The Vision Of Evangelos (Η Όραση του Ευάγγελου)

-From The Meletic Tales.

The morning air in Thera was gentle and warm, as it often was, touched by salt and sun. Evangelos rose with the fresh dawn as he always did, and stepped barefoot onto the stone outside his modest home. The sea beyond shimmered like hammered bronze, and all was as it had been—except in his mind.

For the third night in a row, Evangelos had eerily dreamt of a great fire that was rapid and intense in its occurrence.

It was no ordinary dream. It came like a sudden storm, tearing through his thoughts. He saw the mountain open like a wound, ash pouring into the sky, darkness blotting out the light. He saw homes crumble, the earth crack and people running without knowing where to go in their direction.

Each time he woke with the taste of smoke on his tongue and the aftermath of destruction.

He was not a man of visions. Evangelos was a humble potter, known for his quiet nature, his careful hands and his serenity. He had never spoken of the gods or of omens. He lived by the rhythms of work and rest, of turning clay and stoking fire, yet now something stirred in him—an unease that did not fade with the morning sun.

That day, he walked to the far edge of the village, towards the olive grove that skirted the mountain. An old path curved up into the hills, one he rarely took, but now his feet led him without thought.

Halfway up the path, he met a figure who was a hermit seated upon a stone—an old man, robed in faded grey, with a beard like tangled vines. His eyes were closed, his face turned towards the sky as he meditated.

Evangelos paused, uncertain of what to expect.

The old man opened one eye and uttered. ‘You’ve seen it'.

Evangelos blinked in uncertainty. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The fire. The darkness. The mountain’s breath. It came to you all at once, didn’t it?’

Evangelos felt something tighten in his chest as he breathed.

‘Yes. In a dream, but it felt more than a dream. It felt like… a knowing of something that was about to occur', he answered.

The hermit nodded slowly. ‘You are not the first, but you are the one who speaks of it. Most people bury such things under fear or silence within them’.

‘Is it a curse? A divine punishment?’ Evangelos asked.

The old man smiled faintly. ‘It is neither. It is the rhythm of the world. It is not the whim of gods, nor the vengeance of spirits. It is To Ena—the One. What you saw was not a warning from above, but a call from within your soul'.

Evangelos sat beside him, the breeze rustling the grass. ‘What am I to do?’ he asked.

‘You must act. You must speak, even if they do not listen. Awareness is not meant to be dismissed. You were given clarity, and with that comes a great measure of responsibility’.

Evangelos returned to the village that evening with the sun low on the horizon and a heaviness in his chest.

The next morning, he began to speak. He went to his neighbour, an old mason named Theon.

‘I had a dream. Of the mountain. It opens. It breathes fire. We must be ready’, Evangelos said.

Theon chuckled. ‘You've been working too long with your kiln. Dreams are dreams, Evangelos’.

To the baker he said, ‘The signs are coming. We must move beyond the valley at once, before it is too late’.

The baker frowned. ‘Abandon our ovens? Our shops? You ask too much’.

Evangelos did not stop. He spoke to the weavers, the shepherds and the elders. Most laughed, some grew annoyed. Only a few listened. A young widow named Philonike. A shepherd named Menon. A boy named Pyrrhos, whose dreams echoed Evangelos’ own.

They gathered in secret beneath an almond tree near the cliffs to discuss the vision of Evangelos.

Evangelos spoke gently. ‘I do not ask you to believe my dreams, but observe. The goats no longer graze near the mountain. The birds have changed their flight. The air smells of stone and smoke. These are not mere dreams. These are evident truths’.

‘Where would we go?’ Asked Philonike.

‘There is a ridge beyond the olive groves,’ Evangelos said. ‘It is higher, safer. We must prepare to leave at once’.

They began gathering supplies—water, bread, cloaks and ropes. They spoke little, but their eyes held quiet resolve.

Then, in the night, the mountain groaned. A deep, ancient sound. A stirring. The earth quivered. Dishes rattled. Dogs barked and ran into the hills.

By morning, the smoke began to rise. The village stirred with unease. Even those who had mocked Evangelos now wore troubled expressions. Still, they did not act.

He stood once more in the square realising that he had to convince the people of his vision.

‘You’ve seen the signs. You feel it. This is not the anger of the gods—it is the breath of the world. It moves. It shifts. It is the movement of nature. Come with us. There is still time to escape the volcano’.

A few people stood silently. Some scoffed. One man shouted, ‘You bring fear into our hearts, Evangelos! Be silent! No one believes in your prophetic words. For they are a hollow threat'.

He did not flinch. ‘This fear is not mine. It is the truth stirring. I cannot make you believe it. I can only show what is seen. My vision is no divine prophecy. It is a vision that will reveal the truth'.

That night, the sky turned red. It was a foreboding that most of the islanders would ignore.

Evangelos and the few invididuals who followed him—Philonike, Menon, Pyrrhos and seven others—fled along the old path as ash began to fall like snow. Behind them, the mountain bellowed. Fire broke from its summit. The earth cracked open. There was chaos everywhere. The scene was horrific.

They climbed to the ridge to escape, breathless and afraid, and turned to look one last time. They feared the worse was yet to come.

Thera burnt. The village was swallowed by the fire and smoke from the volcano. Screams were brief. Roofs crumbled. Death was pervasive. The houses and buildings crumbled into the lava.

Then came absolute silence. No god appeared. No miracle unfolded. Only the sound of the whistling wind over the apparent ash that accumulated. It was a haunting presence to witness.

They remained on the ridge for three days, eating what little they carried, drinking from mountain springs. On the fourth day, the fires below dimmed. The sky began to clear.

They descended in mourning. The village was gone. Where laughter had once echoed, only ruin remained. Clay pots melted to slag. Olive trees turned to blackened sticks. A dog’s collar lay half-buried in soot. The burnt bodies of the dead covered the streets. Some of the unfortunate ones were found in their homes burnt.

Philonike wept. Menon knelt. Pyrrhos was silent.

Evangelos stood still, his soul neither defeated nor broken. He felt a gradual awareness.

They chose a new place to settle, far from the mountain’s shadow. They built modest homes from what they could find. They planted new groves. They spoke of what had happened not as tragedy alone, but as a moment of awakening.

‘We were not saved by chance. We were saved by awareness. By listening. By thinking. The Logos warned us', Evangelos told them.

They began calling themselves Meletics—not a religion, not a sect, but a way of life that philosophical.

Evangelos did not preach. He shared. ‘To Ena is not a god. It is not watching us. It does not reward or punish. It is the motion of all things. We are not its servants—we are its expressions that manifest through the Logos and the Nous', he said.

Others came in time. Travellers. Traders. Survivors from distant villages.

Some asked, ‘Who do you worship?’

‘No one. We observe. We reflect. We live with reason and balance. That is enough’, Evangelos would reply.

‘What of the gods?’

‘Let them be, if they must, but our concern is with what we can see and feel and know. The breath. The silence. The tremble in the earth. The kindness of a neighbour. The stillness before dawn’.

One visitor, a scholar from Delos named Ampelios, stayed for many months. He had heard rumours of the man who foresaw fire and built thought from ruin.

Ampelios once asked, ‘What is the soul, to a Meletic?’

Evangelos replied, ‘It is the consciousness we shape. The soul is not a vessel to be weighed by divinity. It is the harmony we cultivate between our mind, our actions, and our awareness. It does not need to be saved—it needs to be understood’.

‘What of the afterlife?’

‘We live too often chasing what comes after, but the flow of To Ena does not halt or resume—it continues. We are not cut from it. We are part of it. The breath we take now is the soul unfolding', he said.

Ampelios wrote these wise words into his scrolls. He was not sure he agreed, but he found something comforting in their clarity.

The new settlement grew slowly. They built not with ambition, but with care. No structure towered above another. Homes were arranged in a circle, not out of reverence, but of unity. In the centre stood a flat stone upon which no offerings were placed—only thoughts spoken aloud.

Each week, they gathered at dusk. They did not pray. They reflected. They recounted the week’s experiences: a kindness done, a moment misunderstood, a lesson drawn from a moment of quiet.

Evangelos often sat silently whilst others spoke. He no longer needed to guide every thought.

One evening, Menon stood and said, ‘I had an argument with my brother. Words I regret, but I observed myself in that moment. I saw that the anger was mine. Not his. I held it, and it burned my own hand’.

Evangelos nodded. ‘This is what Meleticism offers—not perfection, but clarity. To see ourselves not as fixed, but as flowing. To feel each fault, and know it can be shaped’.

The young boy Pyrrhos, now nearing manhood, once asked, ‘Must we always observe? Even when we are hurt?’

Evangelos turned to him. ‘Especially then. Pain is often the threshold of understanding. It is in the moment we wish least to reflect that the greatest lesson hides’.

As the seasons passed, the memory of the old village became quieter, less sorrowful. The children born after the fire only knew the new way. They played between fig trees, read beside streams and listened as their elders spoke not of gods, but of virtues.

Temperance. Fortitude. Reason. Perseverance. Wisdom. Humbleness.

These were the true Meletic pillars they came to live by—not demanded, but discovered.

One girl, Rhea, asked, ‘Why must we practise humility? If we are not answering to the gods, what does it matter?’

Evangelos looked at her with a smile that warmed his whole face. ‘Because we are not alone in this flow. To Ena moves through all things. If we elevate ourselves too far, we forget that we are not the centre—but a part. Humility is not submission. It is alignment’.

Another youth named Hermes struggled with grief. His mother, a weaver, had died after falling ill during a harsh winter. He came to Evangelos with a heart swollen by absence.

‘I do not understand how to go on’. he said.

Evangelos sat with him beneath the olive tree where the wind always whispered.

‘We cannot escape sorrow. Nor should we. It teaches us that we are attached. That we feel. That we loved. That is not weakness, Hermes. That is being awake, and to be awake is the beginning of Meletic thought', he responded.

Hermes did not speak, but he stayed there long into the night, and in time, he found the strength to speak of her aloud at the next gathering.

‘My mother’s weaving was her thought made visible. I did not realise it until after she passed, but her every thread was a reflection of care', he answered.

‘Then her soul was already awake’, Philonike said kindly.

These moments became the lifeblood of the community. Not rituals, but revelations. Not commandments, but consciousness.

When visitors came seeking wonders, they were sometimes disappointed to find no gods named, no sacred relics, but others stayed.

One man, a fisherman named Hippokrates from Naxos, stayed after losing his wife and daughters in a coastal flood. He had shouted at the sky, cursed all names of Olympus. When he came to the Meletics, he expected silence, but what he found was listening.

He spoke aloud his pain, and none silenced him. None corrected him. When he was done, Evangelos said softly: ‘Nature does not punish. It simply is. It moves, it breaks, it renews. Your grief is not weakness. It is your love continuing to speak’.

Hippokrates stayed. So did others. Some asked if Meleticism would spread.

Evangelos said, ‘It will, but not like fire. It will not conquer. It will ripple. When one person sees clearly, those beside them feel it. Clarity invites clarity’.

The years continued. Evangelos grew slower. His walks became shorter, his speech more measured, but never did his gaze dim.

Pyrrhos, now a man of thought and practice, sat beside him often. ‘What shall I do when you’re gone?’ He asked once.

Evangelos reached for a fig and broke it open. ‘Continue’, he said. ‘Observe. Reflect. Teach—not by rule, but by example. That is all I have done’.

On the day Evangelos passed, the wind was still. The sky was neither bright nor dull. It was the kind of day that held no drama—only presence.

He had sat beneath the almond tree once more. His last breath was neither laboured nor announced. It was a quiet joining to the motion he had always spoken of.

The Meletics buried him in silence. No tomb, no statue. Only a stone placed where he had often sat, with a single line carved upon it: ‘To listen is to live twice’.

They did not weep for him as if he were gone. For in every gathering, his words echoed still. In each careful thought, each act of quiet kindness, each child encouraged to ask questions—he lived on.

The tale of the fire, the vision, the warning—these were passed down, not as miracle, but as moment. A moment when awareness met courage. When clarity saved lives.

The mountain, distant and still scarred, smoked no more. The Meletics watched it nonetheless—not with fear, but with understanding. For they knew that everything moved. Everything shifted. Nothing was ever final, not even silence.

Thus, they lived—not perfectly, not without sorrow—but with presence. That was enough.

Eventually, Evangelos grew old. His hands trembled. His eyes clouded, but his voice remained calm, and his thoughts sharp.

On his final day, he sat beneath the same almond tree where he had first spoken to the few who believed.

Pyrrhos, now a young man, knelt beside him.

‘Is this the end?’ He asked softly.

Evangelos smiled faintly. ‘No. Only a fold in the rhythm’.

‘What should I tell those people who come after?’

The old man closed his eyes.

‘Tell them to listen. Not to dreams, nor thunder, but to what is. The rustle of leaves. The turn of a thought. The movement within stillness. That is where truth begins’.

When dawn came, Evangelos did not wake, but no one wept with despair. They sat in silence. They breathed together. They felt the air. The warmth. The shift.

They knew he had not gone. He had simply returned—to motion, to stillness and to To Ena.

The mountain watched in silence. The wind moved gently through the almond trees, scattering blossoms across the earth like soft remembrance. Philonike placed her hand upon the stone where Evangelos had often sat, and whispered, ‘He has become what he always knew—the rhythm, the breath, the space between’.

They did not speak of him in the past tense. Pyrrhos, now a teacher in his own right, would say, ‘Evangelos is still here. He is in the way we greet each other, in the stillness before we speak, in the questions we choose to ask’.

The younger Meletics gathered often beneath the trees to retell his sayings—not as law, but as learning. No shrine was built, yet everyone who walked the paths knew where his thoughts had once been spoken.

Each time the earth gave a gentle tremble or the sky changed hue, they did not fear the consequence.

They simply listened to the nature of the cosmos. For listening, they had learnt what was the true beginning of all awakening, which was To Ena.

It was not a god, nor a force to be appeased. It was the thread through everything—the silent pulse beneath thought, the shape behind shadows. Evangelos had not claimed to discover it. He simply named what was already there.

One evening, a young woman named Zenaida sat beside Pyrrhos. The fire between them was modest, and the stars glimmered like scattered embers above.

‘Do you ever wonder, why he never wrote anything down?’ She asked.

Pyrrhos smiled gently. ‘Because what mattered was not his voice, but what it stirred in us.’

Zenaida nodded, but remained thoughtful. ‘And yet... I wish I had heard him.’

Pyrrhos turned to her. ‘You have. Each time you’ve sat in stillness, and felt that moment just before a question rises, or when you breathe and remember that you are more than your worry—that is him. That is To Ena, moving through you as it moved through him.’

The embers crackled. An owl called from deep in the wood.

‘How do we know it’s not just ourselves?’ she whispered.

‘Because the self alone does not humble us,’ Pyrrhos replied. ‘But To Ena does.’

He placed a small pebble in her hand—smooth, warm from the fire.

‘He once said, 'Every stone holds the memory of silence, and silence is not empty. It is waiting'.

Zenaida looked at the stone and smiled, tears faint in the corners of her eyes.

Others began to arrive—drawn not by summons, but by instinct. There was no ceremony, yet they gathered. There was no doctrine, yet they listened. In listening, they learnt that truth did not begin in certainty, but in humility.

One boy, barely twelve, asked: ‘Is Evangelos watching us now?’

Pyrrhos answered, not with denial, nor affirmation, but with quiet conviction: ‘He is present—not watching, but within. The same way the roots are within the tree, even when unseen.’

They stayed long into the night. No text was passed. No name was worshipped, but each breath taken in contemplation, each silence held with care, was a form of remembrance.

As the wind moved through the branches, a hush passed through them all—not of grief, but of awareness.

They had not lost Evangelos. They had only begun to realise how truly he remained.

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