Rituals of Magical Rain-Making in Modern and Ancient Greece: A Comparative Approach

Rituals of Magical Rain-Making in Modern and
Ancient Greece: A Comparative Approach

EVY JOHANNE HLAND
INTRODUCTION
Rain-making rituals are important in all religious festivals in Greece,
ancient and modern, because the religious rituals were and are
performed by the farmers to ensure the forthcoming rain, so that the
crops may grow and give a plentiful harvest.1 The early rains in
autumn are of great importance as a preliminary to the sowing. From
this perspective, rain-making rituals represent fertility cult.
The striking similarities that are found between the ancient and
modern Greek rain-making rituals need to be accounted for. How
and why are there such similarities? There are many other places in
the world where the ecology is the same as it was in the past but the
rituals and their meanings differ. How does the situation in Greece
relate to la longue dure of the historian Fernand Braudel?
In earlier scholarship, history was considered to be synonymous
with rapid changes, but now we realise that stability is no less
historical than change and that it is as important to explain stability as
change. According to Braudel, a single society may have different
dimensions of time (Braudel 1969: 41-83), and it is particularly la
longue dure, connected with his view of the ecological unity of the
Mediterranean (Braudel 1990), that is relevant for the material which
will be presented in this article. Since man is prisoner of the climate
and the vegetation, it is difficult to escape certain geographical frames
and limits of productivity as well as spiritual constraints or
mentalities. Therefore, it is important to take account of the history of
the infrastructure, the nearly non-moving history, which everything
gravitates around (Braudel 1969: 51-4).
Braudels la longue dure corresponds to the second and third of
Roths categories: linear time, cyclical time, and dreamtime or frozen
time (cf. Roth 1994: 159-76). The cyclical perception of time is
characterised by predictability and repetition, and is typical of peasant
societies. Dreamtime or frozen time presupposes a static perception
Cosmos 17 (2001), 197-251
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of time without movement and involves an orientation to the past; its

vehicle is oral tradition. In Greece, a cyclical perception of time and
the perspective of frozen time are still prominent. The two important
factors in this connection are firstly that Greece is still an agricultural
society and secondly that past stages in the development of Greek
culture are unusually accessible. The Mediterranean area generally,
and Greece particularly, offer a unique opportunity to follow
questions of continuity and change over very long spans of time
directly and not conjecturally, since we find a long literate and
archaeological tradition which may be combined with the results of
empirical fieldwork.
So, how and why are there such similarities between ancient and
modern Greece? Why is it possible to make a comparison between
rain-making rituals in modern and ancient Greece, despite a gap of
two millennia between the two cultures? In Greece, the cyclical
dimension of time is woven into la longue dure, and is connected
with the mental outlook, the mentalit, of the farmer. Ancient and
modern Greece represent two peasant communities inhabiting the
same landscape, with the same climate and almost the same
technological level. The two communities show strong similarities in
culture, social organisation and folk religion which relate to the
economic base of the community agriculture. The basic crops are
also almost the same, in a geographical area where the water supply
always has been a great problem.
Space does not permit me to go into all the factors which should
be examined in order to give an extensive account of all the historical
circumstances which gave rise to the existence of cults connected
with rain-making rituals in South-eastern Europe and Asia Minor,
dating from antiquity and from Byzantine times up to the present day,
since problems of such depth cannot be solved or contained within a
few pages. The uniformity in the economic structure of several
communities in the region that have an economy based on agriculture
and sheep-raising has been due to the unchangeable geophysical and
geographical factors.
Even if modern Greece is a country depending more and more on
tourism, these factors are still important, because the mentality of the
farmers does not change easily. Since the technological
improvements have not given them control over the vicissitudes of
nature, the survival of the community still depends upon natural
Rituals of Magical Rain-Making in Modern and Ancient Greece
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events beyond the farmers control. Most of my older informants who

have passed, or still are in, their fifties remember the scarcity of their
childhood, when famine was the result if the crop failed.2 So, by way
of rituals representing a world-view belonging to a traditional
agricultural society, they try to influence the supernatural powers to
ensure the rain, so that their crops may flourish. Ploughing and
sowing are basic activities undertaken in order to earn a living, and
the ceremonial portrayals of such activities are acts of mimed magic
undertaken to ensure a rich harvest. Both ancient and modern people
celebrate particularly before important passages of the agricultural
year, in order to secure these passages. Today, they pray to their
saints for plentiful rain, as the ancients prayed to their gods. The
belief in the sanctity of water is present both in pre-Christian and
Christian religion and, like his older and modern popular equivalents,
the Orthodox priest is prophet, exorcist, healer and rainmaker. The
magical immersion of the traditional carnival-figure, the rainmaker
Kalogeros in Northern Greece, so the greenery can get rain, thus
parallels other magico-religious litanies in modern and ancient
Greece, and the sacred immersion in water, mud or marshes is pure
rain-magic. Even if many of the rituals as observed in modern
Greece, may be traced back to the classical past through the postByzantine and Byzantine eras, they are not separate from
Christianity.3
Many will argue that several of the carnivals and other festivals in
modern Greece are the results of inventions of tradition,4 designed to
make the claim to their classical heritage valid, as in the struggle
against Turkey, especially in the beginning of last century, and in the
Macedonian conflict which was particularly heated when I was
carrying out my fieldwork twelve years ago in the Greek part of
Macedonia. This dispute involving competing claims to a single
identity may also be an instance of an outlook towards the dreamtime
marking the significance of folklore for national identity, by bringing
out the mythical past. Particularly during the carnival in the village of
Koims, I learned how it is possible to use the festival for political
purposes. But still, the festival has a deeper connection with the
agricultural factor, both because of the critical time of the agricultural
year when it is celebrated, and because of the main source of income
of the celebrants farming. Thus, the festival both presents aspects
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relating to the farmers cyclical dimension of time, and the

dreamtime, which, in this connection, may (paradoxically) also be
related to what Braudel would have called political rapid changes.
In fact, the festivals present layers of different meanings, the political
being the most susceptible to changes, while the deep-seated
meanings, the lasting mentalities, related to agriculture are less
vulnerable to changes and thus represent la longue dure.
It has been claimed that the Kalogeros ritual described below is a
product of the nineteenth century and is accordingly a new festival.
But, even if the festival may have been introduced in the nineteenth
century, the people introduced something that is of very deep concern
in Greek culture: rain magic and the wish for water. Another factor
that is also important is the fact that many of the participants are
migration workers or students coming home to the village during the
most important festival of the year. Rather than being an invention of
tradition, the festival thus becomes a conservation of tradition,
since coming home to the village is coming back home to security
and safety, carrying out the same rituals as their parents and
grandparents, themselves often being refugees from eastern Thrace
(the Anastenarides, see below) or Asia Minor, who in their turn were
carrying out the rituals connecting them to their own villages, which
were not very far away but still in another country after the exchange
of populations effected in 1923. The rituals they brought with them
when coming to Greece, such as the Kalogeros, had until then been
carried out in districts isolated for ages past in impregnable regions,
often called the Blind Province, as had nevertheless other similar
rituals in other areas of the Balkans and Greece, such as in the village
of Olympos on the island of Karpathos in Southern Greece, indicating
that the rituals must have been very widespread throughout Greece
and the rest of the Balkans in earlier years.
For the celebrants, however, it has always been like this, and it is
to ensure the good, a claim which in reality expresses their
mentality. So, owing to climatic, historical and social conditions, the
region has preserved, up to the present day, rain-making rituals within
the same geographical area as that in which the most ancient worship
of the god Dionysos flourished. The Kalogeros is perhaps his
remotest ancestor, and his last descendant. The phenomenon of the
longevity of popular cults as well as the historical and socio-
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economic conditions of this part of South-eastern Europe make such a

claim possible.
In Greece, particularly in the rural parts, several values and beliefs
seem to survive even though new normative religions have been
introduced, and there is a very close relationship between the official
Orthodox religion and popular religion. Since the priesthood was
obliged to incorporate within the very ritual of formal worship, magic
elements of popular worship, one may suggest that the fate of religion
is determined by the masses. For thousands of years, the Greeks, as
well as other people in the Balkans (such as in eastern Thrace or
Bulgaria) and the Mediterranean, have carried out the same rituals
and prayers in connection with the important passages of the
agricultural year. Therefore, as a result of the slowness or
immobility of history, the mentalities, they often continue to do
things as they did them before. Thus, the analogy between the ancient
and modern Greek farmers is not far-fetched, and it seems reasonable
to conclude that the magical practices of modern farmers as they
relate to agricultural fertility can illuminate the ancient peasants rainmaking rituals and the way in which they tried to influence the gods
to ensure their life-giving water.
The comparison will be based on modern Greek carnivals and
other religious festivals, where I have conducted fieldwork. Since
1990, I have engaged in several periods of fieldwork involving
research into the festival dedicated to the Dormition of the Panagia on
15 August on the Aegean island of Tinos. It may be noted that Saint
in Greek is Agios (m.) or Agia (f.) and that the Panagia (which can be
translated as all holy one and which signifies dominion over all the
other saints) is the Virgin Mary. In 1991-92 I visited several other
religious festivals, among them several in the Northern and most
fertile part of Greece. They included: the female festival celebrating
the midwife, Babo, Agia Domenika, celebrated in the village of
Monokklsia on 8 January; several carnivals in Greek Macedonia,
attended in the beginning of March 1992, including the Kalogeros
ritual celebrated in the village of Melik and the mock-wedding
performed in Koims; the Orthodox Easter season celebrations in
Olympos on Karpathos; the Anastenaria festival celebrated in May in
the village of Agia Elen (Greek Macedonia); and the festival
dedicated to Agios Charalampos celebrated at the end of June in the
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village of Agia Paraskeu on the island of Mytilini/Lesbos. I have

also visited several other annual festivals dedicated to different saints,
such as Agia Barbara (4 December) as well as wine-festivals
celebrated after vintage. Information about the festivals celebrated
around sowing which I, unfortunately, have not been able to visit
myself, is collected from the works of several Greek folklorists.5 The
information has been verified through conversations with some of the
actual authors and my own informants in the villages. These modern
rituals will bring us back to ancient society, as presented in ancient
sources combined with later studies,6 by means of bringing in the
relevant points from festivals dedicated to the most important
agricultural deities in connection with the modern festival activities.
Part 1 of the article explores seasonal festivals in modern Greece
along with their parallels in ancient times. I look first at the year as a
whole in terms of the agricultural cycle, and I then concentrate in turn
on the celebration of the Presentation of the Panagia on 21
November; the pre-Lent festival of Kalogeros; and the postResurrection visits to the agiasma (sacred spring). Offerings are
dedicated to the sacred spring in order to provide for the fertility of
society through communication with stronger powers, first and
foremost Mother Earth. The Greeks conceive of the Earth as a
womans body and the agricultural year as a womans life. But, the
Earth represents only one of the two parts of nature that have to be
invoked to ensure the crop. Accordingly, rain magic dedicated to a
heavenly god is a general theme in the festivals and from this fact
follows the significance of the sacred marriage, hieros gamos, which
is discussed in Part 2.
PART 1
MODERN AND ANCIENT GREEK SEASONAL FESTIVALS THAT INCLUDE
RITUALS DESIGNED TO WARD OFF DROUGHT AND ENSURE FERTILITY
The agricultural year

The conditions of both weather and soil were the same in ancient
Greece as they are today. The techniques of dry farming practised in
ancient and modern Greece are dictated by the occurrence of
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sometimes torrential rains in the fall, which can wash away the soil,
and by summer drought, which makes necessary the conservation of
soil moisture by every possible means. The trinity of cereals, vines
and olives forms the basis of all subsistence agriculture in the
Mediterranean region.
The times of sowing and reaping, and the crops grown have hardly
changed since antiquity. In ancient Attica (the Athenian area), the
great majority of grain was sown in the fall, as in modern times, since
spring sowing necessitated irrigation and was not practicable. Given
the climate of Attica, with mild but wet winters and dry summers, the
desirable cereal was barley, which needed much water in the early
stages of growth, but which would ripen early enough to avoid the
worst heat of the summer sun. The sowing of cereals today extends
from the middle of October to the end of December, depending on the
rains. The best guides for the farmer have always been the rain, the
condition of the soil, and his own experience and weather-wisdom.
The season of sowing was and is a time of great anxiety for the Greek
farmer. Perhaps the rains will be delayed or will not come in the right
amount at the right intervals. People feel a greater need for ritual and
magic on occasions when their own technical skills are limited. That
the ancient Greeks proliferated their rituals at the critical time of
sowing is understandable. The insufficiency of mortal wisdom at this
seasonal moment of crisis is all too evident; in other words the
rainmaker is an important figure. Everything is felt to depend on the
weather gods and, to propitiate them, rain-making rituals take place
during the whole agricultural year.
Scholars in the past, most notably those residing in temperate
climates, had the assumption, natural for Northern Europeans, that the
grain harvest in Greece took and takes place in late summer. But
generally May is the month for the barley harvest. Hesiod (Op. 57175, cf. 383 f.) places the harvest at the time of the helical rising of the
Pleiades, i.e. around 19 May.7 Today the rising of the Pleiades is
attached to the Anastenaria on 21 May, while their setting is attached
to Agios Philoppos day on 14 November, in sowing time, and this is
one of the polarities that connect aspects of everyday life and
cosmology. The wheat is harvested in June and July is the threshing
month. The popular names for these months, Therists, i.e. reaper,
harvester, and Alnars, i.e. thresher, reflect these activities.
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After harvest and the threshing of the grain, the dead period of the
grains cycle (cf. Bourdieu 1980) starts in August. At the end of the
dog days, roughly by the end of the month, the official ecclesiastical
year closes and the summer half-year also closes at this time when the
transitional period towards autumn starts (cf. Loukatos 1981). At the
beginning of September, the official ecclesiastical year starts again,
while the agricultural year begins later. By the end of September, the
farmer anticipates the first rains, the early rains of autumn (cf. Hes.
Op. 414-19), that fall from Zeus, so that Mother Earth conceives
again. Afterwards, it is time for ploughing and sowing. November is
the main sowing month. There is great danger that the tender young
shoots will be harmed if the frost is strong or prolonged. If the cereals
have not reached a certain height by the time the frost sets in by
January, the farmer may lose the crop. The period after Easter is also
precarious, since the crop may be lost if it starts to hail and in June
the grain is about to be reaped. In fact, the farmers worries are not
really over until the grain is in the granary.
The popular calendar was and is a social representation of the
order of nature, that is, of the natural year: the perceived order of
hot and cold, rain and drought, germination, fruiting, shedding of
leaves, migrations of birds and so on. The annual production cycles of
agricultural work (sowing, harvesting, pruning, vintage, gathering of
fruits) and stockbreeding activities (shearing, breeding, milking,
pasturing) composed an economic calendar developed from these
perceptions of the natural order. This socio-economic content is
integrated with the Christian saints and their narratives, as the
ancients once integrated it with narratives of their gods and
goddesses.
Agriculture was the key element in the ancient economy, and the
Greeks believed that humans had to serve the gods for the sake of
the produce of the earth, both solid and liquid, and for the sake of
their cattle, horses and sheep (Xen. Oec. 5.19-20). All festivals were
concerned with good offspring generally, animal, vegetable or
human.
The economic basis of present-day Greece does not depend
unilaterally on agriculture, since a great part of the income is derived
from work migration and a constantly growing tourism. Nevertheless,
all the modern festivals are seasonal festivals symbolising important
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passages of the agricultural year, in the same way as all the ancient
festivals, and all are connected with agricultural fecundity, with
fertility and increase.
The festivals celebrate late summer, autumn, the middle of winter,
the end of winter, spring, the end of spring and summer, or
ploughing, sowing, greening of the fields, harvest, threshing,
vintage and pressing, tasting of the wine, etc. Festivals celebrated at
the end of winter and during spring symbolise the passage from
winter to the part of the agricultural year when the food will ripen and
be harvested.
In the rest of this part, I shall compare some important ancient
festivals celebrated before critical periods during the agricultural
year, particularly before sowing and during spring, to modern
parallels celebrated to let it rain according to my informants.
The celebration of the Presentation of the Panagia (the Virgin Mary)

on 21 November in relation to the ancient festivals of Demeter
Nowadays, 21 November marks an important point in the period
of winter sowing, and even though the day is dedicated to the
Presentation of the Panagia in the Temple all over Greece, the name
of the patroness and her festival is specified according to the region.
By that date the good farmer, especially in Northern Greece, must
have sown at least half his land. Accordingly, this feast-day is known
in some regions as Panagia Mesosporitissa (mesos: middle, half;
sporos, spora: seed, sowing).8 In other regions, the festival is known
as Panagia Archisporitissa (Panagia the sowing begins) or Panagia
Aposporitissa (Panagia the sowing is over). The festival is also
called Panagia Polysporitissa (poly: many, varied), because of the
offering of the fruits of the latest harvest. It is the custom on this
day to boil several varieties of corn in a large cauldron. This is to be
the dish of the day. Plates of it are sent round to relatives and
neighbours with good wishes for the crops. On Crete, they have a rain
litany during this festival, if the rains have not started. The point is
the Panagias importance in ensuring the food supply. The other dead
may also be mediators between God and humans to get rain at this
decisive period of the years passage. So, around the time of sowing,
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they exhume a skull from a grave and put it into a basin with water, to
dissolve the ancestral sins. In this way, they bring the anger of God to
an end, so he rains.9
The two most important moments in the agrarian cycle are sowing
and spring, both for the modern and ancient farmer.10 In ancient
Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Thesmophoria, both
dedicated to Demeter, were celebrated just before the sowing. The
Eleusinian Mysteries was celebrated at the village of Eleusis in Attica
around the first of October, to ensure rain to make the Demetrian
corn grow. Certain secret rituals commemorated the annual rebirth
of the grain and other fruits of the earth, and associated the annual
vegetation cycle with the myth of the rape of Persephone (or Kore,
the daughter) by Hades (or Pluton, the wealthy one) the King of
the Underworld, and the subsequent sorrow and anger of the girls
mother, Demeter, the goddess of the corn crop, and how she finally
became reconciled. The Eleusinian Mysteries was a fertility festival
designed to ensure the rebirth of the grain. The cult of the goddess of
vegetation was also linked with the fertility of animal and of man. At
Eleusis, the goddess was offered a mixture of the fruits of the earth:
different kinds of grain, peas and beans. The bearer tasted the
contents, thus partaking in ritual fashion in the goddesss share. A
vast offering of meal was also made, and the Mystai (those about to
be initiated into the Mysteries) drank a special mixture known as the
kyken. Since the festival was dedicated to the Corn Mother,
Demeter, who also needs rain from the heavenly Zeus to make her
crops grow, the central acts, the culmination of the ritual at Eleusis,
were probably the ritual performance of a sacred marriage between
heaven and earth, followed by a sacred birth, i.e. the new grain. The
elements of the final ceremony are traditionally divided into things
said, things done and things revealed. The things said, may be
the mystic formula uttered by the initiates. With their eyes turned
towards the heaven they cried: rain! and with their eyes turned
towards the earth, they cried, conceive! The things done may
have included not merely ritual acts performed by the priests, but also
actual mimetic reproduction of some of the myths of Demeter.
According to some sources, mostly late, Christian and polemical
writings, they were connected with the performing of a hieros gamos.
But the climax of the initiation ceremony was the things revealed.
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The sources do not agree whether the great mystery is a phallus kept
in the sacred, secret chests, the hiera, the Holy Things of Demeter,
or the showing of an ear of grain by the Hierophantes (priest). It
seems plausible that a phallus was represented in connection with a
fertility festival, and that an ear of cut wheat represented Demeters
gift of corn to humanity.11
That the Mysteries at Eleusis had connection with the time of
sowing is indicated by the magical formula rain, conceive and a
water-pouring ritual on the last day of the festival. The eighth day
was called Plemochoai after a form of vessel used in its ritual: this
was shaped like a spinning top, but with a firm base. The initiates
took a pair of such vessels and filled them with water. Then they
tipped one over to the east and the other towards the west, uttering a
mystic formula.12 This magic rite meant to encourage rain suggests
the purpose in the ceremonies of the goddess of corn.
The Thesmophoria was a festival reserved for women, and it was
dedicated to the growing and the care of the grain. The festival was
celebrated just before the rains have begun in earnest and the sowing
starts. It was preceded by the festival of Proerosia (i.e. before
plowing-time), dedicated to Demeter at Eleusis. The emphasis on
sowing rather than on harvest makes it evident that, the more critical
the occasion, the more elaborate and vital is the ritual. At no time of
the year is the farmer less able to make an informed forecast about the
coming crop than in the fall. In contrast, at harvest time, the outcome
is known.
The ritual performed by the women during the Haloa festival of
Demeter celebrated in ancient Eleusis in mid-winter, like the modern
festival dedicated to the midwife, Babo, on 8 January, was important
to secure the harvest, because January is the time when it becomes
clear whether or not the year will be a good one. If the cereals have
not grown to a certain height when the frost sets in, they will need a
lot of rain in the spring to catch up and not be burned by the hot
spring sun before they are ripe. If only a small percentage of the seeds
have sprouted by January, it is unlikely that the crop will be a good
one. The farmer knows that the seeds which germinate after the frost
in the spring rains are likely to be blasted by the sun before they are
ripe and fail to produce grain.
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The importance of this stage in the grains growth explains why

the Haloa festival of light, warmth, eating and drinking, ribaldry and
fertility magic takes place at this time, and why it is dedicated to
Demeter. At this period, the fields are dead. The growth of the
shoots is at a temporary standstill. Likewise, the suns power has
declined each day. This kind of magical rite, in which people attempt
to warm up or wake up the earth to stimulate its fertility by the
magical manipulation of sexual or agricultural symbols, by merry
feasting and obscene behaviour, is paralleled in the modern
celebrations and rituals which take place during the twelve-day period
from Christmas to Epiphany and during the carnival season before the
Lenten period and later during spring.
The ritual of the Kalogeros discussed below is a typical example
of fertility cult. The farmer assists nature to pass the worst of the
winter through sympathetic magic (i.e. magic, that depends on a
resemblance or perceived similarity between the object, substance, or
action used in performing the magic and the desired effect). Perhaps
this way of thinking is illustrated by all the ancient vase-paintings
depicting the head of a woman, or a goddess of fertility, rising out of
the earth struck by Satyrs armed with great hammers.13 It is
interesting to note that it is always an Earth Mother who comes up
and thus brings fertility. The depictions may be compared with
Pausanias (8.15,1-3) story about the Arkadian version of the mystery
cult, the great rituals dedicated to Kidarian Demeter. At the yearly
rituals the priest puts on the mask of the goddess, and beats the earth
with rods, to wake up the powers of the underworld and make the
earth fertile.
Today, similar rituals are performed before sowing and during
spring, because the earth has to be activated before sowing and after
the worst of winter. Accordingly, the youths cut long branches from
hazelnut trees and beat the earth around the time of the first rains
(before sowing) if she seems to be unresponsive to the heaven and
does not receive the rain into her womb. In other words, Gods
rain is not enough, if the earth is not willing. In former years,
gipsies taking part in the Kalogeros festival presented a parallel when
they beat the ground to make the earth fertile.14
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Carnival and the festival of Kalogeros held on the Monday before

Lent (Cheese Monday) in relation to the ancient Dionysian festival of
Anthesteria
Carnival, Apokreos, takes place all over Greece, the Balkans and the
rest of the Mediterranean every spring. According to the Greeks,
Carnival without masks is like bread without flour. The carnival
season lasts three weeks, and is a time of gaiety and merriment before
entering the Lenten period, which lasts until Easter. The first week is
known as the Prophn (from prophn, to address, to announce),
because carnival is announced; the second week is the Meat Week
and the last is the Cheese Week, which is an introduction to and
preparation for the Lenten fast. Masquerading during carnival is a
widespread custom. The goal of the masquerades is to drive the evil
forces far away from the houses and cultivated areas, and ensure that
the sowing will yield an abundant supply of food. The masqueraders
often dress up as a nuptial group, including the Bride and Groom, the
Old Match-maker, the Best Man, the Priest, etc. The nuptial
procession ends up at the village square, where the parody of a
wedding ceremony often takes place. After the wedding and the
parody of its consummation and the subsequent child-birth, a
procession walks through the streets and people sing and dance.
Among several examples of rain magic is the Bear which is an
important character in the carnival in Koims, where the
aforementioned mock-wedding also takes place. The Bear-leader cuts
a few hairs off the Bears coat and offers them to the mothers of small
children as an amulet. The Bear falls to the ground and sometimes he
becomes surly and stubborn and demands gifts before he will get up.
The playfulness of the Bear, its pretended tumbles and demands for
gifts before it will get up, is a well-known rain-making ritual.
Characters representing the legless one and the armless one may
parallel certain fertility-bestowing spirits in Greek antiquity, which
displayed physical disabilities. They figure in the myths as
enchanters, rainmakers and regulators of the earths fecundity
(Diod. 5.55; Nonn. 14.36-48).
In the 1990s, rain-making rituals flourished all over Greece during
the carnival season simultaneously with the launching of a watersaving programme in Athens.15 Another example of rain-making
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ritual was to be found in 1992 in the carnival at Horisti in the

neighbourhood of Drama, in Northern Greece, where the weather was
very dry. Three persons participated in the carnival procession. One
character was dressed up as a green bush. The two other characters
were decorated with green branches, and one of them walked along
sprinkling the bush while the other carried a placard on which was
written: Let it rain.
During carnival the farmer remains deeply aware that nature is
undergoing a slow change. Thus, by means of various symbolic
practices inherited from remote antiquity, he seeks to hasten the
coming of spring and ensure the fertility of his land. So, in addition to
the comic and satirical performances which take place on Cheese
Monday in the village squares, we may also find other practices
inspired by a very ancient sense of magic and usually people ring
bells to wake up the sleeping earth and keep away evil spirits.
As an instance of a carnival festival, I shall present the ritual
known as Kalogeros, celebrated on Cheese Monday in Melik, in
the neighbourhood of Vergina and Pella, in Western Greek
Macedonia. The custom is celebrated around the spring equinox and,
paradoxically, the ritual is known as Kalogeros, i.e. the monk. But,
the protagonist is very far from being or behaving like a monk. He
wears a sack and animal hides. Many bells are hung around his waist
from a leather belt. They symbolise phalluses and each may weight
about 4-5 kilos. He holds a phallic-shaped rod, his sceptre, actually
a piece of wood about three metres in length, with a piece of cloth
tied over one end.
The ceremony starts early in the morning when people gather in
front of the church dedicated to Agios Athanasios which is situated
close to the water tower of the village. A table is placed in front of the
church. It is laid with ouzo, sausages, bread and slices of boiled egg.
The musicians a man with a large drum and another man with a
Thracian lira (i.e. a small three-stringed wooden instrument played
with a bow) start to play. People eat, drink, dance and wish each
other Chronia Polla (i.e. Many Years). After the Kalogeros, the
King and the Girl for the year have been chosen, they are dressed in
their costumes and then the Kalogeros is fed with ritual food in front
of the church (Fig. 1).
A youth climbs the water tower, connects a pipe and opens the tap,
so that the earth will be well-watered during the day. Another man,
sitting on a tractor, ploughs a symbolic field underneath the tower.
211
This is where the Kings cart will be placed during the ritual, and the
ground must be wet; there must be plenty of mud. This magical act,
the watering of the earth, indicates the wish of the farmers for the
season, particularly since it rarely rains in the area during spring, and
the proverb says: Two rains in March, and one in April, a joy to the
man who has sown much. The villages schoolteacher arrives
together with several children. He tells them about the carnival and
emphasises the meaning of the ritual, and the importance of earth and
water, rain for growth, and the fertility of the earth. He also
emphasises the Dionysian element and the connections with antiquity.
This is therefore a part of what Greeks learn in their childhood.
Fig 1. Before the

ceremony
starts
on
Cheese-Monday,
the
Kalogeros is fed in front
of the church dedicated to
Agios Athanasios in
Melik
(Greek
Macedonia). The ritual
meal consists of three
mouthfuls of each of the
most important articles of
food: bread, cheese and
olives. 2 March 1992.
(Authors photograph)
212
Evy Johanne Hland
Around eleven oclock in the morning, the Kalogeros and his

followers start their walk through the village. The King and the
Kalogeros have their own separate spheres in the procession, a more
formal and Christian one (the King) and a burlesque one where we
find the pre-Christian rain-magician (the Kalogeros). The Christian
part of the procession visit and bless the inner part of the household,
since they enter the houses. When they arrive, the leader shakes hands
with the housewife, who is waiting at the door. He wishes Many
Years, good offspring and fertility. Inside the house, he blesses the
holy corner of the house, i.e. the icon shelf with the family icons, the
censer, etc. He is followed by the King with his sceptre, and two sons
of the King. One of them carries a little bottle with red wine and a
glass which he fills and offers to the housewife, and the other carries
a basket, where the housewife puts one or more eggs. Next comes
the Girl. She is a boy dressed up as a girl, carrying a purse in
which she collects money from the houses. They are also given a
container full of corn, wheat or maize. The corn is poured into sacks
placed on a tractor driving along with the procession. In former times
the Kalogeros was always a poor villager, and he was the recipient of
this (harvested) crop, but today it is most often given to the church.
This part of the procession may be treated inside the houses, but the
other part is always treated outside. Kalogeros with his drunk and
burlesque followers goes straight to the back yard of every house, i.e.
to the barn, to see if the all the farming tools are in their proper
places. If they find disorder or irregularities, they have the right to
take the misplaced object away; they will return it only after the
master of the house has treated them to a sufficient amount of wine,
ouzo or metaxa. Until five oclock in the afternoon, they pay visits to
all the houses and are treated with wine, ouzo and food. In the back
yard, the housewife sprinkles the Kalogeros with polysporia, a
symbolic mixture of grains, through a sieve (Fig. 2). As a countergift, he swings the cloth tied over one end of his phallic-shaped
sceptre in order to mix the grains with water and earth, while
wishing a lot of rain and a plentiful harvest (Fig. 3). Then they move
on to another house, are greeted and treated, and become more and
more drunk. The Kalogeros plunges his sceptre with the cloth into
puddles, soaks it with muddy water whenever he finds it and smears
the celebrants with it. He soils everyone, and throws the other young
men into the muddy water and the mud to the amusement of
everyone. The aim of the procession is to assure the rain and a
213
plentiful harvest. When the group have made the round of the whole
village, they end up in the square in front of the church where the
entire village is awaiting them.
Back at the church and the water tower everything is ready. Since
the water from the pipe has flowed since early in the morning, the soil
is really well watered, wet and muddy. In other years, it had snowed
during the ritual. This year (1992), the weather is too dry with no
rain, according to my informants. Ideally, it should be raining during
the ritual. According to the participants, they prefer to perform the
ritual when it rains, because it gives favourable expectations for the
rest of the year.
The custom of dramatising the act of ploughing is important, so
the kings cart and a plough are placed in front of the church and the
play, a parody of ploughing and sowing, begins. May the watermelons grow as big as the Queens breasts, may the maize grow as
long as the Kings prick all the popular actors in the dramatised
agricultural play join in the recitation. Simultaneously, they sow
polysporia. Two young men take the place of a pair of oxen; they put
their arms into the yoke and lift it up so that they are able to draw the
plough. Nowadays the men representing the oxen wear ordinary
clothes but formerly they dressed up in animal skins. Together with
the other participants, they invoke the buried grain so that it may
come back to life again during the sowing of polysporia. The ancient
Greeks called this mixture panspermia (all seeds). At the time of
sowing, a general mixture of the edible plants to be sown was boiled
and offered to the Corn Goddess, and her worshippers also partook of
it, while praying for a renewal of these different crops next year.
Panspermia was an important part of the offerings at most
agricultural festivals celebrated after the autumn equinox and before
the spring equinox. The rituals were dedicated to the chthonic fertility
gods, Demeter and Dionysos. Both were powerful. The Corn Mother,
Demeter (HHD. 4; Il. 13.322 and 21.76) and the wine god, Dionysos
(Diod. 4.3,5) were the primary deities of the farmer. Both were
celebrated during winter with licentious festivals, which were closely
associated. Demeter was the goddess of the fruits of the civilised
earth (HHD.; Hes. Op. 465-467). The fertile or cultured earth is
central in her cult, since she is associated with the fields but, when
associated with Mother Earth (Eur. Bacch. 275 f., Phoen. 683-689),
she refers to the whole area of the nurturing and fertile earth, having
traits from the Lady of the Wild Things.
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Evy Johanne Hland
Fig. 2. The housewife with the sieve drinks the mouthful of wine offered by
the little Prince, before sprinkling the Kalogeros with polysporia, a symbolic
mixture of grains. (Authors photograph)
Fig. 3. In the mud in the back yard the Kalogeros swings the cloth tied over
one end of his sceptre in order to mix the grains with water and earth.
215
Fig. 4. A kneeling Babo holds the cup containing the holy water with
which she is about to sprinkle the kings oxen but she falls into a reverie
in front of the Life-renewing Lyre which is played by her assistant.
Fig. 5 The muddy Kalogeros is washed clean, so it will rain during the
summer. 2 March 1992. (Photograph by Thomas Thomell)
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Evy Johanne Hland
Dionysos also had traits from wild nature. Like the goddess, he
was uncontrollable and renewing, associated with the forests, trees,
and fields. He may be linked to Demeter as the fruit of the tree with
the fruit of the field, as wine with bread. Many supposed that
Dionysos spent the winter months somewhere else. His brotherhood or retinue of animated dancers, thiasos, walked or rather
danced in a wild, drunken and licentious procession, and with
shameless actions they made comical gestures during the dances
which were an important part of the Dionysian kmos (i.e. revelling
procession) that made its way through ancient Athens during the rural
Dionysian festivals the Choes (i.e. Drinking Cups), which were
part of the Anthesteria festival, and the Lenaia. The satyrs, Pan and
the nymphs also belonged to the ritual. Dancing male goats and
female maenads, the obscene satyrs and the young girls carrying
baskets, as well as the processions by themselves generated fertility.
The dramatised acts were addressed to the life beneath the earth, and
the fertility-making gestures were always parts of the Dionysian
agricultural rituals celebrated during winter and early spring.
The dramatised modern ritual is also performed to invoke fertility.
The Kalogeros is in fact the rain-magician, the rainmaker, who
symbolises the forces of vegetation and the fertility of the earth. Babo
also belongs to the ritual. This is a man dressed up as an old woman.
Babo holds a cup with holy water, i.e. womens spittle and a sprig
of basil, in her hands and she sprinkles the holy contents on the
male participants. Sometimes Babo and at other times her assistant
holds The Invincible Lifes Powers in her or his hands (Fig. 4).
This is the male sex organ, a phallus, in the form of a lyre, to be
deposited on the earth when it has been ploughed and sown.
Babo pretends to play, while she utters magical fertility formulas.
In Byzantine and popular Greek, Babo or Baub is a wet-nurse, and
symbolises nourishment. According to the ancient legend this
personification of fertility was associated with an episode in the
Demeter myth as represented in Orphic versions of the myth (Orph.
Fr. 52=Clem. Al. Protr. 2.16P-18P).
The theme for the dramatised representation concerns the struggle
between the chthonic Good and Evil forces, or life and death. An
important phase in the action is the ritual ploughing, the fertilisation
of or the ritual way of making love with the earth; the young and
vigorous men represent oxen yoked to the plough. Very often as a
217
result of clumsy movement, or because of the evil forces, they

stumble and fall into the mud, but Babo plays the Life-renewing
Lyre and, after some sprinkling with the holy water and some
magical formulas uttered by Babo, the oxen get up again.
The king of fertility sits on the cart pulled by the young men
representing oxen. Other men represent the evil forces (death). They
hang on to the back of the cart and hold on, to prevent the king from
moving ahead, but they are soon vanquished. The triumphant king
sits enthroned in splendour because the vital forces of vegetation are
invoked by Babo and her playing on the lyre. The contact of the
royal vehicle with the watered earth constitutes a ritual which
suggests the coming prosperity of the earth, of the fecund-making
rain through the power incarnated in the rain-invoking King.
After the ploughing, starts the aforementioned ritual sowing. The
king makes the sign of the cross three times, scatters the seed on the
supposedly ploughed earth and utters a prayer to the most important
saints of the villagers.
After the ceremony of ploughing and sowing, they sing obscene
songs. The ceremony ends as it started: the Kalogeros is fed in front
of the church (cf. Fig. 1). The ritual food is always their most
important articles of food blessed bread, cheese and olives, three
mouthfuls of each. By giving this to the rainmaker, the villagers give
what they wish to receive in abundance the following year.
Afterwards, the Kalogeros is carried to the mud. Here, they immerse
him three times. To do the ritual properly, he is laid on his back in the
narrow trench or furrow, which they have ploughed in the field. It
seems difficult to carry out the ritual properly in the mud, but the mud
is in fact of the greatest importance. This act symbolises the death and
resurrection of the Kalogeros, and is the most important and tragic of
the play. When he has come back to life, he is washed with water
from the villages water-tank, so it will rain during the summer,
everybody says while completing the ceremony (Fig. 5). The
musicians start to play, and the whole village dance in front of the
church, and the dance is led by the resurrected Kalogeros.
The sceptre which the Kalogeros plunges into puddles and the
mud with which he sprinkles the other participants also announce
fertility and abundance. To ensure the harvest, the ritual visits to all
the houses of the village by the celebrants are important, and
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Evy Johanne Hland
particularly the offer of seed from every housewife. Holding a sieve,

containing all the kinds of seed to be sown, every housewife in
Melik, awaits the company with polysporia. On his arrival, the
Kalogeros mixes polysporia into the earth with his sceptre while
making the shape of a cross, and the little Prince offers a mouthful
of wine, while the King makes the sign of the cross and wishes the
occupants of the house fruitfulness. Again, we observe the thought
behind the gift-giving and sympathetic magic, also recommended by
Hesiod: give a large gift, so youll get more back (Op. 349 ff.). The
little Prince with the wine may be a parallel to the Choes of the
ancient Anthesteria, and may also be compared to the children
carrying the eiresione, an olive-branch covered with small cakes,
loaves of bread, figs, and other fruits of the season,16 during the
festival of the Pyanepsia in ancient Athens. The children called at the
doors of houses singing a begging song accompanied by an appeal for
a gift to the singer. When they got the gift, the eiresione, decorated
with the various fertility symbols, was placed in front of the house to
symbolise blessings for the year. This is also a parallel to the food
and money collected during todays festivals. The kinds of food
which are offered during the visits from house to house, to ensure
the good, are the same as the three kinds of food which are offered
to the Kalogeros, when he is given a seat in the middle of the
ploughed space. These are the basic kinds of food common to the
villagers, because it is the produce of the land and their labour in the
field. Accordingly, it is important to get plenty of the same food in
the next year. It is clearly illustrated when they throw the Kalogeros
to the ground in a pretended act of murder as soon as he has eaten this
sacred meal. He is in fact thrown into, and dragged over, the
sown earth after his meal. Thus, there is a double sowing.
The purpose of the play which is performed during the Kalogeros
is to bring nature back to life and to restore the fertility which the
earth seems to have lost, in the same way as the cults of Demeter and
Dionysos. This is concretised through the struggle where the young
men who draw the cart of the king of fertility conquer the
representatives of the evil forces, i.e. death, as well as through the
death and resurrection of the Kalogeros.
We meet many parallels in the Dionysian Anthesteria festival,
which was dedicated to the new wine, but the festival was also the
219
festival of the ancestors. During this festival the first shoots of

blossom were celebrated at the end of February, but the temporary
return of the spirits of dead was also necessary.
This festival presents a complex of different elements. Formally,
all the rituals were dedicated to the return of Dionysos by sea to guard
the yearly renewal of vegetation. The festival lasted three days. All
the days were associated with the word pot or jar: Pithoigia Jaropening, Choes Drinking Cups, and Chytroi Pots, named after
the necessities for wine drinking and a meal of pottage.
On the first day the Pithoigia, the wine-jars, were opened, on the
second the wine was solemnly drunk, and on the third a pot full of
grain and seeds, a panspermia, was solemnly offered.
This wine-growers festival was held amid the blossoms of spring
with reference back to the grape harvest. The first day was dedicated
to the god of wine, Dionysos. In honour of the gift of Dionysos and of
the beginning of the new vintage, the first fruit offering, the first
mixed wine and water, was offered to the god.17 The offerings were
taken out and carried to the shrine of Dionysos in the Marshes, en
limnais, where the main ceremonies of the Anthesteria were held.
This sanctuary was the most ancient and most holy sanctuary of the
god, and was opened only once a year especially for this festival.
The second day was dedicated to a hieros gamos, the wedding of
the gods. They also had a drinking contest, to celebrate the arrival of
the god.
These days were also polluted. It was supposed that the spirits of
the dead returned to earth when the wine-jars were opened. They
came from the temple in the Marshes, and it was opened to facilitate
their arrival. Therefore, all the other sanctuaries were closed and
people smeared their doorways with pitch and chewed buckthorn to
keep away the ghosts. The third day was dedicated to the spirits of the
dead. During a ritual which was the concern of the individual
householder, the dead were offered a boiled mixture of all kinds of
grains along with honey, panspermia. The meal was cooked in
Chytroi, from which the day took its name. The meal of pottage is
linked to the myth of the flood. When the water had subsided, the
survivors threw everything they could find into a pot and cooked it.
When the day was over, people shouted: Get out Keres (i.e. the
spirits), the Anthesteria is over!
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Evy Johanne Hland
During a special collective ritual the city made an offering to the

dead in the underworld through a chasm in the ground about a cubit
wide. This was said to be the gap through which the waters had
drained away at the end of Deucalions Flood (cf. Noahs). One of
our ancient sources, Pausanias (1.18,7 f.), tells that once a year there
was thrown into it cakes of wheaten meal kneaded with honey.
Water was also poured into the gap, since libations of water are a
usual offering to the dead.
The sanctuary in the Marshes is important when it comes to rain
magic and has affinities with another ancient ritual dedicated to
Demeter. The Mysteries at Eleusis were in fact celebrated on two
occasions, since two moments in the year were emphasised by
Demeters most prestigious cult centre, first and foremost before
sowing, but seven months before the initiation at Eleusis some
preliminary rituals, the Lesser Mysteries, were held in the month of
Anthesterion at Agrai on the river Ilissos, inside Athens. Two other
important rituals at the time of the greening of the fields, in this
month were also dedicated to her.
The importance of early spring in the ancient world is manifested
by the very name of the spring month, Anthesterion (approximately
the last part of February/the first part of March), since its name is
derived from the Greek word for flower, anthos. We meet parallels in
modern Greece through the celebration of saints for the flowers and
fertility, at the end of February, such as Agia Anthousa, the female
saint for flowers, and Agios Polykarpos (i.e. a lot of fruit), the male
saint for fertility.
The Tuesday after Easter (White Tuesday) and the agiasma (sacred
spring)
The White Week after Easter18 and other rituals during spring, also
present interesting parallels to the ancient rituals. During the Easter
season in Olympos, the villagers conduct an important ritual of rain
magic, manifested through a rain litany and a procession with their
principal icons (images). Besides the death and Resurrection of
Christ, this is the most important ritual during Easter. To honour the
dead and celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, on New or White
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Tuesday in the White Week, the people of Olympos carry icons of

saints from the main church to the cemetery for services honouring
the dead. The farmers believe that the icons can ward off drought.
Thus, in addition to regular religious services at the graves, the priest
says prayers for rain (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6. The priest on his knees in front of the icons praying for rain at the
cemetery in the village of Olympos on the island of Karpathos on White
Tuesday, 28 April 1992. (Authors photograph)
The priest says a prayer over each grave, where the housewives
have placed dishes of different food as offerings to the dead, kollyba
(a mixture of wheat, nuts and fruit), cakes, wine, orange-juice,
cheese, sweets, fruits, etc. After the blessing of the priest, the food is
finally passed round and eaten. In this way, they have a meal with the
dead. Then they take the icons, which are wrapped in bright cloths,
into the fields to pray at the small private chapels to ensure good
crops. They carry the icons in procession over the fields in the
neighbourhood of the village, and they have a special service at the
river, which is almost dry (Fig. 7), during which the Panagia is
immersed in the water in front of one of the many chapels.
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Evy Johanne Hland
Fig. 7. The icons are carried in procession over the fields in the
neighbourhood of the village. (Authors photograph)
According to one of my informants, It is important to remember

that the procession with the icons has nothing to do with Easter. The
reason is a time of drought many years ago. Then, the priest prayed to
the icons for rain. Afterwards, they have always carried the icons in
procession on Tuesday after Easter. The icons preside over
everything: prosperity, fertility, plentiful rain, harmony between the
members of society and protection against all aggression from
outside. In addition, the prayer the priest says to the dead for rain, in
several ways is a modern version of Pausanias (9.40,1 f., tr. Levi)
story about when people sent ambassadors to Delphi: for (nearly)
two years the god had not rained. When they asked for a remedy for
this drought the Pythian priestess commanded them to go to the
oracle of Trophonios at Lebadeia and find a cure from him.
The Greek Orthodox Church, since Byzantine times, has
celebrated Easter on the first Sunday after the appearance of the
spring full moon. This is a favourable time for fertility and the growth
of the crops. As already mentioned, the first week after Easter is
known as the White Week, another expression is the Bright
Week (Lampr, bright, another word for Easter). These expressions have given rise to various beliefs: no work is allowed in the
223
fields during this week for fear of hail, because hail is white. Further,
women are not allowed to use a white distaff for their spinning,
because the colour white brings hail (Megas 1982: 110; Loukatos
1985: 163-6). Instead of working, the celebrations during the White
Week after Easter are important, since the whole crop may be lost if
it starts to hail, and it is important to avoid this. Consequently, there
are many rituals after Easter and around the first of May. Both hassili
(the gardens of Adonis) in modern Serres (Northern Greece), the
candles and flowers of the Good Friday service known as Christcandles and Christ-flowers on the Epitaphios (Christs
funeral) and other symbols are believed to become holy during the
ceremony in connection with the spring festival. They are believed to
have miraculous power and produce the same fertilising effect as the
gardens of Adonis on the feast of the vegetation god, Adonis in
antiquity. So, burying the hassili in the fields is good for the crops.
Some of the villagers who celebrate the Kalogeros, the
Anastenarides (i.e. those who celebrate the Anastenaria), start their
most important festival the Anastenaria, dedicated to Agios
Constantine and Agia Helena and celebrated at the end of the spring,
before harvest, by the blessing of the agiasma (holy water) when
gathering at the agiasma, which also signifies the spring house, a
small chapel-looking building at the edge of the village that consists
of a door opening on a damp stairway that leads down to a well. The
leader of the group of Anastenarides, the Archianastenaris, enters the
agiasma and goes down to the well, because he is going to bless the
participants and the fields with holy water. With the procession of
Anastenarides arrayed up the steps behind him, the Archianastenaris
draws a bucket of water and makes a sign of the cross over it with
each of the two icons depicting Agios Constantine and Agia Helena.
Each icon depicts the Saints dressed in blue and purple robes standing
on either side of a silver crucifix, under its two arms. The halos of the
Saints, like the edges and handles of the icons, are plated with silver.
After pouring the bucket of water back into the well he orders
everyone back outside and fills the bucket again.
Emerging from the agiasma, the Archianastenaris hurls the
bucketful of water in all directions, towards the east, the west, the
north and the south. Then he brings up another bucket of holy water,
which he hurls over the hands of the twenty or thirty people who
crowd around him. He does this three, or more times. He brings up
more holy water so people can drink from it, sprinkle their heads, or
224
Evy Johanne Hland
fill small bottles they have brought for just this purpose. He is the last
one to be blessed. When the blessing of the waters is completed, the
procession returns to their shrine, and performs the other central
rituals of the festival.
But agiasma, or holy water, is very important in modern Greek
religion, and a central feature in all churches, and this may give some
indication of the importance of holy water in ancient times as well.
We also meet the importance of water in the agiasma, the spring
house, through the icons which are dedicated to the well, because the
drinking water is always dedicated to a saint and it is for this reason
that they are called Agios (Saint). The importance of water is also
indicated through all the folksongs about water drought and the
finding of water, are well-known themes. And we have to keep in
mind that the water supply is and has always been a great problem in
Greece, as the area is characterised by heavy rains during the winter
period, and nearly no rains during the summer months, i.e. from May
until September or even until the end of October.
The significance of water is also demonstrated through the festival
dedicated to the Panagia under her attribute of Zodochos Pg, i.e.
the Life-giving Spring, which is celebrated on New Friday in the
White Week. On this festival Athenians come to her chapel inside a
circular spring house hewn in the rock on the Southern slope of the
Acropolis to fetch life-giving water in the cave which is dedicated to
her (Fig. 8). Through antiquity it was dedicated to different deities.
The Sacred Spring is situated inside a cave over which is constructed
a church. The spring house and its surroundings were sacred to the
Water-Nymphs from the sixth century BC. Later, the sanctuary of
Asklepios was built here. The cave was later dedicated to Agios
Anargyros, the patron saint of healing, and today it is dedicated to the
Panagia.19
Cult in caves with holy water is of central importance in Greek
religion (cf. Fig. 9). The holy water may be used to ensure health,
good crops, or growing flocks. It may be sprinkled on, or drunk by,
a sick person, and it may also be sprinkled on the animals or over the
fields by the priest to bless them, purify them, or to produce rain.
In ancient times, springs were sacred, representing water-nymphs.
The nymphs were worshipped as deities of water, of marriage and
birth, because they were pre-eminently water deities (Callim. Hymn.
225
4.255-57; Paus. 8.41,2, 8.23,4, 8.28,2, 8.38,3; Eur. IT. 270),

connected with every source of water, and water gives fertility and
life itself to everything which grows. They were, therefore, naturally
believed to give fertility to the soil and to assist growth not only of
everything growing from the ground but also to man. The nymphs
were rain deities (Paus. 8.38,3 f.), and were asked for rain and fertility
of the soil.
Fig. 8. The water scoop is often used in the cave dedicated to the Panagia,
the Life-giving Spring, during the festival celebrated on New Friday after
the Resurrection of Christ. Athens, 1 May 1992. (Authors photograph)
It was from springs more than from any other source that the
Greeks secured their water. They believed that the nymphs of these
springs provided their water, and they honoured them especially as
water deities (Od. 13.103-109, 350 f.). In times of drought the Greeks
prayed to the divinities of the well-springs, fountains, and sources of
streams, and of the streams themselves, rather than to Zeus, or any
other god for rain; that is, they offered vows and prayers to the
Nymphae and similar divinities, perhaps because people felt that the
nymphs were closer than the heavenly, and far away, Zeus. Thus, the
Nymphs were supposed to be mediators between heaven and earth.20
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Evy Johanne Hland
Fig. 9. Below the main church on the Aegean island of Tinos called
Euangelistrias (the Annunciation) are several minor churches or chapels
formed as caves. In the first chapel dedicated to Zodochos Pg (the Lifegiving Spring) is a holy spring, where the pilgrims fetch water, which is
believed to have fertile powers and to cure sickness. August 1994.
As already mentioned, the significance of water is also

demonstrated through the festival dedicated to the Panagia under her
attribute of the Life-giving Spring in the White Week. In ancient
times, the life-giving spring was also a female goddess, connected
with Mother Earth, but she needed to be fertilised by a male god, as
illustrated through the Mysteries at Eleusis.
The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus of Rain (Paus. 2.19,8), and
in colloquial speech one can say Zeus is raining. Children in
227
Ancient Greece sang: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the fields of the
Athenians. According to the tradition, Zeus (Hes. Op. 488), or God
rains, so we get plenty of grain.
Fully-fledged rain magic is found in the cult of Zeus Lykaios in
Arkadia, where nevertheless one of the Nymphs who reared him also
has something to say: If a severe drought lasts a long time the priest
of Zeus will go to the spring of the Nymph Hagno, make a sacrifice,
and let the blood run into the spring. Then, after prayer, he dips a
branch from an oak (the sacred tree of Zeus) into the water, and
forthwith a vapour will rise up from the spring like a mist, and a
little way off the mist becomes a cloud, collects other clouds, and
makes the rain drop on Arkadian land, according to Pausanias
(8.38,3 f., tr. Levi).
Among the ancient Greeks, a king is often a magician in the
service of the gods. Part of his duty is to be a weather-king; he is
making the weather, and this means that he is making rain, for
example by shaking rattles or by other means trying to make thunder
and lightning. In ancient Thessaly, when the land suffered from
drought, they shook a bronze wagon by way of praying the god for
rain, and it was said rain came. This was a traditional public
ceremony for the making of rain. According to Pausanias (2.29,7 f.,
tr. Levi):
Greece had been withering under a drought: neither inside the
isthmus (of Corinth) nor outside it would the god rain, until
they sent to Delphi to discover the reasons and ask for relief.
The Pythian priestess told them to placate Zeus, but, if he were
to listen, it had to be Aiakos who made the ritual supplication.
They sent men from every city to beseech Aiakos; he sacrified
and prayed to Panhellenic Zeus, and brought rain to Greece; so
the Aiginetans made the(se) portraits of the ambassadors.
On the modern island of Aigina, after a long drought, people appeal
to the Panagia, who has supplanted Zeus, for relief. Instead of going
to the Mountain of Zeus Hellanios (the modern Oros), the modern
Aiginetans go in a procession to her Monastery three miles north of
the Mount in the centre of the island.They bring her icon to the town
of Aigina and keep it in the local Metropolitan Church for a day, and
bring it back to the monastery in a procession (Harland 1960). The
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modern Aiginetan habit of predicting rain from the gathering of

clouds upon the Oros has its ancient parallel: according to
Theophrastos (Sign. 24):If cloud settles on the temple (on the
Mount) of Zeus Hellanios in Aegina, usually rain follows.
Not only Zeus, but several of the ancient minor gods as well as the
goddesses were also clever magicians. Their modern parallels are
represented in the same way. In case of drought, the priest may be
sent for to conduct a rain litany to break the drought, such as in
Olympos or Melik where he has to compete with the
Archianastenaris or the Kalogeros, two recognised rain magicians.21
The Archianastenaris successfully entering into ecstasy is
considered to be both an indication of the saints consenting to the
performance of the ritual to ensure prosperity in the coming year, and
also a means of securing fertility. The most important ritual during
the Anastenaria, is the Anastenarides dancing over red-hot coals to
ensure their own health, and secure the fertility of their land. They
pray to their patron, Agios Constantine, and his mother for prosperity,
for fertility, for plentiful rain, and the banishment of all evil spirits.
The Anastenarides worship both fire and water, and on other
occasions when it failed to rain, they would take the icons and go all
round the village. The saint would seize them as his ancient
counterpart, Dionysos, seized his maenads during the Lenaia and
other Dionysian festivals, and they would begin to dance, and pray:
Agios Constantine, have pity on us, make it rain.
During todays agricultural cycle, Anastenaria is a festival of
renewal before the grain harvest. In the village of Agia Paraskeu,
harvest took place during the festival dedicated to Agios Charalampos
around the summer solstice at the end of June in 1992. The two
festivals are supplied with many rituals around sowing.
The modern offerings before the harvest and the sowing of the
grain are equivalents to the festivals of Thargelia and Pyanepsia of
the ancients. During those festivals, they carried the maypole, richly
decorated with fertility symbols, in procession. The offering might
also be manifested by the eiresione. Like the modern variant of the
maypole, the May wreath, the olive-branch was placed at the door of
the home and replaced each year, because, according to the laws of
the ancestors, a human being should return to the gods a part of what
they gave him. The ancestors, who were and are mediators between
humans and the more powerful deities, get periodic offerings of
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kollyba as the dead in Ancient Greece got appropriate offerings of

food (cf. Fig. 10; ARV 1227,1; Aesch. Cho. 22 ff.).
Whether the souls of the dead are thought to be set free during the
first week of carnival or to come up from the world below and
breathe again, in the same way as the resurrected Christ, and wander
among the living until they must go back to their place on
Assumption Day or during Pentecost, there is a parallel to the
customs of the ancient Greeks who celebrated the dead during the
Anthesteria and the Rousalia. It is important to communicate with the
dead during the yearly All Souls Days at the end of winter and at the
end of spring, i.e. during the sprouting of the grains, when the flowers
and the green grain stalks are proliferating and at harvest time. The
wine-offering to the earth during the festival dedicated to Agios
Charalampos and all the blood- and water-offerings to the earth
remind us of the fact that it is not only important to treat the living
participants during the ritual passages of the festivals connected with
the seasonal calendar, with its emphasis on the cycle of natural
increase.
Both the dead (Paus. 1.18,7 f.), the earth (Il. 3.103 f.), the spring
(Il. 21.131 f., Od. 13.105, 350; AP. 9.329, 9.326 f.) and the tree get
their share, today (Fig. 11) as in the ancient world when libations
always were offered to the god before the worshippers could drink (Il.
1.470 f.). During drought, animals may still be sacrificed to the river,
in such a way that the blood may run freely into the river (cf. Fig. 11).
Another similar custom takes place on New Years Day, to ensure
health, good crops or growing flocks. Then, they feed the spring or
bring offerings to the Nereid dwelling in the well or fountain, to
sweeten the water. As they throw sweetmeats into the fountain, they
whisper: May all good things flow into our house, as this water
flows.
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Fig. 10. Memorial service performed for a deceased person with offerings of
food at the tomb on the second of the three psychosabbata (psych=soul,
sabbato=Saturday), i.e. All Souls Day, during Carnival and Lent, at the end
of the winter, Serres (Greek Macedonia). 7 March 1992. (Authors
photograph)
After harvest and the threshing of the grain, when the fruit ripens
and the farmers begin to receive the profits from their crops, once
more the death cult is important, perhaps to secure the future first
rains, when the transitional period towards the productive part of
the year is about to begin again, when the Dormition of the Panagia is
celebrated, marking a turning point towards autumn. Accordingly,
there is a mutual adaptation in the fusion between earlier rituals and
the Christian calendar. Offerings of the basic kinds of food derived
from the subsistence agriculture in the region oil, wine and grains
(bread) that are made during todays festivals have an important
place in the Orthodox liturgy. Even if the agricultural population who
perform the rituals today have got modern technology and new ways
to improve the agricultural productivity of their fields (machinery and
chemical fertilisers), these improvements have not given them control
over the vicissitudes of nature. The survival of the community still
depends on natural events beyond the farmers control. Whether the
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reason is that the ritual is a compensation for technology or that the

people do not really trust the technology, the home-made
sympathetic magic which is so important in connection with fertility
cult is still performed. In this way, they attempt to influence the
fertility directly. Accordingly, the rituals of the festivals represent a
world-view which belongs to a traditional agricultural society. This is
not contradicted by the fact that the summer festivals of August are
celebrated in a month of holiday and leisure. The ancients did the
same, since the end of July and the first part of August, after the
harvest and the threshing of the grain, was a period of leisure for
Hesiod (Op. 607 f.) and Aristotle (Eth. Nic. 8.1160a19-20, 23-28).
Ultimately, festivals are celebrations of the capacity of increase of
the earth, carried on as a way of maintaining that cycle of fertility by
acknowledging the powers of nature and the place of humankind in
enhancing that process, on seizing it and magnifying it. When natural
things are enlarged or prolonged, magnified and amplified in the
festival, or when they are miniaturised, made into toys and gifts, the
community are honouring nature while giving humanity its place in
the larger scheme of things. Fertility, in such a world, is a capacity of
nature enhanced by humans acting together in serious play.
Most Greeks are agricultural people who live close to the process
of nature and, as in antiquity, there is still a common-sense
connection made between the fruitfulness of the earth and human
sexuality. Fertility ceremonies maintain the connection with the
years passage through festive engagements that still speak out on
behalf of fertility.
The creative forces are located in different places, and fertility is
derived from gifts coming from the below (earth) and from the
above (rain). From this fact follows the importance of the fusion of
the two elements in the union of marriage to stimulate the fertility of
society.
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Fig. 11. The lamb sacrifice during the Anastenaria festival, in the village of
Agia Elen (Greek Macedonia). The throat of the lamb is cut, so that the
blood will flow into the freshly dug hole close to the tree and the agiasma
(holy water). 21 May 1992. (Authors photograph)
233
PART 2
THE SACRED MARRIAGE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
The most important agricultural festivals in Ancient Greece, the
Eleusinian Mysteries and the Thesmophoria, both celebrated before
sowing, were dedicated to the earth. Therefore, the ancient periodic
festivals encouraged the fertility of the earth. The eight months
labour of Mother Earth from sowing to harvesting is important to
produce Demeters grain. But, Mother Earth represents only one of
the two parts of nature which it is important to communicate with
through festivals to ensure the harvest.
Agricultural success in Greece depends largely upon water of
sufficient quantity at the proper times, and it was Zeus who provided
this essential rainwater. The god determined the times of rains as well
as their quantity. Agrarian rituals were therefore performed for a
purpose; they not only served as a reminder of natural events, but
attempted to influence them, both magically and by the propitiation of
the deities concerned. Accordingly, rain magic dedicated to a
heavenly god is a general theme in the festivals. The Zeus festival (cf.
Paus. 1.24,4) held in midsummer before the rising of Sirius was
believed to summon the cooling north winds.
Zeus was responsible for the rain on which the crop depended,
symbolised by the marriage between heaven and earth, and Pausanias
tells about the statue of Earth begging Zeus to rain on her, either
because the Athenians needed rain or because there was a drought all
over Greece (1.24,3, tr. Levi). The statue was apparently the upper
part of a naked woman, that was rattled about in a rumbling cart to
produce thunder. But statues were not enough. Most of the other
festivals were also celebrated to get rain.
On 26 Gamelion (the month of marriage) the ancient Athenians
celebrated the Sacred Marriage of Zeus and Hera in the Theogamia
(the wedding of the gods) festival towards the end of winter,
approximately when the carnival season is celebrated today. This was
an auspicious time for marriage, because life was about to come with
the spring, and marriage and conception could suitably be linked to it.
On the human level it was the favourite season for weddings, because
the divine model secured a prosperous result for everyone. The divine
archetype was the best guarantee that legitimate human unions in
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each Greek generation would be fruitful. Behind this way of thinking

is the belief we learn about in the Odyssey where the point is being
made that the Sacred Marriages of the immortals are not infertile
(11.249 f.). In other words, it was normal to sow when the earth
was watered.
In popular custom, marriages continue to take place by preference
during a particular time of the year. According to Aristotle (Pol.
7.1335a 36 ff.), winter is the preferable season for marriages. Today,
the weddings are also at appropriate seasons, such as after harvest or
when they celebrate Panagias Birthday (8 September) and the new
ecclesiastical year starts. The wedding season may also be around
first rains or around sowing, when they also celebrate Panagias
Presentation in the Temple.
The mock wedding in todays carnival in the winter and at the
beginning of Lent, discussed here in terms of the mock wedding in
Koims and the Kalogeros, presents many similarities to the ancient
hieros gamos, aiming to promote a magical fertilisation of the earth.
The ceremonies as a whole seek to achieve the same result. An
important trait is the parody of the wedding ceremony, but the death
and resurrection of the Kalogeros also symbolises the union between
the grain and the earth or its vegetation powers. The ritual ploughing
and sowing of the periphery of the village, when the oxen copulate
with the earth, is a well-known hierogamic theme. It is the
connections between rain magic and the ploughing and the sowing of
the earth that are presented through carnival rituals and concretised
through the mock wedding and, during a similar ritual in another
village, the Kalogeros wishes people a lot of everything in the words:
Good crop with many bridegrooms and brides. We find the belief
that by such magical means it is possible to bind the invisible forces
of nature and make them subject to humans, so that they provide the
desired fertility. As already mentioned, similar rituals are performed
before sowing and harvest, demonstrating that people try to influence
the course of nature through agricultural magic at the most important
periods during the year.
The ritual sowing and the wishes and magical incantations
expressed by the chorus of the celebrants, or the prayers at the
Kalogeros festival to ensure the harvest, is a magical ritual to make
the crop grow. Therefore, the symbolic ploughing of the earth,
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followed by the sowing of polysporia, an equivalent to the ancient

panspermia, are important elements during the festival. In the
ancient parallel, the Anthesteria festival both the offering of all kinds
of grains and the sacred marriage were important rituals.
The union during the second day of the Anthesteria festival meant
that the god was married to Basilinna (the wife of an important
official, the Archn Basileus) the day he came back from the
underworld. In the wedding procession the priestess accompanied by
the god, was escorted by satyrs to the civic centre where their
marriage was celebrated (Arist. Ath. Pol. 3.5). Their union takes place
to induce fertility in the vine. Since the union was performed during a
spring- and flower-festival, the ritual was meant to make the earth
fertile and bring back the fertility of the animals. By marrying
Basilinna, the wife of the king, the god married the town and all its
women. Their union was said to take place in the Boukoleion (the oxherds house) in the Agora (the market place), at night. The Agora is
also the place where the Athenian hero, Theseus, was buried,
according to tradition (Plut. Thes. 36.2; Paus.1.17,2), and where they
had a cemetery already in the Mycenaean period. This indicates the
connection between birth and death; it is also symbolised through the
annual death and resurrection of the lovers of the Mother Goddesses,
such as the vegetation god, Adonis.
As the ploughing is about to begin, traditionally a ritualistic
ploughing takes place accompanied or followed by a hieros gamos,
the purpose of which is to re-enact the union of the Corn Mother or
Mother Earth with her own son, the corn-seed, in order to make the
ground fertile.
A sacred ploughing was performed in autumn before the sowing,
roughly at the beginning of October, to ensure a rich yield of the
fruits of the earth. This is the time of the first autumnal rains, which
fertilise the earth, and make it possible for the ploughman to till the
ground. It is the time to offer to the Corn Mother, who is another
version of Mother Earth herself, the fruits of the latest harvest, not
only in gratitude for the old crop but also in propitiation for a new
and even better one. The Kalogeros festival, where the salient
features are a phallic rod, a parody of a wedding ceremony, a death
and resurrection sequence, and a ritual ploughing and sowing, is
probably not very different from what took place at ancient Eleusis,
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where people gathered with offers of corn, and acknowledged the

recent rains and their beneficent role. Demeter, goddess of vegetation,
united with the Cretan hero Jasion in a thrice-ploughed corn field
(Od. 5.125-27; Hes. Th. 969-71), and thereafter gave birth to Plutos,
wealth in corn. The myth may be compared to the aim of the union
during the Kalogeros ceremony. Here, we find the ancient association
between ploughing/sowing and procreation, and between harvest and
birth.
The annual celebrations of the hieros gamos proclaimed the
divinity of sexuality through the marriage between Heaven and Earth,
which symbolised the primordial union, which was the basis for the
generations of the gods. The first union presented by Hesiod (Th. 45
f.) was the archetype of all life, because it promoted the creation of
the world. Thus, the annual ceremonial recurrence of the event was
the direct renewal of the order of nature, and it aimed to produce the
same prosperous results as the annual birth- or death-festivals, both
for the polis (city-state) and its inhabitants. The sexual union, the
sacred marriage, of various divine couples illustrates the meaning.
The theme of the sacred marriage belongs to the identity between the
earth and the woman, but she needs a partner; accordingly Gaia, the
Earth, is married with Uranos, the Heaven (Hes. Th. 45 f., [116 ff.],
126 ff., 176-85). The marriage of the Sky Father with the Earth
Mother also takes place in the thunderstorm; it was as a thunderbolt
that Zeus laid his fatal embrace on the Earth Goddess, Semele,
Dionysos mother. Zeus impregnating Danae when coming to her in a
shower of gold is another example of the marriage of Heaven with
Earth. A passage in Aeschyluss Danaid trilogy (Aesch. Fr. 25 [44])
describes the union:
The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning
layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from
the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth
forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeters
gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their
bloom. Of all these things I am the cause.
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These lines were spoken by Aphrodite herself in defence of

Hypermestra at her trial for disobedience to her fathers command to
kill her husband. Aphrodite invokes this divine marriage between
heaven and earth, and according to her, she is its cause. She also had
something to say in other marriages: Zeus and Hera uniting at the
summit of Mount Ida are veiled in a golden cloud from which
glistening drops fall to earth. Their marriage is so fertile that
underneath them the divine earth broke into young, fresh grass, and
into dewy clover, crocus and hyacinth so thick and soft it held the
hard ground far away from them (Il. 14.346 ff.). Divine sexual union
is associated with the productivity of the earth. When Hera, with the
help of Aphrodite (Il. 14.197-223) who lends her the zn (i.e. belt,
girdle, belt of seduction) she needs, seduces Zeus their intercourse
causes a flowering of the earth. The scene presents the fertile
marriage of Heaven with Earth represented as a flowery meadow, the
divine and Flowering Hera (cf. Paus. 2.22,1). The conception of the
flowery meadow presents the lap of the Earth which collects the seeds
of the Heaven, but this lap is also the place where the marriage-bed of
Zeus the cloud gatherer and his Flowering wife Hera is situated (Eur.
Hipp. 748-51). We find the connection with Zeus Sophitos, i.e. who
gives life to the plants, and thus is synonymous with fertiliser.
The marriage of Hades and Kore was so important that it was
situated several places, in the meadow at Nysa (HHD. 7, 15-21; Strab.
14.649-50), at Eleusis (Hymn. Orp. 18.12-15), and at Sicily (Diod.
5.3,2, 5.4,1 f.). This cosmic significance of the sacred marriage is also
present in the ritual at Eleusis. When the initiates invoke the heaven
to let it rain, they also pray the earth to be swollen, i.e. fertile.
The purpose of the modern ritual ploughings in the fall and the
spring is the same as their ancient parallels: to ensure the growth of
vegetation and a good crop. By the end of October nature enters the
winter season. And as the seed is buried in the earth, the animals are
shut into the folds, sheds and barns and the humans into their houses.
Since humans are the children of the earth, they are also part of the
order of nature. Thus, marriages or sexual unions of the female and
male are important in the way of thinking of agricultural people, such
as are symbolised through the Basilinna and the Basileus, Demeter
and Jasion or Kore and Hades. Accordingly, Plutarch (Mor. 144b42)
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claims that the most sacred of all the sowings is the marital sowing
and ploughing for the procreation of children.
The hieros gamos in the ritual life of ancient Athens indicates the
connection between human and agricultural fertility that was and is
characteristic of Greek thinking and that allowed for the metaphorical
connection to be made between womens bodies and the body of the
earth.
The location of the sanctuary of the Anthesteria in the Dionysian
limnais is important, because marshes, according to Greek thinking,
are associated with a border, the underworld and death, but also with
the female sex organ and birth.21 Accordingly, death cult and the
marriage aspect are both present in this ancient festival for renewal in
the spring month. The main ceremonies were held in a humid place
with flowers, suitable for the arrival of the god and his infernal
followers. Once a year, Dionysos descends into the underworld
through a lake in a swampy area to bring back his mother, the
goddess Semele (Paus. 2.37,5), i.e. fertility. The sanctuary in the
Marshes was opened only once a year. Through the ceremony in the
marsh the opening of the Pithoigia, the jars, signifies the openingup of the underworld, and the opening of the virgins body. As the
female body is opened up through the first intercourse, the earth is
opened up when it is ploughed, and the Anthesteria, when the new
wine was opened, was also dedicated to the souls of the dead
returning from the underworld. All these ritual openings are liminal
events. Accordingly, all these ceremonies are associated with the
dangers of opening up, and were therefore associated with ritual
precaution, because of the potential danger involved for man (cf.
duBois 1988). The way of thinking is made more explicit through the
sacred marriage in the Boukoleion
Both the modern Kalogeros and the ancient Anthesteria festival
demonstrate that in connection with rain-magic a hieros gamos
followed by a death and resurrection ritual, and a symbolic ploughing
are important elements. As a ritual supplement to the magical cries
rain, conceive, these ceremonies probably also took place at
Eleusis. In Greek culture there is a close connection between
traditional marriages and certain sacred marriages, where sexual
organs have a focal symbolic role when demonstrating the importance
of uniting the two sexes to ensure a fertile result. Therefore, it is
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important to stress the positive role of a hieros gamos to promote

fertility in the Eleusinian Mysteries as well. Sexual elements play an
important part in ritual initiation into mystery cults, and in ancient
Eleusis as in traditional marriages and popular customs at the present
day, there are many parallels, which are of focal importance within all
agricultural societies. Aristophanes comedy, The Frogs, celebrates
the Eleusinian Mysteries, and partly takes place in a marsh (Ar. Ran.
181, 209-20) and presents an important element from the mysteries
and a double example of the female genitals through marsh and frog.
Important also are plants (Papamichael 1975), general agricultural
terminology (Henderson 1991) and the shape of traditional musical
instruments at Eleusis. According to the Greek scholar Apostolos N.
Athanassakis (1976), the flute and the drumstick illustrate the penis,
while the drum, the fiddle and the harp illustrate the vulva. The drum
is associated with the hollow vessel where the sacred meal was
served, i.e. the mixture of grain offered at Eleusis. The symbolic
identification of such a vessel-drum with the female pudenda is found
in many cultures. The corn to be sown was represented by everyones
corn offerings, which were placed inside a drum. The custom of
filling drums with grain may be connected with the ritual pounding of
grain in drums, which in its turn refers to the manipulation of female
and male genitals. The shapes and nature of the ingredients, which are
mixed in the so-called kist (round box) also a symbol of the
female pudendum at Eleusis, represent the female and male genitals
(Clem. Al. Protr. 2.18P f.). They also illustrate the cultivated crop
both sexes live on and want more of at harvest time. Consequently,
the pounding of the grain symbolises the sexual act, according to the
logic of sympathetic magic.
Music also has connections with the pounding of corn and
sexuality, as seen in customs related to the traditional wedding meal
and other customs pertaining to the threshing and pounding of corn
among people close to the soil. Important, therefore, are the
customary meals of corn of all sorts and other crops, which are boiled
together during important moments of the agricultural year. At
Eleusis the cracked grain was also made into a sacramental meal.
Some of the cracked barley with water and mint added to it was used
in the sacramental potion, the kyken. The drink was of a nature
calculated to increase fertility. The ingredients of the potion may be
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symbolically significant. It is natural that the drink of the goddess

who has the power over growth and fertility should contain water.
The idea that the Sky God impregnates the Earth Goddess through
rain is expressed in several sources (cf. Aesch. Fr. 25 [44]) and in the
ceremonial formula, rain, conceive. In addition to the importance of
the flute and the drum, which are present in all agricultural popular
festivals, the phallic fertility-symbol, The Invincible Lifes Powers
has an important role during the ploughing at Melik, when the
fertility-ensuring character, Babo, pulls it out from her sack and
plays while uttering magical fertility-formulas. At some point of time
during the Eleusinian cult, musical instruments were employed, and
their important roles are personified through many of the names in the
cult,22 also having agrarian functions, since the drum is used in
threshing the sacred grain. The point is that the female and male
genitals, the phallus and the vulva, are personified through a hieros
gamos to ensure a plentiful crop.
Perhaps, as the wheat was being cracked, a ritual marriage,
complete with copulatory simulation, took place on the freshly
ploughed land. A relevant parallel is represented by the damalakia,
the young men or oxen, who fall to the ground on their knees at
Melik, and thus make a ritual copulation upon ploughed and sown
land. Certainly, most often they fall into the mud since this ritual
contact with Mother Earth symbolises a ritual sexual intercourse with
the earth. The sinking of the Kalogeros three times in the mud to
ensure the crop, followed by the washing, which is ritually
performed, so as to have rain in summer, is also an important
ceremony. In earlier times, four men would lift the body and go
across the square to the village water-tank which had been filled and
throw him in, to secure the rain during summer. When he was lying
inside the water-tank, they might also pull him up onto his knees
three times, so that the waters were blessed for the sowing. They
might also dip him in a tank in one of the villagers yards, so that the
sowing might be blessed. The magical immersion of the Kalogeros
signifies magical strengthening and renewal. The ritual may be
compared with the ancient evidence of sacred immersion of the god
Dionysos, which is given by Homer (Il. 6.132-137), and the annual
ceremonial immersion in the Dionysian Marshes (cf. Paus. 2.37,5-6).
Immersion in water is an ancient and very widely distributed rite
241
performed to ensure prosperity. Earth and water both represent

elements of fertility, and the one who comes into contact with them is
affected by their power. The watering of the earth is universally
known as a magic rite. Similarly, the daubing with mud containing
as it does the power of the earth constitutes a universal magic with
properties relating to fertility or rain-making.
The season, the sowing and the first rains, are important factors
in this connection. In Greece today, the earth is ready to be sown after
two or three rains. The farmer is also ready, and he starts the sowing
with or without litanies, accompanied by a basket from the housewife
containing the three most important or basic elements in the life of
the household: flour, salt and candles. They are parallels to the
ingredients which are offered during the visits to all the houses in
Melik, and which are offered to the Kalogeros. The farmer brings
these along, and when he takes up the seed, he sprinkles it with water,
and wishes: As the water runs, may the life run.
The connection between the earth and the woman is manifested by
the cult dedicated to various Mother Goddesses in certain watery,
humid, swampy and fertile areas, such as Gaia in Olympia (Paus.
5.14,10) and on the banks of the river Ilissos where the plain was
abounding in water (Thuc. 2.15,4), and Demeter on the fertile
Eleusinian plain, beside the river Kephisos (Paus. 1.38,5). In Arkadia,
Pausanias speaks of the temple and the sacred grove of Demeter in
the Marsh as they call her (Paus. 8.36,6). The sanctuaries dedicated
both to the Mother Goddess Demeter and the other goddesses are
always situated in a place where spring-water rises abundantly (Paus.
7.27,9 f., cf. 1.14,1). The agricultural festivals are therefore
performed in important areas where fertility bursts into leaf, such as
in swampy marshes around fertile plains. Demeter was worshipped in
the Eleusinian marsh and in the marshes at Lerna (Paus. 2.37,1-3, cf.
8.36,6). A modern parallel to the ancient festivals dedicated to a
Mother Goddess in the Marsh, is the festival dedicated to the
Panagias Birthday on 8 September in the island of Euboias at the
village Limn (i.e. marsh), where she is the patron saint. Further, on
the festival dedicated to her mother Agia Anna, on 9 December, i.e.
the conception of the Panagia, a sacred marriage the marriage in the
ditch is celebrated. An important ritual with the same goal is
presented in traditional descriptions of the Kalogeros festival, when
242
Evy Johanne Hland
they take some earth from where the women are sitting to draw the
sign of the cross on the foreheads of the young men, the damalakia.
They always stumble near groups of women spectators; further they
roll in the mud, without restraint. The peasants say they fall to put
earth on their noses.23 In fact, the contact with Mother Earth
perpetuates a most ancient rite of fertility magic. It demonstrates the
importance of earth, mud, the lumps of clay that are moulded into
pitchers, pots and jars, and the connection with women, birth and
fertility (Hes. Th. 570-91, Op. 60 ff.). The association of clay and
clay pots with female fertility is important in several agricultural
societies.24 The purifying and fertility-ensuring function of mud in
connection with rituals of passage in the cycle of nature and the life
of humans is demonstrated by the mud-bath of the uninitiated at
Eleusis. The use of mud was important also in ancient Dionysian
rites. Rolling in mud and smearing with mud are well-known features
of the customs of today and their use in ensuring fertility also
belonged to ancient rituals. The life-giving mud helps both people
and their animals. Accordingly, the participants at the Kalogeros are
soon as daubed as were the ancient participants in the procession
celebrating Dionysos in the Marshes during the Anthesteria.
Today, the waters are blessed and made holy for sea-farers on the
eve of Epiphany, the Baptism of Christ. After the service the fields
are sprinkled with holy water to protect them from disease. Newly
married girls are sprinkled to make them fertile. This is a parallel to
the ceremonial bathing of women annually or in times of drought
with the express purpose of bringing fruitfulness on man, beast and
crop. Of great importance is the ceremony of the throwing of the
cross into the sea on 6 January. Panagia and the saints are invoked to
make the ritual successful. As soon as the priest throws the cross into
the water, several young men dive into the water to find the cross and
bring it to the surface. The one who finds it has the privilege of
carrying it round the town and is loaded with gifts from everybody.
Interesting parallels are the immersion of the Panagia icon in the
brook during the procession over the fields of Olympos and the
ancient myth about the ring of Polykrates (Hdt. 3.40-3). These are
examples of the union of the female and male principles, according to
an analysis based upon the association between the ring and the vulva
243
and the cross and the phallus, which are thrown into the chthonic
symbol, the sea.
According to Homer, Okeanos is the river encircling the world,
conceived as the great cosmic power (Il. 14.201, 245 f., 302, 21.195
f.), the water, through which all life grows. He is one of the various
husbands of the Earth (Ar. Nub. 271, cf. 571 f.), and thus a parallel to
Zeus, the Bringer of showers (Ar. Av. 1749-60), so the Earth may
conceive. Accordingly, in ancient as in modern agricultural contexts,
the weather magician wields the fertilising influences of Heaven and
the powers of the Earth and brings into being the vegetation which
springs up when the thunder shower has burst and Heaven and Earth
are married in the life-giving rain.
CONCLUSION
Since there are important characteristics connected with the rainmaking rituals in Greece, ancient and modern, and despite many
changes in the dynamics of history, it can be claimed that modern
rituals as observed in rural Greece can throw new light upon ancient
Greek rain-making rituals, and give a clearer picture of the way
ancient people perceived the way they could influence the gods to
ensure their life-giving water.
University of Bergen
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to the editor for useful recommendations on conveying
my thoughts and helping to clarify my English. Any remaining errors
are of course my own.
Notes
1
The article is based on a paper (with slides) presented at the

International Water History Association (IWHA) 2nd conference. The
244
Evy Johanne Hland

abstract is published in the Abstract collection: The Role of Water in
History and Development, IWHA 2nd conference 2001, University of
Bergen, Norway, pp. 43-4 (cf. also www.iwha.net. IWHA conference).
The paper was presented in the conferences Theme B, Images of water
in religion, myths, literature and art. A similar paper was presented at
the PECSRL Conference (Permanent European Committee for the Study
of the Rural Landscape), Limnos/Mytilini/Lesbos, 15th-21st September
2004 (theme: One Region, Many Stories: Mediterranean Landscapes in
a Changing Europe). Since 1985, I have had several periods of
fieldwork in the Mediterranean, mainly in Greece where I have also
been conducting research on religious festivals since 1990, cf. Hland
2004. There, the topics discussed in the following article also are
examined further. The problems and fruitfulness of working with
anthropological comparative approaches (such as using material from
Modern Greek civilisation as models) to Ancient Society are also
discussed in my dissertation; cf. further Winkler 1990.
Even if the elements of risk today are different than before, when
famine was the result if the crop was destroyed, this was the reality until
quite recently. Only very lately has Greece been able to turn the
provisions of the European Union to practical use, and even with these
provisions in reserve it is an important emotional experience for the
peasant to see his crop being lost.
The ritual and cosmological vocabulary of Greek religion is broader

than that of a strictly biblical or doctrinal religion, and the sustaining
vehicles (e.g. the calendar) of popular religious activity have preChristian as well as Christian sources, since the same socio-economic
content is integrated with the Christian pantheon and narratives, as those
which the ancients once integrated with narratives of their gods and
goddesses, Hland 2004: ch. 3 and 6. See also Stewart 1991;
Kyriakidou-Nestoros 1986; Hart 1992: ch. 8.
Cf. Hobsbawm and Ranger 1994; Danforth 1984, modified by Alexiou

1986.
Such as Loukatos 1981, 1982, 1985; Kyriakidou-Nestoros 1986;

Tsotakou-Karbel 1991.
For a selection of works on ancient festivals, see for example Deubner

1932; Brumfield 1981; Parke 1986. See also Nilsson 1961; Gernet 1981;
Daraki 1985; Burkert 1983 and 1985; Parker 1996. Hland 2004
presents also several ancient festivals.
245
Cf. also n. 10 below. For the agricultural calendar, see also Nilsson
1961; Brumfield 1981; Petropoulos 1994. See also Bourdieu 1980.
An alternative explanation of Panagia Mesosporitissa is to be in the

earth, i.e. the grains, Loukatos 1982: 132 f., 198.
Kyriakidou-Nestoros 1986: 125, 13.
10 Hes. Op. 615-17 sowing; 567-70 spring; 576-7 harvest. Cf. TsotakouKarbel 1991: 219 ff., 231 ff.; 98 f.; 127 ff., 183 ff.
11 A barley ear represented the bounty of Demeter on coins minted at
Metapontum in Southern Italy, one of which is reproduced on the front
cover of this issue; for details see inside back cover.
12 Cf. the modern ritual performed by the Archianastenaris discussed
below, when hurling the bucketful of water in all directions.
13 Cf. ARV 1472,4 the Anodos (rising) of Aphrodite, cf. 888,155, see
also 1012,1 the Anodos of Persephone. Cf. Paus. 2.37,5, Semele, and
Ap. Rhod. 3.1210 ff. Hekate. See also Harrison 1977: 416 ff.
14 Kakouri 1965: 89 f., 112 f. Figs.53 f. Cf. also Kyriakidou-Nestoros
1986: 125.
15 In present-day Romania unemployed youths in the towns are sent to the
rural areas to earn their living. But, they do not know the earth or the
weather, and have to learn traditional rain-magic. The same happens in
Greece when rain fails to come. The point is that the magic is
understood to work.
16 Ar. Eq. 729 and Schol., Ar. Plut. 1054 and Schol.; Suda. s.v.
the different significations/uses of the eiresin are collected. See also
Ar. Vesp. 398 f. and Schol. to 398. Cf. Plut. Thes. 22.4 f.; Rice and
Stambaugh 1979: 136 f. See also Deubner 1932: Pl. 35 (2); Parke 1986:
76, 189, Pl. 32; Harrison 1977: 320 f., Fig. 93.
17 In February the fermentation of the grape-juice has reached completion,
and the new wines are opened, cf. Kakouri 1965: 41. The wine-drinking
during the Kalogeros thus becomes a parallel to the drinking contest
during the Anthesteria.
18 The Greeks include the First Week after Easter/the White Week in the
Easter cycle. The Easter celebrations last throughout the week that
follows Easter Sunday, in accordance with a popular proverb
determining the duration of the three great festivals dedicated to Christ
246
Evy Johanne Hland

during the year: Three (days) for His Birth, three for Epiphany and
six for Easter.
19 Cf. Hland 2003 also for the following.

20 An inscription from the sixth century BC marks the Hill of the Nymphs
at Athens as belonging to the Nymphs. Zeus also had his place on this
hill about thirty paces lower than the modern church of Agia Marina.
Today people fetch holy water from the spring connected to the church
sacred to Agia Marina, particularly during her festival on 17 July.
According to some villagers Agia Katerina lends them water during her
festival on 25 November.
21 One may also mention a modern parallel from Italy: Late in the winter
of 1989, after three months of drought in the South of Italy, the sea had
sunk 60 cm., the rivers were almost dried up and water was rationed.
During Sundays Mass, the priests prayed for water in the churches. In
the village of Avellino maghi with prestige were sent for by the farmers.
They conducted rituals of rain-magic, and the press was very satisfied.
22 Od. 12.158 f. vis--vis 5.72. Cf. v and v i.e. sea, lake, swamp,
Schol. Ar. Ran. 216.35-40, cf. 219. See also Motte 1973.
23 Clem. Al. Protr. 2.16P-18P, cf. 2.14P f., see also Paus. 1.14,2 f.
24 The 1992 variant of this ritual is Babos cup with holy water, i.e.
womens fertility-ensuring spittle.
25 For woman and earth, see also Triomphe 1992; Jacobson-Widding and
van Beek 1990.
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Rituals of Magical Rain-Making in Modern and

Ancient Greece: A Comparative Approach

Evy Johanne Hland

of time without movement and involves an orientation to the past; its