Lamproba: Lanterns for the dead in Svaneti

It is dark. It is dark even late in the morning, and it is already getting dark in the early afternoon. The only source of light is the snow that has accumulated over the months, while the few objects that still have the desire to stand out in front of the snow, shine in black: fences, tombstones, a few animals returning home. All the colors have been lost, only two remain, the white of death and the black of life.

At the time of this final whitening and blackening of the world, the birch branches of Lamproba, the festival of lanterns, are lit in Svaneti. On the night of February 14, when the more-than-four-month winter has been going on too long even for the living, let alone the dead. The village gathers for midnight mass in the church, a bonfire is lit in front of the church, and after the service, each lights a birch branch from it and places it at the graves of their dear dead.

Anna Kacheishvili has been traveling from the distant capital to Svaneti for the Lamproba festival since 2015. In the winter of the ninth year, she published a photo album and organized an exhibition of her pictures in the garden of the Svaneti Museum. The Mies van der Rohe-style grids of the iron stands desperately try to project some order behind the images, which speak of a completely different, mystical order. Their otherworldliness is also emphasized by the counterpoint of spring nature that, in the meantime, has sprouted behind the photos. The exhibition is titled Gilgamesh, about the man who tried to bring light to his dear friend in the underworld. He failed to bring him back, but he learned from him what death is.

On the border of two Tibets. Dzokchen Monastery (Traveling in Kham 7)

Traveling in Kham: • Jashideley! • Burial in the sky

• Kangding, the gateway of Tibet • The Love Song of Kangding • The monastery of Tagong • The Buddhas of Drakgo

• The towers of the Himalayas • Nomadic wedding in Tibet • On the border of two Tibets. Dzokchen Monastery

“We are invited to stay, but we still have a long way to Dergê”, I finished the last entry about Garzê in our Eastern Tibetan travel diary.

The town of Derge – in Chinese Dege 德格 – was built on the border of Kham Province or Eastern Tibet and today’s Tibet Autonomous Region, in a narrow valley of a tributary of the Yangtze, since the upper reaches of the Yangtze are the border between the two provinces. Back in the 13th century, the Mongols appointed a governor to rule the town and its surroundings, who, after the end of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, declared his small territory – half the size of Hungary – an independent kingdom. This was also recognized by the Chinese Qing dynasty, which conquered Kham in 1720 and bestowed the Derge king with the title of tusi, i.e. Chinese vassal ruler. The kingdom survived until the Republic of China, which gradually absorbed the semi-independent ethnic border provinces previously ruled by tusis into the unified Chinese administration. The Derge Kingdom was annexed to Sichuan in 1918.

In the 9th century, when the Tibetan Kingdom dissolved, and the provincial lords who followed the pre-Buddhist shamanic religion of Bon, began to persecute Buddhism, the kingdom’s official religion, the monks found refuge in the peripheral regions of Tibet, in the western Ladakh and the eastern Kham. The Nyingma order, founded in the 8th century, settled mainly around Derge, among mountains difficult to access. When, in the 11th century, Buddhism became the dominant religion of Tibet again, the Nyingma did not return to the central parts, but continued to keep up their mother monasteries here. We are going to visit some of these now.

Derge Kingdom from the Historical Atlas of Tibet. The border between Kham and Tibet, marked with dashes, has since shifted slightly to the east and runs in the Yangtze (Jinsha) Valley. The red circles indicate the most important monasteries we visited (in this post I will write about Dzokchen, and the others follow in the next ones). On the right edge of the map is indicated Garzê, visited in the previous posts, under the name of Kandze

From Garzê to Derge, the road is only one hundred and eighty kilometers – but what a hundred and eighty! The road first runs in the wide valley of the Yalong River, between small monasteries with golden roofs, and then, leaving the valley to the west, it gradually rises, from two thousand meters to almost five thousand. After a while, the trees disappear, and there remains only the beautiful green lawn. And  the jagged mountain ridges covered with last year’s snow. And the small rivers that flow abundantly from every mountainside. And the nomads and yaks that live everywhere.

The yaks not only live, but sometimes also die, and if this happens unplanned, then the hour of the vultures comes. As we approach the 4,500-meter Haizishan Pass (or rather the five-kilometer tunnel that leads underneath it), we see them circling in the sky, sometimes descending very low and then soaring again. We stop to see if I can get a close-up shot. As I get out, I am shocked to see that there’s one standing a few meters from me, like a well-developed hen, not bothering itself. A little further away, another one, then another. They are standing, then move a little, sometimes flap their wings. What is going on here? I only understand it by looking down into the canyon along the road. These ones are on guard duty here, while the others are feasting on the carcass of a yak down there. Sometimes they quarrel over a bite, but the consumption is basically going on at a good pace. Sometimes one or another guard flies down there, and gets replaced by someone. Some of the guards are watching the promising yak herds grazing on the other side of the canyon. It’s only when I get back to the car that I see, looking towards the pass, what a magnificent guard line they’ve formed.

After a bend in the road leading up the high mountainside, the monastery town of Dzokchen, built around one of the most prestigious monasteries of the Nyingma order, unexpectedly reveals itself. The monastery is not yet visible from here, only a few of its golden domes peek out from behind the green hill on the left edge of the first photo. This is still just the town of Dzokchen, and the large Tibetan-style building in the middle is a modern pilgrim hotel. The town suddenly transitions into the countryside. Past the last houses, immediately come the pastures with nomadic tents, herds of yaks visiting the town, and stones carved with Buddhist holy images and texts scattered across the field.

The monastery of Dzokchen is as grand and magnificent as is fit for a mother monastery. The path to its main temple leads between rows of six large white elephants with six tusks, each of which is the most prestigious symbol of the Buddha. It also impresses the pilgrims, especially the young lamas from distant, smaller monasteries, who visit the temples with great enthusiasm and take photos of each other in front of them. Their enthusiasm reaches its peak when they discover me as the most exotic object in the field, and they all want a picture together with me. In return, I also take pictures of them. They lead me into the great temple, where a ceremony is currently taking place. There are about five hundred monks living in the monastery, many of whom are here now.

Easter Sunday in Sardinia

Every year we return to Oliena for Easter Sunday, the feast of s’incontru, the meeting, when the statues of the risen Christ and Mary, carried by Sardinian men and women, meet each other on the lavender carpet of the main square, and Christ bows before His mother. The ceremony is the same every year, and yet it is always new. The faces are different, the children are a year older, their last year’s costumes are given to new little ones, other boys gather to sing four-part Sardinian folk songs, the young accordionist who last year led the dance in a girl’s dress, now wears a boy’s dress… And even what is the same seems new after a year: how they relive the centuries-old tradition, with full devotion, in traditional dress and ceremony, but as a part of their modern lives, not as a tourist attraction, but as a celebration for themselves, to affirm their own identity.

There had been heavy rain in Sardinia during the previous days, and this morning it was still drizzling, so it’s no wonder that at nine in the morning there are hardly any people in the usually crowded main square. Only the descendants of the bandits are firing rifles in front of the church, the eldest son of each clan with the ancient flint.

We go to the church of the Holy Cross on the edge of the old town, whence the procession of the statue of Christ will start. For now, the church is empty, only its floor is sprinkled with lavender, and a few woman are waiting in- and outside. But soon the procession arrives from the Franciscan church, where the body of Christ spent the previous day and two nights after the deposition from the cross on Good Friday evening. The statue is carried into the church. The assistants, chatting and offering cakes, are waiting for the ten o’clock bell to ring, when the procession will start for the main square.

At the sound of the bells, the statue is raised. The flag bearers of the religious companies stand behind it, and the procession steps out of the church gate. They move slowly, stopping at every corner, waiting for news of how the other procession with the statue of Mary is progressing.

The main square is already full. The villagers, dressed in traditional costumes, stand in two lines on both sides of the path strewn with lavender branches, waiting for the two processions to enter and for the two main characters to meet. As the statue bearers see each other at the end of the two streets leading onto the square, the processions start, and the statue of Christ bows before His mother, the Sardinian men carrying it before the Sardinian women carrying Mary, amidst the deafening gunfire of the bandits.

Then the two processions, joined by the spectators, march up the main street to the parish church, where the Easter mass begins.

Only a part of the participants go into the church. Most of them stay on the church street, where all the bars are open and running at their peak. They huddle in groups, talking and drinking, and some boys practicing four-part Sardinian songs. Not as a performance for the audience: this is also part of the local identity, renewed every year.

At the end of the mass, the people in the church also come out. The accordionists rehearse in the middle of the church square, and then the round dance begins, in which the whole village participates, regardless of traditional costume. This year, another national dress appears on the square: the colorful outfits of four young women from Dubai, which look like Muslim national costumes. They clap and wave happily from the audience, but they do not join in the dance. In the intervals I hear local families coming up to them and inviting them to lunch in broken English.

This is the accordionist boy (?) who played last year as a girl

And the climax of the dance: when the villagers dance not to the accordion, but to a four-part Sardinian choir, as they did for centuries, before the arrival of the first accordion. Everyone feels the solemnity and historical depth of the moment, and at the end they applaud the singers for a long time.

Even in the day of Easter Sunday and s’incontru, in Italy the greatest sacrament is the Sunday family lunch. Being late for it is a bigger sin than being late for church. So after the choir, most of the spectators start to leave. The Dubai girls are herded home by an elderly couple dressed in traditional costume. We also head down to the beach of Cala Gonone, to eat fish at the cave of the sea cows.

Happy Easter

“Down with Easter!”

Easter – as we have amply documented here among the Poemas del Río Wang – is celebrated in many ways in many places around the world, where it is celebrated at all. It may sound surprising, but it was also celebrated in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. This 1933 photo testifies to this.

The inscription on the school board reads: “Who was in church at Easter?” and the little pioneers write down the names of those they know were there. We can only imagine what happens next: if you were lucky enough to experience similar harassment in Hungary in the 1970s, you have an advantage.

Some data: Between 1929 and 1941, only 500 of the 29,000 churches in the Soviet Union remained open, and in 1937 alone, 85,000 Orthodox priests were executed.

But let’s look at the bright side of life: according to this, during the bloody persecution of the church between 1929 and 1941, there was still a church somewhere in the Soviet Union where Easter services were held, a priest to hold it and some believers to attend it.

Although this is not certain either. After all, under what circumstances could this picture have been taken? It is unlikely that the official photographer was there at the time of a spontaneous school humiliation and caught it on camera. Most of the official photos taken in the 1930s are pre-arranged propaganda photos. This picture may also fit into the great anti-religious campaign between 1929 and 1941, and illustrates not an actual, but a desired practice. There may no longer have been a functioning church in the site. Just as the fat and greedy priests who were often paraded as enemies in the campaign had already been completely killed or deported to labor camps.

“Training for Easter”

However, if there was no church, then there were no churchgoers either. Then the picture does not depict a real humiliation, and the names are fictitious. Which also has its bright side.