4th Crystal: In the Necromanteion, near Ammoudia, Greece

    After the Middle East, I flew from Tel Aviv to Athens and met up with my Wisdom University friends in a class called: “Dreams & the Afterlife: An Odyssey to Ancient Greece." They had already visited the sites of the Eleusian and Asclepieion  dream  and healing mysteries.

     After an overnight, I joined the bus on a long ride to the little NW coastal town of Ammoudia, which is situated along the Acheron River (the “River Styx” from Dante’s writings) where it comes out to the sea. We drove to Dodona, where the oldest Hellenic oracle was located. Here using an ancient Oak Tree to listen to the whispering of the leaves and watching the flights of birds in the sky above, people would ask their important questions.

   
     Then on “All Saint’s Day” (also called “Day of the Dead” in Latin America), we walked up a hill to perform the ancient rituals  at the “Necromanteion,” where for centuries, the Greeks would come to commune with their dead relatives. Much of the site is in ruins, but there is one underground chamber about 20 by 30 ft. with a vaulted ceiling and some pools of water on the uneven stone floor.

Before entering, we enacted the ancient ritual of picking a stone and imbuing it with all the things we wanted to cast away to become a clear channel for the messages from our loved ones. On this pile of stones, I tossed our 4th Crystal.

Then, a black cloth was placed over our heads as we prepared to enter the sacred space in the chamber below. We entered and spent a couple of hours mostly in silence, with some drumming and some chanting to communicate with the dead.

      Since one of my objectives on this journey was a "letting go" of my father, who passed last December, I went into a corner, putting my coat over my head, so that the only thing I could see if I opened my eyes was an image of the ribs of the ceiling reflecting in the pools of water. While I did not experience any direct communication with my Father, it was still a powerful time to reflect on my life. The roof reflections in the water, seemed to me, to look like the inside of Jonah's whale, and I remembered that this same place is thought to be where Plato came up with his famous analogy of “The Cave”– where the prisoners could only see the shadows on the wall, but thought that they were experiencing reality.

Hindu Peace Prayer

Oh God, lead us from the unreal to the Real.
Oh God, lead us from darkness to light.
Oh God, lead us from death to immortality.
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti unto all.