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the wooden sepulcher decorated with flowers: lilies, hyacinths, lilacs, carnations; more
rarely, they would also add a piece of paper on which they had inscribed the names of
people that will be “read” (that is, mentioned in prayers) by the priest during mass the
following Sunday. A few girls and young women would bend to pass under the
wooden sepulcher before they reached the exit. As they went out, some tried fake keys
in the keyhole of the church rear door, while others tried to fix lit candles on the rocks
outside. Some were deep in prayer, with spread palms facing the sky. About half the
visitors would continue their pilgrimage towards the holy fountain, inside a nearby
chapel. They queued to drink the water, spilling some on their face. Here people from
the local Orthodox community were guiding newcomers: “You cannot wash, it is a
sin to wash in a Christian fountain, you just drink the water!” A middle-aged woman
smiled at a group of girls and women. Another middle-aged pilgrim standing next to
the anthropologist said:
You see all these people? They come because the saint is so powerful. I come every year,
to pay tribute to the saint who healed my father thirty years ago. Since then, I come to
thank him and bring him offerings. I was born in Istanbul, but now I live with my
children in Athens. This is a very important saint. He heals people with mental illness.Outside, among the large crowd of visitors, pilgrims would be totally absorbed by
their ritual occupations: some were laying broken pieces of red brick one on top of the
other on the low circular wall protecting the sanctuary site from the precipice, some
were building mini-hearths with stones and pieces of wood, some were attaching
strips of cloth on the branches of the taller trees and bushes along the path leading to
the sanctuary, on one of them a mini-swing with a paper doll inside, made out of tis-
sue paper and painted with an ink pen.
Merely two hours away from the hub of the megalopolis, St George’s shrine has
been attracting both Christian and Muslim visitors since the nineteenth century
(Frankland, 1829), and in the last 10 years their numbers have risen sharply: in 2005,
there were around 50 000 visitors the day of the festival, according to the local news-
paper. Pilgrims cross by boat to the island, then walk or take a horse cart through a
forest of pines and shrubs to the bottom of the sacred hill before the final ascent. On
the last part of the journey, from the forest clearing to the monastery, the crowd thick-
ens as the path becomes steeper and narrower. Around the clearing, peddlers sell
souvenirs and pilgrim paraphernalia: candles and bottles of oil to offer to the monas-
tery caretakers (olive oil is used for the lamps that burn inside the church). Many
stands offer ex-votos in different shapes and for specific purposes: small hearts
accompany prayers for a successful courtship and marriage, tiny houses represent
access to property, book-shaped charms stand for success in school or university.
These are smaller replicas of the traditional Orthodox ex-votos that were brought
to the monastery and were attached to the icon to remind the saint of one’s prayer
and the promise of a return gift in case of success. Now visitors carry them up to the
monastery and back again to their houses. Many pilgrims buy reels of white or colored
thread; they attach one end to a shrub or a tree at the bottom of the path and unreel
them as they climb the hill to the sanctuary. Stands also sell plastic bags with dozens
of pieces of sugar that visitors distribute among the crowd as they come down the hill
on their way back from the shrine. Once up at the monastery, people must wait in queues