MODELOS DE VIVIENDA PROGRESIVA, POSIBI LIDADES Y LIMITACIONES EN EL ESCENARIO

In the context of collective life, masturbation is an act of self-pleasure that breaks the sacred rule of the virginity. It demonstrates a ‘love of the self’ (filautia) in opposition to love of God, exemplified by, and within, the communal values of Vatopaidi.

Consequently, masturbation is thought to be both an uncontrolled excessive and selfish act; conversely celibacy, as opposed to masturbation, has its own logic, which is projected onto the natural environment itself. For instance, according to the tradition of the Avaton, monks are not allowed to keep any female cattle and other female domestic animals, except: horses used at the mills, donkeys used to carry things, and cats kept in the garden as a natural weapon against pests, rats, snakes and scorpions. Furthermore, the timetable of the cats is exactly the same as that of the monks: the cats eat when the monks eat, they gather outside the Church when the monks are inside praying during the liturgies, and when the monks sleep or stay inside their cells the cats also rest in at the backyard of the garden. Even more strangely, most of the cats have black fur similar to the black colour of the monastic cap that symbolizes the constant mourning of the monk. In other words, monks and cats are ‘dressed’ the same, naturalizing the

prominent black colour of the monasteries, a relationship that the Vatopaidians describe as a ‘symbiosis of man and nature’: ‘Look at the cats. They mate only to reproduce because this is how God wanted it. He (god) didn’t want them to mate for pleasure’ [priest-monk 6/10/02].

Cats exemplify the naturalized ‘fact’ that sexual activity should never be carried out because of desire, or for pleasure, but only for productivity. This is another

demonstration of the Vatopaidian value of economy (see chapter 6) as the practical compromise towards the impossibility of ‘virginity’: while cats, like the other animals and insects of the peninsula, do indeed reproduce themselves sexually, this act is

sinful, but animals reproduce without having sexual pleasure. Accordingly, for

Christians ‘sex before marriage is against the nature of things (para fysin). There is no logic in it; there is no meaning in it. What Adam and Eve did was irrational (para-

logo), out of the order of logic (logiki taksis)’ [priest-monk 6/10/02]. In response to the

wicked tricks of the Devil, the human has to defend his/her nature to reach God. The word ‘confused’ used above in describing the humans’ entrapment in the Devil’s will suggests that physis is strongly associated with order, while sin is seen as an act against God’s ‘logical order’ (physiki taksis) that causes social disorder.

As already mentioned, the virginity of the place does not allow anyone to bare any parts of their body as everyone has to wear long-sleeved cloths and grow a beard if he wishes to stay on Athos for longer periods. The practical reason for this is to avoid touching others, or yourself. The Vatopaidians need to be constantly aware of such immoral pollution. One morning I was petting the cats in the monastery’s garden. The moment I touched my favorite black cat I heard the angry voice of young monk, shouting: ‘Don’t touch the damn cats! They’re dirty!’ Later that week, the priest-monk who was

supervising me at work told me in a didactic tone that I should never touch the cats because they are polluted:

‘Animals do not have a soul. They are part of God’s ktisis (creation/building). Humans have the freedom to choose their path, animals do not. As Osios Selouanos writes the humans must never show any passions toward animals because they are dirty. When Jesus exorcised the demon from the possessed, the demon was

transferred to the pigs. The Christian must love Creation as a whole and not in parts. Because if you love the animals, there is the danger that you are going to love the (things which were) created and not the Creator’

The monks have to avoid touching the cats in case they develop a personal attachment to them, which could lead to passions such as desire and self-indulgence. To teach me about not touching the cats, another monk along with a number of novices working at the kitchen the next morning began kicking the little kittens in the air, laughing. I thought the monk was abusive and crazy. ‘Is this the mild manner of the Vatopaidians?’ I bitterly wondered. But later I came to realize that in this cruel public way, the whole community was trying to make me understand my hypocritical position in their eyes, as they are the ones who take care of the cats, and although man and cat depend on each other, the monks have to keep away and never touch them (in the same way they keep

away from visitors), in order not to feel empathy and passionate love for the animal. In the same way they cannot touch themselves or others, as they have to be fully dressed. The morality underlying the dressing code is echoed by the virgin landscape, and the rule of Avaton that prohibits sexual reproduction, which separates Athos from the material world. The prohibition of touch is, in other words, the practical application of the ideal of apatheia (‘no passions’, see ‘economy of passions’ below). An old monk advised me one evening: ‘you should always keep your thoughts toward the sky, toward Heaven. The birds fly high, and from up there they watch a tiny world, made of small walls, and squares with buildings, and tiny people who move like ants. Power, money, fame, and fortune, all seem so small from up there…That’s how people should see the world; that is the real world’ [personal communication with old monk 5/5/03]. In the same way, the monks stay detached from the worldly world they also do not touch their naked bodies. In this sense, the monastic and ‘virgin’ body of the monk becomes the social microcosm of the entire Athonian society (as in Douglas’s reading of the body (Caplan 1996: 14).

In sum, the prohibition of touch is an aspect of learning to control the body, both in terms of thought and in terms of the physical senses. The value of filoponia, to be a ‘friend of pain’, echoes Foucault’s definition of monastic life in terms of ‘confession, self-accusation, struggle against temptation, renunciation, spiritual combat’ (1992: 63) in a moral and esoteric struggle against the memory of flesh. The ‘Porno Demon’ is a mythological expression of this ‘logic’, as it is the thought of a naked woman that is a

sin in itself; the act of masturbation is only a symptom that reveals the selfishness

behind the thought: ‘It is not the act, but only the thought of the act that is sinful in itself’ [Vatopaidian priest-monk 12/402]. In this context, Seidler argued that in monasteries ‘sexuality is often defined in terms of desire rather than activity’ (1996: 92). Similarly, in the same collection of essays, Weeks argued that in ‘social purity organizations... desire was a dangerous force which pre-existed the individual, wracking his feeble body with fantasies and distractions which threatened his individuality and sanity’ (Weeks 1996: 36). Sexuality is identified with ‘animality’ (Seidler 1996: 87) that must be controlled as the means of achieving self-knowledge: ‘Just as emotions and feelings are treated as mental phenomena, so are sexual desires... The body is to be feared because it threatens to disturb and upset the kind of control so

closely identified with masculinity’ (Ibid: 91). Masculinity is conceived as independent from the emotional or lustful ties ‘women’ represent, as mothers or lovers respectively (see chapters 3.4-3.5, and 4.2 in respect to the figure of Mary and male independence).

PART II: NIGHT VIGIL