Esoteric tourism – what is it? For whom? When you, having traveled half the world, tend to finally approach… yourself. You come back home, to your native land, in search of a higher sense, looking into your own soul, gaining inspiration from the places of power. How many of them are in Ukraine, next to us, in hills and forest meadows, in the desert steppes and large cities – ancient temples and mounds, temples and monasteries, caves, rocks and other natural and man-made wonders. Even a skeptic will bow before the beauty of nature or the genius of human creativity.
You can believe in this or not, you can seek a rational explanation, but not always it can be found. However each of us, for sure, at least once in a lifetime experienced a special atmosphere of a “place of power”, when, you hold your breath, living through the unique psychological experience of joining something mysterious, sacred, and incomprehensible. We will talk about this phenomenon with a journalist, writer, researcher of Ukrainian magicians – molfars and kharakternyks, traveler, author of the book “Signs of Carpathian magic”, as well as the daughter of a famous Ukrainian science fiction writer Oles Berdnyk – Hromovytsia Berdnyk. Finding her own niche in the tourism sector, Hromovytsia shares with readers her travel experience and understanding of what a “place of power” is.
We met in Kyiv on the slopes of the Dnipro River, in the place that Hromovytsia chose – on the territory of Vydubychi Monastery.
Why exactly this place?
Vydubychi Monastery is an unusual place, one of the most powerful places of power in the capital. Apart from architectural sites (the church of the eleventh century is preserved on the territory of the monastery, as well as several temples of the Ukrainian Baroque period), people are attracted here by a special atmosphere of harmony, tranquillity, and peace. In addition, this place is surrounded by secrets.
There is such a theory – the face of Kyiv. One Kyivan architect (Hennadiy Kurovskyi), after studying the Kyiv’s landscape, discovered that the right bank, the entire historical part of the Vydubychi monastery to Syrets (the historical part of Kyiv) resembles a human’s profile. Then I began to study it on my own and saw that at the key points of this face – there are the main shrines that were built in the Kyivan Rus times. Actually, at the top of the head, where the main upper chakra Sahasrara is situated, there is Vydubychi Monastery. That is, it is a point of connection with space, one of the most sacred places in Kyiv. Here you feel the moment of some kind of special communication. However, even a person who is skeptical about such phenomena will be charmed by the beauty and elegance of the architectural ensemble, which harmoniously fits the landscape.
The entire territory of the monastery is a place of power, but the most sacred energy can be felt at St. Michael’s Church.
St. Michael’s Church is the first building that was made of stone on the territory of the monastery (back then all the buildings were wooden). Prince Vsevolod, son of Yaroslav the Wise, founded it in 1070 to honor the birth of his long-awaited son. It was named after the Archangel Michael, who protect from the water element (in particular, the stormy character of the Dnipro). Here the prince’s troops were gathered before going to campaign in order to get a blessing. Perhaps, because of this fact, Archangel Michael had become the patron saint of Kyiv.
In your opinion, what means a place of power?
A place of power is the place where two worlds meet each other: our terrestrial and that celestial world – different, subtle, where gods, spirits, cosmic powers live, where events and phenomena are born. I divide them into two types – these are natural places where special energy is spilled due to certain geological, tectonic and other features – rifts and canyons, for example. They were created this way, they hide deep natural cosmic powers, and people who feel it can come and exchange this power, take or leave something for themselves.
There is also a second type of places – sacred, divine. The simplest example is Christian churches, monasteries, abbeys. A lot of them were built upon old sanctuaries, pre-Christian temples. On the one hand, we can say that the Christian religion thus enshrined its authority by destroying one and building another. However, we can spell it out in another way – the throne is never vacant. Whatever religion would come, no matter how the egregores had changed, they are attracted to the place where this natural force exists.
One priest showed me a very powerful place in the Church of St. Michael (it is two-story church). It situates on the second floor, where the old masonry was preserved. There are still remnants of old logs dated back to the eleventh century, and if you stand between the walls and touch these logs, then it feels a bit different.
Previously, the architects picked up places for construction very carefully. They fasted, asked the higher powers for insight, enlightenment, a sign, they were listening to the “sixth sense” in order to find the most suitable place for this or that building (alongside the fact that they understood very well technical and engineering subtleties of construction). A place suitable for a religious building is not suitable for housing – it will be very difficult to live in it. Now many modern churches are built, and no proper attention is given to the choice of a place, so they “do not work” on the energy level like the ancient churches.
What else is interesting about this place – when my father Oles Berdnyk wrote the novel Star Corsair, he selected the Vydubychi Monastery as the set for a final episode, when the last battle of good and evil is taking place in the spiritual dimension, and in the material world Gorior and Ahriman appear in order to resolve their dispute. Maybe he intuitively chose this place, one of the most powerful in Kyiv, he felt it.
What other buildings, besides Vydubychi Monastery, according to your observations fit into the “Kyiv’s face”?
If you examine, you see that these are all the shrines of the Kyivan Rus times – Vydubychi monastery, Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Golden Gate, St. Sophia’s Cathedral, St. Michael’s Cathedral, St. Cyril’s Church – all of them are inscribed in the key points of this face in this profile. Lavra situates on the place of the “third eye” (where the center of spiritual vision and knowledge is). From the perspective of esotericism, until the key places will be under the control of outside structures, we will be blocked off the spiritual vision, the vision of our future, our individual path of development.
If you look at the map of Ukraine, is there any link between the places of power?
The study of this issue is the purpose of my Spiral of Power project. I want to make a map of the places of power, then draw lines and see what will happen.
The place of power already has energy, but when a person supplements this power with a prayer and care, then it gets stronger.
The thing that makes a person unique as a phenomenon is that he or she is capable of deliberately directing own thought, managing intentions, making decisions, and implementing them. The very places of power are living in their rhythm, their own lives and don’t concern people to a big extent. However, when one comes to places of power, this person can empower them with faith in the sense that they can work more clearly for people. These places should be treated with great respect. After all, in addition to the “mystical” aspect, almost all of them are natural, architectural, historical or archaeological sites.
The eloquent example is the reserve in the village of Busha that is in the Vinnytsia region. There is a famous rock church, which has no analogs in Europe – a deer, a tree, a cock on it, a man below it are depicted on the rock. Scientists still can’t figure out which power this cult was worshiping.
Photo: busha.com.ua
Busha is a very powerful and beautiful place, even from the nature side – rocks, ravines, river, forest… The family of Pirniak, the enthusiasts, turned this abandoned object, which was known only among archaeologists, first in the Busha Historical and Cultural Reserve, and now in the tourist paradise as well. Now they maintain it and develop infrastructure – tourists and travelers can come and have a cozy place to stay.
Some places lack such care and facilities. For example, the Stone Grave Reserve in the Zaporizhia region – a unique place, shrouded by many unsolved mysteries. Unconditionally it is a place of power, where people came to worship the ancient gods for thousands of years. Ancient petroglyphs and other traces of human living were discovered here – 65 locations dated 24,000 BC.
This pile of stones in the middle of the steppe always causes a feeling that it is a sacred mountain, the mythical Mount Meru, a point of communication, some kind of axis between worlds. However, there’s no infrastructure at all. Perhaps, on the one hand, it’s good, because crowds of people would simply destroy this unique sight, they would loot it piece by piece. Now even the most important petroglyphs are covered with earth, in order to protect them from modern vandals.
What is the name for what you are doing: esoteric tourism?
I call it “Journey of Power”. This is not actually tourism. Discovering Ukraine or the world, because our journeys are not only around Ukraine, the travelers get to know themselves better. They not only visit cultural or natural sites, but they also explore their inner world, learn more about themselves. This is a conscious journey, a journey with meaning, with an inner sense. You go somewhere far away to get close to yourself.
In the first place, the journey develops ourselves. The same way our reaction to other countries and cultures speaks more not about the country we’ve visited but about ourselves. If a person doesn’t know how to go to another country, to another culture, to take it properly, with respect, to be opened to another experience, then it speaks a lot about the level of this person’s upbringing, internal culture. Therefore, these “Journeys of Power” are aimed at understanding something about yourself: who you are, whom you can become, whom you are ready to become, or vice versa, not ready.
Each journey has its task, which I ask to focus on – for example, we traveled to Busha on the Independence Day of Ukraine, and I asked those who meditate in these places to visualize Ukraine how they want to see it. And everyone had very interesting feelings.
I want to make a map of places of power and a guidebook, but not just to describe places where you can go, but describe my own way to a certain stage of my life through the prism of these places. This individual experience is multiplied by the experience gained from collaborating with other people. I am interested in finding out how places of power can be set in a particular scheme.
Who are these people that are interested in this kind of journeys?
These are people who have already been everywhere – Africa, Asia, all over Europe, and now they began to explore Ukraine. In the past, tourism was mostly external to us. That is, everyone went to look for enlightenment overseas – esoteric trips to India, Tibet, Nepal, in search of revelations and spiritual insights. Only in the last few years, our people started to realize that there are also powerful energy places in Ukraine.
What do you associate it with?
These places began to be recognized through the openness of the information space. There were first travelers who went there and said that it was cool, described their experience in blogs, social media, articles. Who knew about the Busha relief or the Stone Grave? Only narrow scope researchers who were engaged in archaeological research. Now the world is open, people even write about small villages, about the interesting things that you can find there. For example, by chance, I found out about Krasnoiilsk Malanka in the Chernivtsi region from my blogger friends.
I appreciate those people who make Krasnoiilsk Malanka because they don’t allow themselves to go down to the tourist kitsch – they do it for themselves. They could have already build a hotel, sell mulled wine and souvenirs, but there is no mulled wine, there is no hotel, but these suits are superb, and the guys who turn into “guardians of the world” for one night. This makes you high, the energy, it’s like you fall into the mythical reality that they create. Or let’s take the original Moshul rite in Orlivka, in the Odesa region.
With all due respect, in Vashkivtsi (Chernivtsi region), you don’t have this feeling during Malanka holiday. Ten years ago, there was a tradition, authentic masks. The old custom was kept – the hamlets competed for the best Malanka. In ten years of tourism, it all transformed, “modernized”, and for me, as for researcher and ethnographer – there is nothing to look at.
Two sides of the same coin- on the one side it is interesting to learn about folk customs, on the other side, popularization kills them.
This is not popularization, but vulgarization, “kitschization”. In my project I try to emphasize for travelers – watch, touch, learn and try to understand – the longer the ritual will remain in its original form, the better for the place and for the whole world.
The places of power are the points where two worlds are connected, where we have access to the celestial world and we can bring some energy from there and it can help us to live in this world. Similarly, these rites that are kept hold the balance between the worlds – if they disappear, our world will disappear as well. In the Carpathians, they say: “As long as there are carols, as long as there are Easter eggs, the world withstands.”
Often, bearers of rituals don’t understand their meaning and sacred subtext, they simply do it as it was in great-grandfather’s times, from time immemorial. When they do it for themselves, they follow the traditions. When they see that there is interest among the tourists, this can be exploited (as in Vashkivtsi), then the ritual becomes a spectacle, losing its originality and value. Perhaps we need to tell them – people, save authenticity!
So, such trips are useful not only for travelers who set off to know themselves, but they also help bearers of traditions, ceremonies or residents of places of power to understand their value, uniqueness, and importance. There are cases when stones from architectural or archaeological sites are stolen for construction works, timber is cut down, mounds are destroyed – they destroy what represents an interest to other people and to the world culture as a whole… As a rule, people who live every day surrounded by beauty do not notice it. It becomes a routine for them.
One of the tasks I want to accomplish due to this activity is to emphasize those unique things I have seen and I value in people who keep these places and customs. It is very important to actualize people, to emphasize the importance of their mission, encouraging others by examples of such guardians as the family of Pirniak in Busha or the guys from Krasnoiilsk or Orlivka. I would like my project “Spiral of Power” to awaken in Ukrainians a sense of self-esteem, self-identity, involvement in the great culture that existed on these lands, the awareness that magic, spread over the places of power is suitable for creating a decent life.
Thoughts and ideas of subjects do not necessarily coincide the views of the editorial board.
By Darya Garmyder
Photo by Yulia Kryzhevska
