St John The Hermit - My Family's Protector

The church up the road from the Kafenion behind the Alfa Hotel is the
Koukoutsakis family private burial ground, I guess we love the view for there.

The church is about 700 years old and is built on the cave of St John the Hermit part of which is actually inside the church. St John the Hermit came with the 99 Holy Fathers possibly from what is now Turkey. The story goes that on the way to Crete they forgot him in Gavdos and then they prayed to him to put his coat on the sea and they brought him here by the power of prayer. When he came to Azogires, in our neighbourhood, Koukoutsiana, there was a prison. The prisoners were ill so he cured them and when they got their freedom, they built the church around the cave where he lived, you can see part of the rock of the cave in the photo above.

Originally the church had mosaics inside; beautiful frescoes depicting the 99 Holy Fathers and much more but unfortunately, during the 2nd World War, the church committee thought make the church prettier so they white washed the walls, destroying the frescoes.

My family came here over 300 years ago and they settled here after a hard life at sea. They were pirates you know, under the leadership of Kapetan Mavros - meaning Captain Black - and that’s where our first name comes from - Mavroukakis black man - kara in Turkish I think. My family were involved in the fight against the Turks and we fought for Crete’s freedom again and again and again, causing us to change our name again and again – Mavraki –Mavroukakis – Kokotsakis - Kokozakis Koukouzakis - Koukoutsakis. We spread all over Crete but Azogires and Saint John were always in our hearts and to this day, all branches of the Koukoutsakis family have one John in the family named after the saint..

To make a long story short, we are protecting Saint John with our own lives and our hearts and in return he is our family protector. He has always protected us, as we are the guardians of his deepest secrets; whenever a family member was in trouble, St John was there; in time of war, in time of peace, St John was there and he always will be there.

When I was a child I witnessed my own father falling of an orange tree when the branch broke. Suddenly the branch floated in the air allowing my father to jump of safely and as he turned around the floating branch hit the earth; this incident happened below St John’s church. Also, several years back my uncle George used the cave as a stable. He had a dream telling him to stop doing that but he didn’t and a few days later a rock fell inside killing one of his best goats. Despite that he continued to house his animals inside and then one day as my father was by the hotel, he noticed a flash inside the cave and saw my uncle running out together with his donkey. That was the last time my uncle put animals inside that cave and he never spoke about what he saw or witnessed

THE FESTIVAL OF ST.JOHN THE HERMIT IN AZOGIRES

The weather was great this year on St. John the Hermit's festival.

About 60 people showed up and most of them remained after for the traditional feast that has been taking place for the past 300 years; a feast that has been handed down from generation to generation of the
Koukoutsakis family.

Since St. John is our family protector, this year as every year, Tony cooked some of the most delicious steaks I've ever had in my life and furthermore, the wine was great.

You should come next year on the 8th of October!

And don't forget that the Hermit is one of the most powerful Saints in Crete so, if you need something in your life just call out to him and he will help you.

INVASION FROM OLD RESIDENTS

We had an invasion from the Lebadas - Wolfgang and AnnaMaria that is -who have been coming to our village as long as they can remember. (Not to mention that they actually lived here back in the 80s for quite a long while and survived!)

All their children have Ancient Greek names and we hope to see them again next year following their return back home to Austria.

THE VOULISMA - A LOCAL MYSTERY

Many years ago there was a robbery in a merchants store in Azogires and clothing was taken along with other household items. The shop owner asked the villagers if they knew who did it. Luckily for the thieves, no one knew because the Azogirians in those days used to deliver their own brand of justice to criminals such as thieves, and sometimes their justice was rather painful.

So the store owner decided to play the last Card in his deck. He went to the Metropolitan, the most senior priest, and told him that if the items were not returned he, the merchant, would be bankrupted.

The Metropolitan replied that he would help and that the merchant should go home and seven priests would come on the following Sunday to make an Aforesmo ( An Aforesmos is a piece of paper, writen by the Metropolitan himself, and given to seven priests. They would then come to the church and ring the church bells for a long while to warn the thief to give himself up. If he didn't, they would read the paper and whatever the Metropolitan had writen on it would happen to the thief. Most of the time what is writen on is not so nice; death curses and more, things we cannot even imagine today.)

Eventually the seven priests came entered the Church of the 99 Holy Fathers. It was a peacefull afternoon my Grandfather Eftihis Koukoutsakis, who was witness to the events, said, and the whole village gathered there to see what would happen.

In the late afternoon, before they were about to start reading the Aforesmos, the clothing and the other items were spoted hanging on some trees across the mountain from the church.

Immediately the priests stopped. But it wasn't so simple; once this paper is writen there are two choices, either read it or destroy it. However, where do you destroy such an item? Clearly you cannot do it just anywhere because it contains dangerous magic.

So the the priests set out to find a remote position and eventually they did. Between Azogires and Anidri they found deserted spot and here they stopped, placed the paper on the ground, said their prayers so that the magic would not follow them and burned it.

But as the Aforesmos was burning, the ground around it sunk, creating a huge hole, known as a Voulisma meaning "ground that sinks."

Even today you can view this position: if you take the Azogires to Anidri path, as you walk along you will see the sunken land below the path.

Next time you are tempted to steal something, think again, as my Grandfather used to say; and he was trully a wise man

A 54 YEAR OLD MYSTERY SOLVED

For 54 years my father, Antonis Koukoutsakis, had been claiming that he had found a ruin above the Church of St. John the Hermit and for 54 years people were telling him that it doesn't exist.Finally this winter my father told me he discovered it when he was 5 years old and together we decided to go out on a hunt for this ruin. In the end we found it, proving the entire village wrong.
But by closing one mystery we opened another when we found a bizarre shaped piece of metal. Not knowing what it is we brought it down to the Cafe and started asking the locals, only to be told that this is not a tool of any sort.

Well today, six months later, we have proved them wrong once more.

My uncle Pavlos Koukoutsakis who has lived in Athens for the past 40 years, told us that he remembered the ruin and that he kept Honey Bees in it 50 years ago. So I thought it would be wise to show him this piece of metal that we found laying around. He immediatly he recognized it he said

"That's mine, I had that tool for separating the Honey trays inside the Bee hive."

So we returned it to him since he is the rightful owner of it, and it made him twenty years old again by brigning back those old memories

ME PRESENTING THE TOOL BACK TO ITS RIGHTFULL OWNER




MY FATHER TELLING US ABOUT THE DAY HE MADE THE DISCOVERY AT THE AGE OF 5

MY UNCLE REMEMBERING THE GOOD OLD DAYS IN AZOGIRES WITH TEARS NEARLY COMING OUT OF HIS EYES

Tales of Papa Papagregorakis #3

The Evergreen Plane Tree

(The tree is located on the pathway down to the Monastery, just before the 'modern,' but now deserted, olive oil factory. See the map in the Alpha Kafenion.)

Papa Gavriel and the Plane Tree

Some people believed that the Evergreen Plane Tree had some sort of power for Papa Gavriel. The tree originally had 99 crosses formed by its branches, one for each of the Holy Fathers who followed St. John to Azogires, but nowadays there are a lot less.

Once Papa Gavriel was trying to build a bridge down stream from the current one to save the people having to walk up the valley to cross the river. But there was another plane tree in the way. He was cutting off a branch from this tree when another branch fell on his back, injuring him. They took him to the monastery.

The next day the villagers came to see him and offered to use his sharp axe to cut down the offending plane tree.

“What tree?” was Papa Gavriel’s reply.

They went down to the river and there was the offending plane tree: dry, rotting and falling apart.

When they made the road to the monastery the man with the bulldozer tried to remove the Evergreen Plane Tree. The villagers told him not to but he carried on, ignored them and cut into the roots of the tree. As he did, the bulldozer cut out. He started it again but when he cut into the roots it shut down again. The third time he hit the tree, the bulldozer cut out, rolled 5 metres backwards and rolled down the hill. It took another bulldozer to pull it out

In the 1990s there was a merchant who wanted to show that there was nothing special about the Evergreen Plane Tree. He and a friend took a branch of the tree and took it off in their car. Just outside the village the car broke down; it appeared to have run out of petrol.

They came back to the village for help thinking that someone had siphoned the petrol out of their car. When the helpers arrived with petrol can they found the petrol gauge reading full and petrol in the tank. They checked the electrics and the battery; all appeared to be all right but the car still would not start. Then one of the men said,

”Maybe there’s something about the tree after all”

and threw the branch out of the car. They turned the ignition key and the car started immediately.

The Cave of John the Hermit

The cave of St John the Hermit

It’s said that when St John the Hermit arrived in Azogires, around 1300CE, he stayed in a cave up by the Alpha Hotel known as St John’s Cave or the Holy Cave. The cave is believed to have been used for human habitation for several thousand years.

It is still used as a place of worship and during the Second World War, it was used as a hiding place for weapons for the partisans.