A Greece Pilgrimage

It is 4.15 a.m. and jet lag is keeping me awake in my Athens, Greece hotel room. Getting out of bed I wonder over to the window, discovering a luminous full moon blazing her light directly over the Parthenon. Gasping at this auspicious sight taking place on Athena’s sacred hill, the Acropolis, I pull a chair over and sit in the light of the moon which is also shining brightly into my hotel room.

Full Moon over the Acropolis, Athens, Greece_Photo KStanley

I drop into a deep meditation and offer a prayer of thanks to the Divine for the gift of this pilgrimage.

It is a revelatory experience to walk the pathways of ancient temples at Athens, Delphi and Dodona, to do ritual honoring the land, goddesses and gods at the old oracle sites, and to view the multitude of sacred artifacts displayed in the museums. What was previously etched only in my imagination through reading, lectures and discussions, came vibrantly to life as we traveled in the footsteps of the ancestor priestesses for ten days in Greece.

Pilgrimage to sacred sites holds particular interest to me and my prior pilgrimages to sacred places such as Egypt have been times of peak spiritual experience propelling my personal and spiritual growth.

Temple of Athena, Athens, Greece

The trip began in Athens where I toured the Acropolis, the new Acropolis Museum, the ruins of the Temple of Zeus and hiked to the top of Mt. Lycabettus, the highest point in Athens which was once sacred to the goddess Gaia. The major highlights of the trip came with our visits to the oracle sites of Dodona and Delphi. (Stay tuned for upcoming posts on Dodona and Delphi)