Enroute to Cappadocia in January 1998, I stopped in Greece for a week to visit a man whom I had met on the Internet. I'll refer to him as John. He lives in Athens, but his large family owns an historic, 200-year-old "castle" in a small village south of Sparta and Areopolis in the Peloponnesus region. At an Internet mailing list to which John and I had been subscribed, he had been informing me and the rest of the group about strange phenomena which were occurring in the southern Peloponnesus, including the notorious "Gates of Hades", the primary motivation for my visit. The following two maps show the region which I am discussing. You will notice in the relief map on the left that three finger-like peninsulas extend southwards at the bottom of the Peloponnesus. If you save these maps to disk and zoom in on them or blow them up, you can see more detail than here. In the map on the left, I have placed a black circle at the end of the middle peninsula. The roadmap on the right depicts this local area in greater detail.
The Gates of Hades are (is) situated at the extreme southern end of the middle peninsula, where the cross symbol denotes the location of a lighthouse. This is the southernmost limit of the Continent of Europe; and when one looks due-south from this lighthouse, one is looking in the direction of western Ancient Egypt, or eastern modern Libya. This area is a part of the Mediterranean Sea where several ocean currents converge, resulting in numerous shipwrecks against this rocky coastline over the centuries. Thus, in fairly recent times, the Greek Government built a lighthouse to alert ships not to approach too closely to these potentially dangerous convergent currents. Since there is no roadway from Tainaro, the nearest village, to the location of the lighthouse, nor any feasible spot at which to dock a cargo ship below the lighthouse, undoubtedly all of the materials used to construct this lighthouse had to have been brought manually overland from Tainaro. Additional information about this will follow later in the narrative, but I could point out here that this convergence of treacherous ocean currents is similar to the convergence of two primary Pacific Ocean currents at Carmel, California.
In the map on the right, you can see Sparta at the top. Southeast of Sparta is the ancient Spartan port city of Gytheion, from where one can drive southwesterly to Areopolis. Secondary roads lead farther south to Tainaro and the lighthouse. Tainaro (indicated here as Akr. Tainaron) would be located at about the place of the "intersection" on the cross symbol, 2-3 miles (3-4 kilometers) north of the lighthouse, where the country road dead-ends near the Psychomantium of Poseidon, discussed below. Just south of Areopolis on the right map, you can see what is called "Dirou Grotte", indicating the Diros Cave, also discussed below. John's family castle is located a bit north of Gerolimen. The distance from Areopolis to Gerolimen is 26 kilometers, or about 16 miles. On the map you can see the number 26 just south of the Diros Cave. To the west (left) of that number you can see two mini-peninsulas that jut out from the coastline, forming a sort of cove in between. The more southwestern of the two is Devil's Mountain, shown below. The Tsitsiris Castle Hotel is located on this cove, which is visible from John's castle's second-floor terrazzo. The sprawling Tsitsiris Castle is the largest one in this area, but there are several of these old "castles" in the general vicinity.
On the left is a picture of John; on the right, his family castle in the Peloponnesus. There are only a half-dozen windows in this castle; the uppermost area is an old lookout tower from which one could fire on approaching "enemies". This is a four-story structure. On the ground-floor level, it has an old olive press that was pulled by donkeys, along with a storeroom for tools. I could tell by looking at this old olive press, by all the accumulated dust, that it had not been used in years. The second floor contains the main living area, with additional sleeping quarters on the third level. The uppermost "battlement" is a single large room with windows facing in all directions. The walls of this castle are about 2-feet thick, made of solid rock. As I visited there in January, it was extremely cold in this castle during the nighttime. In fact, I have never been so cold whilst sleeping in my whole life. I had two small electric space heaters next to my bed, and I slept in my clothes underneath three blankets -- and I was still cold! John and I talked about this, of course, and he said that usually the family does not visit the castle in wintertime, but he added that in the heat of the summer, the castle feels "naturally" air-conditioned. At night, when I was sleeping there, I was thinking about prisoners in ancient dungeons in castles like this, prisoners who had no electric space heaters or blankets; and it literally made me terrified of such a prospect.
Although John and I drove in his car from Athens to the castle, he is also a motorcycle enthusiast. He owns three motorcycles and has raced them on numerous occasions in both Athens and Sparta.
After a couple of brief stop-overs in Madrid and Venice, I arrived in Athens on Sunday afternoon, January 11, 1998. John met me at the airport, and we drove to his three-story home in the north Athens Petroypolis District. We had a marvelous dinner with his large family and then partied until the wee-hours at a posh north Athens nightclub, the Club Apollos, a large split-level, California-style club and restaurant with patios on a mountaintop overlooking the City of Athens -- very Los Angeles in every respect. Monday afternoon we departed for the Peloponnesus and arrived in Sparta at sunset. Sparta is a lovely and bustling little city. Its main boulevard through the middle of downtown is lined with citrus trees. We parked near a newsstand so that John could make an inquiry about something. Even in cold January there were oranges hanging on these boulevard citrus trees; and when John was gone, I amused myself by picking a couple of oranges and eating them.
From Sparta we drove to nearby Gytheion, the ancient port city for the Spartans. Gytheion has a completely enclosed harbor that could be easily patrolled by even an ancient navy. It was the main "safe-haven" port for the ancient Spartans. Anthony and Cleopatra once sailed into Gytheion for a clandestine romantic rendezvous. And why not? Gytheion is one of the most beautiful small cities that I have ever seen in my travels. Unfortunately, John and I arrived after dark that Monday (and on the return trip, at twilight), so I have no photographs of this breath-taking seaport. There is a "corniche" that runs alongside the harbor with sidewalk cafes. On the other side of this corniche avenue are numerous hotels, restaurants and classy shops. We ate Greek seafood dishes on both occasions -- molto delizioso!
We arrived at the castle around 10 PM. After unloading the car and getting settled in, I used John's laptop computer to send some messages to our Internet mailing list about my travel activities on my way to Tyana, Cappadocia. Whilst I was working at the computer, John was outside on the castle terrazzo, looking for UFOs over Devil's Mountain.
The next morning, I took this photo from one of the castle windows in the main bedroom, looking westwardly towards the cove that I mentioned earlier. Adjacent to this castle is some of John's family property, which includes a large olive grove with about 2,000 trees. This part of Greece is "Kalamata Olive Country", where all of the world's Kalamata Olives are grown. There were literally millions of Kalamata olive trees around here. John's late uncle (mother's older brother) used to live at the castle and depended upon these olives as his source of income. Since his death, the Athens family now rents the olive grove to someone else who pays them a commission based upon the amount of olive oil that he produces each year. I picked a few of these olives right off the tree, and they were very bitter to taste. I found out later that the reason that olives are cured in brine is to eliminate this bitter taste from the commercial product. I was most impressed by this experience and subsequent tidbit of information, as olives and olive oil are two of my very favorite food products.
The local animals deserve some mention, also. The "Dog-Star" Sirius was the guardian star of Ancient Sparta. Today there are dogs running loose everywhere, and they are some of the most exotic and splendid dogs that I have ever seen. Once when John and I stopped for gasoline, we noticed a couple of large dogs standing up on their hind legs and embracing each other with their forelegs and kissing each other, almost like humans! It was a sight that neither one of us had ever seen before. Around John's castle there were numerous wild cats that climbed around on the castle ledges and sunned themselves on rooftops. It is the custom in John's family that when someone visits the castle, they place little pieces of bread out for these cats to eat. I thought that this was an unusual practice, since I have never heard that cats would eat bread; but these cats ate it up. Also, one night when we were arriving back at the castle along the country lane that is pictured above, we confronted a herd of young donkeys that were out on the prowl together like pack of errant schoolboys. Suffice it to say that if you ever visit Greece, you should make it a point to include a few days in the Peloponnesus, if possible at the Tsitsiris Castle Hotel. This is some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet; my photos, as lovely as they are, do not even begin to do justice to this place.
In the above photograph of John's castle, the view is looking north along the country lane. If one were to walk northwards past the castle and on about the length of a football field, one comes to a path that leads into a neighbor's olive grove. A couple of men were picking olives in the distance. John led me down this pathway for perhaps a couple of kilometers, where we arrived at a peculiar sort of rock pile next to the path. We climbed over these rocks and hiked across a rocky area until we reached a gigantic hole that precipitously sloped down into the ground. It is a "bottomless pit", approximately 20 feet or 7 meters across, that apparently reaches down to a watery cave. People have thrown dead animals into that pit, for instance, only to find them washed up on the nearby seacoast. We dared not approach closer than about a meter to this pitch-dark hole. I hurled a large rock into the hole, but it never hit bottom. We looked around for something other than a rock to throw in, and we found an old tin can near the rock pile. So we threw that into the hole. We could hear it clanking inside as it bounced off the walls of the pit, but we did not hear it hit the bottom. Yes, very spooky. I was a bit surprised that it wasn't fenced off. If that were in America, it would be surrounded by barbed wire and warning signs to keep people from accidentally falling in.
This photograph was taken from west of the castle. I walked a short way over towards the cove to take the picture. You can see in the distance a flat promontory jutting out from the coast. That is Devil's Mountain, and a local legend has it that a "Demon" lives inside the mountain and periodically causes some trouble for people. The Tsitsiris Castle is located about halfway between here and Devil's Mountain. According to John, numerous UFOs have been sighted flying over Devil's Mountain, hence the name. In fact, John's grandmother, an elderly woman whom I met in Athens at the family dinner party, said that she and two of her sons (uncles of John) had seen a UFO over Devil's Mountain one time when they were driving along a local country road. John's grandmother is about as "normal" an old lady as there is, and certainly she was not lying to me, although she seemed a bit embarrassed or shy when I started questioning her intently about this "encounter". Whilst John and I were at the castle, however, we spotted no UFOs, unfortunately.
John and I spent all of Tuesday, Wednesday and part of Thursday in this area. We returned to Athens on Thursday evening, stopping again in Gytheion for dinner. Then I departed for Istanbul on Sunday, January 18. During this time, John and I drove to visit the Diros Cave between his castle and Areopolis (where we went to eat our meals at a homestyle local restaurant). Going north, when you turn left off the main country road from the castle to Areopolis to visit the Diros Cave, above is the view from that road. You'll notice little "dark spots" on the coastline. These are entrances to "underground waterway passages" or "water caves" in this area. Diros is the only one of these local "caves" that is open for tourist purposes. A German explorer, for example, has been attempting to map all of these caves and link them together. The problem with such a project is that only the Diros Cave has electric lighting. When one attempts to enter these other caves, they are pitch-black inside, so nobody has ever been able to map the entire network of caves, which John told me are probably ultimately linked underground to the main Gates of Hades cave entrance, just south of Tainaro, west of the lighthouse.
In the Baedeker tourist guide of Greece, we can read that the Greek Speleological Association has a record of more than 7,500 karstic (or seashore) caves on the Greek mainland and the islands. Several thousand of them have already been explored and mapped, and many of them are open to visitors. Of all these, only about 28, including the Diros Cave, are very well-known to the public. The Gates of Hades is not listed amongst them.
In ancient times the area around the Gates of Hades was thought to be one of the entrances to the Underworld, where Herakles descended in quest of the dog Kerberos. Its general maritime location was the scene of naval action in the Second World War. In this area of Greece there are numerous military communications facilities, but the rocky terrain of the land has made foreign invasion and occupation practically impossible.
These are photographs taken inside the Diros Cave (using a flash). You pay your admission fee and board a small rowboat. Besides John and me, there were two other tourists in our rowboat. The boatman used a pole to propel the boat along the cave waterway, in much the same manner that Venetian gondoliers negotiate the canals of Venice. In the lefthand photo, this is a shallow passageway from one area of the greater cave to another. The righthand photo shows a typical "streamside view" of what the cave's "banks" look like. At the family dinner party on Sunday, both John's grandmother and mother said that they had once toured the Diros Cave out of curiosity and that it had "scared them to death", so to speak. John's mother said that she never wanted to make such a claustrophobic trip again. The tour lasted about half an hour. Most fascinating! When we exited the cave, there was an artificial "dock" of sorts, from which we had to climb up a stairway to reach ground-level again. Even the Diros Cave has not been fully explored and lighted yet. Thus, it is not surprising that so very little is known about the entire extent of all these underground cave waterways that permeate the Peloponnesus.
It was so deathly quiet inside that Diros Cave. As the boatman took us along the cave's waterway, I was thinking to myself how that back in ancient times, if one had wished to explore such a frightful water-cave, one would have had to use a primitive torch to light the way. The quietness of the tour, the gentle splashing sound of the water against the sides of the rowboat, created an eerie feeling, as if we were being steered by Styx into the ancient "Underworld" of Hades.
QUOTE from some material on the Web follows. If you have any questions, email me below.
The name Hades can lead to some confusion, for it was used by the ancient Greeks both for the god who ruled the Underworld and for the kingdom of the Underworld itself. Though it was the world of the dead, the Greek Hades was not like the later idea of hell, a place where the damned go to suffer eternal torment. It was a place where all the dead -- good or bad -- journeyed, guided there by the messenger god Hermes. Only when they arrived was their fate decided. Some, particularly those who had offended the gods, did suffer, but those who had been wise and kind, and those who had achieved brave deeds, could lead an afterlife of great happiness. Over all such matters ruled the god Hades, a stern but at the same time always just king.
Hades himself does not feature strongly in Greek legends because once he had been established as Lord of the Underworld, he seldom left it. Once or twice, when a nymph caught his fancy, he ventured out in his chariot with its sinister-looking black horses, and on one brief visit to earth he seized Demeter's daughter Persephone. But generally, Hades stayed out of sight in his own kingdom.
The kingdom of Hades, however, plays a most important part in Greek legends. Many of the Greek heroes, together with other gods, visited it for one reason or another while they were still living. A favourite task for a god to set a mortal was to go to Hades and bring back some object or token of the visit. It needed great ingenuity (or the help of a magic spell) for a mortal to get both into Hades and out again.
In the very early days, it was believed that Hades lay far to the west, beyond the horizon where the river Oceanus, which encircled the earth, began. Later, some stories contained descriptions of dark caverns and long, gloomy passages which led down to the Underworld from districts on the mainland of Greece such as Thesprotia in the west or from across the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor. But wherever they entered, the dead could always rely on Hermes to show them the way.
UNQUOTE. Unfortunately, I did not retain the URL for this information, which I found in connection with a recent web search for other things. However, I have no doubt about its authenticity, and so I have included it here. The above information is an excellent summary of the Greek Hades. And the mention of ancient caverns and gloomy passages into the Underworld is quite significant, I think.
As an aside, let me also add here that Apollonius of Tyana roamed around this same area of Greece during his lifetime. He was granted permission to enter a cave of Hermes called the Cave of Trophonius. It is said that Apollonius retrieved the Emerald Tablets of Thoth/Hermes from this cave and that these valuable documents, inscribed on solid jade, ended up in the personal imperial library of Emperor Hadrian at Rome around the year 110 CE. Did Apollonius visit the Diros Cave? Did Apollonius enter the Gates of Hades? Today, of course, nobody can know.
On Wednesday afternoon John and I drove south to the Gates of Hades. About halfway between his castle and Gerolimen, one can turn right, or west, onto a narrow unpaved country road that leads to the Tsitsiris Castle Hotel. It is built in the same style as the castle pictured above, but it is about twice this size and quite sprawling and difficult to photograph. And in the picture below, John's castle would be located in the right center where you can see a string of light-colored buildings underneath a zigzag mountain road.
These are typical shoreline scenes on the way down south to Tainaro, down to "the end of the world", as this area is known locally.
South of the town of Vathia (see the previous roadmap), one reaches Mianes. This is a roadsign just south of Mianes where the road forks and leads a couple of more miles down to its dead-end in the tiny village of Tainaro, the last line of the lower sign. Just above Tainaro you can see "Pule tou Ade" which is Greek for "Gates of Hades". This is only a minor tourist attraction since it is way off the beaten track. When one reaches the village of Tainaro, one has to leave one's vehicle in a large public parking lot near the Psychomantium of Poseidon. From this parking lot, there is a path that leads down a cliff to the seashore below, perhaps 100 feet or 30 meters down, where there is a public boatdock and beach. We visited briefly with a German woman who was camping out on the beach with her family.
The Peloponnesus is a popular destination for German tourists. Around the time of World War II, German Führer Adolf Hitler heard that these Greek cave passages were linked with other caveways that stretched all the way to Berlin. He dispatched secret agents to Greece to explore this possibility, but nothing ever came of the project, other than that the Peloponnesus itself became a popular holiday and retirement destination for Germans. Just down the country lane from John's castle, a new house was under construction by a German family.
The Gates of Hades also did not go unnoticed by the famous late French undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau. Cousteau knew all about this legend and requested permission from the Greek Government to conduct scientific oceanic research in and around the lighthouse area. The permission was initially granted; but a few days before the French diving was to get underway, the Greek Government reneged on the deal and denied the request, the reason being that this was a "sensitive military area" and off-limits to such exploration. One can only speculate about the true motives behind these actions by the Greek Government.
Here are two photographs of the Psychomantium of Poseidon. According to legend, the Greek God Poseidon had a palace complex here. This round stone temple marks the spot at which there used to be a passageway from the surface down into "Hades" itself. This "hole" (as it were) has now been covered by concrete slabs, so there is no modern danger of anyone's falling into a "bottomless pit" here, to disappear forever, as would happen to one who fell into the pit near John's place.
This is an ancient floor mosaic in the ruins of Poseidon's Palace.
This is a most enigmatic spot, just next to Poseidon's Palace. Notice the bare round area amidst all the literally millions of rocks of all sizes from pebbles to beachballs. Apparently this is a totally "natural" phenomenon; nobody actually "faked" this effect, supposedly. John speculated that it depicts an ancient rocket launchpad, Poseidon's private backyard spaceport, if you will, with the downward thrusting of the rocket engines scattering these stones into a bare round circle. You be the judge for yourself.
Curving up from the lower left you can see a faint brown pathway through the stones. This pathway takes one over the hill in the distance, from where one hikes on down to the lighthouse.
Here is a picture of John, as we made our way across the stones towards "the end of the world".
This is the modern lighthouse at the ancient "end of the world". This is a view looking southeastwards in the direction of Egypt. The shoreline entrance to the Gates of Hades would be directly behind my back.
John was gazing south from the lighthouse at a small fishing boat, passing quite close-by. If one were to explore the Gates of Hades itself, one would have to obtain a boat at Tainaro and travel around the lighthouse promontory to a point opposite Tainaro in order to enter the cave. Several adventurers have attempted to explore the interior of the Gates of Hades, and they were never seen again. It would almost require a Jacques Cousteau-type expedition to undertake such a perilous exploration.
Here I was standing on the west side of the lighthouse, looking north. On the far horizon you can see the Devil's Mountain from the opposite side, the southern side. The smaller headland that juts out from the shore in the middle of the picture is the back side of the Gates of Hades. In other words, if one were to take a boat from here to the Gates of Hades, one would have to travel around that headland and enter the cave on the other side, approximately below the point of the hill. To reach the Gates of Hades by foot from here would be practically impossible because of all the large boulders that litter the landscape. This area of Greece is definitely the rockiest place that I've ever seen on Earth. One could theoretically reach it by foot, I suppose, but it would be an arduous undertaking, in that one would have to backpack all one's water and other essentials. I certainly wouldn't want to try it myself.
The actual Gates of Hades cannot be seen, or photographed, from any geographic location visible from the country roads. However, I have seen one of John's personal photographs of the Gates that was taken from a small boat near the entrance to the cave. It looked much the same as this triangular shoreline "karstic" cave that I photographed near Mianes.
Prior to my trip to Greece, John photocopied this page from a Greek book on UFOs, scanned it and sent it to me electronically. In the book The Sirius Mystery by Robert K.G. Temple, the so-called "Nommo" insignia of "the ancient astronauts" is discussed. The upper photograph supposedly shows a UFO with the Nommo insignia painted on the underbelly, flying over this southern part of Greece. In the lower picture is an ancient Greek monument in the shape of the Nommo insignia.
This is an interesting picture that I got from John. It depicts a couple of Greek Gods sitting on a throne with a human woman standing at their feet. A literal interpretation of this bas-relief would be that the, for instance, 5-foot-tall average woman reaches up only the knees of these gods. That is about one-fourth of their true height, which would be about 20 feet or 7 meters. See also my essay regarding Nibiruan Physiology.
On both occasions when John and I passed through Sparta, it was after dark. John had hoped to be able to show me this "pyramid mountain" which is visible from the highway, but as luck would have it, I didn't get to see it.
Back in Athens on Friday, John and I spent the day driving around, seeing some sights and his favorite places. I suggested that we visit what is known as "Plato's Olive Tree", which was said to be the oldest living tree in Greece. Plato had sat in meditation underneath this olive tree 2,400 years ago. Since John had never seen it himself, he readily agreed. We made some inquiries and discovered that the tree was located in the botanical garden of a city museum. This museum was conveniently located on a main thoroughfare, and we had no trouble locating it and parking the car on a side-street.
We walked in through the museum gate; and since I was wearing my cowboy hat and carrying a camera, I looked like a typical foreign tourist, so two of the security guards immediately walked over to ask if they could assist me with something. John told them that we wished to see Plato's Olive Tree. One of the guards smiled and beckoned us to follow him. We walked into the botanical garden in a corner of the museum complex. The guard pointed to a small building in the center of the garden and told us that Plato's Olive Tree had died a couple of years ago, to their embarrassment, and they built that little stucco building around it to hide it from the public.
John and I looked at each other in amazement! Say what?! Without missing a beat, I walked over to the gated entrance to the little house and quickly took a couple of photos of the dead tree inside. The guard shouted at me and said something loudly to John in Greek. John turned to me and said, "It is forbidden to take any photographs, the guard told me." I played the dumb American tourist, smiled and nodded at the guard. But I already had my photographs, which turned out to be not so good because I'd neglected to use a flash.
At any rate, John and I left the museum, rather in a state of disbelief. He had heard absolutely nothing in the news about the death of Plato's Olive Tree. That evening at dinner with his family again, we related what had happened. His family members were just as surprised as we were about it. None of them had heard a single word. Then John's father stated solemnly, "They say that when Plato's Olive Tree is dead, it will signal the end of the world."
Robertino Solàrion
Dallas, Texas
20 March 2001
