The Daring Custom at Meteora on Saint George’s Day

Locals embark connected a hard ascent to scope a tiny chapel dedicated to Saint George. Credit: Vassiliki Chletsi / Greek Reporter

Against the breathtaking backdrop of the towering Meteora rocks, a unsocial customized unfolds each twelvemonth connected the feast time of Saint George successful Kastraki, Kalabaka. This is the ritual of Agios Georgios o Mandilas (Saint George of the Kerchief/Veil).

Following the religion work astatine the basal of the cliffs, locals and visitors stitchery for a show of religion and carnal courage. Young men and women, on with older locals who “still person the bosom for it,” embark connected a hard ascent to scope a tiny chapel dedicated to Saint George, wedged into a cranny of the sheer vertical stone face, 40 meters (130 feet) supra the ground.

Agios Georgios o Mandilas customized astatine Meteora. Credit: Vassiliki Chletsi / Greek Reporter

These climbers standard the imposing “Holy Spirit” stone utilizing lone 2 ropes. They transportation with them colorful kerchiefs—mandilia—which person been brought by the faithful arsenic votive offerings (tamata) to the Saint. Upon reaching the chapel, they regenerate the old, weathered kerchiefs from the erstwhile twelvemonth with the caller ones. The ritual concludes with the participants singing accepted people songs and dancing beneath the cliffs.

Credit: Vassiliki Chletsi / Greek Reporter

The ascent appears daunting, adjacent impossible, to the untrained eye. Yet, mean people—often wearing elemental sports shoes and lacking nonrecreational climbing gear—successfully scale the cliff. For them, it is simply a idiosyncratic challenge, an enactment of self-transcendence, and a profoundly felt trial of faith. They ascent to airy the Saint’s lamps and to bring backmost the “blessed” kerchiefs from “heaven to earth.”

Credit: Vassiliki Chletsi / Greek Reporter

The fable of Saint George’s customized successful Meteora

Like galore past customs, this ritual is accompanied by a section legend. According to tradition, a Turkish serviceman fell unconscious portion cutting trees successful the adjacent Saint George forest. His wife, witnessing this, offered her kerchief (feretze) to the Saint with a plea for her husband’s recovery. A nonmigratory climbed to the chapel and hung the kerchief earlier the icon of the Saint. At that precise moment, the serviceman regained consciousness. This simple, almighty communicative of anticipation evolved into the Christian contented observed today.

They ascent to airy the Saint’s lamps and to bring backmost the “blessed” kerchiefs from “heaven to earth.” Credit: Vassiliki Chletsi / Greek Reporter

Once the ritual astatine the precocious chapel is complete, the climbers descend, draped successful the aged kerchiefs that person spent the past twelvemonth exposed to the upland elements. These are past distributed among the faithful, believed to bring bully luck and extortion to those who person them.

Related: Meteora, Greece: A Unique-on-Earth Fusion of Nature and Faith