The Ancient Thracian City of Perperikon

"Come, Sabazius!"

Amidst the dust of Ancient Thrace, we invoked Dionysus in all his forms, within a sacrificial tomb, a hole bore into the side to allow the blood to flow from the (beheaded?) corpse. This may also have been wine vat, but the shape of it, the perfect fit of a body, longways, strongly suggested other uses...

One by one we occupied the tomb, shaking and seething to the chant

“Come on your bull's hoof,

Come on your Panther's back,

Come on your snake's belly,

Dionysus, come!”

And come he did, in writhing ways, to flicker a kiss upon my face.

Some tourists had stopped to observe us. We were told by Zhoro, our only native Bulgarian, who served in my own mind as a perfect Psychopomp, consistently contextualising place and myth, that their guide was explaining to them that we were doing some kind of ritual. It was a welcome change to have nobody attempt to stop us, but rather continued on their way once they'd observed enough.

Back out into the late afternoon sun, we explored the rest of the site, the ancient throne room, the kings tombs and the less inspiring medieval tower. We had encountered a local, who it seemed was really a treasure hunter, who unveiled to us a pile of bones he had found beneath some rocks. He later invited us to see some coins he'd found, instructing us not to tell of them to anyone. We politely declined, hoping he would leave us be to camp without having to ask for his own silence in return. Upon the top rocks was a large rectangular pool, cut deep into the rock, within which frogs mated veraciously, the sound of their own rituals a perpetual backdrop to our own invocations.

At a staggering 5,000 years old, but possibly even older, the size and carvings of the rocks was another reminder, like at saqsaehuaman, Machu Pichu, even the egyptians pyramids and stone henge, of the near impossibility of making such indentations and carrying and erecting such vast pieces of stone without a greater grasp of technology than we assume so called stone age cultures had.

The next phase of the ritual took us to the alter of Dionysus. The stars had risen, our site a perfect observatory for one of the clearest start-speckled skies ever seen.

Under the watchful blinking eye of a billion blinking lights, we perfromed our usual rubric of opening ritual, Orryelle and I performing the six-fold Maatian banishing, and Kazim his own incorporation of Chumbley's, and words in French which while incomprehensible to myself were spoken with such resonance and gravity as to further launch the group into deep ritual space.

One we'd chanted the tones, lingering on the third eye's humming MMM for extra resonance in the skull, we shifted to the altar place for the fire itself, where attempts were made to skry with flaming Rakia, Bulgaria's indigenous (alcoholic) spirit.

Slightly intoxicated from ritual, red wine and rakia, Zhoro's own Hymn to the Stars (though he may have another name for it), beautifully sung and evocative of a thousand different moods and memories from this life, past lives and the next ones, he joined us for our final part of the ritual that night, focusing upon the Nightside aspects of Dionysus, as the fire itself invoked shadows. Zagrius, Sabazius, Bachios, Lykios...

As we ascended towards our camp in the dark, the frogs and crickets continuing their song, while we slept Zhoro was awakened by a jackal in the night, come to see what we'd left for his pack to eat, perhaps. A reminder that though we were working strongly with the spirits of the place, and the old gods of Thrace, our own connections with various currents, this time the connections we have with Annubis who'd been mentioned at an earlier part of the rite, manifested themselves.

It was also in our camp that we saw fireflies. Many of them, flickering about. At Jes' place where we were staying in Khurdzhali, aided by the ever generous and helpful Ishmet and Layla, I'd seen fireflies for the very first time in my life, around where we were doing our rituals and meditations.

Their subsequent appearance at every site, and very often only in solitary form, served as a perpetual reminder that we were watched, protected and guided by hands and forces that we had done no formal invocation of, and that the spirits of the place, at every site, welcomed and celebrated our contemporary use of these ancient spaces.



Tristram