THE PILGRIMAGE, AN ANCIENT PRACTICE OF WALKING

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1. OBJECT AND REASON FOR THE PILGRIMAGES

It is said that a pilgrimage will be effective only if it is done on foot, whatever its purpose.

I would like to start this post by mentioning what a pilgrimage is in itself and what are the motivations that people feel or have to join one of them.

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Pilgrimage means a march or transfer of an individual -or a group of people- through a region using established paths and covering considerable distances. The pilgrimage represents a trip to a holy place, a Sanctuary, Mosque, Hermitage, Temple, Synagogue, or Church, round trip, of a person alone or integrated into a group. You arrive at the holy place and return to the place where you started your pilgrimage; and always walking, most of the way.

The word pilgrim comes from the Latin peregrinus, from per: through, and ager: field, countryside, region. It indicates to walk, to march, to move, to travel, to put in movement – concept of “movement” that we will explain later. It is the person who travels on foot, who leaves a geographical point to reach another, separated by great distances, and through roads that are not at all comfortable, known or unknown, for a considerable time (several days), which transforms that journey into an intense and exhausting one.

Those characteristics of intense and exhausting is what makes it a sacrifice, so from the beginning of the journey, the pilgrim is offering an oblation with his own body -obligating himself to travel through long journeys- to the divinity with whom he will have contact at the end of his journey and that is usually a Sanctuary.

The term “pilgrim” -and “pilgrimage”- is applied today essentially to people who move around for religious reasons, but in ancient times they also had other motivations and causes.

The pilgrimage is a joint action of several pilgrims who walk and at the same time make the oblations to the divinity with which they will have contact at the end of the journey, in the holy place. However, the route in modern times, has been having other ways to perform it, walking, horseback, donkey, camel, or other animal capable of making the journey, by motorcycle, bus or car.

The human being intuits that he has a spiritual foundation and that he must go towards it, perhaps for that reason he looks during his wandering for a place where he can find it . His pilgrim walk is that spiritual search, which keeps him strengthened and helps him to achieve the goal of reaching the holy place.

The pilgrimage is an activity in search of spiritual contact with a Divinity, with the Angels or with the Saints. This spiritual communication is what moves the pilgrim to make this effort of long walks; it brings it into effect in different ways: by praying, offering oblations, thanking, invoking, singing, adoring, asking, etc.

The object of pilgrimages is to obtain from the divinity certain miracles, in regard to relief of diseases, physical and mental degenerations, vices, and also to obtain certain gifts besides the expiation of sins. Saints joined to these experiences of worship (Dulia) because the believer needed, at certain time of Humanity, their help and intermediation to be able to communicate and have contact with divinities.

The pilgrimage contains 3 phases, 1) WALKING, 2) OBLATION or SACRIFICE, and 3) DIVINE CONTACT. The 3rd phase, is achieved through this pilgrimage through a mechanism “magic”, ie, the pilgrims get divinely energized by “magic virtues” (Post WALKING AND THE ARCHETYPE “MAGIC”), ancient magical paradigms, both of IMITATION and CONTACT, which allow them to have the power to communicate with the deity. The one of CONTACT is realized because the divinity -or the holiness-, with which the pilgrims will communicate, somehow transmitted and bequeathed their energy (things, remains, miracles, etc.) in the locus-sanctuary where they will arrive to receive that divine influence. Their physical transfer to the sanctuary is achieved by walking (phase 1), and when they arrive in this way they can make the physical-spiritual contact in the sanctuary, to achieve the spiritual link (phase 3), and also to reach the mystical communication, contemplative and revealed. The second phase, that of Oblation or Sacrifice, is carried out during the whole journey, from the place of departure to the Sanctuary; and it depends on the religious customs -of each religious belief- of the pilgrims, being able to vary, from the very walk, which is not allowed to travel on top of any animal or motor vehicle or pulled by animals, or doing it in some parts of the route on their knees, or others in fasting of one or two daily meals (but always drinking water), without pronouncing word, singing, in total silence, with sexual abstinence, and another ten commandments and prohibitions that represent a true sacrifice, which leads them in a full way to achieve the magic of imitation and/or contact.

How much does walking empower the pilgrim to achieve contact with his divinity? Just by fulfilling the sacrifice of reaching the holy place, the pilgrim was granted an enormous spiritual force to trust that he would achieve contact with the divinity, along with other spiritual benefits.

THE PRISTINE TELEOLOGICAL CAUSE OF THE PILGRIMAGE: Notwithstanding the above I must explain the primal element of pilgrimages which is indeed of the spiritual type, but as I have mentioned in Post TOTEM AND WALKING. PART I, ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECTS, and in future Post WALKING AND DANCE, where I express that WALKING is the NEED OF THE HUMAN BEING TO BE IN MOTION, a MOVEMENT both physical and mental and also of the spiritual type.

Let us see in an abbreviated form. In Post TOTEM AND WALKING. PART I, ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECTS, I express: ” Walking was preserved analogically as a spiritual practice within the Totemist system. This imperative need to walk in a wandering way, which started 2 million years ago, was spiritually satisfied by imitating the animals in their walk and with the dance; a rhythmic and cadenced dance, which communicates with a percussive beat to the body with the external natural environment, in a spiritual and somatic way: SPIRITUAL WALKING. The more sedentary we become, the greater the need to ask for help from the spirits, from our inner spirituality. The primitive man of those times, is inclined to invoke the spirits – his spirituality – because of his new sedentary state that reduces his capacity to have contact with his unconscious and with other mental functions.” So, from this time of transition from nomadism to sedentarism, early man tries to compensate this loss of walking in several ways; a human need that in a semi-conscious way is partly satisfied by pilgrimages. In a general way and in the same sense, we can say that the human being requires to be in movement, and as we have expressed in the future Post WALKING AND DANCE, dance is another of the forms that the human being has used to satisfy his imperious need to be in movement, generated by the observation and imitation of the instinctive dances of the animals, very especially -with much curiosity, attention and seduction- in his rituals of courtship and pre-appearance. The dance is a corporal movement but as a result of that spiritual necessity to walk (intrinsic activity), in a similar way to the peregrinations, transforming itself into a MOVEMENT OF THE SPIRIT, a MOVEMENT of SPIRITUAL type.

I could not affirm that the pilgrimage is an unconscious act in the human being, of that part that I have qualified of SPIRITUAL WALKING, nevertheless, something of that congenital necessity that has been acquired from very remote times, is managed to satisfy with the pilgrimage.

2. BRIEF HISTORY: BEGINNINGS, ORIGINS, CAUSES, GENESIS, FOUNDATIONS.

The divine contact sought in the third phase, by means of pilgrimages, is physically achieved by arriving at holy places or sanctuaries, which have been defined and erected, over centuries, because

– The divinity that is venerated had an apparition -or several- in

– A simple relic (thing or small body part) of the divine person or the saint being venerated was found.

– A distinguished relic (important part of the body) of the divine person or the saint being venerated was found.

– A miracle is attributed to the divinity or the saint being venerated

– It is a holy place that for some reason reveres that divinity or the saint.

– The Holiness passed by that place and they turned it into a sanctuary.

– It is attributed to him the realization of individual and collective healings for coming before his presence.

– That divinity appeared before several individuals (children, women, men) or only one.

The holy places, where the worship of divinities and holy persons have been performed, in addition to those indicated, also took place in caverns (antrum, antri: in Latin; antrón in Greek), caves and grottos (krúpte in Greek) sacred (Sacrum speluncas dissimiles veris).

3. TYPE OF PILGRIMAGES

The different forms, categories or types of pilgrimage have been shaped over time, attending to the great diversity of collective and individual needs; as they are:

– By Devotion

– By Vote

– By Exercise or Profession of Faith

– For Mercy

– By Collection

– By Worship or Reverence

– By Request

– By Prayer or Thanksgiving

– By Offering

– In gratitude

– By Promise or Command

– For Hope

– For Charity or Love

– By Duty or Oath

– To achieve Miracles

– For Atonement of Sins

– By Commitment or Obligation

– By promise or thanks

All these categories consciously represent the religious feeling of approaching, in a first phase – quite remote – the spirits, and in the next phase the divine; however, underneath all this, lies the teleological cause of walking.

4.         SIDE EFFECTS OF PILGRIMAGES

Besides this primary effect (teleological cause or ultimate cause) that the pilgrimages have, which we have mentioned, that of SPIRITUAL WALKING AND SPIRITUAL TYPE MOVEMENT, there are other secondary effects.

Among the side effects of religious pilgrimages are:

– Contact with the sensitive and affective part of the pilgrim

– That some physical ailments are corrected by walking for long distances or long, repetitive periods.

– It generates in the pilgrim an atmosphere of gratitude and responsibility.

– It provokes in the pilgrim a space of community and collectivity

– It also provokes a state of benevolence and fraternal help.

5.         THE MOST IMPORTANT IN ANTIQUITY

Perhaps the oldest pilgrimages were those developed by walking in the deserts, since in almost all religions there has been the idea that one can get in touch with divinities and gods in these lonely places, perhaps because of their isolation, quietness and silence. It was a true sacrifice to make in these environments, which almost led to lose one’s life because of long days, perhaps with some points fixed in advance, but always seeking contact with a divinity, and until this spiritual link was achieved, the sacrifice was suspended. In my novel JESUS GOES TO PSYCHIATRIST (*), God the Son is not very much in favor of long walks to seek communication with Him, although He did go on journeys through the desert to have contact with God the Father. He commented that He did not even need a temple to communicate with Him; however, He did make pilgrimages: His last walk as a pilgrim to the city of Jerusalem was made by joining the feasts of the Jewish Pesach (Passover festivities).

The most famous pilgrimages, which since the Antiquity have been made, are

ELEUSIS: A little mythology and a little reality. Let this serve as an example for the dozens of cases that have been forged in the mythical Antiquity. To Eleusis -Athenian city, 500 years b. C. -great crowds of people came to worship several Greek deities, among them Démeter. In the language of those days, they said they were looking for the mystery of the deity, and it was no other thing than to try to contact it, to request its protection and auguries, to ask for its gifts and to thank for the great harvests, for which they celebrated ceremonies of sacred worship, in their respective sanctuaries. In general terms, these were public rites where obligations and constraints were expressed for the whole community. They would come to Eleusis in procession to carry out these festivities since they began their marches with baths in the waters of the sea. These rites of Eleusis and others, had their origin in prehistory based on older festivals on agricultural fertility, to ensure large harvests, which in turn surely served to influence the organization and practice of pilgrimages and the same cults that developed in early Christianity.

ZEUS and other divinities: Another bit of mythology. Certain cults were carried out in sacred caves in pre-Hellenic times. Zeus in some sacred caves in Mount Dicte, in the island of Crete. Also in sacred caves the processions to venerate Cybele in Phrygia and Lydia, with bullfighting ceremonies, with fasts, baths and penances.

TAMMUZ or ADONIS: More of mythology. Great processions were held to worship the god Tammuz (god of the Semitic peoples of Babylon and Syria) or Adonis (adopted by the Greeks in the seventh century BC) in the cities of Byblos, Syria, and Paphos, Cyprus, to achieve good crops.

GANGES: Sacred river of India. This river has several holy places that have developed in the tributaries of the river, and to which pilgrimages are carried out at different times of the year.

THE MECCA. Holy place of Islam, where Muhammad was born. It consists of the Kaaba Mosque (Future Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND THE CENTER OF THE KAABA) and in its center the black stone.

The oldest Christian pilgrimages are those of Rome and the Holy Land:

THE VATICAN. Holy City in Rome, where the holy popes are located, is the Basilica of St. Peter, and the mortuary remains of the popes.

JERUSALEM. Holy city of the 3 religions: Christian, Muslim and Jewish.

TEOTIHUACAN, MEXICO, sacred city of the Mexicas. Since the 9th century.

6.         MOST IMPORTANT PILGRIMAGES TODAY.

We can list, in a concise way, the most important pilgrimages at present:

THE VATICAN. Holy city in Rome, where the holy popes reside, is located the Basilica of St. Peter, and the mortuary remains of the popes. The high point was reaching St. Peter’s Basilica and the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul.

JERUSALEM. Holy city of the 3 religions: Christian, Muslim and Jewish.

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA. In this place of Spain the remains of Santiago el Mayor, apostle of Jesus Christ, were found in the 9th century. And since that time, pilgrimages have been made to this place, where the tomb was found.

THE MECCA. Holy place of Islam, where Muhammad was born. It consists of the Kaaba Mosque (Future Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND THE CENTER OF THE KAABA) and in its center the black stone.

FRANCE, OUR LADY OF LOURDES: City of France. Pilgrimages for the apparition of the Virgin Mary.

FÁTIMA: In the town of Santarem, Portugal, the Virgin of Fatima (of the Rosary) appeared in 1917. Pilgrimages.

MEXICO, BASIC OF GUADALUPE, IN THE CITY OF MEXICO, since the 16th century, with the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1531.

INDIA, SACRED RIVER OF THE GANGES, holy places in its tributaries

INDIA, HOLY CITIES OF INDIA: KUMBHAMELA, RISHIKESH, BENARÉS, and others

IRAQ, in BAGDAD, BAHA’U’LLAH HOUSE

IRAN, in the HOUSE OF BAB IN SHIRAZ

ENGLAND, CANTERBURY

ITALY, Francis of Assisi

ITALY; Santa Rita di Casia.

CANADA, Sanctuary Sainte Anne de Beaupre

And several dozen more.

7.         DEVELOPMENT OF THE WALK AND THE PILGRIMAGE

What did walking mean during pilgrimages? Simply because it was the only way to make those spiritual journeys? No! From the point of view of consciousness and traditions, in ancient times it was the only way to make them, but walking, apart from representing a physical spiritual sacrifice, was the way to have contact with a path that supposedly had been traveled by one or several of the saints, whose relics were kept in the Sanctuary. Either they represent the transit through the places that the Saint visited or lived during his existence, or his place of birth. They are also the places where apparitions of the Divinity or the miracles performed by Her were made. A process of “Dulía Walker” that was granted to the saints during the pilgrimage.

From that moment, the contact with the Divinity, with the Saint and with the spiritual began. Rome was an example of it, since to reach the holy places there was the Main Way (Via Francigena) and other secondary ways that were also considered holy. Another important case about this, is the pilgrimage to Santiago Compostela with its holy route, the main one, the “French Way” that was traced so that pilgrims from different points could start, covering almost all Europe, and they were gathered in France. In these routes, many holy places are touched (Churches, Sanctuaries, Relics, etc.) which gives these routes their quality of “Holy Walks”.

A clear example of this was represented by Egeria, a Galician Abbess from the 4th century, who made several journeys through biblical roads and lands. During 1000 days she walked those roads through Constantinople, Sinai, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Jerusalem. A Christian pilgrim who, according to the Scriptures, travelled all those roads and places that the Bible has recorded as part of the history of the three religions (Christian, Jewish and Muslim).

There was another type of pilgrimage in the Buddhist current, apart from the fact that in his philosophical-religious conceptualization it was an inner journey, the Buddhist monk made a geographical tour through which he visited distant places with the purpose of making a discursive wandering, haranguing his exordiums and Buddhist principles for possible future initiates. The Mahayana (philosophy of Vacuity or emptiness) led Buddhism to a reflective and dissertationary pilgrimage (Post THE PATH OF VACUITY, Future Post DISCURSIVE AND POETICAL PILGRIMAGE).

However, from the congenital and unconscious point of view, walking during pilgrimages has represented a rescue of a loss that the human being started to suffer since 10,000 years ago, as we already pointed out at the beginning of this post, resorting to this practice and to others, looking for the contact with his spiritual need, because he has lost the communication with his unconscious and with other functions of the mental type, caused by his sedentary state.

8.         THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND THE PILGRIMAGE

Now, what relationship do we find between the WALK-RWD system and the pilgrimage?

Undoubtedly, the walk, during these processions of the pilgrims, has a symbolism – of the spiritual type – that impels the being – physical, mental and spiritual – towards a point that shows him a sense of life, and that orients him for his location and transmits him that he will find it at the end of his journey.

The WALK-RWD system is a recurrent form of daily walking, -sometimes wandering and sometimes very defined- that combines that walking with 3 other activities (reading, writing and drawing) organized -consciously and unconsciously- and lead the walkers towards several concrete objectives: 1) Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, 2) Creativity and artistic creation, 3) Concentration, relaxation, meditation and contemplation, 4) Mind-body harmony, 5) Understanding and acceptance of oneself, 6) Perception and knowledge of reality. In an integral way, the following is achieved: the pleasure of and for living.

In its constant application it results in a conscious and voluntary walk towards the Sense of Life (Future Post WALKING AND ITS TELEOLOGICAL COMMITMENT).

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