in narratives, 191, 306
Hecuba, 281 other forms of, 104
Hegel, 260 technique against, 207
Helenos, 294 —Dangerous,
Heliodorus, 309 ailments caused by, 143
Helios, 294, 309, 337 and philotimo, 236
Hell, 77, 313-14, see also Hades, other world and Empusa, 332
Helle, 336 as excuse, 236
Hellenistic age, 268 counter-measures against, 250, 337
hemp, 292 forms assumed by, 123, 249, 329
henbane, 292 in narratives, 101-4, 186
hens, 123-4 origins of, 331-2
Hera, 272, 275, 283, 300, 323, 325, 345 synonyms for, 12 n. 1, 244
Heraclos, 288, 293, 359 n. 2 treatment for, 101, 102, 156
herbs, 22, 33, 44-7, 115, 123, 133-4, 186, —Shameful, 95 n. 2
255, 296, 341, 360, 366, 373 —Upgly, 12 n. 517m. 2) 95 mar
herm, 342 n. 3, 348 hubris, 100 n. 2, 207, 213, 221, 236, 241,
hermaphrodites, 111, 222, 288-9, see also 351-6
strangers husband, 11, 41, 60, 215-19, 230, 242, 273—
Hermes, 278 n. 1, 344-6, 348 6, 279, see also philotimo, women
Homeric Hymn to, 344 Hygieia, 340, 347
Psychopompos, 80 Hyginus, 274, 278, 340 n. 3
Trismegistos, 346 hypnotism, 36, 127
Hermotimos, 294. hysterical repression, 229
hernia, umbilical, 149, 152 n. 1
Herodias, 340 Tasion, 275
Herodotus, 273 n. 1, 278, 316, 332 n. 1, 336, Iblis, 360
34 6 idealism, 233, 237
Herostratus, 89 n. 1 TiePOn 76074:
Hesiod, 6, 267, 272, 274, 279, 285, 299, 304, Iliad, 298, 299
305, 320 N. 3, 329 N. 3, 332 Nn. 5, 339, Ilyssus, river, 350
340 nN. I, 341, 349, 350 n. 3 illness, attitude to, 6, 223, 227
Hesychius, 339 causes of, 5, 6, 208, 221, 249, 280, 368,
hierarchies, 209, 213
Hippasos, 282, 373 |
definition of, 207-8
Hippocrates, 292, 295, 306, 342, 345, 356 prophecy and, 64
Ne 1 shameful, 157-8, 222, 236
Hippodamia, 274 warding off, 41
Hippolytus, 306 imagination, 231, 263
Hitler, A., 81 immortals, 327-34
“holies”, 74 impotence, 11, 18-19, 28 n. 1, 64, 252, 254,
Holy Ghost, 273 n. 1 . 257; 273, 279, 293, 295, 331
holy orders, 278 incantations, 22, 165, 229, 250, 252, 284,
holy springs, 137, 324 298, 348, 359-60, 373
 INDEX 401
incantations—cont. Jesus see Christ
silence, 250, 348 Jews, 25, 30, 81, 188, 211, 336, 359
warding-off, 295, 309, see also lies, ritual, jumping see leaping
xemetrima Juno, 366
incense, in charms, 50, 98, 104, I2I1, 134,
168, 337 Kakiades, 110
in childbirth, 373 Kalamos, 25
in healing compounds, 147, 160 kalkes see kallikantzari
to ward off danger, 170, 256 kallikantzari, and the hearth, 119-22, 140,
incest, 231 232, 259, 300
the male authority, 216, 242 at Christmas, 119-22, 140, 259, 314, 319,
and insanity, 228 341
as community problem, 223, 231 behaviour of, 110, 122, 165, 232
concealment of, 220, 223, 273 belief in, 183, 247
in myths, 274-5, 278 birth of, 46 n. 2
incubation, 62-3, 297, see also dreams charms against, 120, 121, 133, 259
incubation shrines, 287 described, 107
India, 81, 297 n. 1, 348 in narratives, 110, 118-22, 150-1
Indo-European deities, 317 origins of, 327, 331
Indus Valley, 358 parallels, 362
infant abandonment, 223 treatment of, 119, 120, 121
infant mortality, 268 n. 1 Kanake, 274
infanticide, 223, 231, 271, 282-4 Karpathos, 86
infidelity, 14, 218-19 Kazantzakis, N., 291
inheritance, 265 Kemp, P., 197; 367, 368, 369, 370-1
inhumation see burial Keos, 324
injections, 102, 148 Kephalonia, 108
initiates, 238 Keres, 58, 77, 304-5, 314, 320, 328
initiation, 294, 339, 347; see also rites kidnapping, 219
insanity, and prophecy, 64, 294, 300, 307 killing, 15, 17, see also murder
attitude towards, 206, 22 Kimon, 275
causes of, 108, 111, 156, 248 kings, 36, 38-9, 286, 296, 297, 306,
concealment of, 223 317
defined, 228 kinship ties, 222, 267, 294, see also family
treatment for, 77-8, 108, 156 klidonas, 311 n. 2
institutions, political, 267 knives, 341
religious, 217, 286 black-handled, 15, 32, 117, 136, 140, 151,
social, 267 158
intelligence, 181 knots, 19, 137, 168, 252
intercourse (sexual), 54, 96, 102, 242 kolevelonides, 121
and fear, 216, 234 kolliva, 69, 313
pre-marital, 278 “‘kombolio” see rosary
and prohibition, 46-8, 373 “korakiasma’”’, 143, 155, 342
magical associations of, 19 Koran, 359, see also Mohammedanism
secret, 279 Koukoudi, 327
killing of, 89, 91, 104, 133, 188, 251,
with revenants, 72
with the dead, 316, see also curse binding,
pollution in narratives, 65, 89, 91, 104-5, 190-1
introversion, 237 protection against, 105, 138, 139, 250,
Iphianassa, 294 259, 330
Iphigenia, 277, 282, 299 n. 2 Kramer, S. N., 282 n. 2
Iphiclus, 293 Kydoimos, 344
iron, 138, 338, 360
Iron age, 268, 286 Lacedaemonia, 325
irrational, 5, 377-8, see also rationalism Lackman, R., and Bonk, J. W., 6
lafitis see snake, liokra
Isaeus, 277
Isocrates, 315 Laing, J. G., 366
Lais, 277
Italy, 2, 26, 358, 365, 375 lamb, 63, 65, 348, see also sheep
itch, 52, 80, 129
lamias, 115, 119, 181, 183, 185-6, 246, see
James, E. O., 318 n. I also Empusa, nereid
Lattimore, R., 285, 318
Janus, 260
Jason, 276, 336 laurel, 81
155, 34! Lavrion, 71
jaundice, 53, 135, 143, 149) law, Athenian, 275-7
jealousy, 11, 24, 31-2, 34, 106, 211, 221,
Spartan, 275, see also Gortyn
248, 364 talion, 242
Jerusalem, 291
 402 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
Lawson, J. C., 6, 304-5, 311-16, 319 n. 1, exorcism of, 75
320, 323 n. 1, 324 n. 1, 326, 328, 331-3, hidden, 295
352, 353 power of, 18, 47, 188, 256
leaping, 288, 320, see also revenants use of, 29, 31-5, 129, 130, 252, 256
lechona, dangers surrounding, 11, 25, magic, attitude towards, 23, 24, 121, 178,
49, 104, 111, 134, 149, 167, 257, 271, 193-5, 206, 232, 253, 258, 260, 370,
300 376-7
impurity of, 19-20, 42, 46 n. 1, 48, 272, bad, 23, 32, 33, 295, 370
359 black, 30, 94, 99, 130, 252, 256
protection of, 104, 111, 135, 137, 139, 149 Christ and, 80-1
taboos surrounding, 14, 19-20, 48-9, circles, 37, 41, 125, 138, 139, 250, 259,
132, 188, 271, 374, see also vulnerability, 265, 330
pollution classification, 252
Leimone, 276 contagious, 252
lemon trees, 61 dangers of, 368
Lesbos, 274. deceit and, 345-6
Leto, 272 Ephesian, 293
Leucippe, 282 good, 23, 33, 94, 116, 295, 370
Leucippus, 278, see also Hermes holophrastic, 251, 252
Leucothea, 359 homeopathic, 252
Levadia, 110 human qualities and, 42-56
Levendis, 86, 237 in cities, 194
libations, 369 in Classical age, 292
Lewis, C. S., 332 n. 4 in myths, 292-3
Liddell, H., and Scott, R., 127 n. 1, 152 n. 3, in narratives, 4, 7, 81, 178, 190, 206
288, 299 n. 3 in other countries, 359, 365, 367, 370, 371,
lies, 7, 12, 14, 17, 72, 82, 195, 207, 221, 345-
375-6
6, see also xemetrima in pre-Classical age, 294
life expectancy, 268-9 of cures, 5, 269, 368
light-shadowed, conceptions of, 42, 51-5, of curses, 368
107, 190, 237-9, 298-308,
352 Oriental, 370
defined, 239 n. 1 practitioners of, 89, 295, 307
in narratives, 48-53, 110 protective, 37, 41, 138
pollution of, 129, 307 ritual, 252
purity, of, 49-52, 236, see also vulner- role of, 5
ability secrecy, 346-7
light-spirited, 52, 303 sympathetic, 252
lightning, 107 texts on, 80, 94
ligaria see osier threat of, 11
lime, 138, 359 tools of, 22, 23, 293, 341
Linforth, I. N., 346, 348 n. 6 white, 372
Linton, R., 317 women and, 216, see also ritual, magical
liokra, 128-9, 137, 165, 168-9, 334-5, 352, magical devices, 348
see also snake magical healing see healing
liokrino see unicorn magical system, 253, 257
literacy, 7 magical treatment, 137, see also healing
Little, A. M. G., 288 n. 2 magicians, and exotika, 23, 253
liver, 73-4, 120, 325 and extraordinary dead, 325
living conditions, 267 and priests, 23-4
lochia, 132, see also pollution attitude towards, 214, 225, 260, 2g1-2,
locks, 18-19, 47, 140, 252 294
Lord’s Prayer, 96, 117, 136, 147, 154 bad, 32, 286
love, 201, 218, 271 good, 23, 32, 116, 286
Lucian (of Samosata), 289 n. 3, 317, 320, healing role of, 181, 255-6, 269, 286, 366
325, 349 n. 6-7 hereditary, 22, 23, 110
Lycus, 303 in narratives, 18, 28, 89, 94, 109, 116,
188
male, 22, 23, 286
Macedonia, 89, 90, 367 mythical, 291-4
McNeill, W. H., 267 powers of, 27-35, 286, 366
Macrobius, 338, 339 n. 2 practice of, 33, 89, 94, 109, 110, 116, 117,
madness, 294, 295, 303, 308, see also insanity 165, 222
“magarismene’’, 48 traditions of, 23, 286, see also magic,
Magi, 291, 292 practitioners of
magia, constituents of, 22, 23, 30-2, 34, 130, magnetism, 31, 43, 80, 127, 180
165 maidens, 273-6, see also virginity
counter-spells against, 139 Makareus, 274, 275
 INDEX 493
malaria, 59, 139, 257 Minotaurus, 282
male fears, 217-18 Minyas, 282
malice, 169, 207, 221, see also hatred miracles, and birth, 58
manipulation, 96, 368, 369, 370 and death, 182-3
Mannhardt, W., 252, 331 n. I and the Panaghia, 25, 49, 82-8
*‘manteis”’, 286, 301 and the pure, 44, 45
Mantheos, 35, 110, 118, 130, 174, 295, 307 at Church of Christ, 82
mantis, 302 at Church of St George, 91
maranthos, 115 gifts for, 85, 138
marihuana, 292 n. I in narratives, 45, 46, 49, 66, 77, 85, 87-8,
marriage, 6, 44, 137, 192, 218, 273, 275, see also baraka, Christ
277-81,284, 374 Mireaux, E., 267, 279
Mary, Virgin, 49 n. 1, 282, 363, see also mirrors, 33, 78, 341, 361
Panaghia miscarriage, 28, 46, 47, 84, 168, 252, 273,
mastery, psychological, 204 342 n. 4, 373
“mastich”, 104. n. I mistletoe, 338
match-makers, 16, 280 Mithra, 325
matricide, 300, 302 Mnesiptolema, 275
mayissa, see wise women moderation, 206, 210
measles, 159 Mohammed, 359
Medea, 276, 283, 294, 295 Mohammedanism, 362, 365, 375
medicine, folk, 125, 133-41, 143-60, 180-1, Moira (pl. Moirai), 100, 169, 304, 313, 315,
194-5, 207-9, 342-3 327-8,
341, 344, 371 n. 2
and commun‘ty, 225 Molossus, 276
and drugs, 292 money, 221, 257
efficacy, 254-8 Montenegro, 367
in other countries, 364, 366, 368-70, 373 mood, 196, 253
popularity, 269-70 moon, afflictions caused by, 13, 135, 149,
mediums, 29, 36-7, 52, 286 208, 249, 257
Medusa, 330 and fertility, 135, 258
Megara, 29, 36 and treatments, 4-5, 12, 134-6, 155, 256,
Megas, G. A., 136 n. I, 311 n. 2, 331, 340, 296
353 bringing down, 295
Melampus, 293, 294 convulsions, 101, 143, 156
Meleager, 315, 371 danger of, 123, 135, 143, 257; 338; 374
Melicertes, 282 herbs gathered under, 135-6, 154, 296,
Melissa, 316 338, 341
memory, of childhood, 231, 232 light-shadowed and, 53
of the dead, 223-4 magic and, 338
and distortion, 199, 256 mice and, 337
and oral tradition, 270 Mopsi, 293, 295
Memphis, 325 morbidity experience, 268
Menander, 348 morbidity survey, 174 n. 2
Menelaos, 278 Morocco, 2, 358-63, 375
meningitis, 103 Moros, 72, 100-1, 124, 138, 143, 191, 246,
menstruation, and impurity, 20, 46, 48, 155, 248, 332
188, 299, 359 Moslems, 87, see also Mohammedanism
and magic, 17 mother, 215, 219, 228-30, 271, 273, 284, 298
and taboos, 20, 48, 155 motherhood, 206, 219-20, 230, 273-4, 281,
dangers of, 20, 46 284.
power of, 131, 299 mouse, of Apollo, 337
Mertens, R., 128 n. 1, 335 n. 2 mouse oil, 129-30, 160, 178, 255, 336
meteorites, 374 mumps, 149, 159, 162
Methana, 330 murder, 16, 184, 320
methodology, 3, 174, 185, 196, 197, 199, and haunting, 137
200, 264, 375 concealment of, 220, 223
Mexico, 292 n. I fear of, 216, see also pollution
mice, 129, 336-7, 366, see also mouse oil sites of, 111
midwives, 37, 213, 225, 271, 281, 282 n. 1, Murray, G., 349 n. 4, 352, 378
366, 373 Murray, H., 5
milk, 50, 76, 79> 126-9, 132, 335, 366 muteness, 77, 84, 87, 117, 137, 166, 229,
Miltiadis, 29, 30, 110, 295, 307 257s 259, 350-1
Minoan-Mycenaean beliefs, 330, 338, 353 Mycenaean period, 317
burials, 297, 314, 319 Myron, Holy, 147
settlements, 3, 69, 264, 324 myrrh, 81
Minoan period, 317, 358 Myrrha, 274
Minos, 294 mystery, I, 2, 4, 8, 263-4, 374
404 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
myth, 203, 236, 240, 294 oil of the dead, 17, 32, 133, 170
combat, 161, 183, 184, 260 oleander, 134
mythology, 5, 260, see also priests olive oil, 133, 146, 148-9, 152, 159, 168,
252, 254, 267, 311, 337, 366
nail parings, 22, 32, 130, 337 omens, 58, 63, 311-12, 325, 374, 376
nails, 29, 31, 34, 140, 155, 341 onion, 366
names, 95, 119-20, 144, 165, 222, 331 oracles, and prophecy, 282, 301
narratives, analysis of, 176-201 belief in, 64-6
characteristics of, 6-8 Delphic, 64, 302
content of, 188, 198-9, 202-3, 211, 219, dream, 240, 294
B22-9 order, 260
effects of, 2, 199, 201-5 Oreads, 342
function of, 2, 7, 222-3 Orestes, 300, 302, 304-7, 318
intentional, 199, 205-10 Oropos, 293
logic of, 245-60 Orpheus, 283, 306, 322, 341
of danger, 12 Oschophoria, 288
psychological implications, 227-43 osier, 160 n. I
revivalist, 208, 209 Osiris-Serapis, 322
“set”? for, 203-4 Orthodox Christian dogma, 183, 185, 193,
themes, 2, 5, 109, 201, 222-3, 263, 269 195, 209, 211, 232, 238, 256, 267, 319,
Nausikaa, 296 325
navel see wandering navel pantheon, 183, 208, 232, 372
Neaerea, 281 other world, 4, 311-21, 372, see also Hades,
necrophilia, 223, 329 Paradise
negroes, 72 n. I, 101, 360 Ovid, 274 n. 3, 299, 330
Neoptelemus, 316 owls, 373-4
nephritis, 115 n. 2
nereid, nereida (pl. nereids), ailment pain, 1, 3, 92, 125, 183, 223, 243, 248, 253,
caused by, 116, 118, 236, 243, 250, 324 353> 377
and lechona, 20 Palaikastro, 288
and light-shadowed, 50 Paleopetra, 92
and water, 49, 113, 116, 118, 123, 137 Palestine, 94, 128 n. 1, 335
and women, 218, 274, 284 *‘paliomerologites’’, 106
behaviour of, 13, 20, 51, 54, 95, 104, 110, pallake, 277
112-13 Pan, 276, 305, 329, 331, 332, 342, 350, see
belief in, 4, 49, 54, 107, 118, 181, 183, also Stringlos
186, 246-7, 259, 260, 362 Panaghia, ambivalent nature of, 260, 323,
control of, 112, 115, 131, 251 334
description, 12 n. 1, 107 and fertility, 83, 322
functions of, 218-19, 284 and health, 68, 85, 208, 210, 322
Greek, 114 and holy springs, 137-8
in magic, 23, 25 and mothers, 83-4, 260, 271
in narratives, 13, 50, 51, 65, 102, 103, 104, and women, 83, 87, 217, 322-3, 327
110-18, 186, 191, 242 bad luck and, 63
treatment of, 104, 112-13, 115-17, 324, belief in, 248
327-8 child-offerings to, 45, 58-60, 83-4, 219—
Turkish, 114, 186, see also polarity, 20, 228, 260, 274, 283-4
women importance of, 105, 227, 232, 321-3,
Nero, 294 327
Neumann, E., 289 in dreams, 58-61, 63, 83, 248, 253, 257
New Testament, 273 in narratives, 25, 45, 49, 58-63, 68, 82-8,
Nicomache, 275 90, 156, 167, 189, 257
night, 341 powers of, 96, 165, 227, 232
nightmares, 51, 248 Sleeping of the, 49, 85, 87, 193, 320
Nikephoros, King, 39 visions of, 85, see also miracles, muteness
Nilsson, M. P., 278-9, 284, 287, 288, 293, Panorio, 8, 173-4, 178, 192-5, 246, 265-6,
298 n. 1, 300, 314, 318 n. 1, 320, 324 n. 312, 355
_ 3» 326, 338, 344, 353 Paphos, 274
Niobe, 281 Paradise, 77, 238, 313-15
noon, 329, 331-2, 350 paralysis, 19-20, 82, 87, 186, 250, 257
nostalgia, 43-5, 231, 233 “parigoria’”’, 68, 238, 313-14, 319
numbers, 167, 188, 229, 350, 361 ‘parmos’’, 136
nuns, 39, 62, 156 Parnassus, Mt., 344
nymphs see nereid parricide, 373
Parthenon, 194
Oedipus, 265 patriarchal society, 272
offerings, 6 Patroclus, 301, 329
 INDEX 405
Paul, B., 378 Pliny, 291-2, 294 n. 3, 299 n. 4, 330, 335;
Paul, King, 38 336, 337, 338, 350
Pauly, A. F., and Wissowa, G., 314 n. 1, 318 Ploss, H., 298 n. 1
n. I Plutarch, 275, 277, 279, 280, 282, 288, 300,
Pausanias, 278, 293, 298 n. 1, 299, 300, 321 , 339 2. 4
n. I, 324 n. I, 329 n. 6, 340, 341 poison, 338
Pelasgus, 275 polarity, 24, 201, 202, 209, 231, 260
Pelion, Mt., 331 Politis, N., 303 n. 6, 331, 352
Pelopia, 278 pollution, burial and, 317
Peloponnesus, 41, 77, 111, 175 by blood, 298, 348
penicillin, 256 by deformity, 298
Pentheus, 282, 289, 296, 307 n. 1 by donkey’s milk, 50, 129, 305
Periander, 316 by drunkenness, 298
Pericles, 277 by faeces, 47, 132, 188, 232, 298
“‘perideipnon”’ see “‘parigoria”’ by gipsies, 287, 298
Perseus, 324 by illness, 340
Persia, customs in, 275 by intercourse, 298, 359
plains of, 358 by lechonas, 188, 298, 300
Persians, 332, 337 and awe, 138, 271, 272
personality, and culture, 4, 5 and penalties, 20, 132
development of, 237 period of, 11, 19-20, 46
of listeners, 202 protection against, 300, 340, 371
of narrators, 196, 198, 232 by menstruation, 48, 188, 299
predictions, 5 by murderers, 6, 340, 359
structure, 198 by revenants, 73-4, 132, 232, 300,
“petrahali’, 25 320
peyote buttons, 292 n. I by strangers, 298
Phaeacian, 276 by the dead, 298, 300, 340, 362
Phaedra, 295 by tortoise blood, 50, 79, 129, 335
Phaedrus, 329, 350 by urine, 71, 132, 298
Phaistos, 278 concepts of, 42, 53, 206, 232, 298, 300,
phantoms, 303 307-8, 351
pharmacy, 296, 342, see also drugs control of, 242, 298, 300, 306, 374
Philip of Macedon, 38 in former times, 298-300
Philippedes, 303, 305 in narratives, 209
Philo Judeaus, 275 kallikantzari and, 232
philotimo, and anxiety, 216, 273 light-shadowed and, 190, 307
challenge to, 15, 210, 221, 356 mothers and, 298
defence of, 210, 212 of evil-eye, 47-48
protection of, 212, 215, 222, 230, 242 polluted objects, 19, 340
rites serving, 286, see also blame-throwing Pollux, 323
Phineus, 306 Polydos, 294
Phobos, 344 polygamy, 373
Phoenicians, 282 Polyxena, 277, 281, 316
Photius, 300 Pontos, 264
photographs, 78 portents, 58, 191
Phrixus, 336 Poseidon, 79, 309, 323, 329) 343
Phrygians, 325 possession, demon see under demons
Phryne, 277 poverty, 223, 271
Phylacus, 293 power, healing, 129, 161-4, 248, 252, 342-3,
piety, 217-18, 220, 225, 228, 230, 354 351, 359
piety-pollution system, 206 magical, 22, 37, 370
piety-propriety code, 220, 230 of blood, 131, 132
of Christ, 80
pigs, 27, 65, 366 of epileptics, 56
pimple, bad see anthrax
pimples, 157, 168 of strangers, 36
Pindar, 305, 314-15, 345 n- 3, 348 of the evil eye, 43
of the supernaturals, 24, 95, 328, 344
pins, 34, 34!
Pitt-Rivers, J. A., 363, 364, 365 of words, 165, 363-4
plague, 104, 143, 293, 298, 330, 336, 369, see pollution and, 232
also Koukoudi prophecy and, 311
Plague, as a spirit, 368, 369, 370-1 transferability of, 251, 344-5, 351, see also
plants, 291-2 healers
Plato, 272, 275, 281, 282, 292, 295, 301-4, powers, 4, 36, 214, 250, 286, 327, 333-4,
312, 316 n. 2, 320 n. 2, 328 n. 4, 334 n. 344
practika, 129, 150, 187, 269, 343, see also
1, 338, 342 n. 1, 348 wise women, healers
pleuritis, 16
406 THE DANGEROUS
HOUR
prayers, 44, 250, 256, 359, 369 Pythagoras, 291-2
Praxithea, 282 Pythia, 304, 307
pre-Christian attitudes, 272
elements, 183, 184, 326 Radin, P., 8, 289, 305, 352
heritage, 183 rage, 308
hierarchies, 209 rain, 61
practices, 25, 272, 289 rape, 25, 216, 223, 273, 278, 357 n. I
survivals, 185, see also ritual rating scales, 3
pregnancy, I1, 15-16, 47) 84, 93, 102, 107, rationalism, 2, 234
223, 254, 273, 368, 373 rationalizations, 7, 220, 225, 227, 228
prescriptions, ritual, 254 reaction formation, 212
Priam, 316 reason, 376-8
priesthood, 351-2 rebellion, 274, 284
priestesses, 286, 372 rebelliousness, 214
priests, and cures, 50, 115, 159, 170, 287 rebirth, 339, see also revenants
and dead, 224 reciprocity, 253
and dress, 289 recreation, 192
and exorcism, 19-20, 50, 53, 77, 97, 122 Redfield, R., 355, 356 n. 2
and healing, 269, 287 reeds,
34, 137, 159
and magic, 225-6, 256, 289, 352 reification, 244 n. 1, 247
attitudes to, 53, 88, 106, 189, 206, 209-14, remedies, folk see medicine, folk
217-18, 225-6, 289 reputation, for healing, 180
bad luck and, 189, 286, 289, 312 of women, 219, 276
continuity of, 291 village, 212, see also community
corruption of, 25, 27, 209, 217 respect, 207
evil-doing, 19, 24-6 responses, idiosyncratic, 227
in Bulgaria, 372 reverbrating, 202, 203
in mythology, 293-4 restrictions, institutionalized, 216
in Spain, 364 resurrection, 283
in the past, 287-8, 299 retardation, 102, 106, 109, 223, 229-30
nature of, 260 revelations, 290, 350 n. I
power of, 22-7, 166; 48h, esq 27, revenants (vrikolakes), belief in, 54, 58, 118,
286 181-5,
190, 374
problems of, 225 conditions producing, 54, 66, 70-6, 137,
role of, 23-7, 193, 214, 286-7, 290, 326— 166, 258-9, 288, 302, 314, 316 n. 1, 320,
7> 352 374
status of, 183, 218 destruction of, 71-6, 267, 319
propaganda, 7 illness and, 208
prophecy, 57, 64-5, 287, 290, 301-2, 311— in antiquity, 342 n. 2
12, 314, 344, 346, 361 in narratives, 70-6, 122, 167
propitiation, 24, 369, 372 places for, 142
propriety, 220, 223, 225, 230-1, 236, 241, pollution and, 73-4, 132, 232
297; 354, 363, 365 reasons for becoming, 166, 314, 319, see
“prostitutes” see gossip also Christ, exorcism, pollution
prostitutes, 168, 170, 277-8 Rhea, 275, 293 n. 2
protection, 354 rheumatism, 4
Protesilas, 279 Rhodes, 4
Protestantism, 356-7 Ridgeway, W., 318 n. 1
Proteus, 294. ridicule, 15, 38, 210, 225, 237, 291
Psamatha, 330 rings, 60, 138, 140, 168, 341
Psellus, 312, 325 rites, adoption of, 339, 370
puberty, 298 cathartic, 369
public health, 268, 269 child-dedication, 284
Purgatory, 367 death, 313
purification, 340, 360, 373-4 Dionysian, 282
and death, 301 funeral, 313, 320, 362, 367, 372, see also
and healing power, 161 burial
purity and healing, 312 health, 367, 369
and transmission of “‘bad’’, 164. hospitality, 36—7, 286, 296, 361, 370
and miracles,
44, 45, 49, 52, 307 initiation, 283 n. 1, 339
concepts of, 42, 78, 161, 298-9 of passage, 24, 369
of holy place, 359 religious, 23, see also exorcism
of women, 276, see also light-shadowed, ritual, against the evil eye, 139, 252
pollution apotropaic, 24, 258, 259, 296, 366
psychic function, 199 attitude towards, 207, 376
psychic processes, 24.1 Babylonian, 336
psychoanalytic theory, 232 baptism, 238
 INDEX 407
ritual—cont. St Elias, 49, 141, 305, 309, 337, 369
diagnosis-healing, 22-3, 254 St Fanourios, 90
for the dead, 139, 224 St George, 53, 91, 141, 165, 236, 246, 307
funeral, 258, 312, 313, 367 narratives about, 39, 46, 64-5, 90-1
healing, 137, 138, 164, 165, 177, 251, 359; as slayer of Koukoudi, 89, 105, 251, 323
366, 369 nature, 260
hospitality, 212, 296, 370 role of, 323
importance.of, 235 St Gerassimos, 108
impurity, 340 St Helen, 366
in narrative, 209 St John, 77, 88, 131, 193, 343
magical, 130, 133-4, 138, 252-3, 341 St John the Baptist, 340
numbers, 350 St Kosmas, 79, 88, 323
practices, 5-6, 180, 283, 367 St Lucy, 366
pre-Christian, 373 St Luke, 273 n. 1, 309
propitiating, 24 St Marina,
76, 79, 323, 324
protective, 137, 362, 366 St Matthew, 241
purification, 340, 373 St Modhistos, 92, 250, 323
religious, 23, 134, 156, 225, 359, 369, 372 St Nikephoros, 258
spring, 282 St Nikolas, 60, 79, 92, 189, 250, 309
Taurian, 299 St Pantelimon, 61, 94, 323
““tendance’’, 24 St Paraskevi, 92, 93, 131, 323, 324
techniques of, 206, 207, see also curse, St Paul, 305 n. 1, 306, 343 n. 1
binding, death St Peter, 37-8, 58, 92, 343
Rizos, 124 St Rocco, 366
rock, 138-9, 208, 339, 347 St Serafim, 61, 94, 189, 323
Rodd, R., 291 n. 1, 352-3 St Venere, 366
Rohde, E., 314 n. 1, 318 n. 1, 332 n. 3, 339 saints, and healing, 79-80, 82, 131, 137, 141,
n. 5 323, 359, 368, 371
Rome, 26, 260, 294 and illness, 208, 237
culture of, 358 as protectors, 217, 271, 314, 323
empire of, 268, 291 beating of, 250
roosters see cocks idea of, 247, 259, 326
rosary, 117 in narratives, 88-94, 188-9, 232
Roscher, W. H., 293 n. 4 offerings to, 69, 324
Rose, H. J., 302, 314 origins of, 309, 323-4, 326-31, 366
rue, 115, 121, 133, 337; 338 power of, 80, 82, 96, 165, 181, 232, 324,
Rumelia, 176 327
rumour studies, 8 saliva, 366
rural culture, 1, 181, 355 salt, 50, 138, 145, 147, 338, 360, 366
rush, 104 n. I Salmoneus, 306
Russell, Claire and Russell, W. S., 237 n. I Samter, E., 298 n. 1
Sanders, I., 267, 372-3
‘sabia’, 363 Santorini, 12 n. 1
‘Sacred Springs’, 282 Saracatzani, 3, 106, 173, 176, 312, 322, 355
sacrifices, animal, 69, 84-5, 92, 250, 303, Satan see Devil
324, 359, 360 é satyrs, 329, 331, 342
child, 83, 99, 282-4, see also Panaghia Savage, C. A., 277
human, 304, 373 scapegoats, 237
in Yugoslavia, 369 scapulamancy, 63, 189, 257, 258, 287, 310-
personal, 242 I2
substitute, 305 schizophrenia, 33, 77, 259
Sahara, 128, 335 schoinos, 104, 163
St Anna, 88-9, 366 Schmidt, B., 6, 128, 314, 320, 326, 335, 353,
St Anthony, 366 382
St Antonius, 89, 189, 323 Schmidt, K. B., and Inger, R. F., 128 n. 1,
St Artemidos, 324 B30
St Artemisios, 79, 89, 309 sea, 32, 34, 60, 164, 188, 250, 347
St Athanasios, 50, 61, 62, 189, 193, 305 second sight, 42, 52, 57
as destroyer of Koukoudi, 89, 91, 105, second world, 4, 23, 183, 239
secrecy, 346-7
251, 323
St Constantine, 44, 63, 89 security 5, 228, 235-6, 267, see also family
St Damianos, 79, 88, 323 security mechanism, 235
St Demeter, 309 seers, 239, 290, 293, 294
St Dimitrios, 41, 63, 69, 89, 90, 141, 189, Semele, 329
Semites, 282, 337
250, 259, 323-4 sensory data, 246, 249, 251, 256
St Dionysios, 79, 309
St Eleutherios, 271, 309, 323, 324 sensory deprivation, 7
408 THE DANGEROUS
HOUR
Sennacharib, 336 concepts about, 57-8, 69, 76-8, 301-2.
Serbia, 367 305, 311, 314, 368
serfs, 267 throwing, 43, 80-1, 314
Sethon, 336 wandering, 77, 78, 208, 252, 294, 311,
sex, 187, 208, 214-16, 218, 223, 242, 288-0, 314, 320, 337, 372, see also Keres, mice
345, 363, see also intercourse, sexual Spain, 2, 358, 363-5, 2S:
Seyfert, O., 294 Sparta, 275, 278-82
shadows, 51-2, 71, 103-4, 110, 117, 300, Spata, 82, 137, 156, 272
302-3, see also light-shadowed, heavy- Spathi, 174, 192, 212
shadowed sperdoukli” see asphodel
shamanism, 42, 305, 37I n. I spells, 15, 18, 37, 137, 366, see also curse,
shame, 208, 228-9, 290, 363 magic
sheep, 64, 97-8, 158, 346, see also scapula- spirit-bearers, 368
mancy spirits, concepts about, 23, 96, 181, 191,
shrines, 250, 264, 293, 359 239, 368-70
Sicyonia, 340 etymology of, 303
Sileni, 331 evil, 14, 50, 97, 108, 133
silver, 138, 338, 360 healing, 368, 371
“simadi’’, 33 in antiquity, 304—7
Simonides, 304 in other countries, 365, 368-9
sirens, 304 intrusion by, 252, 366
Sirius, 76, 339, 340 personified, 37, see also exotika, light-
Sisyphus, 316 shadowed
sixth sense, 64 spitting, 40, 145, 341
skin ailments, 167-8 springs, 123, 166, 264, 339, 341-2, 359
skino see schoinos stars, and gipsies, 136, 297
slander, 223 communication with, 158, 295
smallpox, 330 illness caused by, 149, 187, 208
smoke, 60, 139, 157, 338 power, of, 136
snake, 125~7, 208, 239, 249, 311, 334-5, 346, preternatural significance of, 338
366, 374 : “seen” by, 136, 143
of death, 70, 373, see also liokra status, 180, 267, 273, 276
snakeskin, 36, 126, 127, 331, 334 stealing, 106, 162-4, 345-8, 351
sneezing, 347 Stebbins, Dr R., 128 n. 1
soap, 32, 252 sterility, 254, 372
social position see status Stesichorus, 304
social learning, 247 “‘stichio”’ see ‘“‘stoicheion’’, light-shadowed
social roles, 268, 291 stimulus-bound, 255
sociological revolution, 269 “stoicheion”’, 239, 303-4
Socrates, 281, 301, 302, 320, 328-9, 334, 350 stomach, 36
Sofia, 372 stones, 138, 338, 342, 348, 359
Solomon, 80, 94, 325 strangers, as omens, 3II
Solomonaiki, 31, 94, 99, 325 attitude towards, 42, 211-13, 235, 286,
Solon, 277, 280-1, 317 296-7, 361
soot, 139-40, 163 bad luck brought by, 39-41, 63, 312
Sophocles, 243, 285, 290 n. 3, 302-3, 315, infants as, 37, 42
316 n. 1, 341 n. 1, 378 powers of, 36, 40, 83, 174, 181, 191, 286,
Soranus, 347 n. 7 296, 297, 361
sorcerers, and magia, 75, 137, 139 suspicions of, 37, 40, 212, 220, 222, 286
curse of, 165 warnings against, 40, 207, 219, see also
in narratives, 30, 34-5 hermaphrodites, pollution, rites
role of, 23, 27, 370 streams, 123
tools used by, 22, 29, 31, 130, 131 Stringla, 330, 366
sorcery, and illness, 208, 243 Stringlos, 12 n. 1, 95
and magical ailments, 144, 252 and death, 65, 76, 254, 330
as excuse, 236 animals and, 124-5
attitude towards, 124, 194, 254, 257, 358 as construct, 243-4
counter-measures against, 29, 32, 188 behaviour of, 97, 330
elderly and, 285 belief in, 96-8, 118, 121, 196, 247-8, 327
in narratives, 28, 29, 31, 35, 475 75, 133 counter-measures against, 97, 98, 133,
in other countries, 364-5 196
practitioners of, 23, 80, 94, 364. derivation of, 330-1, 366
women and use of, 216, 280, see also forms of, 14, 37, 50, 95, 97, 98, 123, 139,
exorcism, magic 177, 196, 329
Sosias, 264, knowledge of, 180, 183, 196
soul, capture of, 252, 314, 320 narratives about, 96-8, 188, 191, 231
children, 18 strix, 330, 366, see also owl.
 INDEX 409
structures, institutional, 214, 264 Thessalonians, 284, 295
psychic, 376 Thessaly, 267, 282
social, 195, 214 Thompson, S., 345 n. 8, 350 n. 5
suggestion, 177, 257 Thomson, G. D., 298 n. 1
suicide, 16, 76, 190, 228, 265, 292, 317, 320 thought, dichotomized, 212
Suidas, 315 n. 2 Thyestes, 278
Sullivan, H. S., 235 time, 141, 341, 362
sulphur, 366 Titane, 340
Sumer,
49, 358 tokens, 28, 33, 137; 165, 251, see also magia,
Summers, M., 314, 320 “simadi”
sun, 136-7, 208, 249, 253, 337-9 tonsillitis, 149, 159
super-ego, 224 toothache, 136, 149, 158
supernatural see magic tortoise, 335
“supernatural underground’’, 23 Toth, 346, see also Hermes
and magical devices, 341 tradition, 234, 265, 286-7
survivals, 280 traditions, conflict of, 4, 143, 201, 269-70,
and methodological problems, 263-6, 270 343, 355, see also beliefs, magicians,
and trances, 294 priests, systems
understanding of, 350-3 trance, 51, 57, 72, 78 n. 1, 100, 156, 294
and unresolved issues, 350-2, see also transference, 251, 343, 345, 369, see also
beliefs exorcism
suspicion,
37, 39, 41, 191 transmission, of healing power see under
swearing, 20, see also curses healers
sweat, 130 of illness, 164, 248, 251, 361, 366
Sybaris, 330 transubstantiation, 283 n. I
sycamore, 59, 73 transvestism, 288, 289, 371 n. I
symbolism, 201, 232, 240, 246-7, 250, 258, Transylvania, 337
287, 311 travellers, 37, 372, see also strangers
systems, authority-technology, 213, 225, trees, 337
227, 269 Troy, 280-1, 294, 336
healing-magical-religious, 207, 209, 213, tuberculosis, 16, 19, 126, 144, 165, 248,
218, 225, 227, 232, 256, 257, 269 250-1, 257, 366, 369
ideological, 232 Turkey, 3, 25, 32, 43, 126, 220
magico-religious, 210 turquoise see copper sulphate
outside-city-technology, 207, 225 Tychi see fortune
“symbolic”, 287, 189 Tychiades, 320
value, 206, see also traditions Tyndareus, 280
typhoid, 101, 150, 257
taboos, 11, 42, 132, 141, 190, 209, 271, 279,
292, 299, 307, 340, 350, 351, 354, 368, Ulysses, 292, 296, 300, 304-5
371; 374 unconscious, 202, 240-3
talion see law underworld, 315-16, see also Hades
talismans, 303, 359, 371 unicorn, 335
“tama”’ see vows unmarried girls, 15-17, see also maidens,
Tammuz, 283 virginity
Tantalus, 280, 306 urine, 20, 71, 132, 158, 337, 366, 373
Tartarus, 306
techniques, magical-religious, 284 Valetta, N., 290 n. 2
propagandistic, 208, 234 values, 208, 215, 220, 225, 233
technology, effects of, 355-6, 376, 378 integrating, 222
Tegea, 332 moral, 7
Teiresias, 290, 292, 293, 299, 350 community, 198, 215, 221, see also beliefs,
Telchines, 293, 295, 304, 306 traditions
temptation, 44, III, 115 vampires, 372, 374.
“tendance’’, 24 “‘vasilikos’’ see basil
Tenedos, 282, 336 venereal diseases, 144, 157, 158
Tenos, Panaghia of, 25, 45-6, 49, 59, 82-7, Venetians, 38
189, 219-20 vengeance, and community, 206, 221
test, projective, 202 code of, 12, 210, 273
Thais, 277 in dreams, 240
thaumaturgy, 252 women’s, 216-18, 242
Thebes, 36, 176, 188, 243, 296, 340 Venus, 363
theft, 223 verbal ability, 177, 181
Themis, 79 Vermeule, C., 332 n. 2
Themistocles, 275 Verrall, A. W., 321 n. 2
Theocritus,
312, 331, 334 n. 3, 34! village see community
Thera, 12 n. 1, 46 n. 2, 331 vine branches, 134, 148
410 THE DANGEROUS HOUR
vine leaves, 134, 337 as healers, 25, 225, 257, 269, 366, 369
vinegar, 36 belief in, 28-9, 30, 75, 269
vipers see snakes in ancient Greece, 294, 295
Virgil, 316 in narratives, 28-9, 30, 75, 188, 206
virginity, 15, 273-9, 284 in other countries, 365-7
virility, 279-80 magical powers, 27-9, 34, 36, 75, 286
visions, 4, 51, 110, 304, 306, 311 protection of community by, 222
visitations, 57-62, 285, 297, 361 wizards, 29, 366
Vittora, 77, 191, 248, 251, 285, 305, 308, 320 wolves, 350, 366
vows, 63, 85 women, 17, 48, 99, 214-19, 234; 274, 276-7,
vrachnas’’, 332 279-80, 284
vrikolakes see revenants and burial, 317
Vrilissia, 76 and children, 230
vulnerability, of brides, 169, 206, 360, 368 ‘and magic, 364
of children, 368, 374 and pollution, 359, see also mother,
of dirty, 48 motherhood, Panaghia
of good, 360 wool, 12, see also fleece
of grooms, 169, 206, 360 words, as a defence, 236, 359
of the aged, 12 discharging, 30
of the lechona, 46, 49, 134, 271, 272, 374 healing, 348, 367
of the light-shadowed, 305, 306 power of, 165, 229, 296, 348-9
of the unbaptized, 13, 135, 271-2, 306, stealing’, 342-50, 353
360, 374 spellbinding, 325
of the unburied, 360 spellbreaking, 149, see also xemetrima, lies
of women, 360, 368, 374 worry, 101, 106, 223
periods of, 11, 353; 37!
Xanthias, 316 n. 1, 329
Wachsmuth, C., 253, 295, 353 xemetrima, against Dangerous Hour, 101-3
waist, 143, 153-4 and user, 146, 147
wandering navel, 143, 149-53, 180, 187, 342 efficacy, 256
warts, 136, 137, 187 for anemopyroma, 145, 154, 163, 254
water, 18, 30, 64, 109, 362 for bewitchment, 103, 132
power of, 123, 137, 208, 312, 338, 359 for evil eye, 131, 133, 139, 145-9, 162,
silent, 117, 166, 239 163, 168
weddings, 11, 17-19, 24, 48, 68, see also for other illnesses, 53, 149, 154, 156, 159,
brides, husband, marriage 162-3
wells, 123 for wandering navel, 151-3, 187
Westermarck, E., 197, 358-62 healing power of, 22, 49, 156, 161-3, 165,
whirlwinds, 104, 114, 133, 333 296, 343, 348
Whitman, C. H., 270, 318 n. 1-2 secrecy about, 88
widows, 373 used under the moon, 12, 13, 135
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 283 n. 1, used with other substances, 133, 134, 138
318 n. 1, 323 N. I, 324N. 3, 342 n. 3 used with water, 88, 137
Williams, P., 365, 366, 367 words, 346, 348, see also healers
wine, 23, 134, 337; 366
wise women, and healing, 13, 22, 25, 30-3,
Yama, 318
36, 148, 156, 254, 257, 269, 286, 248,
353 yawning, 164, 347
Yugoslavia, 2, 358, 367-71
and power, 181, 230, 251
and wisdom, 180, 230
as part of community, 23, 222, 224, 269, Zacharias, 273 n. I
286 Zagreus see Dionysus
belief in, 225, 254, 269 Zeus, 273 n. 1, 274, 275, 278, 280, 293, 295,
exotika and, 307 296, 300, 302, 306, 307, 329, 343-5,
in narratives, 25, 30, 32, 188, 206 349 |
in other countries, 363-5, 372, 374, see also Laphystian, 282
practika, babi”, sabia” Teleios, 287
witchcraft, 43, 216, 222, 285, 293, 338, 361 ? Xenios, 361
witches, and evil eye, 43, 222 zig-zag chain, 161, 343, 347, 351, 354, see
as evil-doers, 19, 22-3, 284 also power, healing
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