The book Women, Pilgrimage, and Rituals of Healing in Modern and Ancient Greece: A comparison by Evy Håland is, as the author herself states, the third and concluding study regarding Greek festivals and the rituals performed by women in relation to them.
The book’s main aim is to compare the rituals performed by women in religious festivals in ancient and modern Greece. The purpose is to highlight the common aspects between the two periods that reflect similar or common mentalities, due to the fact that both societies were rural, developed in the same geographical area and were therefore preoccupied with similar issues. Hence, the offering of gifts, the veneration of the relics of heroes and saints, the dedication of oneself or others, are ritual acts that occur in both periods. Similarly, the belief in the therapeutic properties of water, the cave as symbolic of the womb and its relation to healing, pilgrimage as part of a healing process, the role of animals in the veneration of healing saints and deities, the protective and apotropaic function of amulets and the therapeutic properties of dancing, are common in both periods.
The book also addresses another major issue, namely, how to sidestep the male perspective in the interpretation and reconstruction of women’s lives and acts in Antiquity, since the ancient sources concerning female rituals were written by men, who did not participate in the ritual acts and who often disregarded women’s perspectives of these rituals. Moreover, reconstruction of ancient religious practices was done mostly by north European male scholars. So, there is a predominantly male point of view on practices that involved and often concerned primarily women. Moreover, the author advocates for an interdisciplinary approach in the analysis and interpretation of the past and the particular subject. She argues that the combination of different disciplines, such as history, anthropology, ethnography, archaeology, ethnology, folklore, gender studies and religious studies, will provide a more holistic understanding of the subject and therefore a more nuanced reconstruction and for that reason the study combines a thorough interdisciplinary research and extensive fieldwork.
The book consists of an introduction, ten chapters and an extensive bibliography, and is enriched with images from ancient material and various instances of the modern religious festivals the author examines.
Chapter 1 (Introduction: Rituals of Health and Healing in Greece) presents the problem, namely how to understand ancient healing rituals that were performed by women but were recorded and described by men. It emphasizes the necessity to change the perspective from the male point of view to the female one, since it is women who perform and participate in these religious rituals. It also describes the theoretical and methodological approach and includes the definition of the key topics of the study, i.e. religion and healing. It also presents the gendered values of the region, emphasizing the female ones that relate inter alia to motherhood, emotion, and suffering, what the author calls “poetics of womanhood”, as opposed to the male ones of “honour and shame”. This facilitates a more gyno-centered examination and understanding of the sources. Also, Håland underlines the value of applying the insight provided by modern accounts of performance and meaning in healing rituals to the ancient ones, as a means of offering new interpretations.
Chapter 2 (Healing Water: the Life-Giving Spring at Athens and Beyond) and 3 (Healing Caves and their Deities) examine the performance of healing rituals in caves in ancient and modern Greece and the role of water in these rituals. Very often healing saints are worshipped in caves, which include a spring that has purifying and healing properties (in the Greek Orthodox tradition known as “agiasma”, a word related to “agios”, meaning sacred). The author describes the ritual performed in the Acropolis cave in Athens, where the Virgin Mary (the Panagia) is venerated in her identity as the Life-Giving Spring (Zoodohos Pege), thus combining in her the purifying and life-giving, hence healing, properties of the water with her identity as the one who gave birth to Christ, the provider of eternal life. Chapter 3 focuses on female healing saints traditionally worshipped in caves or churches associated with a cave, such as Agia Marina, protectress of all illnesses, venerated in older days in a cave-church close to the Athenian Pnyx or Agia Paraskeue, healer specifically of the eyes. In addition, the author parallels these rituals with the veneration of female goddesses, such as Demeter, or nymphs in caves in ancient Greece. Furthermore, the cave as a symbol of the maternal womb, therefore with fertility connotations, is a deliberate choice of place of worship, indicating the significance of place in religious rituals.
In Chapter 4 (Pilgrimage in Greece. From Modern Tinos to Ancient Epidauros and Beyond: Letters, Accounts and Inscriptions Recounting Healing Rituals and Successful Recoveries), the author addresses the interrelationship between oral and written sources concerning ancient and modern pilgrimage by combining evidence from fieldwork and archival material. The emphasis is on the description of the rituals associated with the pilgrimage on Tinos, where the participants are mostly women. It is women who crawl to the church to supplicate the intervention of the Panagia with a miracle; it is women, who vow, pray and make offerings; and it is women, who narrate and preserve personal or other peoples’ accounts of miracles. These narrations are reminiscent of ancient literary accounts, describing healing miracles performed at the Asklepieion at Epidauros.
Similarly, Chapter 5 (Pilgrimage to the Tombs of Healing Saints and Ancient Healing Mediators) broadens the topic of pilgrimage focusing on the healing aspect of saints’ tombs, such as saint Gerasimos, venerated at Kephallonia, and saint Nektarios at Aegina. The author parallels this practice with the pilgrimages in Antiquity to the cult sites of healing mediators, for example the heroes Trophonios and Amphiaraos, or deities with healing capacities, such as Asklepios and his daughter Health, even deities associated with death, like Pluto and Kore, who were attributed healing abilities.
Chapter 6 (From Modern to Ancient Deities and their Sacred Animals) examines the association between animals and healing deities and saints. Animals are connected to them as offerings, but often as healing mediators, a well-known example being the case of Asklepios and the snake. In some cases, even, animal parts can be used as ingredients in remedies. The symbolism of the snake and its connection with healing receives particular emphasis. The author describes two festivals taking place at Markopoulo on Kephallonia and Cocullo in Italy. At Markopoulo, small harmless snakes appear each year at the church of Panagia during the celebration for her Dormition. They are believed to have curing abilities and holding them is considered a blessing. At Cocullo a similar festival occurs in honour of the healing saint Domenico. The two festivals are compared to ancient Greek notions about the snake (tame snakes were similarly kept in the Tholos at the sanctuary of Askepios at Epidauros) and its role in healing rebirth, regeneration and fertility.
In Chapter 7 (Colours, Smell, Plants, Herbs, and Other Healing Remedies) the author examines the use of plants and herbs in healing rituals in ancient and modern Greece, and the therapeutic dimensions of color and smell. Smell could be used as a diagnostic of illness, particularly in Antiquity, but sweet smell was also a sign of sanctity and could have apotropaic and therapeutic properties. Flowers, plants and herbs are often used in Orthodox rituals, for example in the decoration of the Epitaphios, and often acquire therapeutic properties by being involved in the religious ritual, or being close to the relics of a saint or his/her icon. Flowers and herbs, when touched upon the relics of saints or their icons become amulets with apotropaic, healing and/or fertility properties. Plants and their colours similarly can play a significant role in religious and healing rituals. Saffron, for example, has been associated in Greece with a female deity and healing since the prehistoric period: it was used in the dyeing of Athena’s peplos, and it is still used today in the Aegean for menstruation pain. Specific plants and herbs connected with female deities and saints were often used to treat specifically women’s complaints. There is, therefore, a more fundamental connection than simply a symbolic one among certain plants, female goddesses, and women.
Chapter 8 (Healing and Protective Amulets, Votive Gifts, and Offerings of Thanks) deals with amulets and their use in Greece in both periods. It examines amulets made of resilient and perishable material, such as cloth, thread or hair, with an emphasis on amulets used in healing and those employed to ward off evil. The chapter also examines the belief in the Evil Eye, a persistent notion in the Mediterranean, and the amulets, rites and symbols associated with it. Finally, the author analyzes the notion of votive human limbs as part of supplication or expression of gratitude for healing.
Chapter 9 (Healing Dance and Movement) addresses the contribution of dance and movement in health. The therapeutic benefits of exercise were appreciated already by Aristotle, Plato, and the Hippocratics, as can be substantiated by the fact that they would prescribe it as a medicine. The key to the therapeutic properties of movement concerns the release of the “happy endorphins” that have an important effect on health. Dance often formed part of rituals in ancient Greece, like in the festivals dedicated to Dionysos, the Eleusinian Mysteries or initiation rituals. Dance is also performed in certain Orthodox rituals, although this practice is not always accepted by the church. The ritual dance performed on burning coals at the Anastenaria festival, for example, is disapproved by the church, since it puts the participants (the Anastenarides) in an ecstatic state making them oblivious to any pain from the fire. For its participants, however, it offers purification and healing, and a deeper connection to saint Constantine, since it is he who commands them to dance. Walking or crawling at pilgrimages also puts the pilgrims in a state of flow or in an altered state of consciousness, where the fatigue from the effort is transformed into energy to complete the pilgrimage, and the senses are reinforced.
Chapter 10 (Summaries of the Chapters and Some Concluding Reflections) summarizes the main points of the book and offers some concluding remarks and reflections.
The book is an important contribution to the study of ancient and modern Greek religion and ritual. As always, the author makes a thorough analysis of the ample material she presents, offering important insights on various issues, which cannot all be presented here. The main point concerns the central role of women in rituals regarding fertility and healing, as responsible diachronically of their family’s health and their body, but also as possessors of valuable healing knowledge, namely plant wisdom, a knowledge often disregarded as magic by men in the past. Moreover, practices and beliefs that are diachronically associated with rituals, reveal the existence of common cross-period mentalities and preoccupations, thus bringing life to the people of the past. The juxtaposition of modern rituals with ancient ones offers invaluable insight on ancient rituals, aspects of which may not always be visible, thus exhibiting the importance of using comparative approaches, interdisciplinary and cross period studies, as Håland argues.