by Sol
Part I - Paros
In the southern part of the Aegean sea, off the south-eastern coast of mainland Greece and east of the Peloponnesus peninsula, lies the island archipelago of the Cyclades (pronounced "kick-lah-des"). It is composed of over 200 islands ranging in area from a few hundred meters to over 400 square kilometers (240 square miles), and nestled together in a relatively small region. The impression one gets when flying over the entire complex at high altitude is of looking at a puddle that some playful child threw sand and rocks in.
The Cyclades are located in a highly active geological region, at the very meeting point of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates in the north-eastern Mediterranean. The continual subduction activity there formed a sea-floor in the Aegean, which differs greatly from the rest of the Mediterranean, its "parent" sea - the latter is mostly smooth, while the former is dominated by underwater mountains and deep trenches.
All of the islands are the visible tops of submerged mountains, except for two which were created by ancient volcanic eruptions - Milos, and the famous Santorini (Thera). And there is another island which is a notable exception in the area, a place whose Ancient Mystery is begging to be unraveled today.
Central location
The island of Paros is one of the largest in the Cyclades, with an area of about 300 square kilometers (about 200 miles). Its topography consists basically of one single mountain rising 800 meters (2400 feet) above the sea and sloping evenly towards the water on all sides.
The place is sparsely populated by less than ten thousand residents even during the peak summer months, a number apparently similar to what it was in the island's antique heyday. A couple of small towns and several picturesque villages dot the vast expanse of coastline, with a few hamlets nestled between the several peaks of the mountain, each with its own stunning view of the settlements below and the neighboring isles.
The mentioned underlying stratification of the area, as well as the barrier nature of the entire island chain, work to contain the natural movement of the sea, and it appears calm as a swimming pool in the many bays and coves surrounding the shore, with only ripples from the wind or wavelets from the occasional boat marring the flat surface. The water itself is completely clear to great depths, with the characteristic local hue of deep blue.
Map of the Cyclades Islands
If two diagonal lines are drawn on a rectangular image of the Cyclades archipelago such as the one above, one quickly notices that Paros occupies a position near their intersection, almost at the very middle of this island chain. This prominent placement had turned it since very ancient days into the main transportation hub for all sea-faring vessels traveling around the Cyclades, as well as those heading further south to Crete and Cyprus, or east to the Dodecanese islands. It's also the first stop for nearly every ferry out of Athens to the south-eastern Aegean.
With such a central location, one would imagine that Paros is the busiest and most bustling place in the entire region - but for some reason, this is far from being the case. Several nearby islands, like Mikenos and Ios, are world-famous for their never-ending parties and other forms of extatic entertainment; while others, like Delos, Naxos and Santorini, are considered the main haven in the area for the archeology and history buffs. At the same time, Paros is being curiously overlooked by the majority of the tourist island-hoppers, who seldom stay there for long and prefer to use it merely as a convenient jumping-off point to other destinations nearby, as one author wrote in a recent NY Times travel advisory.
Paros boasts the same colorful country atmosphere for which the Aegean islands are famous - the breath-taking vistas and views, the immaculate white-and-blue houses that one sees on photos of Santorini, and the ancient narrow streets, their paving stones whitewashed at the seams to make them stand out like an irregular fisherman's net, and scrubbed so clean you can eat off the ground.
And yet many have noted that Paros "lacks the glamour of nearby Mykonos", as a travel-blogger put it - summarizing a prevalent attitude which causes no end of anguish to the local businessmen and entrepreneurs, most of whom earn their living from tourism. Make no mistake - Paros is still packed during the three peak summer months and reservations must be made many months in advance if one wishes to visit then, but the "party atmosphere" is just not the same on this island, and the over-all feel of the place is much more sedate, contemplative, and family-oriented.
And perhaps 'tis were best were it to stay so - because it leaves Paros to remain the pristine gem that it still is, a place favored by many artists and writers for its rural solitude and quiet. Just last month a noted local resident bemoaned "the pace and extent of the island's submission to a thoroughly unoriginal form of tourism" - objecting to its assimilation into the standard tourist entertainment grid, with the attendant nightmare visions of shopping malls and golden arches.
The Non-Violent approach
Indeed Paros can be seen as a small bit of "heaven-on-earth". It has even been noted that if we take the Greek word "paradisos", meaning "paradise", and remove from it the name Adis (which is Hades, the Underworld or Hell) - we are left with "paros" (and one can also make interesting anagrams with "adis")
A typical street in the town of Parikia, Paros
And one of the things that make the place special is the absolute absence of crime, violent or otherwise - for example, there's no theft. People leave their their bags and wallets sitting for hours in their unlocked cars with the windows open, while they walk around town. You can put your money on a bar-room table and go dancing outside all night, and then return to find the exact sum still there. A friend forgot his lap-top on the beach, only to find it waiting for him in the same spot the next day.
Large groups of people on this isle, tourists and locals, drink vast amounts of alcohol on a daily basis, and some dedicated revelers even do it all day long - yet street brawls are never encountered. You never see as much as a small shove, or even hear a voice raised in anger or a nasty remark! A drunkard will lie down or fall down, long before he tries to pick a fight. The most inebriated people will walk by you without a word (but often with a smile), in a hurry to get home and nothing else. It almost feels as if some type of a "non-aggression" spell had been cast over the place.
It should be noted that Greece generally has one of the lowest crime rates in the European Union, according to this typical travel brochure. Though a dramatic rise in crime has been noted for the past decade as part of the general "modernization trend" in Greece, it still remains one of the safest countries in the world.
The US State Department Travel Advisory points out that the islands are especially known for hosting cases of sexual assault and date-rape - perhaps a somewhat explainable phenomenon, considering the general free-for-all beach-party atmosphere that prevails there. A 2003 article from The Guardian in England warns that "Holiday Rapes Increase on Greek Islands", urging women to be more careful and not accept rides from strangers. But it notes that the majority of cases occur on the famous and extremely crowded beaches of Crete, Korfu and Rhodes - locales akin to many like them around the world, which are known to attract all types of criminal activity.
The much smaller Cyclades islands are considered more secluded and can boast a near-zero crime rate, and Paros in particular stands out in that regard. Walking around the streets of the main town Parikia, one feels absolutely no kind of violence in the air. Women feel completely safe walking anywhere alone, at any hour of day or night. Perhaps this is because this island caters more to the older couples crowd and less to the single-minded bar-hoppers who fill the rest of the archipelago. But maybe the regular revelers simply chose to avoid this island in the first place, because it has some type of a special energy which creates a more sedate atmosphere.
In an attempt to understand whether there really is something "in the air" which causes this unusual behavior in the local residents, we investigated the minerological structure of the island. And quickly discovered that it does indeed possess a most peculiar geological characteristic.
Marble Isle
According to the Wikipedia article and the sources on which it relies for this information, the island of Paros is entirely composed of marble. The material is rich in calcite and pyrite crystals, which sparkle in the sun like fool's gold. Nearly every single rock and stone on that island is a piece of marble that can be polished to a good shine, and one's body glistens with sparkling star-dust after lying in the sand.
Modern marble quarry on Paros
This extraordinary feature has not been historically missed by local civilizations. "Parian marble" formed the chief source of income for the island in antiquity, and has been prized since the earliest times for its remarkable "pure white and slightly translucent" quality, which made it ideal for use in sculpture and ornamental statuery.
Marble is a "Metamorphic" rock, which means that it began its existence as another type of stone - usually limestone, and was changed into its present form and composition by various geological forces. "White marble formed when very pure limestone rock was buried deeply and exposed to high heat and great pressure". These forces cause the limestone to change its molecular structure and outside texture. In a process known as "recrystallization", fossilized materials and carbonate minerals in the limestone recrystallize to form large, coarse grains of calcite.
As noted earlier, the entire Aegean Sea was formed by a geological process known as "high-pressure metamorphism" between two tectonic plates, which resulted in the creation of the Cyclades archipelago. The pressures thus encountered shaped the island of Paros into a kind of a "marble stopper", which plugs up an upward-bound opening in the subduction zone.
The neighboring island of Naxos was also a known exporter of marble in ancient times, but its marble is more greenish in tint and is of a coarse grain, unlike the white and fine-grained marble of Paros (and mount Pentelikon in Attica, another famed source of marble in Ancient Greece.) The reason for this difference in marble types with Paros in particular has not been adressed in depth by scholars. But this study of other geological inconsistencies on Naxos, demonstrates that the inordinately intense heat and pressure caused by various processes in the very epicenter of the Hellenic Subduction Zone where Naxos is located, had led to several anomalies in the immediate region, of which the "marble plug" of Paros, just five kilometers, away could be another.
Temples of Healing
Leaving aside for the moment the commercial and artistic uses of marble, the very existence of such a gigantically consistent rock-crystal would certainly be believed by practitioners of Crystal Healing to have a very marked influence on the people residing upon it.
Though it's often noted that the scientific validity of any "healing theory" relating to crystals is strongly disputed, not to say outrightly denied, by the Western approach to medicine - but records show that this hasn't always been so. In fact every ancient civilization we know of, had used crystals and precious metals as a vital part of personal well-being and energy regeneration, a legacy which has been passed down to us in the form of our fascination with jewelry. Therefore the significance of the vast Paros Crystal could not have escaped the notice of the various Healers of antiquity.
It is not clear at this point whether the Ancient Greeks had used marble so extensively in their temples because of its particular healing properties, and not simply due to its structural integrity and aesthetic quality. Nor has any serious study been done on the precise effect that living astride such a huge crystal would have on the population - a subject surely begging research today. Knowing what we do of Crystal Healing however, we must assume that "some type" of an effect must prevail in a place like that.
According to the lore, marble is generally said to have a cleansing effect, beneficial for one's blood and skin. It's used extensively in Homeopathy and Naturotherapy as a balancing agent, said to enhance one's serenity. It's considered to provide clarity and mastery of thought, and is thus beneficial for states of meditation and contemplation. And it also "allows for total recall of dreams".
The latter characteristic seems significant as part of the Asclepius (Asklepios) Cult, which became very popular in later Classical Greece. Asclepius was the son of Apollo and the God of Medicine. Nearly every place of importance had its own "Temple of Healing" called the Asclepieion, where people came to treat various maladies by methods which utilized the "holistic approach", similar to what is offered today by various New Age workshops and healers. The treatment involved sleeping overnight at the Asclepieion, and in the morning reporting one's dreams to a priest-healer, who prescribed a cure accordingly.
Remains of Asclepieion and Temple of Dionysus on Delos
Paros had an Asclepieion on it standing not far from the main harbor - although the records do not distinguish it in any particular way, and it was evidently nowhere near as famous as the big centers on the island of Kos in the Dodecanese and in Epidaurus on the Peloponessus. Nonetheless, the Paros Asclepieion is afforded mention in the short Wiki article on the subject.
The Paros Asclepieion was built in the 4th century BCE but evidently did not last for too long, as its architectural members were found to have been removed and used to strengthen the city walls against the attacks of Macedonian ruler Philip V around 200 BCE. Nothing but a part of the foundation survives today, so the place is not a very big tourist attraction. (See "Paros and Antiparos - History, Monuments, and Museums" by Yannos Kourayos, Adam Editions, Athens, 2004, pp. 29, 38)
The history of Paros has been very violent and by no means as peaceful and serene as the atmosphere on that island today - which is perhaps evidence against the theory of the Healing properties of marble. And yet while reading a brief historical recount such as on Wikipedia, one notices that the residents of Paros have usually had to defend themselves against attack, they were not the initiators of the hostilities. And they are not remembered for being aggressive but quite the contrary - as trying to abstain from participating in the local wars.
So this island's stormy past does not necessarily contradict our hypothesis about the "contemplative and non-violent" influence of such a vast amount of marble. And this hypothesis is further strengthened by a couple of very interesting comparisons with similar places around the world.
Some notable world comparisons - Hualien
Hualien is the largest settlement on the rugged east coast of Taiwan near China, and it’s known to the locals as "The City of Marble".
The amount of marble there is truly vast - it is considered one of the biggest producers of marble in the world, with many millions of tons of this decorative stone mined each year. Marble is used extensively in the local architecture, even as pavement for some streets and sidewalks, and there is a famous Temple of Eastern Purity there, built entirely out of marble.
A street in Hualien, Taiwan
An interesting aspect of Hualien is that it appears to be very famous for its healing properties, and it's even called the "Lourdes of Asia" in the above article. Every year thousands of people with various medical problems make a pilgrimage to the Temple of Motherly Love, believed by practitioners of Taoism to be possessed of special healing energies.
And there's still a further extremely interesting thing about Hualien. It is hailed as "one of Asia's most spectacular sights" - and yet, for reasons which completely befuddle the local tourism authority, it is usually very much neglected by tourists. Evidently most visitors see Hualien only as a "transit point or a convenient overnight stop when visiting nearby Taroko Gorge", and not as a destination in itself.
It seems that this city is akin to Paros in more ways than one. And as regards to Taoism, Paros has in the past few years become home to a regional Tao Center, which is already drawing big crowds of followers and students from abroad. A large marble bust of Buddha adorns the lobby, brought to the Marble Isle from the Orient in an original display of East-meets-West.
Crestone
The little hamlet of Crestone, Colorado is nestled on the western slopes of the Sangre De Cristo mountains in south-central Colorado, at elevation of nearly 8,000 ft (about 2,600 meters.) According to the above website it boasts only 84 residents - and yet it's listed as being home to several notable spiritual institutions and a "diverse community of New-Agers and artists".
A further search reveals that this little settlement is hailed as the "Shambala of the Rockies" - a place revered by several American Indian tribes since antiquity, and today housing a Carmelite Monastery, in addition to a most impressive range of various temples and workshops of New Age Arts and Eastern religions. There are also several Healing Centers, famous around the US for reforming junkies and alcoholics. A perusal of this listing of events from a local newspaper shows that Healing Seminars form an important part of the weekly routine.
Over twenty local spiritual workshops and communities are noted at the end of the "Shambala" article, a list which would do credit to a sizeable town and not just to a settlement of less than a hundred people. It does say that the population of the "Baca" part of town, which contains most of the spiritual centers, is closer to 900 - still a very small amount for so many important organizations.
Crestone is located at nearly the same north latitude as the island of Paros - about 37.5 degrees north of the equator. But this coincidence does not nearly exhaust the list of similarities between the two places.
Situated near Crestone in the Sangre de Cristo range is the famous "Marble Mountain", a location well-known for its many caves and stories of buried treasure. Back in mid 16th century one cave known as "La Caverna del Oro" - the cave of gold, was explored by the Spaniards as part of their search for Eldorado. But lacking any reports that any gold or treasures were actually found, it would appear that the explorers were fooled onto the mountain by "fool's gold" - the shiny limestone rock most extant on the Sangres and called the "Crestone Conglomerate".
Marble Mountain, Colorado
The curious thing about Marble Mountain is that it does not actually contain any marble today, although there is a disputed presence of old quarries around it. According to this report, the mountain is composed of limestone, a sedimentary rock which can transform into marble under high pressure as noted above, but did not at that particular place. The mountain was evidently named after its wide swaths of exposed limestone, turned white by the weather.
So where is the actual marble? Apparently not very far away, about a hundred miles to the north-west of Crestone, near the old town of Marble, Colorado. Marble Mountain itself may be dry of marble, but the State of Colorado is considered a major producer of marble in the US, so much so that marble was recently recognized by the State legislature as the "Official State Rock".
The marble mined in the region is the famed "Yule Marble", universally hailed for its “uniform pure white consistency”. Nearly identical in fact, to the quality for which Parian Marble was so prized back in the day.
Yule marble has been used to build some of the significant monuments and edifices of the United States, among them the Colorado State Capitol, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The last one was built to resemble the Great Ancient Greek Temples, like the Parthenon on the Acropolis, which was also made of marble.
If all of the above weren’t enough, Crestone, Colorado is reputed to possess another interesting similarity to Paros, which we gathered from past residents. It seems that despite its stunning views and spiritual healing centers, tourists do not like staying in the place for very long, but mostly use it as a convenient base-camp for hiking in the nearby mountains and national parks. Something about the energy of the place that makes only the most dedicated people stay there, and the rest quickly leave.
Conclusion
We have identified two highly diverse locations named above, which are situated nearly on opposite sides of the world from each other, yet both bear several striking parallels with the island of Paros, geographically located almost exactly midway between them - the marble deposits, the Healing Energies, and the reluctant tourists. This would appear to add serious weight to our theory (if not entirely vindicate it) about the special healing properties of marble, and their influence on the population and history of Paros.
And yet all of this is merely a very small part of the greater Paros puzzle, which we propose to unravel, or at least describe, here. The preceding will serve as a convenient introduction to the several other fascinating aspects of this little Aegean isle, and it can perhaps be used to explain our further findings there, which will be introduced in subsequent parts of this treatise.
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My deepest gratitude goes to Raven, Pete Reston, Daniel Ward, and John Karavias, who have contributed invaluable research and insight to this investigation.
List of cited sources, by order of appearance:
1. Encyclopedia page on the Cyclades
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greece/Regions/Cyclades.html
2. “The Aegean Sea in Its Contemporary Context”, by Yucel ACER, PhD., 30 April 2007
http://www.turkishweekly.net/articles.php?id=207
3. Wikipedia article on Paros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paros
4. “Paros, Greece, Is a Jam-Packed Island That’s an Open Secret” by DANIELLE PERGAMENT
New York Times Travel, 17 September, 2006
http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/travel/17nextstop.html
5. “My big fat Greek island party” – a travel blog
http://grhomeboy.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/my-big-fat-greek-islands-party-i/
6. “Paros of Marble and Concrete” by Jonathan Carr, Athens News, 18 May 2007
http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.prnt_article?e=C&f=13235&t=06&m=A22&aa=1
7. A typical “Travel to Greece” website
http://www.greeklandscapes.com/travel/safety.html
8. “International SOS” advisory for Greece
http://www.internationalsos.com/demo/security/country/Greece.cfm
9. US State Department Consular Information Sheet on Greece
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1127.html
10. "Holiday Rapes Increase on Greek Islands", The Guardian, 25 January 2003
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-25-2003-34345.asp
11. Page on Parian Marble from Marble.com
http://www.marble.com/countertops/encyclopedia/8/parian.html
12. Names and Origins of Stones – the letter P
http://www.cagenweb.com/quarries/name_and_origion/p1.html
13. Definition of Metamorphic Rocks from Marble.com
http://www.marble.com/countertops/encyclopedia/27/metamorphic,rock.html
14. Website on white marble
http://saltthesandbox.org/rocks/whitemarble.htm#HowFormed
15. Website explaining properties and origin of marble
http://www.flooringguide.com/how-to/stone/ss002_i.php3
16. Media Highlights from “Geology” and “GSA Today” magazines, May 2001
“Miocene high-pressure metamorphism in the Cyclades and Crete, Aegean Sea, Greece: Evidence for large-magnitude displacement on the Cretan detachment” by Uwe Ring
http://www.geosociety.org/news/pr/01-10.htm
17. “Geoarcheology - cracking ancient quarry codes” by Christina Reed, Geo-Times, Jan 2001
http://www.geotimes.org/jan01/geoarcheology.html
18. “SOME LIKE IT HOT! CORE COMPLEX FORMATION ON NAXOS AND IOS ISLANDS,
AEGEAN SEA, GREECE” – a paper by U. Ring, K. Gessner, S. Brichau, and J. Glodny
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/RSTGV/00084/RSTGV-A-00084.pdf
19. Wikipedia article on Crystal Healing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_healing
20. Crystal and Gemstone Therapy - Marble
http://www.peacefulmind.com/stones.htm
21. Encyclopedia page on Asclepius (Asklepios)
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Asclepius.html
22. “The Asklepieion on Paros” by Theodore J. Drizis, for the International Society for the History of Medicine (ISHM), 2006
http://www.ishm2006.hu/scientific/abstract.php?ID=51
23. Wikipedia article on the Asclepieion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepieion
24. "Paros and Antiparos - History, Monuments, and Museums" by Yannos Kourayos, Adam Editions, Athens, 2004, pp. 29, 38)
(Sorry, no web-link for this one)
25. Hualien – the City of Marble
http://www.sinica.edu.tw/tit/scenery/1096_Hualien.html
26. Website of the Tao’s Center on Paros
http://www.taos-greece.com/
27. Colorado website about town of Crestone
http://www.colorado.com/city158
28. “The Shambala of the Rockies – the mythos and Power of Crestone”, by Allison Rae
http://www.crestonecolorado.com/shambala.html
30. “Climbing Marble Mountain, Colorado” – a hiker’s description
http://www.jackieandalan.com/marblemountain.html
31. Legends of America – “La Caverna del Oro hidden treasure”
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/CP-ColoradoTreasures3.html
32. “Once upon a Geological Era: Pondering the deep past of Custer County”, by Wayne I. Anderson, Professor Emeritus (Geology), University of Northern Iowa
http://www.uni.edu/~andersow/onceupon.html
33. “The Caves of Marble Mountain”, by Wayne I. Anderson
http://www.uni.edu/~andersow/thecaves.html
34. Page on Marble, Colorado, from ghosttowns.com
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/co/marble.html
35. “What’s in Marble News”, from the Marble Tourism Assosciation
http://www.marblecolorado.net/news.html
36. Wikipedia article on Yule Marble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Marble