Tours and Travel to Sacred Destinations
Demetra has been leading tours to sacred sites in Greece, Turkey, India, and Egypt since 1992.
Her co-facilitators include friends and colleagues such as Vicki Noble, Michael Mayer, Brian Clark, Melanie Reinhart, Cathy Harner, Dennis Harness and Andrea Mikana-Pinkham.
Beyond the beauty of the landscape, the grandeur of the archaeological remains, and the indomitable spirits of the people, the most powerful revelation is the presence of the healing energy that continues to emanate from the sacred sites and is ever available for restoring body and soul.
2019 Tour: The Greek Mysteries
Eleusinian, Dionysian, Orphic, Samothracian
Athens, Eleusis, Brauron, Mt. Olympus, Macedonia, Thrace, Samothrace, Cape Sounion
with Demetra George M.A.
May 15-28, 2019
The sacred sites of the ancient Greek mystery religions are the inspiration for this spiritual journey to the less traveled areas of Greece. In contrast to the public civic religion, the mystery rites swore their initiates to secrecy and in return offered participants a direct personal experience with the divine. They promised insight into the eternal ‘other’ world and transformed beliefs about life and death in ‘this’ temporal world.
The journey begins in Athens atop the Acropolis, the spiritual center of Athens and then proceeds along the old Sacred Way to Eleusis, the site of oldest and most celebrated death-rebirth mysteries of the mother and daughter, Demeter and Persephone. At Brauron, we explore a sanctuary of Artemis where young girls, dressed as she-bears, were initiated into the mysteries of womanhood in the Arkkteia ritual.
We then head northward into Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace, following the trail of Dionysus who was the holy child born during the Eleusinian mystery. First, we climb and picnic along the verdant wildflower-strewn lower slopes of Mt. Olympus, home of the twelve Olympian gods. Onward into Pella, the birthplace of Alexander the Great. We encounter his mother Queen Olympias who was a priestess of a snake-handling cult and leader of women’s ecstatic Dionysian rituals. As we travel across Northern Greece, on May 21 we attend the Anastenaria ceremony, a local traditional ritual of trance dance, fire-walking, prophecy and healing that contains vestiges of ancient Dionysian and Orphic worship.
Next, sailing to the remote isle of Samothrace in the northern Aegean Sea, we will visit the Sanctuary of the Great Gods where the Eleusinian rites merged with those of Cybele, the Great Mother of Anatolia It was here that Alexander’s parents Olympias and Philip II met while participating in the mysteries and pledged their betrothal. Upon our return to Attica, we rest for a day on the shimmering beach of Cape Sounion under the Temple of Poseidon on the cliffs above. Here we will assimilate and integrate our experiences and transition back to ordinary life, now perceived with the eyes of the mystai.
This unique traveling symposium combines travel to sacred sites; seminars on myth, art, history, ancient literature; creating sacred space for meditation and reflection; and personalizing our experiences and insights with archetypal astrology.
COST: $5995 (Total earlybird fee if paid in full by November 15, 2018).
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About Your Guides
Demetra George, M.A. in Classics, specializes in mythic archetypal astrology and ancient techniques. She is the author of Astrology for Yourself, Asteroid Goddesses, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, Finding Our Way Through the Dark, and Astrology and the Authentic Self, and Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice. She lives in Oregon, lectures internationally, and leads pilgrimages to the sacred sites in the Greece, Italy, Egypt, and India. Alecs Garrett will be joining this tour to share her love of mythic asteroids in chart interpretation and offer her nurturing support to ensure that we all have a well-tended comfortable journey.