Samothrace is an island of ancient mysteries with thousands of years of history, located in the northern Aegean Sea and belonging to Greece.
Audronė Ilgevičienė and Petras Ilgevičius arrived on the island in July 2015, they were very surprised when an employee of the Temple of the Great Gods there, upon learning where they had come from, said: “Welcome back home. Lithuania is here…”
That was the beginning…
This event brought together a group of 34 people from different professions who, in August 2016 left for Samothrace.
The aim of the trip was to investigate possible traces of the Aestian presence on the island of Samothrace by any means possible. The expedition followed the requirements of a spiritual travelling. Information was gathered through empirical and intuitive methods. The material found acceptable to science was passed on to specialists in the relevant fields for further research, but the purpose of the journey was not just to find scientifically acceptable facts.
Even before we set off, we realised that the most important thing was not whether we would find physical evidence of the presence of the Aestians on the island more than three thousand years later, or we would not. We realised that this exploit was necessary for the verification of Aestian spiritual identity, as more and more people in Lithuania no longer believe in the spiritual roots of their nation.
This book brings you the material from this unconventional expedition. It consists of three groups of texts: the historical-archaeological context, intuitive insights and the experiences of the participants.
Video footage of the expedition is available on the attached DVD. It includes:
video recordings of interviews with Greek locals on the island (Yiannis Maltesos and Yiannis Antonios);
an interview with archaeologist Dimitris Matsas;
footage of the expedition: you will see the places visited by the participants on the island, and learn more about the specifics of spiritual travelling.
This book is a material for reflection, and is meant especially for those to whom Aestian topic is precious.
It is a journey into oneself, into the immemorial past of one’s own Nation, which today paves the way to the future.
In Search of Aestian SpiritualIdentity: material from an expedition to Samothrace (Greece). Vilnius: Idealistų būstinė. 2017. 300 p. + 1 video disc (DVD). ISBN 978-60995799-1-7.
