A spiritual transformation began to take place in Rasputin. It is not known what caused it, whether the fact that his six-month-old first-born son died or the fact that he was severely battered while trying to steal horses.
He began to visit various monasteries and hermitages and made pilgrimages to holy places not only in Russia. In 1893 he traveled to what is now Greece, to the Orthodox center on Mount Athos, where he listened to the monks' theological discussions. He memorized the passages of Scripture and the writings of the Fathers of the Church, having never read them himself because he was semi-illiterate. However, the monastic life he experienced there discouraged him from remaining in the order.
