Stewart - Dreaming and Historical Consciousness

Question 1

Variation in historical consciousness

Answer 1

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

Question 2

History vs myth

Answer 2

Things can be both histories and myths e.g. the long march of the Mormons

Myths should not be submitted to verification

Question 3

Ethnography of history

Answer 3

‘Historicisation’ replaces ‘historiography’

Question 4

Naxos villagers’ view of history

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Example of non-traditional historicisation

Answer 5

Warrior dance of the Ohafia Igbo, Nigeria creates linkages to past warriors in an alternative epistemology

Question 6

Post-Freudian thought on dreams

Answer 6

Features model that dreams use experiences of the past to predict the future

Question 7

Heidegger exploration

Answer 7

Explored the concept of temporal ecstasies as being fusions of past and future in the present

Question 8

REM significance

Answer 8

People lack meta-consciousness, making it different to waking visions

Question 9

Koronos geography

Answer 9

Mountainous village home to approximately 500 people

Question 10

Koronos belief in dreams

Answer 10

People strongly believe in their predictive value

Villager who believed a dreams saved him from an exploding kiln which he was sleeping next to

Question 11

Dreams of the saints

Answer 11

Many still occur to oneirokrites

Question 12

Oneiromancy stigmatism

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Nature of sources from this time

Answer 13

Priests and canons - influenced by the church’s considerations

Question 14

Initial dreaming and reaction

Answer 14

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

Question 15

1835 dreaming

Answer 15

Two new visionaries (one called Manolas) led to the digging at Argokoili

Bones were found in accordance with a dream

Question 16

1836 dreaming

Answer 16

A new visionary - Maggioros - led to the finding of three icons

He was assisted by priests, and one more was found later that month

Question 17

Historical context in the 1830s

Answer 17

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

Question 18

1830s new synods

Answer 18

Curtailed Orthodox monasteries, building of churches and excavations

Dreams now became an incitement to break the law on several accounts

Question 19

1833 new bishop

Answer 19

Gavril Sylvios forced by the state to oppose the movement in Koronos and condemned three priests who helped find an icon in 1838

Question 20

Authority criminalisation

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Collision in world-views

Answer 21

Collision between Greek intellectuals with the help of northern European scholars, and the village worldview

“Conjunctural period of paradigm clash”

Question 22

Archetype for the 1830s movement

Answer 22

The discovery of an icon on the nearby island of Tinos in 1823 and the subsequent erection of a church for the Panagia

Question 23

Cult of the Panagia Argokolitissa in the 1850s

Answer 23

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

Question 24

1930 dreams

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Children dreaming

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Later excavations

Answer 26

Extensive, but no icons were found

Question 27

Organising the dreams

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Opposition to dreaming in the community

Answer 28

The local community increasingly opposed the dreaming

Some like the priest believed the visions were caused by an incipient delirium brought on by fasting

Question 29

Alienation of the cult

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Date for the finding of icon

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Marina Mandilara

Answer 31

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

Question 32

After September 1930

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Achievement of the 1930 dreamers

Answer 33

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

Question 34

How should the myth-dream of Koronos be viewed?

Answer 34

As a broad social phenomenon

Shows a diachronic interaction between myths and dreams of lost icons stretching back through history

Question 35

Emery up to WW1

Answer 35

Flourished in C19 and during WW1

Question 36

Emery cable cars

Answer 36

Massive structure of cable cars was built to bring the emery downhill, not anticipating the overtake of the motor vehicle industry

Question 37

Decline of emery

Answer 37

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

Question 38

Transfer of worry to children

Answer 38

Anxious discussion of the emery business had penetrated into the minds of the dreaming children

Question 39

Predication of the dreams

Answer 39

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

Question 40

Use of dreams

Answer 40

Failed at predicting the future, but diagnosed the present

Fiction captured the factuality of the situation

Question 41

Later church building

Answer 41

Chapel of St Anne built in 1962

A church was built years later in the 1990s despite no more dreams or any icons

Question 42

Three salient moments

Answer 42

First was a reaction to nationalisation

Second to economic depression

Third to physical displacement

Question 43

Recursive relationship between events and structures

Answer 43

Events alter existing structures of thought, which provide new contexts for subsequent transformative events