I've spent spring, summer, and early autumn 2019 wondering how I can return to the Davelis Cave. The chapters of "Twenty-Five Centuries without You" were coming along nicely but I also knew that there were some pieces of the puzzle still to be retrieved from the Penteli Mountains. The adventure which I knew was ahead of me was as daunting as it was intriguing - especially the idea of having to descend into deep potholes. Furthermore, I did not find anybody or anything (no person, no books, no websites) giving even a hint of any subterranean tunnel in the Davelis Cave. At this point, it was nothing but intuition telling me that there may be something there underground. Something that was used in Pasión's time - in the 5th century BC - for mystical initiations.
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Few people are aware that a story of fiction requires just as much verification as science. The proof one is looking for may not be as hard-core as to satisfy the rational mind but it must satisfy a very specific kind of inner feeling.
One must find a psychic resonance - often in the form of synchronicities - which show that the story authentically stems from the invisible realms and is not simply made up by the brain. |
Penteli Mountain Landscape - Outside the Davelis Cave
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After months of failing to find anything about the caves, I finally decided to throw a "message in a bottle" into cyber-space. I joined a caving group where I apologized for the intrusion while asking for help from anyone who could take me closer to the mystery of the Davelis Cave. The one and only soul who eventually replied to my call for help was a young Greek woman named Christina. We chatted for about half an hour, during which she asked me a series of peculiar questions. Was I aware that the cave had very strong energies, not only positive but also sinister ones? That people went mad exploring those regions? And why did I want to go into that cave?
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To write a book, you must not simply sit down and make up plot, characters etc - that would not be a work of art, that would be an imitation of art. To write a book, you must take your soul on a journey and document the experience. You must travel the collective unconscious as wide and as fearlessly as you can and let the highest truth of the moment come to you. |
It was clear from the way she spoke that Christina knew about invisible energies and hidden worlds. I told her I was on a mission to uncover a mystical story and that no eerie energies would hold me back from doing so. Upon that she told me to contact her when I am in Greece and she'll take me to the cave. We never chatted again. I simply bought a plane ticket to Athens and a month later I was there.
Magic had it that Christina still remembered me when I called her and we agreed to meet that Saturday morning at Kifisia Tube Station near Penteli. She said, she will try to bring her "teacher."
Before entering Davelis
Caving - the intuitive way
Can a human body really fit through
that?
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Puzzled as I was who that might be, on Saturday it turned out that Christina was training in the art of caving with Pavlos, an Australian Greek who happened to be a board member and an instructor of the caving society and - as synchronicity would bring it - a dowser. He told me that with his "divining-rod" he found many new caves on Crete. That made him a local hero but also stirred suspicion among his more conservative caving colleagues. I told Pavlos about my intuitive awareness of tunnels inside the Davelis cave and he agreed to help exploring them.
Once at Davelis, Pavlos pointed at three more hidden tunnel entrances inside the cave - in addition to the one I spotted during my first trip. He pointed at a crevice that I would have never picked as an entrance: it looked way too small for me to squeeze a human body through. Yet, Pavlos suggested, we should go in. I asked, when, he said, now. Within half an hour, he conjured up from his trunk helmets, headlights, ropes, carabiners... I, the least experienced, was to follow him, the most experienced, and Christina was to follow us both. |
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As soon as we started crawling into that hole, I was grabbed by the worst kind of primordial, getting-stuck-in-the-birth-canal kind of fear that I used to have nightmares about as a small child. Dearly, I wished I could have turned around but a thought came to my rescue. It said, the worst that can happen was to die here but that would be quite all right. Consciousness cannot get trapped between the rocks forever and if you die while doing what you are meant to do, it is not doing you harm. I felt the profound, eternal truth behind that sentiment and all the fear vanished. Now, I could follow Pavlos through the many moves of descent: there was no vertigo, no clumsiness, no doubt. Something larger than myself took over and it became wonderful adventure to go down a near-vertical tunnel we found leading into the deep of the earth.
'Look, these are stairs.' |
Hibernating bats - they look like stuffed wine leaves and must not be disturbed
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Triangle-shaped tunnel leading to the sacred little pond
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At one point, we no longer needed ropes to get further down. We took a few rude but easy steps leading into a subterranean chamber. In the middle of it was a flat altar stone and crude seats all around. There was also a triangle-shaped tunnel that was not a natural feature. Its walls were worked by human hands and at its end was a little pond. We were inside the initiation chamber.
We sat down in the chamber that I was in search of for many months. It was a great moment of synchronicity, perhaps not of the very same kind Jung wrote about but something related. Something that was until now only on my mind, I now found as a real place. This was a moment when the inner and outer world became one: when an inner vision found its mirroring evidence in the outside world. It was the evidence stories need: not evidence in which numbers add up or objective proof is gained but evidence of the soul: when the world demonstrates that the inner track you've been following, was the right one. When I saw the triangular tunnel leading to the sacred pond, I knew immediately: that is where Pasión, the initiate met Sofia - the woman from the future, who will not be born for 25 centuries after he died. That is impossible. |