What is Pilgrimage?
Modern Britain suffers from spiritual inertia. The heavy material smog of mortgages and cars, along with the ever-increasing pace of working life, leaves little time to simply connect with the land, ourselves and each other. Our traditional guides fail us, with religion losing relevance daily, and science proclaiming that ‘spirit’ doesn’t even exist. In this modern land, it really isn’t easy to break through to the Light.
But not all is bleak. There is good news. A very ancient spiritual technology has been recently rediscovered, offering direct engagement with the Source. You don’t need to dress smartly, sit still, feel guilty or get bored. No gurus are required. It is a natural form of whole-body movement, a deep dance through imaginary labyrinths, and a hearty adventure. We call it: pilgrimage.
Alright, so you’ve heard of it. But what is pilgrimage? Simply put, it means making a journey on foot, with an intention, to a holy place. It requires becoming a stranger in your own land, and re-discovering yourself as part of nature. It means putting aside the conveniences that define our modern lives, to travel in the oldest way, slowly and deeply, carrying only what you need and learning to ask for the rest.
This may sound basic, but unfold the concept and you will find profound challenges and mysteries. For example: what is a ‘holy’ place? And why walk to get there?
A ‘holy’ place is somewhere that you feel offers healing, a place you are summoned to walk towards, somewhere you wish to honour by arrival. The healing you seek is the intention you carry. The first step in preparing for pilgrimage is making conscious the healing you need, and identifying the place you feel might embody this.
As a child you knew such places well. They might be great trees, river sources, or hilltops where our ancestors lived for thousands of years. They might be cliff-top chapels, roaring waterfalls, burial places of heroes, or mighty stone cathedrals.
The word ‘holy’ is not religious. It comes from the Old English halig, which means whole, healthy and wholesome. Its nearest living descendent is ‘hale’ as in ‘hale and hearty’
Wholeness (holiness) does not just sit around throbbing. It is all about relationship. The healing magic needs you to need it. And there is no better way to activate this holiness than to take the time and energy to walk there. The unreasonable dedication of a slow journey on foot is a powerfully sincere offering of time, energy and focus, and a key to unlock the holy places of this land.
Of course, it’s not all about the destination. Far from it, pilgrimage enshrines the process, the cumulative act of every step. By spending such a long time – as long as you can afford to dedicate – making an unbroken journey on foot, you create a distinct life-space, set apart from normal everyday existence.
Among this special soil unexpected things grow, strange meetings, synchronicities and discoveries. Do not expect to return home the same person. Or rather, expect to come back more you than ever before. As the path unfolds outward through nature, so mirrored doors curl inward to reveal aspects of yourself long unseen/ignored. If life is a journey from birth to death, making pilgrimage is a microcosm of this whole path, intense with all the richness and rawness that life ought to offer but somehow often doesn’t.
But if it’s so good, why did we forget about pilgrimage?
There are two Henrys why Britain lost her pilgrimage mojo.
First, King Henry VIII banned it 500 years ago as part of the religious takeover called Reformation. Partly because he wanted a guilt-free divorce, and partly he sought a smash-and-grab of monastic land and treasure, and partly he wanted to cut Roman Catholic authority out of the English domain. But also, Henry knew pilgrimage encouraged self-awareness and freedom, which conflicted with the newly imposed Protestant work ethic. So in 1538 he passed laws that required every priest to give four sermons a year specifically condemning:
“wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money, candles, or tapers to images or relics, or kissing or licking the same”
Having placed pilgrimage in the unfriend zone of ‘wrong religion’, a Tudor taboo that has lingered for almost 500 years, Henry went a step further, inventing vagrancy laws that forbade the British itinerant traditions. Only people with signed testimoniales (the origin of modern passports) were allowed to freely wander the high roads. Everyone else was whipped back to their parish of birth.
The other Henry to hinder British pilgrimage was Mr T. Ford. His Model T’s affordable mass-appeal led to the universal motoring phenomenon that made so much of Britain unfriendly for pilgrims on foot. From the tarmacking of ancient pilgrim paths into motorways, the physical danger of road crossings, the incessant peacelessness of traffic, to the unsuitability of metalled road-walking for human bones and joints – cars have made Britain far harsher to travel on foot.
Perhaps worst of all, the culture of motorcars has imposed new scales of relative inefficiency onto the very idea of walking as travel. By sheer force of convenience, driving has hamstrung the perceived viability of pilgrimage, turning it from a common universal act of travel healing, into a mildly obscure religious leisure activity.
But with its source in ancestral Ice Age migration and hunter-gathering, pilgrimage is a practice older than some hills, and not even Kings or industrialists can kill it – they merely sent it underground.
So for 500 years pilgrimage slumbered in Britain. Today, this fallow period has given us an opportunity to reclaim and renew pilgrimage as a modern spiritual practice. Today the inheritance is yours, to make what you need.
So identify the healing you need, choose your holy place, make your plans, dedicate your time, and set out walking.
Be sure to carry as little stuff/money as possible, and to say yes to whatever arises. Don’t forget to bring a gift.
It will be as simple and wonderful as you dare imagine.
