Latest news with #Macedonia
Asharq Al-Awsat
24-05-2025
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Fire Walkers Defy Pain in Ancient Greek Ritual
Under a cloud of incense smoke, a group of men and women in a village in northern Greece swayed slowly to the music before removing their shoes and rushing, barefoot, onto waiting embers. The fire walking ritual, held on the day of the Orthodox feast of Saint Constantine and Saint Helena on May 21, has been practiced for over a century in four villages of the Greek region of Macedonia, which borders Bulgaria. Each year, this ceremony -- called "Anastenaria" ("sighs" in Greek) -- attracts crowds of visitors. Considered a pagan ritual to honor the ancient Greek Dionysus and Artemis, the ancient custom was once banned by the powerful Greek Orthodox Church. For the past several decades, cooler heads have prevailed. But the rite remains shrouded in mystery. "Those who walk on fire don't like to talk about it much," explained Sotiris Tzivelis, 86, who grew up in the village of Agia Eleni, near the city of Serres. "Back then, when someone fell ill, we would call the 'anastenarides' to help heal them," he told AFP. The family requesting help would make a special handkerchief, to be blessed during the ceremony. It is one of these handkerchiefs that the ceremony leader, Babis Theodorakis, gives participants to mark the start of the ritual in the "konaki" -- a room decorated with Orthodox icons where participants prepare by dancing to the sound of the lyre and the drum. When ready, they head to a nearby meadow and form a circle around the glowing embers. "I have never walked on fire, but every year, I give our family's handkerchief to the dancers before taking it back at the end of the ritual," said Tzivelis. Pagan ritual According to local tradition, the rite originated in the villages of Kosti and Brodivo in southeastern Bulgaria, where Greek communities lived before emigrating to Greece in the early 20th century with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. "How to walk on fire without getting burned, I can't explain it to you!" said Babis Theodorakis, the ceremony leader. Apostolis Vlaspos, 65, who has practiced the ritual for 20 years, described it as "something internal, an indescribable force". "The first time I walked on fire, I saw the image of Saint Constantine, whom we call 'grandfather', and I felt like an electric shock," he said. After circling the glowing embers three times, participants begin to walk on them, swaying to the music and clutching icons under their arms. When they return to the "konaki", visitors rush to photograph them and check that they have no burns on their feet -- proof of a miracle, according to believers. The ceremony concludes with a meal of mutton specially slaughtered for the occasion. "Those who say that people walking on fire are in a trance are wrong," said villager Kostas Liouros, 67. "What happens to them is natural and requires mental peace and great concentration," he explained. "Some say we drink alcohol or that before removing our socks and shoes, we coat our feet with herbs and things like that, but none of that is true," added another participant, who declined to give his name.
The Independent
15-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Surprising discovery at ancient Grecian burial ground
A tomb in Greece 's Vergina, previously thought to be the resting place of Alexander the Great 's father, Philip II, likely contains the remains of a different man and a young woman. Radiocarbon dating suggests the man and woman in the tomb lived between 388 and 356 BC, whereas Philip II died in 336 BC. The man's age at death (25-35) also contradicts Philip II's age at death (around 46). Six infants buried in the tomb between 150 BC and 130 AD are likely unrelated to the original occupants, suggesting it was reused during the Roman period, scientists say. Analysis suggests the man spent his childhood away from the Macedonian capital, while the woman likely lived in the Vergina/Pella area her entire life. Tomb thought to hold Alexander the Great's father actually found to contain remains of young woman and six infants
Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
How to transform flowers into precious jewellery
Spring comes in with a burst of flowers, but flowers are fragile and ephemeral. Floral jewellery is a way to hold back time and flowers have accompanied us through the turmoils of love and even in death. After Queen Meda, the sixth wife of Philip II of Macedonia, threw herself onto his funeral pyre, she was buried with an intricate wreath of gold myrtle flowers, symbolising the victory of love over death. Enamelled flowers decorated the backs of 17th-century jewels and watch cases but floral jewellery really blossomed in the 18th century with the whimsical rococo art of Fragonard and Boucher, at a time when silk court dresses were covered in colourful flowers. Little baskets of jewelled flowers were turned into giardinetti, or little garden rings, known in English as 'flowerpot rings'. Grander customers sought whole jewelled bouquets. The French queen Marie Antoinette, never one to be behind the fashion, ordered a diamond bouquet of wild roses and hawthorn blossoms from the court jeweller Bapst. The new supply of diamonds from the mines in South Africa in the mid-19th century allowed women to commission extravagant jewelled corsages, sometimes set with en tremblant springs to allow the jewelled flowers to tremble as if in a summer breeze. From the early 19th century, every flower was given a meaning, listed in helpful dictionaries. Daisies symbolised affection, a fact known to every hopeful lover who has tried plucking the petals to reveal their romantic fate. Jewelled daisies play on this old idea. A 1900 Maison Vever design for a jewel shows a woman with the flowing hair popular in the art nouveau period set against a panel reading 'Un peu, pas trop, passionnément, pas du tout', recording love going from the faint through to the passionate before ending with its total loss. An enamelled ring transforms the custom of daisy plucking into a jewel. Tiny doors, enamelled with roses (for love) and daisies (for innocence), open up to reveal the hidden message, doubtless with the hope of landing on success rather than failure. The art nouveau jeweller René Lalique had a particular appreciation for flowers, which he observed closely from the new bud to the almost decaying. The wood anemone, represented in Lalique's fragile glass, enamel and diamond pendant, signifies anticipation and expectation. It was bought by the Dutch consul to Russia from Lalique's exhibition in St Petersburg in 1903, but the consul certainly didn't expect to be caught up in the Russian Revolution of 1917. He fled with his family, taking the pendant back to a safer life in the Netherlands. Lalique favoured the lily of the valley in particular, as a good luck token and emblem of spring. On May 1 he gave the workers at his factory the traditional bunch of lilies of the valley, accompanied by chocolates. Lilies of the valley found their way into his brooches, hair combs and pendants. Forget-me-nots, as the name suggests, are for remembrance. A jewel decorated with a forget-me-not was an unmistakable message to a lover. Van Cleef and Arpels' mid-20th century bunch of jewelled forget-me-nots came with a little gold tag to reinforce the meaning. Flower jewellery has appealed to people in all sorts of situations. When Private AB Petch went to war in 1916, he took a little heart-shaped glass pendant painted with the flower and the words 'forget me not' as a reminder of a loved one waiting at home. Pansies, or in French pensées, are for 'thoughts of thee', and the gift of a jewelled pansy was one way to stay in your lover's thoughts. The bright colours of variegated pansies could be recreated with enamels, amethysts and citrines, and made into brooches and necklaces as an open statement of love or friendship. Jewels and flowers need not be in competition. Some jewellers have found ways to combine the two, perhaps by incorporating a boutonniere for a real flower into a piece of jewellery. The Sketch of April 3, 1907, illustrated floral jewellery alongside its botanical inspiration, suggesting that 'the ingenious artificer go still further and make settings into which real flowers could be placed'. The new clip earrings of 1935, according to The Northern Whig, could also be improved by the addition of flowers, real or artificial. Colourful flowers continue to inspire designers to make jewels to brighten even the darkest season.
Telegraph
08-05-2025
- Telegraph
The best Greek white wines for £10 or less
Exhilarating, pithy, and full of refreshing mineral flavours, yet with a satisfying waxy richness, Santorini assyrtiko has become one of the world's great wines. Greatness, of course, always comes at a price. A few years ago, Santorini assyrtiko was still a supermarket buy. These days, it is so sought-after that, just as those of us on a budget might spend our summer holidays rummaging through Airbnbs in the Peloponnese (or in Wales, unless that's just me?) rather than floating around five-star infinity pools on an Aegean island, we need to hunt elsewhere for our Greek white fix. The clean, lemony taste of assyrtiko is in huge demand no matter where it's grown in Greece, but it is more affordable if you look beyond the tiny volcanic island of Santorini and across to the mainland. For instance, the grape thrives in the relative cool of the mountains of Macedonia, in northern Greece. This is a different destination, so don't expect a simulacrum of a Santorini assyrtiko: think more of the freshness of a lemon grove at dawn than of flashy intensity with honeyed backnotes. One very good and extremely well-priced example is Athlon Greek Assyrtiko 2024, Macedonia (12%, Aldi, £8.99). Here, the grape is blended with 15 per cent chardonnay, which calms the vibrant citrus of the assyrtiko and brings a slightly creamy texture. I'm guessing the chardonnay is really there in order to make the wine a bit cheaper, but it doesn't matter what the reason is because it works. I'd grill a piece of white fish and make a lemony new potato and spring onion salad or skordalia (Greek garlicky mashed potatoes with almonds) to eat with this. Crete is another good place to look, not just for assyrtiko but for a whole array of unusual, herbaceous whites made from indigenous grapes. It is the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean (there's a quiz question right there: Sicily is the biggest, I'll leave you to work out the rest), long (160 miles) and narrow, and the wineries are clustered in the centre, to the south of Knossos, and the north-west. Lyrarakis Assyrtiko 2024, Crete (13.5%), £13 or £12.50 in a mixed six (down to £10 in a mixed six from 3 to 30 June), Majestic Seek out the very good wines from Lyrarakis. Majestic has the Lyrarakis Assyrtiko 2024, Crete. I also like the Domaine Lyrarakis Psarades Dafni 2022, Crete, but it does seem to split a room. The grape is dafni and the wine is very herbaceous, with curious notes of bay and galangal. Domaine Lyrarakis Psarades Dafni 2022, Crete (12.5%), £11.95, The Wine Society A much easier Greek grape to fall in love with is malagousia, a beautiful white that combines a dewy freshness with fleeting richer notes, such as bergamot and guava, and a tantalising florality. Malagousia had all but died out until it was planted by Vangelis Gerovassiliou on a peninsula vineyard to the south of Thessaloniki, back in the '80s. The Gerovassiliou version is still the most impressive I have tasted, but at more than £20 (you can find it in independent wine merchants), it doesn't qualify for this 'more affordable' column (see Wines of the Week for a sub-£10 bottle). The final Greek grape to put on your radar is moschofilero, which is found in Mantinia in the Peloponnese. This pink-skinned variety makes dry wine with a heady rose fragrance, balanced by a keen and spicy edge, like lemon rind and pith with white pepper, which keeps the wine crisp. A last thought: while it may seem counter-intuitive to expect wines from a hot southern European climate to have luminosity and freshness, all these grapes achieve it. Now all we need is some sun, and perhaps a plate of olives, tomato and feta. Wines of the week
