Santorini Angel – A Journey

January 5, 2013

Angels, Greece, Inspiration, Photography, Photos, Spirituality, Travel

December 20th, 2000 | Oia, Santorini Island, Greece.

In December of 2000, I embarked on a journey to build a shrine on a cliff edge on Santorini Island (ancient Thira) over the caldera of an ancient underwater volcano.

My pilgrimage to Ancient Thira, a.k.a. Santorini started with a dream inspired by an angel…

Click on the gallery below to scroll through full size images.
Music Tie-in, listen to: Stairway To Heaven.mp3 – Led Zepplin

December 2000, building my shrine overlooking the caldera of an ancient volcano. Location: outside Oia village, on a remote hiking trail northern tip of Santorini Island.

I constructed the shrine out of tin, glass and ceramic tiles and painted it. Inside there’s an alter made of volcanic rocks, an icon of the Old Testament Archangel Uriel, an oil lamp, matches, olive oil, personal keepsakes. It is cemented to a boulder at cliff edge. The caldera is in the distance. The sea below me is very deep almost bottomless, the crater created by the eruption.

Uriel’s shrine cemented to boulder on cliff edge.

Lighting the oil lamp one last time before I leave the island. — at Santorini Island, Greece.

The shrine was visited by my friend Jennifer in 2007: This is how it looked after years of exposure to the sun, rain, wind and saltine air. Haven’t been back to the island since i built the shrine. According to Jennifer it has become a popular stop along a remote hiking trail. Hikers have been maintaining it, writing their names on the rocks, making offerings and leaving possessions. I don’t know when I’ll get back there again. if you are interested in lighting the oil lamp for me let me know. I’ll send you a map and instructions. I buried something special to me under the rocks.

December 2000 | The last eruption in Santorini was the largest in the ancient world. In legend It buried Atlantis which is suppose to be underneath me in this photo. Volcanologists predicted another eruption around 2000 that will sink the island. It didn’t happen.

AEGEAN SEA

A reproduction on wood of this Icon is in the shrine. The inscription reads Archangel Uriel written in Byzantine script. More on: Uriel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I found an Iconographer Greek Orthodox Monk in Athens. Told him my story and what I saw in my dream. He painted this image of Uriel in traditional Byzantine style on wood.

The Book of Enoch describes Uriel as one of seven archangels who preside over the world. “One of the holy angels, who is over the world… the leader of them all.”