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Travel Sacred Turkey Part One: Mount Koressos, Catal Huyuk, Asclepion, Pamukkale

My several over-the-pole flights had discombobulated my energy and I was flat out on the couch in my lovely Gilo cottage when my husband announced we were flying to Istanbul the next morning. Oy Vay! Come what may I had to pull myself together and prepare for a two week adventure through Turkey, our last Middle East adventure.

We arrived at ten the following morning to a country that lies in Western Asia and Europe; the Dardanelles, Sea of Marmora and the Bosphorus separating it from Europe. Turkey is said to be a democratic country and part of the Council of Europe.

This July day the Turkish airport was filled with a bustling throng of excited, Turkish and western travellers. Heaps of vibrancy and anxious and apprehensive minds and faces dominated the scene. We took a cab to our hotel passing by the crumbling stadium where gladiators fought lions. I had seen a past life of my husband’s in this occupation.

Two days emerged in Istanbul before our comprehensive bus tour began and I began to calm down and regain my energy, enjoying lots of back rubs from hubby and the vibrant downtown view from my flower bedecked balcony.

Breakfast at the hotel was fried fish, deep fried fritters of sorts, beans in sauce, lentils, sweet breads and crappy coffee; the canned milk containers sitting beside the pot. Instead of food I people watched, wondering what my fate would be and who my fate was to be shared with. A dissimilar group of adults from all over the planet slowly emerged from the bedrooms along with two teenage Indian children, because it was a Cosmos Tour that originated in London that we were picking up in Istanbul.

I decided immediately I would be getting to know everyone personally and we were soon off with our “Nezli girl” tour guide and crossing the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles leaving Europe and entering Asia. What a sight to behold. I fell in love with the surrounding hills that reminded me of the dry hills of Penticton that I love so dearly. We toured Izmir and Troy with its fabled stories, and when we reached the beaches where many lost their lives in World War II, I became ill and had to go sit in the bus. I began seeing the bloodshed in the area and it sickened me until I recalled that I could do a clearing ‘Coning’ to cleanse the area with my Coning team of the White Brotherhood/Ascended Masters. Then I felt better again.

When touring interesting Ephesus on a hillside– it was in the process of being rebuilt column by column, statue by statue – I heard about a side trip to the Mountain Koressos were it is alleged that Mary Anna, Mother of Jesus passed into the spirit world. I had a visitation from Goddess Mary Anna while I lived in Northern Israel one nite at 1:30 a.m. I am familiar with her essence. She stood beside my bed clothed in blue with a white veil over her head. Her hands were in the prayer position and she was directing the golden sparking light of Reiki to my pelvis, where I had pain from a car accident shortly before moving to Israel.

I immediately hired a cab to get to the mountain that was only seven miles from Ephesus and as we spiraled the mountain in a beat up cab I felt enclosed by a spiritual force that was extremely powerful. I felt that the mountain had special upflow vortex energy and when I walked that last part to the house I became very still within myself. Mother Mary’s small stone house had been identified by a mystic Catholic nun. The house had been rebuilt and was now a shrine of pilgrimage. When I noticed a painting of Mary Anna on the shrine wall, my heart leapt for it was a great likeness of her. Someone else had a visitation and painted her here. I have recently discovered that her “Earth commission” now is to heal women’s issues.

As I was walking around the mountain I bumped into an elderly village gentleman and I asked him if this was Mary Anna, Meryam Ana as she is known here last earthy dwelling place. He spoke broken English but he confirmed that in a distant village this site had always been venerated by descendents of early Ephesus Christians as Mary Anna’s dwelling place, but the extraordinary book, Urantia, claims that she died a year after Jesus crucifixion, in Bethsaida.

When we reached the Catal Huyuk region of the southern Anatolia province I climbed a hill to over look the lake and temple site from 10,000 BC. Something was greatly stirred within me at the time that I had not yet ‘seen’, but I knew I had been here before. I built a small shrine of basalt and clay type stones and meditated for a time. It was a place of power that I latterly discovered was a place where I had indeed been a temple priestess.

Over the next few days I enjoyed chatting with my diverse group of humankind changing seats often to get to know them. Often I facilitated Reiki in the evenings, as folks were picking up headaches in these old sites. When we reached the ruins of ancient Pergamum our tour guide mentioned that there was an ancient healing center nearby called the Asclepion. I discovered we had a spare hour and off I dashed again with my husband in tow. As we wound up the mountainside I enthusiastically devoured some fresh Turkish figs and enjoyed the superb views of hillsides covered in vertical plantings of grapes. We climbed all the way to the top of a mountain to a dip in the hillside where we finally reached the Asclepion, still in ruins because of an earthquake many years ago. Here we read methods of treatment included dream interpretation, suggestion, praying, sun and water baths, walking barefoot, drug therapy and bloodletting. I was especially intrigued by the dream interpretation site. Mesmerized I sat down and let the images flow. Here, beside the stream that flowed from a spring at the top of the mountain individuals slept outdoors under the great cosmos for the night and upon morning were led into the healing centre place where expert help facilitated their dream interpretation. Oh, I wished to stay here forever! (I have found myself so often saying this when I’ve traveled to sacred sites). On second thought I asked for to create a site such as this upon my return to Canada! A healing center beside a stream where natural therapies could take place. What a dream. The Asclepion has been noted by prominent physician Galen as the leading healing centre of its time about two thousand years ago.

Too soon I had to leave the Asclepion’s positive environs, but the Hierapolis and Pamukkale, the ‘cotton candy’ extraordinary site of travertine deposits and hot springs was next on the agenda.

Pamukkale, another amazing sacred and powerful earth site loomed in the distance as we travelled to the Hierapolis. This white ‘castle’ is about six hundred feet high and stretches over thousands of feet in the River Menderes Valley. People have bathed in its calcium rich waters for thousands of years. We were told we may go inside the Plutonium–meaning place of god, Pluto–at our own risk. The Plutonium is a cave from where some of the seventeen hot springs in this area flow because of volcanic activity, but there are carbon dioxide gases released here with toxic fumes that the famed priests of Cybele managed to escape somehow. We sit in the pools and I feel healing taking place in my legs. I absolutely love the feeling of the jelly like substance that is the calcium carbonate before it’s out gassed and becomes smooth white travertine.

At sun down this day we bed down in a hotel near the Hierapolis where the white washed buildings with turquoise doors cast shadows upon the purple and pink bougainvillaea that cover the lattice works fence. We share a glass of local red wine and a vegetarian dinner before we fall into a comfortable bed. I am awakened in the morning at roosters’ crow having communed with higher dimensional beings and write a poem.

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National best-selling author, Advanced Reiki Master, Fire Priestess, Conference Speaker, Metaphysician Master, Agnes Toews-Andrews, has been researching the Goddess, the paranormal and metaphysical at home in Canada and at sacred sites around the world since 1987. It was while working with energy/Reiki that her clairsentient and clairaudient abilities began to awaken. A world traveler, she is the author of 8 non-fiction spiritual books and 1 book of paranormal fiction. At home in the question mark, Agnes has known since the age of 14 while watching a sunset in rural British Columbia that she was to be an 'Activator' of humanity and in 1989 made a commitment to be a Lightworker. Also a co-creative Devic gardner, macrobiotic consultant, she is the proud mother of two amazing kids and grandmother of five even more amazing grand kids. She currently resides in the Selkirk Mountains in the West Kootenays, British Columbia, Canada.  

Comments

  • Jamie
    Jamie Tuesday, 15 October 2013

    Ms. Toews-Andrews,

    I will most likely never visit Turkey, but I really appreciate that you've shared your journey with us! It sounds wonderful.

    I have long been fascinated by the 'ancient Greeks' and the 'Byzantine' Eastern Roman Empire, even as a boy.

    Turkey really is an amazing country. Very superficially, it seems like a vastly older, Muslim version of the USA. They've even got a societal gun obsession, deeply religious population, imperial past, and their own special kind of country music!

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