Crystals I

Introduction-2

A young couple in love, Anna and Adonis, walk hand-in-hand, enjoying their afternoon stroll through the lush oasis created by the waters of St Barbara, in the city of Drama. Anna is a very sweet, tender and beautiful girl, with all her lithe moves strongly reminiscent of an sss, or in other words, what we would today call tomboy, but with overflowing coquettish femininity far beyond the usual. But her most significant feature was her assertiveness and freedom of speech. She would always be the supporter of someone mistreated in her social surroundings. In that she shared a common thread with Adonis, a particularly sensitive and rather reserved, romantic boy in his early twenties, who was looking at the world with simple, well-meaning and kind eyes. He considered everyone a friend. Evil people simply did not exist for him. There were only people who did something wrong and who would quickly see the error of their ways and correct them. If one happened on him by chance, he would catch him staring into the distance with his mind lost in his dreamland. He was constantly dreaming of a world good and ideal, where people love and help one another, where children play and laugh while adults are joyful and happy. He was dreaming of a beautiful human society where the elderly would be respected by the younger generations. Whoever and whenever someone needed his help, he would gladly rush to offer it selflessly to his fellow. That was all the more the case for his friends. He lived too much in a fairyland that would take him too long to exit from, if he kept on treating people with overdue naivety and kindness. As a result, he often became the victim of his immediate environment. Fortunately, he had good friends, such as Kostas, Papagiotis and Kosmas who stood up for him during hard times. Yet, his true support was Anna.

As they were strolling through the wonderful cool scenery, they met their close friends, Kosmas Amarantides and his girlfriend, Areti, who were lying on the grass, speaking softly. Kosmas was the dare of the gang and a well-known prank, the first to jump to a dance when he got the chance. He misses no chance of course to tease Anna and Adonis a bit. They respond amicably, talk with them a bit and then they part, greeting each other to continue with their walk. While walking away, Kosmas shouted to Anna and Adonis that he had met their common friend, Panagiotis Vasiliadis at Eleftheria Square and that he was looking for him for a reason that he did not reveal. It seemed however that the issue was something urgent and important. Adonis gestured to Kosma that he knows about the issue and that he will take care of it. It was something between Panagiotis and Adonis.

So, Anna and Adonis walked a bit further and stopped under the canopy of a great century-old plane tree. There is a small rocky waterfall opposite them, whose cascading waters created a pleasant roar and soapy white foam on its bottom. They are amidst scenery of fantastic beauty surrounded by lush vegetation, huge plane trees, wildflowers with lots of ducks and fish splashing in the rich waters that quieted down after a while. They sit at the root of the century-old tree, with their backs against the more than a meter-wide trunk and are enjoying their love. They gaze at the cascade of the small fall opposite them that mesmerizes them as the water hits the ground powerfully from the height of two meters. The small fall is surrounded by rock and stone that fits in the general scenery as a natural extension of the ecological system, providing an outlet to the waters of a small artificial pool at the bottom of which, legend has it, an old Christian church self-submerged when the city was taken by the Ottoman Turks.

The waters of the fall formed foamy eddies, sending forth water droplets as they cascaded. The stony wall, the waterfall, the cascading water and the lush vegetation, all created a calm beauty that soothed the soul and thought while at the same time ‘controlling’ it and keeping it in touch with its splashing. The young couple in love tied in harmonically with the surrounding beauty. They were a beautifully real picture amidst a beautifully complex scenery. The eyes of the couple followed the flow of the water coming down from the artificial lake. According to legend, an old small church dedicated to St Barbara by the shore of the lake, submerged the night the Ottoman Turks took the city back in 1383 to save itself from being turned into a mosque. Legend also had it that in that small old church by the shore of the lake, there was a White Rod that cast a strong blue-white glow when the faithful gathered at the Church of St Barbara. Sometimes it glowed so intensely that it could turn the night into day. But of course all that was just folklore.

As folklore had it, handed down by grannies to their grandchildren or from the older to the younger priest taking charge in the Church, the intensity of the White Rod12 was not uniform or steady. It was variable, sometimes disappearing completely, other times flickering, and still other times giving off a strong, steady light, depending on its position, the size of the congregation and the degree of the depth of prayer. Other times, it became grey and dull. This was the case when someone was lying, did something wrong, evaded truth or was full of similar negative emotion that sent forth waves of negative energy. It would also go dark, foretelling of a catastrophe, like that of the fall of the city to the Ottomans, or of a natural disaster or other similar calamities. In cases like these, if folklore was to be taken literally, chances were that the negative energy emitted by people with negative thoughts or acts, or by nature in general, absorbed positive energy from the rod which resulted in loss of energy in the latter and dimming of its light. It would seem, in simple words, that whatever ‘good’ and ‘righteous’ approached the rod intensified its light, while whatever ‘evil’ or ‘unjust’ dimmed or extinguished it completely. This response pattern of the rod was first noticed by a 10th century AD priest, father Constantine, when he came to realise that the flickering and variations in the intensity of the light were associated with the sacrament of confession. It was then he understood that when a member of the congregation was lying, the light of the rod flickered and dimmed. But when the confessant had a genuine change of heart and was telling the truth, the light strongly intensified. The pattern of light variation was consistent in most of the cases he had observed.

Legend had it that this priest had associated the response pattern of the White Rod with falsity or verity, good and evil, justice and injustice and generally with positive and negative emotions and for this reason, he decided to do an experiment so as to either confirm his theory or reject it. Fr Constantine was a particularly inquisitive spirit, and while he was strongly infused with religious feeling and profound faith, he was not hindered from seeking out knowledge within the confines of his potential and the historical time and place he lived in. He was known to his fellow citizens as Fr Costas, which showed their love and respect to his person. Having an ascetic countenance and composure, Fr Costas was a priest true to his mission. He was a genuine fatherly figure. He cared about his flock, suffered from their wrongdoings and injustices and was joyful and jubilant when amidst justice and kindness.

So, according to folklore, he invited about ten members of the flock that he considered to be honest, just and good members of the faithful flock, as well as a similar number that he considered to be dishonest, unjust and suboptimal members of the flock. He gathered them all during a quiet afternoon, under the great plane tree at the church yard, explained to them that he was exploring the properties of the ‘rod’ that was in the church and that he needed their help in a task that was simple and easy and would only require their physical presence. After he secured their informed consent in aiding him in his effort, and despite the fact that they did not quite understand what that was all about, they still listened carefully to his instructions.

After first splitting them in two groups, one including those whom he believed were infused with positive feelings and another that included those he believed possessed negative feelings, he asked them to wait somewhere a little outside the church yard that was fenced off from the lake shore by a short wall that encircled the church.

Following that, he called up into the church members of the group he considered righteous and possessing positive feelings one by one and asked them to pass by the rod and then exit the church. He observed that the light of the White Rod was significantly but variably intensified by the presence of each member of the group and dimmed as the person left. But in the presence of the last member in that group whom the priest regarded as righteous, the rod dimmed. That inconsistent finding posed some questions in the priest’s mind and made a note to come back to it later. Then, he asked them to re-enter the church one by one, but to remain inside after approaching the rod. He observed that the light of the rod intensified with each member of the group entering, but dimmed a bit when the last member entered as well. To Fr Costas’ mind that was a phenomenon worthy of extra attention.

Following this trial, and without saying anything, the priest asked the members of the ‘righteous’ group to return to their designated place outside, and repeated the procedure with the second group whose members he considered suboptimal and possessing negative feelings. Right from the start, the light of the crystal had dimmed considerably. Since it was no longer visible and remained virtually unchanged, there were no recordable findings. For this reason, he asked five innocent children to remain near the White Rod in the Church. With the White Rod now glowing steadily, he repeated the trial of the last group members so that he could measure changes in the rod’s light intensity. He observed that the light of the White Rod dimmed steadily with every member of the second group who came near it. But he also observed that in three cases, the light intensified despite the fact that the priest considered those persons unjust. In one case in particular, the light shone through quite intense. That was also a noteworthy case that deserved further study. But that would have to wait.

He had already reached certain general but substantive conclusions, but still wanted additional confirmation. Keeping the children steadily next to the White Rod, he carried the experiment a little bit further. He now asked a pair of a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ person to be exposed simultaneously to the rod but the change in the light intensity, either positive or negative, depending on whether the amount of ‘good’ prevailed over that of the ‘bad’, was insignificant. He then asked all ten members of the so-called ‘righteous’ group to approach the rod as a group and alternate with the members of the so-called ‘non-righteous’ group when the former left the scene. He then asked the ‘good’ members to approach the rod while the ‘bad’ members stepped away, and the vice versa. He used many alternative setups, all he could think of, to confirm his conclusions but still some questions remained.

He insisted upon testing his last concern. That is, the case of this three fellow citizens whom he considered ‘non-righteous’ and possessing negative energy but to whom the White Rod reacted positively and the single case of his fellow whom he considered ‘righteous’ but to whom the rod had reacted negatively. By studying these cases, he could eventually reach a safe conclusion. After thanking all of them, he asked the four of them to stay, those, in other words, who elicited contrary to the expected results, although he had started entertaining some probable answers in his mind. He proceeded therefore with an additional test. The results were the same. The rod reacted positively to the first three people and negatively to the fourth. Studying these paradoxical, in his opinion, findings, he thought of conducting some particularly careful research some other time, after studying this paradox himself first. For this reason, he reminded them, in both a requesting and demanding fashion, that it would be good to visit the Church for confession. He also explained that the confessional would be also important for him because in fact he would be able to continue with his study. So he reminded them that the following Thursday was confession day and that he would be glad to see them. That was three days from Monday, the day of his original experiments. He asked them to come by that day as he would have more time than usual to listen to them. He would also made sure that that was the case. Following that reminder, he bid them goodnight and let them leave.