Journey of Khevsurs’ Jvarioni to Tusheti

In Khevsureti, two weeks before the beginning of the religious festivities of Atengenoba held in summer, two ‘Jvarioni’ (two pilgrimage groups) of Khevsurs bearing the Karati and Khakhmat banners would journey to Tusheti, where they would pay homage to their sanctuaries, the shrines of Khakhmati cross and the Karati cross that existed in almost every Tushetian village, and were known under the name the ‘sakhevsuros’ (locals, Tushetian call Khevsurs’).
The Khevsurs’ Jvariani would travel to Tusheti along a long ago established route – after crossing the Borbalo pass, they would start their pilgrimage from the Pirikiti gorge (north of the Caucasus mountain range), then journey all over Tusheti, and return passing the Gometsari gorge, then upstream toward the source of the Alazani river and across the Borbalo mountains, back to Khevsureti, where the Atengen festivities were going to start – the celebration of the Karati khati (shrine) in the Liqoki gorge, by the village of Chalai, the main sanctuary of Kopala, and the celebration of the Khakhmati Jvari (cross, sanctuary) near Khakhmati settlement, at the shrine of Giorgi Naghvarmshvenieri (of beautiful stream).
The sacral niches of Khevsureti sanctuaries in Tusheti should have appeared when the inhabitants of Pkhovi (Pshavi and Khevsureti) evading the enforced spread of Christianity took refuge in Tusheti (The Georgian
Chronicles, 4th c.). Apparently, they took with them into exile some sacral objects from their shrines (displaced persons would take one stone from the main shrine and build a new shrine for that stone in their new
residence, in the form of a niche). The tradition of Jvarioni journey would have started when the main part of the Khevsurs returned back to Pkhovi.
The rituals performed by the Khevsur Jvarioni in Tusheti, in parallel with paying homage to the «Khevsurtsalotsavi» (place of Khevsurs’ worship) niches, included the blessing of the fortresses and houses newly built by the locals, the treatment of the sick; releasing the souls of the unfortunate victims of tragic accidents from the captivity by the avsuli (evil spirits), - as it was believed that the demon of the place had caused the fatal accident and the perished persons would remain imprisoned by it until a Khevsur khutses (presbyter, elder) rescued him by performing prescribed rituals.
The journeys of Khevsur Jvarioni to Tusheti were forcibly stopped in the 1930s as a result of the anti-religious propaganda of the communist regime. The desire to revive this ancient tradition arose recently among
the representatives of the Khevsur and Tush intelligentsia, and through their efforts, in the summer of 2020, the Khevsur Jvarioni moved to Tusheti to pay homage to their shrines. As expected, the ritual appeared to be radically altered – as a testament to the fact that all rituals and practices belong to that specific span of time in which they have originated, and remain alive as long as people have a deep belief in them; This was indeed a proof of the fact that any artificially restored ritual is devoid of real content and is largely just a show in nature.
In both Khevsureti and Tusheti, only phantoms within people’s memory are preserved of the members of the socium that existed in the times during which the above-described customary rituals were performed as a part of living traditions.