KATAVASIS

A SIX DAY JOURNEY EXPLORING GREEK UNDERWORLD MYTHOLOGY

Storytelling - Creative Explorations - Rituals - Nature Immersions -
Story Counselling - Ancient Temple Visits

Date

24 September to 29 September, 2025

Location
Mariva Bungalows, Therma, Samothraki Island, Northern Greece

Investment
Sliding scale from €800, increases from 1 May onwards.

Six days. Four myths. One Island.

Come friends.

Be entertained and opened by tales of characters who experienced the Greek Underworld.
Embody the hero/ine's journey yourself, and turn myth into lived
experience through storytelling, creativity, psychodrama, rituals and real-world missions.

Katavasis in Greek means to 'go down' to 'descend'.

Let us descend together, not as tourists, but as pilgrims.

Let us meet the mysteries that wait for us in the dark shadowy places that leave our
eyes widened, our hairs standing on end, and our bellies poised for the mystery to unfold.

Let us return with stories etched into our skin, with fire in our rosy palms, and with the knowing
that the underworld is not a place we leave behind, but a place we carry within us, always.

Schedule

Over the course of 6 days, we will explore the halls of select Greek Underworld myths, allowing their ancient echoes to reverberate in our bones.

Each day, we will gather around a particular story learning from its wisdom.

In the mornings, we will wake the myth with poetry and movement as invocation and meditation to prepare us. Followed by storytelling and creative activities to explore the myths and learn from how they each affect us.

After lunch, in the afternoons, we will set out on quests on the land with questions of how the themes of the myths show up in our lives - leading us deeper into a labyrinth of longing for truth. We will wander, we will let the land itself and its spirits whisper to us.

After dinner we will enjoy a night time dreamy, ritual based experience deepening the myth - looking and feeling it from other perspectives.

What is included

Experiential exploration and study of 4 Greek myths with themes including longing, change, death, transformation, love, fate and the journey of the soul.
Creative exercises you can replicate to better understand how myths mirror your life.
Group adventures and opportunities to share your own stories.
5 nights accommodation.
15 meals from dinner on the 24th to lunch on the 29th September.
Entry and experience at the Sanctuary of the Great Gods and museum.

Who is this for?

KATAVASIS is for the dreamers, the creators, the ones who feel the pull of the old stories in their marrow. It is for the artists and storytellers who sense that their work is not just their own, but part of a larger, older conversation.

It is for those who want to carry the myths in their bodies, not as abstractions, but as maps, as talismans for when the ground beneath them shakes, rattles and rolls them into different shapes and forms.

It is for those who feel the weight of their own underworld - a grief, a longing, a stuckness - and who desire to see their story from new perspectives in the company of others, and through myth and ritual with our wild earth.

And it is for the travellers, the ones standing at the crossroads, listening for the caw caw caw of the crow, the sign, the omen that says: this way, this way, this way....

Location

Samothraki Island, a magical, mysterious and enigmatic island in the northeastern part of the Aegean Sea, has been chosen as our mythic landscape to explore for KATAVASIS.

This island is a place of fascinating natural beauty where time and space truly shift, change, stretch and hover for those who can surrender to Her mysteries.

It is the home where the ancient Greeks performed the rites and rituals of the Kaveiria Mysteries to worship the Great Gods of the sky, nature and sea.

Accommodation and Food

We will stay, eat and gather from our home base of
Mariva Bungalows and Retreat Center, which is a traditional Greek retreat space and hotel located in the village of Therma, within walking distance to a magical waterfall, wildly-animate plane trees, chestnut trees and blooming hydrangeas.

Participants can either share a room with another person or pay extra for their own room.

All rooms have beds, balcony and private showers.

Healthy, nutritious Greek food will be cooked by the Mariva Bungalows chefs using the most natural ingredients available,
with an emphasis on sustainability, organic produce, and local sourcing. Specific requests for food can be noted in your sign-up form.

Your Psychopomp for the Journey

Anatolia H. Karteras

Anatolia H. Karteras is a counsellor, artist, writer, craft practitioner, lover of story, and facilitator creating at the intersection between ritual, nature activism and art.

Born to migrant Pontian Greek parents, raised on the Wurundjeri land of Melbourne, Australia and now based in regional France, Anatolia's relationship to the various lands we walk on and the land of the body we walk with, informs her work.

At the heart of her creations is a fascination and honouring of how the trance states of ritual magic, in relationship with natural forces can inform the creative process, transforming human relationship to life itself.

Underscored by a belief that the blooming of modernity must be rooted in land-listening for our species and ecosystems to survive, her work explores how different land and waterscapes, with the memories and beings of 'place' speak to those who will listen.

'Becoming Myth' events are her desire to breathe life into myths as conversations for current day humans to build intimacy with the sublime intricate web of life and death.

Anatolia will be sharing about KATAVASIS in the coming months through essays, stories, images and more via the Facebook event link and on Instagram.

Investment

You are invited to contribute an amount for the whole 6 day experience - between the sliding scale below - depending on your honest financial circumstances.

Until 1 May: Pay what you can between €800 - €1500.

From 1 May - 30 June: Pay what you can between €1000 - €1500.

1 July - 31 August: Pay what you can between €1200 - €1500.

1 - 23 September: Cost is €1500

Let this be an invitation to tune into the truth of where you are financially, reflect on the value you put on transformative experiences, and consider how what you offer financially returns to you in other reciprocal, mysterious ways.

No one is judging you for your offer. If you also have other ways you want to contribute your gifts, contact Anatolia at anatolia@becomingmyth.com

Join us by filling in the information form below.