Christianity
კაცხის სვეტი
Katskhi Pillar
“A single room of prayer atop a pillar of stone, reached only by ladder”
Scenes
Meaning
Above the spring woods a white limestone pillar rises straight into the sky, and a long ladder runs up its flank to the small stone church at the top.
A limestone pillar rising some forty meters from the forest, held before Christianity to have been a place of a fertility god. On its summit stand a small church and the remains of a hermit's cell, dated to around the ninth or tenth century, and it is understood as a site of the stylite tradition — living apart from the world atop a pillar. Long unclimbable, it was first surveyed by mountaineers in 1944, and since the 1990s a monk is said to have kept prayer there, going up and down by ladder.
Field notes
- Location
- Katskhi · Georgia · N42.3° · E43.2°
- Best time
- Spring and early summer, when the woods are bright and the white rock stands clear
- Getting there
- About an hour by road from Kutaisi, then on foot to the foot of the pillar.
- Etiquette
- The summit is a monk's dwelling and is not climbed by visitors; prayer is offered at the chapel below.
Sources
- · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- · Georgian National Tourism Administration
Photographs are freely licensed works from Wikimedia Commons and similar sources; the author and license appear beneath each image.