Divinity, hidden in plain sight

During my travels, I always keep an eye out for hidden divinity. Not the kind that loudly demands attention – but the quiet kind that lingers in corners, in stone, in myth, in places most people pass without a second glance. I search for the sacred that endures in disguise: a goddess carved into a weathered façade, a forgotten symbol tucked into a narrow alley. An ancient temple that was renamed – but never fully driven away.

Rome is a perfect example of this. When I first traveled there, I quickly realized that I was literally surrounded by the old gods – not just in a spiritual sense, but in stone and marble, in fountains and domes, woven into the city’s everyday life.

Neptune rising from the water like a spell frozen in marble (Could it be that Medusa stopped by for a little visit?). And the Pantheon – once a house for all gods, later Christianized – still carries that vibration beneath its dome. That quiet whisper: I was here long before you renamed me. Even after centuries of reinterpretation, it can still be felt: the sacredness of former devotion, the echo of prayers that belonged to another world.

Rome is built upon layers of belief. And as I walked through its streets, I found myself wondering how many gods are still there – simply going by different names. As a pagan and an omnist, I did not feel foreign there. Rather, I felt remembered. Yet my own journey of discovering the old gods within modernity had begun some time before.

The moment mythology became something I could feel – not just knowledge, but lived experience – happened much earlier, in Cyprus. I was eight years old when I visited the Baths of Aphrodite. Something about that place stayed with me. Since that day, she has accompanied me – or perhaps I have accompanied her. However one chooses to phrase it, that was where my conscious relationship with the ancient world of the gods began.

From then on, I was captivated by culture, history, and the mythological layers beneath everyday life. But it was only years later that I began traveling with clear intention. No longer simply to see places, but to enter them as living mythscapes – as spaces where traces can be read and resonances perceived.

What fascinates me most is how often old deities continue to live on in the garments of newer belief systems. A saint in a chapel, a figure in a cathedral – sometimes these are renamed Divinities, reshaped, perhaps forgotten, but never entirely erased. Not rarely were churches built upon former sacred sites, drawn to the energy that had been honored there for centuries. The old rarely disappears completely. It transforms. It remains – for those who look closely.

And even within seemingly modern contexts, traces appear: a street name, a relief on a façade, a local festival older than its current interpretation. Through this lens, every city becomes a woven tapestry of stories – and every journey a kind of archaeological search for the unseen.

Yet my longing reaches further. Japan calls to me – with its forests, mountains, and sacred sites. I feel especially drawn to Fushimi Inari Taisha, with its thousands of vermilion torii gates winding up the mountain. Inari Ōkami, the deity worshipped there, embodies both male and female aspects – fluid, beyond rigid categories. The thought of encountering such a presence, not merely reading about it but experiencing it, awakens in me a deep desire to travel.

Or Malta, where one of the oldest known Goddess temples rises from the earth – a place that whispers of rituals older than much of recorded history.

These paths – from Cyprus to Rome and my own homeland, and onward to the places still waiting for me – have taught me one thing: the gods have not disappeared. They lie in layers beneath our world.

Traveling, then, becomes less about sightseeing and more about listening. About conscious perception. About walking alongside something ancient – even if only for a moment.