A Journey to Mount Athos

by FranCois Augieras

  I put my icon in a cleft in the rock. The lamp, whose wick was getting black, gently lit up the unchanging gold, to me the very image of the Divine Light that attracted me. I sat in the lotus position, my back against the stone, with blankets over my shoulders and thighs, protecting me from the cold. I created silence and peace within myself. I heard the soft murmuring of the stream. In this cave I was alone, close to my end. But the adult man is always alone. If time and space are nothing but resonance and sounds, I thought, would silence not be the secret path by which everything returns to uncreated life?

  In the morning I sit down on my cooking pot, not lighting a fire, as my supply of wood is running out. Besides, the fall of snow has taken the edge off the bitter cold of the last few days. It gives off a cheerful, even light. The sky is clear, very blue. Everything is quiet, the colours very intense: the forest, the stream, the thickets in front of the red rocks.

  A divine peace overcomes me, going right to the depths of my being, purified by music and fasting, and to my soul, beaten down by pain, detached from selfish interests, empty. Any impure thought would hinder me, but none comes to mind; my past seems to have been banished, the moment itself is enough to make me happy. A ray of sunlight touches my icon, placed in the entrance of the cave.

  Sitting on my cooking pot, from the darkness of my hearth, I look at this little piece of wood, painted with divine gold—tarnished by the centuries—washed by the delicate morning light. Alchemical work? In me, everything is calm and silence in order to be nothing but a gaze ... the soul becomes what it gazes at. We must die to Time so we can be reborn as Light. Gold attracts me; it is the final idol before seeing God. Idle shadow of the heavens overflowing with brightness! Pious imagery matters little to me. Absent, present ... am I alive, am I dead? My hope reaches perfection. O memory of heaven seen again! At the sight of gold my patience is infinite: getting up, leaving my cooking pot, I move the icon along the rock so that the sun can touch it again when it shifts because of the earth’s rotation. Then I go back to my cast-iron seat; hours pass; I wait for ‘something’. Today, several favourable circumstances seem to come together; the purity of my soul, the evenness of the daylight polarized by the snow.

  I close my eyes. What is this weakness that is taking hold of me? I am moving on somewhere else. Do not think, my soul; stay peaceful. Hold your breath, remember your inexistence. THAT which has no NAME shines beneath your closed eyelids, grows as big as the universe, knows nothing about you and has known you for all Eternity. It is the Clear Primordial Light that refuses to be born! Do not be afraid, do not lose consciousness. Look at the Pure Reality: recognise it; it is You. Universal, happy, shining. Stay within It, listen: the pure work of an eternal cause, it sings at the heart of an incredible silence. Living gold, brighter than a thousand suns, it dances without moving: such aimless work, sufficient to fill it with joy!

  When I came to I could not have said if I had seen the Clear Primordial Light for a century or for the blink of an eye. In the blue sky a crow was soaring ... at the very same moment that I suddenly passed on to absolute existence ... it occupied the same point in space: with a flap of its wings, it swooped down onto the top of a tree.

  Under its weight some powdery snow fell from the upper branches. It cawed, and then silence fell again. I stood up, walked around a little in the entrance to the cave. There was still an inexpressible joy, a sweetness, a bedazzlement in me, caused by the discovery of an unknown force field of incredible strength. It permeated my whole being. Then the spell disappeared, and only my deepest memory retained intact, the image of the Clear Primordial Light.

  I lit a fire. From somewhere around my heart, a worrying pain ran through my left shoulder and down as far as my wrist. In another life, had I been the old alchemist I had become: sick and extremely poor? Or was it simply a mask that for a time covered my true, eternally adolescent face?

  Day was breaking over the wild gorge. Mist covered the stream. Above the rocks an extraordinary sky—blue, gold, very pure—meant that beyond the forest the sun was already shining. I went down to the water. Standing on the stones, I stared for a long time at the clear, peaceful, divinely beautiful sky, full of light, which contrasted with the dark cliffs. This golden, crystalline sky, where the pale moon gleamed softly beyond the tall cedars, as though left behind by the night, seemed to be the most exquisite expression of the Clear Primordial Light that I had seen the night before in the depths of my pure consciousness. Of course, it was not It; it was Its loveliest reflection. On this occasion, yet again, I was not a Christian. The strange wisdom that was rising up in me came straight from Asia. Too old, too ancient to believe in Jesus Christ, if I had to ‘see’ an incarnation of God in the world ... then, between the wonderful radiance of the sun rising above the milky mist covering the frozen water of a stream ... and the sad figure of a carpenter from Nazareth ... I did not hesitate for a moment.

  The pain in my chest is getting so much worse that I will have to go into one of the monasteries. It is urgent. I must go straight away, down along the shallow bed of the stream to Koutloumousiou, where I shall be safe and looked after; for I am going to collapse from starvation, from weakness. I gather up my manuscripts, tie them neatly in a bundle and attach it to the leather belt round the waist of my coarse woollen overcoat.

  Going along the river I head for Koutloumousiou, dreaming of a square meal. In this region of holy caves I saw the Clear Primordial Light, but at the cost of what terrible solitude! I shall go further towards wisdom, but cautiously, perhaps withdrawing into some monastery or other. In fact, after a long, entirely alchemical retreat into the Sacred Forest, the thought of travelling the paths of Athos one last time in search of new adventures will not be upsetting to my fundamentally Slavic, nomadic, probably Russian nature. I take my manuscripts with me: The Art of the Sacred Book can accommodate a wandering genius! Brilliant or not, I am hungry.

  VII

  THE FINAL PAGES

  I made only a short stop at Koutloumoussi, then quickly headed for Kariés, where I knew how to find an excellent inn. My sufferings were not over; I was expecting new ordeals, but I was sure there would be a respite from my misfortunes. It was as if kindly presences were discreetly accompanying me.

  Happily I climbed the hundred steps that led to the first narrow streets of Most Holy Kariés. The snow crunched under my boots, the sky was blue over the forests of Athos; above the white roofs, a biting wind was blowing scented smoke around. Everyone kicked their boots, heavy with snow, against the doorsteps of the shops, beat their clothes and roared with laughter. The arrival of the snow was the main topic of conversation; more than one solitary gardener seemed to have come to Kariés for the sole pleasure of telling everyone that he had not seen so much snow since the beginning of the century. As for me, in a very good mood, I wandered along the alley-ways and the passages that lead to the stables, which had a good smell of hay, leather and dung, whose intoxicating scent fuelled my desire to take to the roads once again. If before I had laughed at the rustic appearance of the pious anchorites, today I had to admit that I was beginning to look rather like them. My untrimmed beard made me seem very old; my holed boots were no better than theirs; and I must cut a fine figure with my poor overcoat, dragged in at the waist by a leather belt from which hung an enormous bundle of manuscripts. And, like all solitary people, I had an incredible desire to talk. I went into the little shops, with their frost-covered floors, on the pretext of asking the time, coming out immediately, only to walk in somewhere else with no particular reason. With this one difference: they were among friends, fell into each other’s arms, greeted each other like brothers, while my solitude was quite striking. No one came up to me cheerfully or held me to his heart. Nonetheless, because of the length of time I had been on Athos, the passers-by were not completely unknown to me. I had come across such and such a face on a distant track; I thought I remembered a child who I had probably seen in a church, and who was now taking hot coffee to good mo
nks sitting at the back of a shop, robes hitched up over their trousers of rough grey cloth, and warming their fingers, swollen with cold, over a little brazier. I would have found this solitude painful—not a true solitude, more an absence, the beginnings of nonexistence—if the fact that I knew I was on a journey again, and the feeling of drunkenness brought on by the dazzling brightness of the snow had not been enough to fill me with joy.

  All the more so since I had just found a thousand drachma note in the depths of a pocket! A thousand drachmas that came from where? A thousand drachmas forgotten since when? It was then I remembered I was very hungry. I did not recognise the innkeeper, and my face seemed unknown to him. It was not the man who had bought my Luftwaffe uniform; that had been a long time ago. But, thank God, the food that was simmering on the antique stoves had not changed: it was well-known for being the best since Saint Athanasius! I feasted on platefuls of lentils, but stubbornly refused the meat they offered me; without quite knowing why, I felt an overwhelming disgust for animal flesh. I was not so fussy about the resinous wine! Around ten o’clock in the morning, slightly drunk, I bought a few things and went back to my table, well-supplied with tea, sugar, bread, a spirit lamp, a warm balaclava and a little metal teapot, which I needed in order to set off alone through the woods to the distant monastery of Esphigmenou, where I had decided to base myself for a while. Leaning back against a wall at the rear of the inn, my favourite spot each time I was in Kariés, how could I doubt it? Once again I had been seized by my obsession for wandering. And this time I had the feeling it was my final expedition. So was I never happy except when travelling? I felt no attachment to anyone or anything, anywhere. Without friends, without religion, without a master, without a child, could I only find peace on the road?

  It was a strange destiny. But, I thought in that dark corner at the back of an inn, could I complain about it? Today, my state of perpetual wanderer seemed clearer than ever to me. Yet instead of being weighed down by it, to my great surprise I accepted it enthusiastically. This terrible freedom, this total disengagement and withdrawal, the feeling I increasingly had of time exploding, heralded the imminent AWAKENING. I was in my last incarnation! As old as the world, having probably known everything in many different lives, free at last to go towards the Light, I began to see my solitude, however appalling it might be, as the reward for a very ancient love of God. I was secretly worried by faint forebodings, but they did not frighten me. The idea of ending up on a road, like a fallen beast, my heart broken with fatigue, did not bother me, for there was something of a ‘starets’ in me. I wanted to see the sea one last time, even if it was stormy at this time of year; then, via Vatopedi, to get to Esphigmenou. I gathered my belongings and paid my bill.

  At the end of the day, after a long walk, I spotted a deserted inlet which I did not know. I stopped and lay down on the sand. The whole of Athos was still white with snow, frozen, except on the shore. It was almost warm beside the foam and the water. The air here smelt of salt and seaweed. Slow, heavy swells lifted up the grey sea; a steady wind created powerful waves ... they crashed violently onto the shingle, broke apart and spurted up again as spray: a deafening noise made me drunk with pleasure. I was in no hurry; I gathered some dry wood, lit a fire and sheltered from the wind. I fetched some fresh, slightly salt water from a little stream that made peaceful puddles here and there among the round pebbles, a few steps away from the violent breaking of the waves. I put my metal teapot on the burning embers; lying on the sand, my coat wrapped tightly round me, among a pile of branches, my manuscripts still attached to my belt, I treated myself to some scalding hot, sweet tea while I watched the movement of the sea ... happy, with the primitive pleasure of a perpetual nomad!

  I had often slept by the waves. At this time of year it was best to get to a monastery before sunset. Reluctantly I stood up; the idea of stopping and making a camp struck deep chords in me, which today sang and echoed loudly in the wind. All things considered: some tea, a bundle of manuscripts, boots ... I could not wish for any other possessions than these, which I could easily spread out on the shingle beside a fire, and gather up quickly if I felt the desire to leave. Leaving hot ashes and the imprint of my body behind me on the sand, I walked away from the sea. In the distance it was pounding other shores beneath vast, snow-covered hills over which loomed the summit of Athos, clearer and purer than usual in the depths of the harsh winter. Again I saw the Sacred Mountain in all its grandeur! To travel one last time through this divine land, to die on a path: could I hope for more from my strange destiny?

  My path, through the woods very high in the hills, became a simple track used only by the wild boars and the wolves. In a clearing I was able to escape for a moment from the rampant vegetation that covered the foothills of Athos; some good paths showed that there was a monastery nearby ... Which one went to Vatopedi? The one I chose led only to deep thickets, dark and sad, where the snow had not yet reached. Night came quickly at the end of December. I sank in above my waist in beds of dead, rotting leaves, and was almost unable to get out. Slipping on the clayey earth I nearly fell into a ravine; I held on to some young trees, which saved me. I was beginning to despair of getting out of the woods, when I spotted the lead cupolas, the roofs and the towers of Vatopedi a hundred metres below me, close to the cypresses by the sea.

  Vatopedi: the largest monastery in Athos! I went in as the gate was closing, and a lantern was being lit by an icon of the Virgin. My clothes soaked with snow and mud, my torn boots no longer staying on my feet, I headed through a long, low, damp arch and quickly passed a shop hollowed out of the thickness of the wall, a sort of stall where several monks were buying things before the first night service. Of course, in my pocket I was gripping the parchment that gave me the right to enter all the monasteries of Athos, but I looked so poor that I preferred to hurry on. Suddenly furious with this false modesty, I went no further beneath the sorry archway; I turned on my heel and went up the three steps that led to the narrow shop that was filled with smoke from a paraffin lamp. When I appeared in the doorway, everyone stopped talking: it was obvious I had come from the forests, I was poor! I produced my parchment, which was studied with the greatest care by holding it close to the lamp. So what had been in my mind? The renouncement of all vanity, no doubt! More deeply, the wish to be ‘seen’ in rags, but seen by human eyes, so much did solitude weigh me down. Misjudged, scorned, but seen! This was mingled with cowardice, the desire to inspire pity, to be given charity and help. And, among the secret mysteries of my insane character there stirred a terrible joy: the pleasure, wholly that of an actor, of appearing in a new guise, with a new mask on my face, the mask of an old man reduced to extreme distress, and whose soul, on the threshold of the Most Holy Eternity, amuses itself with one final metamorphosis after so many others! They handed back my parchment and gave me some tea. Standing in that porter’s lodge, which was used as a grocery store and smelt of rancid oil and pepper, I wondered ardently if I had not trodden the boards in at least one of my incarnations? This taste for metamorphoses—how unchristian it was! As death approached, I became more certain that life—my own and others’—is nothing but a dance, a game, masks, apparitions, theatres of the Spirits—and also I felt more close to God, and I will add: loved by God, God’s accomplice! I put down my cup. I was given a blessing and allowed to enter. If only in memory of an old tradition, the rich monks of Vatopedi never turned away wanderers.

  I went into an outer courtyard. The brightness of the lamps behind small, tightly-closed windows lit up the high walls with their battlements, the well, the scarlet church, the alley-ways, the houses with several storeys, their balconies painted red or blue. Vatopedi was like a large village. You would have thought you were in Old Russia one evening at Christmas; and perhaps it actually was the night before the nativity of the Christians’ God, for a furtive excitement, an air of celebration reigned everywhere in this enormous monastery. Monks hurriedly crossed the courtyards, white with snow, pulling down ove
r their brows the black hoods that covered their heads. There was already singing in the church. At its entrance a heavy door curtain was constantly lifted by monks in a hurry to get to their stalls. A thousand candles burnt inside the altar; each time the curtain was pulled aside it was as if the door to an oven, or to heaven, was being opened.

  Exhausted after a long walk, yet happy, light-headed with fresh air and cold, I followed them in. A powerful scent of incense and burning wax finally made me drunk, vagabond that I had become. On this night of celebration the tarnished gold of the ancient mosaics shone intensely, coming back to life. The adolescent angels, emerging from the darkness of the domes, answered the call of the flames and the deep, muffled chants, as old as the Near East. Standing in a dark corner, eyes raised towards the painted cupolas, I looked at these young, smiling angels, their wings outspread ... the last metamorphosis of the young Helladic gods! For me, Christ Pantocrator was only a more recent manifestation of the divine ... among so many others, a mask that belonged to a Christian domain of nightmares and dreams. The GOLD of the icons and the mosaics—and IT ALONE—was perhaps the true face of God.

  At dawn, having walked out of the blue-painted postern gate, its lamp extinguished at this time of day, clear air freed me from the smell of wax and filth that permeated Vatopedi.