On Tuesday, April 14, Professor of Religious Pluralism and Director of Chapel House, Georgia Frank, led a talk on caves and the role they play in facilitating religious gatherings. She emphasized how they have often been the setting for creation stories, rituals and altering one’s perception. Students and professors were free to attend and listen to the lecture.
The talk was part of Colgate University’s weekly Arts and Humanities Colloquium, a series designed to foster intellectual exchange across disciplines. Organized by Yukari Hirata, Division Director for Arts and Humanities, the colloquium invites professors to share their research with a broader academic audience. Hirata described her motivation for inviting Frank to speak.
“This is a place where people from the ten departments in the Division and anyone else come together, learn about each other’s works, get to know each other’s interests and encourage stimulating conversations,” Hirata said. “It builds an intellectual community where we can ask questions to experts in a given field and also be inspired to hear perspectives from other fields in surprising ways. Professor Frank’s talk was exemplary of this goal.”
Frank studies early Christian literature and ancient Mediterranean religion. She explained that this project marked a shift from her previous work.
“When the invitation came from Professor Yukari Hirata to present research in progress, I was thrilled to propose this paper. More so than my prior research, this project took me well beyond my ‘wheelhouse,’” Frank said.
To deepen her understanding of caves across cultures, she collaborated with colleagues from many disciplines.
“Presenting this talk as part of the Arts and Humanities lecture series was a token of my gratitude and esteem for the guidance of generous colleagues who led me down fascinating rabbit holes,” she said.
Frank opened the lecture by expressing her thanks to those who helped and inspired her throughout the process, and mentioned how she was initially exposed to the role of caves thanks to a colleague. She credited much of her work to colleagues Scott Mehl, Christopher Vecsey, Rebecca Ammerman, Ken Belanger and Anthony Aveni, as well as librarians Lisa King and Mark Sandford.
The speech was broken down into sections on caves in ancient Mediterranean religions, the legend of the Seven Sleepers and dark zones used for cave rituals.
She began by describing how caves are very prominent in ancient Mediterranean religion — they go back to the story of Goddess Demeter and were used for underground rituals. She described how hero-god Trophonius gained his namesake cave and how Odysseus traveled to the cave of the Nymphs. Emphasizing how caves can shape perception, Frank explained that people can become trapped deep within them and only experience the world through shadows they may see, until they eventually emerge into the light.
Caves appear in religion as much as they do in myth; Jewish legends state King David was believed to have lived in a cave and Christianity suggests Jesus was born in a cave. Frank also described hell as a cave, or a means of descent. Monks and nuns have sometimes lived in caves, seeing them as spaces to foster a closer connection to God.
She explained that her interest in this topic developed gradually through her teaching.
“I soon found myself interested in other myths set in the underworld, as well as reenacting ‘tours of hell’ in ancient Greek, Roman and Christian rituals. My course on ‘Death and Afterlife’ allowed me to explore caves in other religions,” Frank said.
During the lecture, Frank moved on to discuss Daoist and Mesoamerican caves. She credited her inspiration to scholars she met at different conferences, again emphasizing generosity throughout her work. In Daoist culture, caves can be considered places of encounter between human and divine forces — they become networks underground, becoming what Frank describes as “wombs.” Thus, she describes caves as an “axis mundi” that serves the gods.
Caves have many uses: sites of burials, sacrifice, depositories of ceremonial offerings and displays of ceremonial art. The Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, Mexico, for example, was said to be the place where many ethnic groups originated. Frank expressed how much of pre-existing research focused on caves’ services to gods, but seemed to overlook ordinary bodies in relation to caves, namely, how they may feel or think while inside.
This led her to discuss the story of the Seven Sleepers in Ephesus, Turkey, in which seven young men living in the Roman Empire took refuge in a cave to escape persecution for their faith, only to fall asleep and miraculously wake up hundreds of years later. This was believed to be proof of the resurrection. Many caves around the world, including in Azerbaijan and Jordan, have become sites to tell the story of the Seven Sleepers. For instance, the names of the seven individuals were found engraved in a cave in southern Egypt. Frank emphasized the lonely nature of the legend: once they woke up, the world they knew was gone.
Frank also found that the dark zones, the deepest parts of caves, are where most ritual objects appear. First-year Chloe Zajac found this point particularly compelling.
“I thought the part about where she said that most of the rituals happen in the darkest part of the cave was interesting; people walk all the way back even though it would’ve been way easier to do the rituals in the semi-darkness,” Zajac said.
Frank also spoke on the physiological effects one may experience with caves, such as dizziness, headaches and an altered perception of time.
“Learning more about cave archaeology and human physiological responses to prolonged stays in cave environments was a game changer for my own approach to these myths and rituals,” she said.
It is important to note, however, that the caves are not always magical places. Frank discussed how the documentary, “No Other Land,” depicts Palestinians living in caves as a means of refuge, showcasing how these spaces can play a role in the refugee crisis.
Frank concluded by saying that caves are portals to the world of the dead; they are settings for creation stories, as well as means of communication between sacred and human realms. They can be sites for ritual activity and environments for altering cognition, physiology, perceptions of time and feelings, thus shaping human experiences in profound ways.
