“Anastenaria”
is a religious ritual performed in a small number of villages in
Northern Greece and South East Bulgaria. During
this ritual, people of all ages dance for many hours, with icons and
other sacred objects in their hands, until they reach a trance-like
state of mind. The repetitive and evocative rhythm of music does not
just accompany this ritual dance but plays a particularly significant
role in
the participants’ experience. The ritual climaxes with the
“Anastenarians” dancing barefoot over hot coals, until there are only ashes left.
The
Dionysian origins of the ritual (according to others it is
even older) triggered
my interest a few years ago -
when I first heard about “Anastenaria”. I have been intrigued to
look at the point where the destructive power of fire meets with
Bakkheia (the frenzy that Dionysus induces in the Dionysian
Mysteries), in which individuality vanishes.
Nowadays
the celebrations of Saints Constantine and Helen form the frame for
the current Christian
adaptation of the ritual. For the “Anastenarians”, dancing on
embers recalls the rescue of their holy icons from the fire that
burnt down a church in the
village Kosti,
their homeland in Eastern Thrace, when the icons themselves “cried
for help” according to the legend.
Over
time, the ritual has gone through a lot of transformations and
interpretations. It continues, though, to maintain its cathartic
function for the participants, who seem to experience through it a
feeling of purification, leaving behind whatever torments them. Their
burdens are symbolically represented by fire; hence, the
“Anastenarians” keep dancing until they properly extinguish the
coals, until they reach - together - a state of rebirth through this
self-transcendent experience. Their
ritual dance, when seen stripped of its mythological connotations,
apparently becomes an ultimate
expression of a primordial human need, which keeps calling for help
from
within
the flames, like their holy icons.