Mystery
THE VIOLENCE OF NATURE
Samothraki Island is dominated by Fengari Mountain. This lofty peak of the Saos mountain range is the highest point between Mount Athos and Mount Ida. On a clear day it can be seen looming above low lying Imbros Island from the plains of Troy. The mountain dominates its surroundings.
In ancient times, the secret rituals of the Samothracian mysteries gave protection from the powers of the storm, the powers of the sea, and the powers of wind.
The island generates its own weather. Often, when all surrounding is clear blue sky, and bathed in bright sunshine, a terrible storm can rage about the mountain.
During the great winter storms the thunder can be so violent, that the very earth shakes.
Sheets of rain fall, and walls of water come crashing down the mountainsides, sweeping away roads and bridges.
Samothraki is a place of arcane violence, threatening and awesome.
Photo credit: photo by site author.
SECRET RITUALS
These secret rituals were handed down from mother to daughter, long after the pagan temples were closed by decree of the Christian Emperor Justinian in the sixth century.
Even in the mid 1800s, it was known that sailors would visit the island and seek out certain women for charms and amulets for protection from shipwreck, or to give a blessing for a fair wind before embarking on a long voyage. It is told that these women also prepared secret love philtres, and amulets for other secret matters.
To this day the island continues to attract devotees of the secret and the occult, shamans and witch doctors.
However, the island, as it did in ancient times, yet holds its secrets.
THE FORCE OF THUNDERING WATERS
The force of the water on Samothraki can be deadly to the uninitiated - only a fool would pitch a tent anywhere near a river. Even in summer a sudden storm high up on the mountain can send a wall of water hurtling down on unsuspecting hikers and campers basking in the sunshine below
Every year, the island hurts and kills unwary visitors.
If it were not for the extreme violence of its nature, Samothraki would long since have become a tourist trap, like every other Greek island.
DEATH
Death pervades the island. The most famous touristic site on the island - the river that falls into the sea at Phonias, is called 'The Murderer'.
The same name could just as easily be given to each and every river that flows invitingly down the slopes of the Fengari Mountains, which can turn from a sparkling stream into a death torrent in a matter of seconds.
It is not for nothing that nature has survived intact on Samothraki, where elsewhere in Greece and the Aegean it has been tamed by humankind. The very violence of the island is its own protection.
In ancient times, initiation into the secret rites of of the Gods of Samothrace offered protection after death.
Photo credit: photo by site author.
THE GODS OF SAMOTHRACE
The Greeks first came to Samothraki around 700 BCE. The Gods of Samothrace were already worshipped on the island before the Greeks arrived. In ancient texts, these Gods are usually referred to as 'The Great Gods', or the 'Gods of Samothrace'.
We do not know all of their names, although four were called Axieros, Axiocersa, Kasmilos and Axiocersos. Their names were evoked in the secret rituals, and are still chanted to this day in mantras by the shamans and priestesses who visit the sacred island.
"Axieros.... Axiocersa....Kasmilos....Axiocersos"
Photo credit: photo by site author.
The Lost Phallic Statues
Although the Nike is now the most celebrated statue of Samothrace, in ancient times a pair or male statues with erect penises were the most famous cult statues on the island of Samothrace.
The statues are mentioned by Herodotus, and by Hipolytus.
What did these statues look like? We know that their hands were raised to the heavens. Their penises were erect. We do not know if they faced one another, or faced forwards. We know, according to Varro, who visited in 66BC, that they were in front of the doors. They may have been at the doors of the building the preceded the construction of the building now known as the Anaktaron.
There may have been more than one pair of these statues.
INITIATION
The priest IASION, we are told, was the first priest of the Gods of Samothrace to initiate strangers into the ancient rite of the Megaloi Theoi, over 2,600 years ago.
In the very earliest times the secret rituals of the great Gods were probably conducted on simple open air altars in front of small wooden temples; there was no wealth on the island to build grandiose structures of stone; the substantial cultic remains we see today in the sacred enclosure are the result of outside investment and patronage from Athens, and then later, from Rome.
Photo credit: photo by site author.
PHILIP OF MACEDON and ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Alexander the Great's father, Philip of Macedon, is closely associated with Samothraki.
The Roman historian Curtius Rufus recalls that Alexander was highly critical of his father for spending so much time on the island.
IPlutarch tells us that is was believed that Philip met Olympias, his wife, on Samothraki while they were both being initiated into the sacred mysteries of the Gods of Samothrace.
Both Philip and Alexander the Great jointly donated a HIERA CHORA THEON EN SAMOTHRAKEI to the Great Gods. This was a dedication of sacred land, off the island, made holy to the Great Gods of Samothraki. This was done to bring a piece of the the holy land of Samothraki to the mainland. One imagines soil from Samothraki would have been placed in a small bag, and buried in this sacred precinct.
Alexander persisted in his devotion to the Gods of Samothraki, and we are told he left a dedication to them in an inscription in distant India.
Alexander's successor, Philip III, his half brother, continued to fund and develop the cult centre of the Great Gods, and dedicated new buildings at the site
Photo credit: photo by site author.
DIODORUS SICULUS
(writing in the 1st Century BCE)
We shall now give an account of the islands which lie in the neighbourhood of Greece and in the Aegean Sea, beginning with Samothrace.
THE NAME OF THE ISLAND
This island, according to some, was called Samos in ancient times, but when the island now known as Samos came to be settled, because the names were the same, the ancient Samos came to be called Samothrace from the land of Thrace which lies opposite it.
It was settled by men who were sprung from the soil itself; consequently no tradition has been handed down regarding who were the first men and leaders on the island. But some say that in ancient days it was called Saonnesus (The Island of Saon) and that it received the name of Samothrace because of the settlers who emigrated to it from both Samos and Thrace.
Photo credit: photo by site author.
THEIR LANGUAGE
The first and original inhabitants used an ancient language which was peculiar to them and of which many words are preserved to this day in the ritual of their sacrifices.
THE GREAT FLOOD
And the Samothracians have a story that, before the floods which befell their peoples, a great one took place among them, in the course of which the outlet (of the Black Sea) at the Cyanean Rocks was first rent asunder and then the Hellespont.
For the Pontus, which had at the time the form of a lake, was so swollen by the rivers which flow into it, that, because of the great flood which had poured into it, its waters burst forth violently into the Hellespont and flooded a large part of the coast of Asia Minor and made no small amount of the level part of the land of Samothrace into a sea; and this is the reason, we are told, why in later times fishermen have now and then brought up in their nets the stone capitals of columns, since even cities were covered by the inundation.
The inhabitants who had been caught by the flood, the account continues, ran up to the higher regions of the island; and when the sea kept rising higher and higher, they prayed to the native gods, and since their lives were spared, to commemorate their rescue they set up boundary stones about the entire circuit of the island and dedicated altars upon which they offer sacrifices even to the present day.
For these reasons it is patent that they inhabited Samothrace before the flood.
Photo credit: photo by site author.
THE LAWGIVER
After the events we have described one of the inhabitants of the island, a certain Saon, who was a son, as some say, of Zeus and Nymphê, but, according to others, of Hermes and Rhenê, gathered into one body the peoples who were dwelling in scattered habitations and established laws for them; and he was given the name Saon after the island, but the multitude of the people he distributed among five tribes which he named after his sons.
THE FOUNDING OF TROY
And while the Samothracians were living under a government of this kind, they say that there were born in that land to Zeus and Electra, who was one of the Atlantids, Dardanus and Iasion and Harmonia. Of these children Dardanus, who was a man who entertained great designs and was the first to make his way across to Asia in a make-shift boat, founded at the outset a city called Dardanus, organized the kingdom which lay about the city which was called Troy at a later time, and called the peoples Dardanians after himself.
They say also that he ruled over many nations throughout Asia and that the Dardani who dwell beyond Thrace were colonists sent forth by him. 4 But Zeus desired that the other (Iasion) of his two sons might also attain to honour, and so he instructed him in the initiatory rite of the mysteries, which had existed on the island since ancient times but was at that time, so to speak, put in his hands; it is not lawful, however, for any but the initiated to hear about the mysteries.
THE PRIEST IASION
And Iasion is reputed to have been the first to initiate strangers into them and by this means to bring the initiatory rite to high esteem. And after this Cadmus, the son of Agenor, came in the course of his quest for Europê to the Samothracians, and after participating in the initiation he married Harmonia, who was the sister of Iasion and not, as the Greeks recount in their mythologies, the daughter of Ares.
This wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia was the first, we are told, for which the gods provided the marriage-feast, and Demeter, becoming enamoured of Iasion, presented him with the fruit of the corn, Hermes gave a lyre, Athena the renowned necklace and a robe and a flute, and Electra the sacred rites of the Great Mother of the Gods, as she is called, together with cymbals and kettledrums and the instruments of her ritual; and Apollo played upon the lyre and the Muses upon their flutes, and the rest of the gods spoke them fair and gave the pair their aid in the celebration of the wedding.
THE LATER GENEALOGY
After this Cadmus, they say, in accordance with the oracle he had received, founded Thebes in Boeotia, while Iasion married Cybelê and begat Corybas. And after Iasion had been removed into the circle of the gods, Dardanus and Cybelê and Corybas conveyed to Asia the sacred rites of the Mother of the Gods and removed with them to Phrygia.
Thereupon Cybelê, joining herself to the first Olympus, begat Alcê and called the goddess Cybelê after herself; and Corybas gave the name of Corybantes to all who, in celebrating the rites of his mother, acted like men possessed, and married Thebê, the daughter of Cilix.
In like manner he also transferred the flute from Samothrace to Phrygia and to Lyrnessus the lyre which Hermes gave and which at a later time Achilles took for himself when he sacked that city.
To Iasion and Demeter, according to the story the myths relate, was born Plutus or Wealth, but the reference is, as a matter of fact, to the wealth of the corn, which was presented to Iasion because of Demeter's association with him at the time of the wedding of Harmonia.
THE SECRET RITES OF THE GREAT GODS
Now the details of the initiatory rite are guarded among the matters not to be divulged and are communicated to the initiates alone; but the fame has travelled wide of how these gods appear to mankind and bring unexpected aid to those initiates of theirs who call upon them in the midst of perils.
THE POWER OF THE GREAT GODS OF SAMOTHRACE
The claim is also made that men who have taken part in the mysteries become both more pious and more just and better in every respect than they were before. And this is the reason, we are told, why the most famous both of the ancient heroes and of the demi-gods were eagerly desirous of taking part in the initiatory rite; and in fact Jason and the Dioscori, and Heracles and Orpheus as well, after their initiation attained success in all the campaigns they undertook, because these gods appeared to them.