Monastery of St. Nahum
The apostles who brought Christianity to Bulgaria were Clement and Nahum. They were authorized by the Bulgarian Tsar Boris to establish the first religious university of its kind in Ohrid, which facilitated the translation of religious books into Bulgarian Slavonic and the education of the young generation of leaders of the new empire. St. Clement oversaw the university in Ohrid, while St. Nahum established a similar institution, intended mainly for the royal family and nobility, in the capital of the empire, Preslav, located in eastern Bulgaria.
After many years of public activity in Preslav, Saint Nahum joined his brother in Ohrid and took over the management of the educational institution, while his brother became the first Bulgarian Archbishop and was engaged in organizing Bulgarian Christianity. However, this role did not seem to suit him, and after years of missionary and educational activity, Saint Nahum’s soul grew weary of people and longed to return to the path of monasticism, to be united with God alone. Consequently, he retired to a monastery on the other side of the lake and spent his last years there, performing miracles and establishing the monastic tradition in Bulgaria and Macedonia. The monastery quickly became a place of pilgrimage and study, and especially a place of healing, since Saint Nahum was not only a scholar and a monk but also a healer.
St. Nahum Monastery is wonderfully located on a rocky hill near the springs that feed the lake, creating an area of pools that looks like paradise. People come to this area to be healed, swim at the sandy beaches, and take boat tours through the bubbling and clear large ponds. Next to the monastery, there is a monastic guesthouse, and it is believed that whoever sleeps here will receive an answer to their problems in their dreams, as was the case in the temples of Asclepius in ancient times.
In the center of the monastery is an ancient church where the saint is buried. Pilgrims come to the tomb, place their right hand on it to absorb the energy, and then place their hand on their heart. Some also place their ear on the tomb, and at times, one can hear the heartbeat of Saint Nahum, even though he died more than a thousand years ago. There are many miraculous stories about the place, the most recent of which is about a young man named Alex, who, one bright day, was touched by the Holy Spirit and spent 15 hours using a chainsaw to carve the image of Saint Nahum from a dry tree trunk that was there. You can see the statue created before ascending to the monastery, and next to it are pictures documenting the miraculous sculpting process.
On the way to the Monastery of St. Nahum, about 14 km north, on the shores of the lake, there is a reconstruction of a Neolithic village on stilts in the water at a place called the Bay of Bones. About 10 km north is the beautiful village of Trpeja, from which one can reach another small monastery on the shores of the lake, called Zahum, only by boat.
The Entrance Mosaic
Above the entrance door to the Monastery of Saint Nahum is a mosaic depicting a man riding a carriage pulled by a bear and an ox, while Saint Nahum watches the rider from the side. In another mosaic, further to the left, he is seen leading the bear to the carriage. The “regular” tourist guides explain that when Saint Nahum arrived in the area, he heard that a bear had eaten a farmer’s ox, leaving the farmer unable to plough his fields. So, he went into the forest, caught the bear, and forced it to pull the cart or plough for a year as both punishment and compensation for its deed. This explanation often brings a smile to travellers’ faces, but it is not the only interpretation. The true meaning of the image is much deeper.
Saint Nahum was not just a simple monk, seer, and miracle worker but one of the most learned men of his time. He was the head of the school in the capital of Bulgaria, Preslav, a scientist, a doctor, and the teacher and personal tutor of Simeon I, the most important Bulgarian Tsar. Moreover, Saint Nahum was raised in the tradition of Christian esotericism and was one of the apostles who accompanied Cyril and Methodius from the University of Magnaura in Constantinople, the leading center of education at the time.
In light of all this, one might ask whether there is an allegorical meaning in the mosaic displayed at the entrance to the monastery. And indeed, there is: the esoteric meaning is that in order to succeed on a spiritual path, the first step is to harness the two opposing forces within us in a single direction. This idea is embodied in the biblical adage “A wolf will dwell with a lamb.” These are not external animals but symbolic representations of the opposing forces within us.
Whenever animals appear in Christian mosaics, they symbolize qualities within a person. The monks saw in the external world a reflection of one’s inner world and in the struggle against external difficulties an opportunity to confront inner weaknesses. The two animals, the bull and the bear, represent the opposing forces within a person: good and evil, civilized and wild, black and white, reason and emotion. The carriage symbolizes the human system, and the man riding it represents the spirit, the will, which must harness these opposing forces in a single direction to fulfill one’s destiny in the world.
In contemporary spiritual traditions of the West, there is a story about a man named Gurdjieff, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was part of a group searching across the world for the true meaning of human life, which had been lost throughout history. After much effort and many years of searching, Gurdjieff arrives at a spiritual school in the mountains of Central Asia, where the truth and the path of human spiritual development are known and preserved. When Gurdjieff asks the school’s teacher to be admitted, the master responds: “You come to me as a sheep, but there is also a wolf inside you! Can you make these two live together in peace?”
The first step in any spiritual path, whether from the East or the West, is to recognize the duality that governs our life and the world and to transcend it. This is the meaning of the carriage and the rider in the mosaic. In many spiritual traditions, including the ancient Jewish one, the chariot (Merkava) is a symbol of the human system: the energy centers, the soul, and the intellect. The first step on the path is to learn to ride it by harnessing the two opposing forces, the bull and the bear, in one direction, toward the fulfillment of one’s destiny, connected to God.
The motif of the chariot pulled by opposing forces and controlled by the person standing on it is an ancient symbol that appears in Tarot card number seven, the Chariot card, in much the same way as it is depicted in the mosaic at the entrance to St. Nahum Monastery. In the Tarot, however, the chariot is pulled by two sphinxes—mythical creatures—one black and one white.
The chariot motif also appears in Neoplatonic mysticism during the Roman Empire, where Helios, the sun god, moves through the sky in a chariot pulled by four horses. It is found in the biblical story of Elijah ascending to heaven in a chariot of fire and in Kabbalah, where the Tree of the Sephiroth represents the chariot and symbolizes the human system.
The mosaic at the entrance to the Church of St. Nahum on Lake Ohrid captures the essence of the human story. Within each of us resides both a bear and a bull, and we struggle to reconcile them and harness them to the plough or carriage so that we can fulfill our human tasks. Saint Nahum knew this, Plotinus knew this, the holy HaAri HaKadosh knew this, and Gurdjieff knew this, and each sought to teach this lesson in his own way.
