The Nine Steps (Οι Εννέα Σκαλίτσες)

-From the Meletic Tales.

The sun had not yet declared itself to the morning as it arrived, but the lone traveller was already climbing the first hill, his sandals brushing dew off the wet grass. He bore no name that was familiar, for he had left it behind in the village below. The shepherds there had simply called him 'the quiet one from the south'. They said little else. He had asked only for general directions to the old trail—if it still existed in its path.

'It’s not used. Hasn’t been for generations', one old man had muttered over olives and bread. 'If your feet don’t fear silence, you may ultimately find it in your search'.

Thus, with nothing more than the wind’s tug and the memory of a tale heard long ago, the traveller came upon it—a narrow path coiled up the side of a mountain in northern Euboea. The trees crowded round as if to protect it from eroding. There were no markers, no signs of prayer or offering, no temple stone or shrine. Just stone, wild grass, and the faint sensation of waiting.

The first step was barely a step at all. The stone seemed no different from the earth below, but when he set his foot upon it, a stillness took root within him that was noticeable. The abrupt noises of the world—distant birds, the far bleating of goats—slipped away as though someone had shut a distant door in the horizon.

He stood still. His body, once weary from travel, felt momentarily weightless. He breathed, deeply, slowly and became aware of each muscle as if from the inside out the journey would be physical. The sensation wasn’t ease or comfort—it was exposure. His limbs were no longer instruments of motion but living repositories of memory, fatigue, hunger and the ache of past burdens.

With that awareness came a quiet lesson, which was to ascend. The body must be felt, known—and then released from control. He took off his cloak and left it on a branch. The wind accepted it within its gentle breeze.

The second step revealed a shift in his perception. Colours deepened. The green of the trees became almost ancient, the sky bluer than his mind could bear. The beauty seemed not to invite admiration but challenge sheer illusion.

He heard a brook somewhere near—but did not know where it truly was in location. The wind brushed his ear from one side, yet the leaves stirred from the other. The senses were real, but no longer reliable. He realised how much of the world he had known only through them, and how little he had questioned what they filtered in his life.

His eyes closed. In darkness, there was absolute peace. He walked blindly forth, murmuring inwardly: 'Let me not cling to what I see. Let me not be governed by taste or noise or touch. Let me observe, but not follow that which tempts me to be led astray'.

The third step arrived with a sharp, piercing sound—a soundless sound, like the snapping of a string inside the head. Thoughts came suddenly. Not thoughts of the path or the trees, but of memories, regrets and names he had not spoken in years it seemed to him.

He felt pulled into a deep river of inner voices. Logic rose and battled itself. Faces he had forgotten accused or wept or laughed without an act of kindness. Every opinion he had held appeared before him as if on trial, yet—none of them remained for long. They were passing forms, mere shadows in the mist.

Then a voice—his own—rose above the rest: 'None of this is you. These are not your soul, only its echoes that are audible'.

With that, he let go. He bowed his head and breathed as if to exhale every belief, every categorisation, every phrase he had clung to. He stepped ahead, mind stilled and contemplative.

This step was a descent, not in direction, but in time. The traveller found himself surrounded by vivid images of childhood, the face of his brother sleeping, the cracked handle of a jug he once loved. These unforgettable memories did not torment—they invited, and therein lay the danger that was hovering. Each image seemed to say: 'Stay with me. Rest. Be comforted'.

He understood then that memory was not always longing—it could also be a temptation, a sudden whim. The past wrapped itself in warm cloth and tried to pull him backwards.

'No', he said aloud. 'I do not belong to you. I honour you, but I am not you. I have a will'.

Thus, he stepped forth without nostalgia, carrying only his gratitude to display.

Now came the strangest of the steps. Here the wind died completely. The trees stood motionless, as if listening. He looked down and did not recognise his own hands. The lines on them, the calluses, seemed foreign. He tried to recall his name, the one he had abandoned, but it refused to surface in his attempt.

His thoughts stammered. 'Am I the traveller? A seeker? A man of letters? A son? Or just a fool in disguise?' The mountain gave no answer.

He stood there, stripped of role, status and story. The loss felt violent—then liberating in its breath.

He laughed. It was not loud, but it was free. 'If I am none of these things, then perhaps I am simply being'.

With no title, he climbed higher. There was no clear boundary to this step. It began in silence, extended through silence, and would have ended in silence—had he not heard a certain voice from within.

It was not a worded voice that he could explain. It was more like a call, or a light inside a cave.

His chest filled with an inexplicable warmth. For the first time, he felt whole. Not happy. Not elated. Just unbroken in his will. This was the soul, he realised—not the poetic idea he once carried, but the actual current beneath his life. It pulsed like a quiet flame, asking nothing, needing nothing, content only to exist with the self. He stood in awe. Then he bowed. The wind resumed, gentler now, as if affirming the moment.

The seventh step stretched impossibly. Every motion slowed. His feet moved, but the air thickened, as though time itself was no longer linear in its duration.

Moments repeated themselves. He took a step—and it happened twice. A bird flew overhead, and then again. The sequence of cause and effect blurred, then faded. It was something that he did not recognise at first.

He then remembered something from an ancient scroll he had read as a younger man: 'Time is not a ladder but a circle, and sometimes, it breaks'.

He realised that past and future were his own illusions, created to manage his fear. Here in this step, he needed neither nor his uncontrollable desires.

'Now is the only step that I need to take'.

He moved forth. The mountain did not protest with his action.

There was no step here. Not visibly. The path crumbled into rock and air. He stood at a nearby ledge with no instruction given. There is something that urged him ahead—not foolishness, not faith, but understanding of his fate. He let go of fear. That was the key that would resolve his path.

When he did, the ground met his foot once more, invisible until accepted. There was no applause, no miracle—just an agreement between the soul and world. He no longer walked. He was the walking. The distinction dissolved into the moment of time.

The sky opened above him, not with transparent light but with vastness. He was not above the world. He was within its highest silence.

Here, there was no step at all. No path. No tree. No wind. No stone. The traveller stood in the absence of all distinction. He could not even say, 'I am here'. for the 'I' had evaporated like the early mist that appeared. There was only a certain stillness that spoke without tongue, a presence that embraced without arms. It was the awareness of awareness itself.

Within it, he perceived what the Meletic sages called To Ena—not as an object or a deity or a truth, but as the undivided whole of being. The One did not speak, for there was nothing outside it to speak to, but the traveller understood. To reach the highest point was not to rise, but to return. To let go of the self was not loss, but homecoming. To find truth was not acquisition, but unveiling. In this state, time dissolved, identity rested and the soul became its own burning flame lit.

They say the traveller was never seen again, but now and then, a lone shepherd or wanderer climbing the hills of Euboea finds a soothing place where the wind stops, where the trees hush, and where their breath deepens without cause. They take a step. Perhaps two, and sometimes—if they are very still—they feel something leave them. A weight. A story. A name. In that moment, the mountain remembers him who walked the nine steps.

They say that months later, another shepherd climbing the same path stumbled on an empty cloak in juniper. Hearing a soft hum, he paused—but caught no traveller’s figure. Only the wind carried the stirring echo of passing presence.

Wise villagers say: 'Sometimes the mountain shows itself to travel-worn souls. A step or two—and they feel something slip away. A name. A burden. A belief'.

Some call it the teaching of the nine steps. Others call it a myth, but whenever a traveller dares to climb that forgotten path in Euboea, they sense the immediate possibility of stepping beyond the path itself.

When the wind returned, it was gentler than before—as if it too had changed. The traveller, who had passed through the ninth step where there was no path, no guide, and no self, stood still. This stillness was not the absence of motion. It was the presence of meaning in every part of being. The silence that surrounded him was not empty; it was full. Each moment throbbed with an unseen rhythm. The breath of the world had become his own it its essence.

He had no impulse to turn back, nor to remain. Where there is no direction, the question of return becomes unnecessary, yet the mountain in its quiet way, spoke through the stillness: 'Go. Not down. Not backwards, but into the world'.

For awareness is not to be held like a cup of water—it must be poured into life itself.

The traveller stepped—not downwards, but outwards. Where once had stood a summit, now stood an open field. The trees were familiar, and yet they bowed as he passed. The birds did not scatter; they flew with him, matching his pace, then rising above. The mountain no longer loomed—it walked with him.

Each footfall stirred dust but made no actual sound. The path was not marked, but the land remembered him. There were no visible signs, no symbols—but every leaf, every stone nodded in recognition. He had seen To Ena, and so the world saw him differently.

Upon his descent, he came upon a child gathering herbs at the edge of a grove. The boy looked up and narrowed his eyes.

'Are you a hermit?' He asked plainly.

'I have been, and perhaps will be again in my life', the traveller replied.

The boy approached him, cautious but curious, 'Why don’t you speak like the others?' He asked.

'I speak now not to explain, but to reflect'.

The boy laughed. 'That’s confusing. How can that be?'

The traveller smiled. 'The world is confusing when we try to hold it too tightly'.

He knelt beside the boy and picked a stalk of thyme. 'What are you gathering?' He asked.

'Herbs for my mother. She is unwell'.

The traveller held the thyme gently and closed his eyes. The boy watched, sensing something strange in the silence that enveloped the grove.

When the traveller opened his eyes, he said, 'Give this one to her last. Boil it with rainwater, not well water'.

The boy nodded, then hesitated. 'Are you a healer?'

'I am no longer anything', the traveller said gently. 'But you are'.

The boy blinked in confusion, but before he could ask more, the traveller turned and continued walking.

Further down the mountain’s side, a man stood chiselling at a broken column, the ruin of a temple long swallowed by vines. The sound of stone against iron echoed faintly. The artisan looked up as the traveller passed. 'Have you come from the peak?' He asked.

'There is no peak', the traveller answered.

The artisan paused, wiping sweat from his brow. 'They say the ninth step is the end of seeking'.

The traveller looked upon the column. 'No. It is the beginning of seeing'.

The artisan furrowed his brow. 'Do you know what this temple was at one time?'

'No. But it seems to have served its time and purpose', said the traveller.

The artisan turned and looked at the ruin. 'Do you think it is wrong that I attempt to rebuild it former grandeur?'

The traveller shook his head. 'Build what the soul needs, not what history demands of you'.

The artisan considered this for a long moment. Then he asked, 'Will you bless it?'

“I have no blessings', the traveller said, placing a hand on the column. 'Let this stone remember silence. That is worthier than any blessing'.

As he left, the sound of chiselling grew softer, slower, until it finally ceased.
At the foot of the valley, he came upon an old woman stirring a pot over an open fire. She looked up, squinting.

'Come, sit. Eat', she said without any question. He sat and listened.

'You look like one who’s seen too much, or perhaps too little', she said.

'I’ve seen only what remained when all else fell away', he replied.

She tasted her stew, then said, “Ah. That flavour—what’s missing isn’t salt. It’s forgetfulness'.

He chuckled. 'Then you remember well'.

'I’ve forgotten more than I’ve known. That’s how I became wise in life', she responded.

They sat together for a long while, saying nothing. The fire cracked. The wind shifted. She handed him a bowl of lentils to eat. Thus, he ate in silence.

Then she asked, 'What do you carry with you now?'

He placed his hands on his knees. 'Nothing'.

'Then how will you give?'

He paused. 'By being. By listening. By not needing'.

She nodded slowly. 'You’ll be a stranger in every village'.

'Perhaps. But I’ll be home in every tree and grove'.

When he stood to leave, she pressed an olive branch into his hand. 'For when you forget again'.

He bowed. 'Thank you. For reminding me'.

In time, the traveller passed into valleys and villages, hills and hollow places. He never stayed long, but wherever he went, those nearby found themselves falling quiet, or wondering, or letting go of lingering thoughts that had gripped them for years.

He gave no teachings, held no gatherings, left no scrolls behind as a testimony of his words, yet his presence was like water in drought—softening the soil so seeds could awaken.

Some people claimed he could read minds. Others said he spoke to trees. A few believed he was a myth—a story told to shepherds to make them ponder the wonder of stars.

The traveller had wandered without seeking, yet wherever he paused, life unfolded more slowly, more inwardly, as if space itself remembered something forgotten. A baker in Chalcis, after speaking with him once, began rising earlier—not out of obligation, but reverence. A harpist in Eretria who had lost her voice found herself composing music again, although now without sound—playing strings no one could hear, but many could feel.

He did not preach. He did not point, but his presence was the echo of the ninth step: a silent resonance that drew others toward their own stillness.

And so, in time, the tale of the Nine Steps became not a legend but a quiet inheritance. Not one of fame, but of phronēsis—of wisdom lived, not taught. Farmers passed it to their children with gestures, not scrolls. The names of the steps were remembered in dreams, etched not in stone, but in practice.

Some who sought the mountain never found it. Some who had never walked a step, somehow arrived.

And as the seasons turned, as the olive trees thickened and goats wandered the dry highlands, it was said that in the silence before dawn, when the world holds its breath, you might hear it—the faint sound of footsteps on stone, leading upwards, into nothing. And that, if your soul was quiet enough, it would take a step too.

Not with your body. Not even with your mind, but with that part of you that has always known the Meletic path.

Then, like the traveller, you would no longer seek To Ena. You would remember that you had never been apart from it.

Not once. Not ever.

One night, many years later, a young woman wandered alone up the slopes of that same forgotten mountain in Euboea. She had heard whispers of an ancestral path. Not of gods or glory—but of steps that changed one’s seeing and one's belief. She found nothing but silence.

Until, beneath a juniper bush, she discovered a cloak. Weather-worn, sun-bleached, but still folded as if just removed.

She picked it up and held it close. It held no power, but it bore presence. She looked up the mountain. The path was not visible, but she began to walk. Not up. Not forth, but inwards. Thus, the steps begin again.

In Meleticism, we ascend not to escape life but to return to it with opened eyes. The nine steps are not a ladder to heaven—they are a rhythm within every conscious moment.

Letting go is not loss. It is the clearing of space. What remains is To Ena—not as something distant, but as the core of each breath we do not control.

So, walk. Even if no one sees the steps beneath your feet. Even if you carry no name. For every journey walked in awareness makes the invisible path a little more visible for those people who seek enlightenment.

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