When the Pagan Flame Went Out

The Olympic torch, initially masterminded for the 1936 Olympics by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels as a symbol of the pagan spirit of the ancient Greece, which was conceived to be an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich, flamed out at the very moment the torchbearer entered through the gates of the main Kremlin tower.

The Spasskaya Tower (Russian: Спасская башня, translated as "Saviour Tower") is the main tower with a through-passage on the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, which overlooks the Red Square. The face of the Spasskaya Tower is encrusted with an ancient icon of Savior of Smolensk. The icon is of the Deesis iconographic type dating back to the Byzantine art of traditional representation of Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist, imploring Christ the salvation of man. In the center of the composition is the full-length figure of Christ Pantocrator. The word Pantocrator is of Greek origin meaning "ruler of all". His halo is surrounded by angels. By his feet stand little figures of attending Juliana and Alexis, the man of God.

The torch flame went out exactly at the moment the torchbearer, Shavarsh Karapetyan, entered the Kremlin compound passing under the Spasskaya Tower famed icon. A former Soviet Armenian finswimmer and 13 times European champion, seven times USSR champion, who is also noted for having saved single-handedly 20 lives when a trolleybus fell into the Yerevan reservoir on September 16, 1976, Shavarsh Karapetyan noticed that the torch flamed out, seconds after he had passed under the tower. Beckoned by Karapetyan, a security guard who was standing nearby unabashedly relit the torch using his zippo lighter.

Although the incident was mainly viewed as one of the usual mishaps that haunt the Olympic Flame throughout the history of the Olympic Games, certain members of the Russian clergy took note of the inevitable symbolism of the event, in light of the fact that the torch lighting ceremony in itself is ingratiatingly pagan in nature. Besides, the ritual has little direct connection to the ancient Greek Olympic tradition. Invented in its modern form by the organizers of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the rite of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins, pertaining to the desire of the Nazi leadership to revive antagonistic paganism in Europe and undermine the Christian tradition there.

The shadowy past of the Olympic Torch, coupled by its more intrinsic polytheistic symbolic undertones, has recently drawn criticism from some of the most prominent Russian Orthodox clergy stating that kindling a fire with a prayer to Zeus and Apollo by a certain “high priestess” runs against the fundamental principles of Christianity, thus making the very idea of Olympic Games somewhat dubious from Christian point of view.

Ironically, as it was being carried through the main Kremlin tower and under the much-esteemed icon of Christ Pantocrator, which had been mysteriously recovered during the restoration of the Spasskaya Tower back in 2010, the seemingly debatable torch flamed out. That produced a mixed reaction in the public. However, those who had previously voiced their concern that perhaps using the Olympic Flame implied a certain compromise on the part of the Christians in connection with the Olympic torch’s symbolic past have now expressed their relief already.