Cosmo Sapiens

  By Marina Siskos The feeling is ignited only to the lucky ones that have experienced at least one Dekapentavgousto in Greece. The sense of sacredness is diffuse in every corner of the country, heralding the end of summer, in the characteristic, mild breeze of late August. Awakenings, traditions, pilgrimages to historic monasteries throughout the country, offers to the Virgin Mary and a 15-day period of Lent, commonly honour the Dormition of Mary. Some places have tied their name to the uniqueness or the longevity of their celebration of the Dormition of Mary.  Inside the Byzantine church of Panayia Kosmosotira, Ferai, Evros Panayia of Kosmosoteira, Ferai, Evros: Liturgy at the Trinational Point of Evros Constructed on the strategically unique position atop a hill trespassing via Egnatia, close to Evros river, the church of Kosmosoteira, in the traditional Ferai settlement (district of Thrace), is an outstanding monument of the mid-Byzantine period. The monastery has been fou...

By Marina Siskos. April 6 marks the Remembrance Day for the genocide of Thracian people. For Thrace, Easter of 1914 was the  Black Easter. Implications of injustice, massive destruction and extermination of the Thracians extends to the present as the genocide affects the formation of identity and consciousness of their descendants. Collective memory moulds identity: mentality, discourse, self-perception and all its dimensions, material and non-material culture, literature and mythologies, directly or indirectly refer to the past and the suffering, the need for remembrance and the what should have been. Systematic atrocity: Backdrop of the Genocide of Ottoman minorities The turn of the 19th century heralds the collapse of the “multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire,” manifested among a host of factors, such as the weakening of its once robust army, by the emergence of national independence movements, in tandem with opposing, imperialist European powers (Hoffman, 2022). The mov...

  By: Marina Siskos Published in the Greek Herald  https://greekherald.com.au/culture/history/carnivalesque-customs-of-thrace-the-timeless-value-of-satire-practiced-through-rituals/?fbclid=IwAR383O4Bg0MzPE2Pm8_FHXAupa8cPpwKjAE8PHhNAUiAAHw3k8mFNlyKDhw Carnival customs are observed on the first Sunday of Christian Orthodox fasting, The Tyrian Sunday, alongside most significant Thracian customs Thrace is Dionysus’s birthplace. Dionysus, or Bacchus, was the god of the grape-harvesting, winemaking, vegetation and fertility. Dionysus was the son of Semeli and Zeus (Moutsopoulos, 2016). Thracian festivities celebrated to this day are sharply reminiscent of Dionysus’s characteristic shenanigans (Moutsopoulos, 2016). The customs known as  Kopek   Mpehis  and the  Monks , as described in narrative skillfulness by the master of  ethnographia , Georges Vizeynos, date back to the antiquity. Representations of the carnivalesque customs and practiced are preserved wi...

  The Early Years; The Unique Narrative Style Georges Vizeynos, 1849 -1896.  Georges Vizeynos, novelist and poet was born by the family name Georges Syrmas, in a destitute family environment of five children, on March the 8 th , 1849.  He has left an unparalleled legacy by introducing a set of ground-breaking techniques in his writing, majorly by means of the profoundly soul-deciphering style of his novels, which are recognized as viscerally psychographic. His piercingly soul-searching writing style came into being and flourished roughly a generation prior to Freud.   An outstanding figure of the generation of 1880, Vizeynos skilfully adopted a starkly sincere depiction of the human soul. It is only just that Vizeynos is acclaimed to be the master of ethographia , unanimously characterized as  “painter of souls”, with his seemingly effortless soul-depiction of his characters, transcending simple ethnography . Georges Vizeynos was born in Vize, Kirklareli...