“Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities.” 2011. (original) (raw)

New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies

Despite the different types of pilgrimage (internal, moral, and place pilgrimage), they all involve movement and an engagement with the sacred. Anthropological research has focused mainly on place pilgrimage and this entry begins by outlining the social and economic processes which have encouraged the growth of this form of pilgrimage since the 1960s. It then proceeds to discuss both religious and nonreligious place pilgrimage around the world and illustrates these pilgrimages through particular examples. Key changes in the anthropological study of pilgrimage since the 1970s are considered next and the entry concludes by outlining two promising avenues which researchers are exploring: (1) alternatives to the dominant constructivist approach; and (2) attempts to break down the boundaries between Anglophone and non‐Anglophone pilgrimage research.

Review of Dionigi Albera and John Eade (eds), New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies

Numen, Vol. 67, No. 1, 2019, pp. 108-110.

This collection of original essays resulted from a 2013 workshop at the Musée des civilisations de l' Europe et de la Méditerranée (MUCEM), though a majority of chapters were commissioned later. The editors are concerned to address the rapid growth of the fragmented field of pilgrimage and tourism studies, and to showcase research done in non-Western contexts, by non-Anglophone scholars. In “Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective” Albera and Eade position the book as: identifying non-Western pioneers in pilgrimage studies; diversifying terms used to discuss types of journeys, such as “ ‘chaoshan’ (to have an audience with a mountain) and ‘jinxiang’ (to offer incense)”, the language used for pilgrimage to mountain shrines in China (p. 5), and the various words for the human actor, the pilgrim; destabilization of the colonial link between Europe and Christianity, and ‘other’ regions and religions (particularly of Indigenous people); and attention to migration, diaspora, hybridity and sharing of environments, methodologies and resources to approach pilgrimage creatively and critically. The first case study is Marcus Bingenheimer’s “Pilgrimage in China,” which is an overview of mountain journeys with discussion of scholarship in both European languages and Chinese. This is an excellent strategy that operates throughout the book; the pilgrimages themselves are important, but equal emphasis is given to the way that academic studies, by local and international authors, have framed and presented them.

Religion, Pilgrimage and Tourism: An Introduction

Religion, Pilgrimage and Tourism (4 volume reprint series with Routledge)

Introduction For as long as human beings have existed they have been interested in travel. Particular homelands and cultural norms have always been constructed with reference to, or contrasted with, the lands and habits of ‘the Other’. Implicit in this statement is the notion that some places are more special (perhaps sacred) than others, and this is the core of the intimate relationship between human beings, place and travel, and religion. The field encompassed by this four-volume reprint series ‘Religion, Pilgrimage, and Tourism’ is thus vast. At the least controversial end of the spectrum are those incidences of travel which are sanctified by the so-called ‘world religions’ (Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), such as the Hajj, the Camino de Santiago, the Shikoku henro, the Kumbh Mela, and the hope expressed at the annual Passover meal, ‘next year in Jerusalem’. However, the field extends far beyond these ‘official’ journeys, and encompasses the nomadic wanderings of Australian Aboriginal peoples through their ancestral lands, travel to participate in Native American potlatch gatherings, the assembly of Ancient Greeks every four years to honour Zeus Olympios at the Olympic Games, and the modern Druids who perform rituals at Stonehenge at the midsummer solstice. Yet beyond the immediately religious lies journeying that is motivated by individual ‘spiritual’ needs, which may involve traditional sacred routes and sites (for example, Westerners going to Indian ashrams), and radically eclectic, non-traditional pathways (for example, Wagner aficionados who travel to experience productions of the Ring Cycle and fans of Elvis Presley who visit his home, Graceland). In the post-religious milieu of the twenty-first century, almost any journey to almost any site may be religious and/or spiritual, a journey ‘redolent with meaning’ (Digance 2006).

Ritual Journeys in North America: Opening Religious and Ritual Landscapes and Spaces

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, 2016

The religious landscape of North America is different from other regions of the world in that not only is there a lack of a highly visible religious elements, but also the idea and practice of pilgrimage and ritual travel is not as pervasive as in Europe and Asia. However, there are many human-built and natural spaces marked by Roman Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Indigenous peoples, and members of other faiths which are subject to either formal or informal pilgrimage-like travel. Visits to these sacred sites have intensified with the rise and expansion of tourism after World War II, conflating pilgrimage-like travel with tourism. As such, there has been an expansion of the term ‘pilgrimage’ to describe the visits of people to sites of historical, political and/or pop culture importance. This paper examines the changing religious and ritual landscapes in North America, and examines the case of tourism and pilgrimage to Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ontario, to show how ritual journe...