Serifos Hiking Adventures: The Road to Taxiarchon

The Mosuleum of the Taxiarchon Monastery on Serifos.

One final stop for me on the island of Serifos was the Monastery of the Taxiarchon.

Taxiarchon is a rough translation. It indicates what English speaking Christians would refer to as Archangels. Taxi means to move. Archon or "arches" indicates one who oversees or arches over a group. So The Monastery of Taxiarchon is The Monastery of the Archangels.

This time I remembered my scissors to gather wild grapes along the road, and retraced my steps to Piraeus.

From there, the road to the Monastery, founded in the 15th century, is about 7 km of seaviews. I found a driftwood walking stick and began clopping my hiking booths through delicate clouds of hatching flies, tiny spiders flying through the air on a single thread of their own silk. I offered some of my homemade bread to ants along the road.

Taxiarchon is a tidy white compound with a mosoleum and a chicken coop. I climbed a flight of stone steps and crept through a wooden hatch door.

On the other side, the pink double doors of the monastery’s inner sanctum came into my view, buttressed by an overhang of olive trees.

The sanctum was located in a depression in the middle of two levels of surrounding walkways. Every few feet, hatch doors marked the monk’s quarters.

A few of these tiny meditation chambers were open. They looked like dorm rooms for very small students. Not much headroom at all, so indicating seated or resting meditation. The were tidy friendly digs with refrigerators and stickers, degrees and portraits.

The leader of the order opened up the sanctum for me to inspect. I had not been inside a Greek Orthodox church of this caliber to my recollection.

The sanctum held about a dozen irreplacable artifacts. According to the leader of the order, each was about 100 years older than the next. The oldest, an Arabian cistern, dated back from shortly after the founding of the order. It resembled a very tall amphora and was posted next to arm rests, apparently made from olive wood, for the monks, who stand between them for several hours during organized prayers.

Just to the left of this this was a wall of tin press fetish articles, hands and throats and hearts, my understanding is that these indicatet illnesses and infirmities the monks have prayed for.

Additional artifacts in the room included a handsome Egyptian incense burner, just over the entry and a woven gold and platinum thread tapestry depicting the entombed body of Jesus surrounded by his apostles.

I made a donation of 2 Euros to the order. In return, I recieved a nougat of the type made by the order to support their work. It had the consistency of marshmallow, with the milk-and-honey flavor of Greek confectioners sugar.