Stewart - Dreaming and Historical Consciousness Flashcards
Variation in historical consciousness
Western society - chronological, a way of ordering the past
Other societies - not seen in such a linear way and this may make it relater better to the future and present
History vs myth
Things can be both histories and myths e.g. the long march of the Mormons
Myths should not be submitted to verification
Ethnography of history
‘Historicisation’ replaces ‘historiography’
Naxos villagers’ view of history
Seen as cyclical, with the golden past arising at certain key points
Historical consciousness used to look into future and predict whether it would be good
Example of non-traditional historicisation
Warrior dance of the Ohafia Igbo, Nigeria creates linkages to past warriors in an alternative epistemology
Post-Freudian thought on dreams
Features model that dreams use experiences of the past to predict the future
Heidegger exploration
Explored the concept of temporal ecstasies as being fusions of past and future in the present
REM significance
People lack meta-consciousness, making it different to waking visions
Koronos geography
Mountainous village home to approximately 500 people
Koronos belief in dreams
People strongly believe in their predictive value
Villager who believed a dreams saved him from an exploding kiln which he was sleeping next to
Dreams of the saints
Many still occur to oneirokrites
Oneiromancy stigmatism
Condemned by the Church
While Koronos has the responsibility of organising the largest annual pilgrimage on Naxos, there is stigma associated with them, as many believe they are out of touch with reality
Nature of sources from this time
Priests and canons - influenced by the church’s considerations
Initial dreaming and reaction
Began in 1831 when three shepherds were instructed by the Panagia to dig for an icon depicting her
Bishop of Paros and Naxos at first blessed the excavation site with holy water
1835 dreaming
Two new visionaries (one called Manolas) led to the digging at Argokoili
Bones were found in accordance with a dream
1836 dreaming
A new visionary - Maggioros - led to the finding of three icons
He was assisted by priests, and one more was found later that month
Historical context in the 1830s
War of Independence against the Ottomans (from 1821)
Placement of a new monarch (Otto) on the throne in 1833, his Catholicism clashing with venerable Orthodox institutions
1830s new synods
Curtailed Orthodox monasteries, building of churches and excavations
Dreams now became an incitement to break the law on several accounts
1833 new bishop
Gavril Sylvios forced by the state to oppose the movement in Koronos and condemned three priests who helped find an icon in 1838
Authority criminalisation
Wanted to criminalise the Naxiote charismatic movement
After their fraud case failed, they decided to confiscate the icons, holding them in a box in the Khoran metropolitan church
This was disrespectful as the icons were supposed to have feelings and to be kept in the light
Collision in world-views
Collision between Greek intellectuals with the help of northern European scholars, and the village worldview
“Conjunctural period of paradigm clash”
Archetype for the 1830s movement
The discovery of an icon on the nearby island of Tinos in 1823 and the subsequent erection of a church for the Panagia
Cult of the Panagia Argokolitissa in the 1850s
Was in a strange predicament - authorities had allowed a church to be consecrated but the icons were still missing
Influential healers and prophets arose in response to the obscurity of the situations
1930 dreams
Katerina Legaki and her brother, Nikiphoros, experienced dreams of St Anne instructing them that the Panagia Argokoilotissa was on their landlord’s icons stand and that they should take it back to the mountain
They found and returned the icon in February, reconnecting the movement with its power source
Children dreaming
A series of dreams from schoolchildren showed that the villagers were still ruminating on historic events
“active historiography” in which concern for the missing icons carried over into sleep
Later excavations
Extensive, but no icons were found
Organising the dreams
Evdokia became the organiser of the dreamers, convening daily gathering were the children would read their recent dreams
The dreams concerned finding an icon of St Anne which would result in the building of a monastery and general prosperity for Koronos
Children continued to collectively dream
Opposition to dreaming in the community
The local community increasingly opposed the dreaming
Some like the priest believed the visions were caused by an incipient delirium brought on by fasting
Alienation of the cult
After accusing a well-respected priest of trying to steal the Panagia icon, the cult became more isolated and took up residence in the Argokoili cells
Date for the finding of icon
Moved back several times as dreamers failed to find it
These failures strengthened the dreamers initially, as they dug in deeper
By August, many disenchanted supporters began drifting away, leaving a hard core who were developing ever more complex narratives of redemption
Marina Mandilara
Kept a dream diary - a series of her drawings show the building blocks of iconography and promise of a grand church
Many drawings were architectural plans
After September 1930
Priests were banned from officiating ceremonies and the circle of support contracted
Drawings became increasingly disconnected from the content of dreams, narratives lacked a substance without public readings - became repetitive
Dreamers repeatedly asked the saints for more details
Achievement of the 1930 dreamers
They generated a myth, reacting to an earlier myth of 1836
In turn, the dreams of the 1830s had been in reaction to a similar occurrence on Tinos a decade earlier
How should the myth-dream of Koronos be viewed?
As a broad social phenomenon
Shows a diachronic interaction between myths and dreams of lost icons stretching back through history
Emery up to WW1
Flourished in C19 and during WW1
Emery cable cars
Massive structure of cable cars was built to bring the emery downhill, not anticipating the overtake of the motor vehicle industry
Decline of emery
WW1 marked the first nail in the coffin as artificial emery became prevalent
1924 disruption as Emery was declared an antiquity, and therefore ‘national property’
Great depression happened in 1929, with the economy plummeting
Transfer of worry to children
Anxious discussion of the emery business had penetrated into the minds of the dreaming children
Predication of the dreams
Upon initial events of the 1830s which had come to the children through pilgrimage, local stories and genealogical relations
Then precipitated by the economic disaster
Use of dreams
Failed at predicting the future, but diagnosed the present
Fiction captured the factuality of the situation
Later church building
Chapel of St Anne built in 1962
A church was built years later in the 1990s despite no more dreams or any icons
Three salient moments
First was a reaction to nationalisation
Second to economic depression
Third to physical displacement
Recursive relationship between events and structures
Events alter existing structures of thought, which provide new contexts for subsequent transformative events
