Just beyond the walls of the Gouvernatou Monastery is a paved path that zig-zags down one side of the Avlaki gorge of Akrotiri. The path ends (or so we thought) at the Katholikou Monastery, but its first major landmark is the Arkoudospilios Cave. This large cave seems to have been sacred to Artemis, but now houses a very small chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The cave’s association with Artemis seems to originate from the bear-shaped stalagmite at the centre of the largest area of the cave, and is appropriate on Crete, where Artemis is especially venerated. Local myth claims that the bear was petrified by Mary when the local monks of Gouvernatou were plagued by thirst. Thus, the small chapel was dedicated to her.
Caves like this one are interesting to me for their manipulation of the senses for the purpose of ritual. The distinct brand of sensory deprivation and exhaustion offered by caves like this and that at Eleusis inspires an epiphanic experience and devotional bond to the deity. For the modern uninitiated student, these shadowy rites come closest, even in their mystery, to explaining a religious system that can seem merely accessory in light of contemporary advances in social, political, and technological sciences, not to mention a timeless cultural mosaic of theatre, music, and visual arts.
The most exciting part of the cave complex, though, was a small icon within the modern chapel. Beside the obligatory Mary and Jesus icons was a depiction of two saints wearing the traditional Cretan garb that Alex, the secretary of Etz Hayyim, told us about yesterday. The outfit includes deep indigo harem pants, a needle-point head scarf, a distinct 4-5 meter red belt, and a special knife with a triangular hilt, whose shape has gruesome utility.

Alex described this distinctive Cretan order only when we asked him how he saw the Cretan identity functioning discretely from a larger Greek identity. It was in Arkoudospilios that we saw the first echoes of the island identity imagined and described by one Cretan reappear kilometers away in the deserted hillside of Akrotiri.