Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey

Authors

• René Gothóni University of Helsinki

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67208

Keywords:

Pilgrims and pilgrimages, Methodology, Ritual, Liminality, Rites of passage, Rites and ceremonies

Abstract

During the two past decades, scholars in religious studies and social anthropology have frequently reconsidered Turner's theoretical model of pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is the outer manifestation of an inner journey, often referred to as an allegory of the soul's journey to God. Thus it is cosmologically meaningful. The height of the journey is the arrival at the pilgrimage centre and the encounter with the divine. There the pilgrim perceives the gap between what he should be (according to the religious tradition) a what he really is, i.e. he suddenly realizes the discrepancy between the precept and the practice. This experience is the very essence of a pilgrimage, because what has been experienced cannot become unexperienced, what has been seen cannot become unseen, what has been realized cannot become unrealized.