Pilgrimage Practices Research Articles

Мавзолеи уақ әулие в лесном природном резервате "Ертіс орманы"

Based on the materials of an ethnographic expedition to study the mausoleums located in the State Forest Natural Reserve “Ertis Ormany”, the cult of saints - aulie and the practice of pilgrimage among the Kazakhs of the Pavlodar region are considered. Today, on the territory of the reserve there are seven sacred objects of regional significance: the mausoleums of Gabdul Uakhit Khazret, Shokman Kozha, Akhat mullah, Shakau mullah, Mergalym ata, Temirgali Nurekenov and the burial place of Sary baybishe. The construction of sacred objects by the descendants of the Kozha is supervised by the department of tourism and environmental education of the Ertis Ormany reserve within the framework of the “Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan” project of the “Rukhani Zhangyru” program. Department employees develop tourist routes to religious pilgrimage sites and conduct information and scientific work. The most famous object of religious pilgrimage is the mausoleum of Gabdul Uakhit Khazret. A developed infrastructure has been formed around it to satisfy all the needs of pilgrims: a good road to the site, information stands, parking, a guest house, places for ablution, sacrifice, eating, a well with good water). The construction of other pilgrimage sites on the territory of the reserve is taking place along the same path. Religious tourism is in demand in Kazakhstan. Its basis is primarily the cult of ancestors - the Aruaks. However, until recently, in the north of the country there were not many widely known and accessible sites for pilgrimage. The project “Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan” made it possible to identify them and begin to create a favorable environment for visiting them.

Паломничество в Святую Землю и российская провинция на рубеже XIX–ХХ вв.: источниковедческий потенциал Пензенских епархиальных ведомостей

Using the example of diocesan periodicals and historical tradition of creating monuments of travel literature, the article examines the phenomenon of the Russian cultural Renaissance in its regional dimension. The burst of public interest to the value-based foundations of the Russian culture of the turn of the 20th century is explained by the processes of emancipation and growing social instability. In these conditions, the democratization of pilgrimage practices as reference forms of spiritual perfection becomes an organizing idea of socio-cultural uplift. The purpose of the article is to identify and analyze materials of the journal “Penza Diocesan Gazette,” devoted to the problems of organizing pilgrimage trips to holy places. The source base of the research has been formed using thematic index of articles developed at the Theological Seminary and the Church Historical Committee of the Penza diocese. After summarizing the data, it has been determined that pilgrimage sections were present in the diocesan periodicals from the moment of its appearance (in the 1860s). However, the Palestinian themes became regular with the activities of local departments of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society (in the 1890s). At that time, the diocesan gazette became a media embodiment of the IOPS and an active means of religious and ethical education of the population. In this context, the materials are reviewed, covering the process of the Penza branch of the IOPS organizing and holding annual readings on the Holy Land, as well as perception of this information by the participants. Despite high frequency of “Palestinian” publications, pilgrim epistolaries were isolated occurrences on the pages of the Penza Diocesan Gazette. Thus, the work of the priest Peter Arkhangelsky “On the pilgrimage of the clergy to the holy places of the East,” published in the Penza Diocesan Gazette in 1898, acquires special significance. The reader is presented with a unique experience of reconstructing everyday practices of the Orthodox travelers to Palestine from the Penza gubernia at the turn of the 20th century. Genre features and event-related content reveal mechanisms of introducing national organizing idea to back-countrymen, their involvement in the process of returning to historical and cultural origins of Orthodox Christianity. Among main hindrances to the development of pilgrimage activities of the local clergy, Arkhangelsky names scarcity of material support and intensity of service, which did not permit long absences.

Reframing the Intersections of Pilgrimage, Religious Tourism, and Sustainability

Every year, hundreds of millions of people around the world travel to sacred places to worship and to learn. While the practice of pilgrimage has a long tradition and is an important part of many religious traditions and the spiritual development of individuals, some scholars have begun to question the sustainability of modern pilgrimage travel. Not only does pilgrimage, like other forms of mobility, contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases and waste accumulation, it also seems to be exempt from blame when it comes to the current environmental crisis. In addition, while mass religious gatherings have historically been tied to the transmission and spread of disease, the threat of pilgrims becoming infected while on pilgrimage has not historically been an inhibiter to religious mobility. Indeed, the demand for pilgrimage seems to increase during times of hardship and uncertainty. Given these inherent contradictions, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to question the notion of sustainability in the context of pilgrimage and religious tourism and discuss whether modern day pilgrimage and religious tourism can be structured and managed in a more sustainable manner. First, the authors discuss the existing academic literature on the positive and negative economics, socio-cultural, and environmental impacts of pilgrimage and religious tourism. The authors then question the validity of certain tourism-environment models, including the ‘Tourism Area Life Cycle’ and ‘Carrying Capacity’, in the context of pilgrimage and religious tourism, particularly as they apply to pilgrimage and religious tourism destinations that do not typically show a decline in their visitor numbers. The authors then expand upon a conceptual model that can help scholars analyze the impacts of pilgrimage and religious tourism on pilgrim-towns. The authors conclude by contending that future discussions regarding sustainability in the context of pilgrimage and religious tourism should include religious and cultural constructs of what constitutes the tangible and intangible forms of sacredness of a place.

The Practice of Pilgrimage by Kalmyk Buddhists

Abstract Kalmyk Buddhists have long engaged in the practice of pilgrimage for religious purposes. Historically, the main destination for Kalmyk pilgrims was Tibet, which was facilitated by traditional ties between the Kalmyks and the Dalai Lama (and by extension the Tibetan people) after the adoption of Buddhism by Oirat groups at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Kalmyk pilgrims pursued a host of goals – religious, political, diplomatic, and educational in nature. Some pilgrims engaged in exploration; during the early Soviet period Kalmyk pilgrims were used by the Soviet government as covert foreign policy instruments in its dealings with Tibet. Soon afterwards, however, pilgrimage was banned altogether due to the anti-religious policy endorsed by the Bolsheviks. It was not until the late 1980s that pilgrimage was revived owing to the democratization of social and political life in the Soviet Union.

Kemerê Duzgi: The Protector of Dersim (pilgrimage, social transformation, and revitalization of the Raa Haqi religion)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a well-known pilgrimage site of Kurdish Alevis, a heavily suppressed ethno-religious minority in the Dersim region (Turkey). Forced modernization politics in the 20th century destroyed their rural way of life and social structure. Nevertheless, Kurdish Alevis maintain their faith in Dersim as ancestral sacred land, referring primarily to non-human entities, most of which are natural, such as mountains, rivers, lakes, and trees. They uphold their beliefs while engaging with contemporary religious-political discourses. Depending on worshipping animate and inanimate natural objects, the cosmology of the Raa Haqı is evaluated from a different angle. Duzgı, an isolated mountain, is one of Dersim’s most significant jiares (sacred places) and is a powerful religious symbol of Kurdish Alevi identity. Annually, tens of thousands of Kurdish Alevis come from around the world to Duzgı for pilgrimage. This article, based upon data collected during long-term ethnographical fieldwork on the mountain, will provide a framework for understanding Kurdish Alevis’ political context, beliefs, and practices, as well as an overview of anthropological approaches that inform debates on new animism and will focus on pilgrimage practices and show how Duzgı contributes to the consolidation of a fragile community’s collective consciousness and contemporary ethno-politics.

A Debate on the Islamic Practice of Pilgrimage to the Grave: Study of the Hadīth on Grave Pilgrimage for Women

This research aimed to analyze the hadīths and comments of 'ulamā' regarding the prohibition and permissibility of grave visitation by women. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad, the practice of visiting graves was strictly prohibited but later the prohibition was abolished. However, after the Prophet's death, the pros and cons surrounding the law on grave pilgrimage resulted in hostility, as the performers were accused of grave worship and convicted of heresy. Subsequently, the data were analyzed using the library research method with a comparative-compromising approach. The results showed that hadīths on the law of pilgrimage for women were not singular and had birthed several other laws. The admonishment of grave visitation by hadīths editors did not apply to all women because many supported pilgrimages, which made such curses nasākh. It denoted that hadīths prohibiting women from visiting graves were no longer valid, except for the 'illāt, which fulfilled the curse of women. Since different editorials will give rise to varying opinions regarding the grave pilgrimage for women, a compromise between hadīths is necessary to produce an accurate and accommodating legal formulation

Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Providing of Accessibility of Balkan Sacred Sites for People with Special Needs (Part 2)

Our native lands are a cross-cultural place, and with time they had turned into popular destination of specific kinds of cultural, religious, and pilgrimage tourism. How in the context of good neighbourhood and religious tolerance religious life transforms spaces by specific religious practices, developing at the same time responsibility to tourist accessibility through adequate information, good management and socially attentive welfare administration? Second part of this study explores same pilgrimage practices in countries that do not share socialist Balkan heritage. Main perspective of this study is observation of physical and digital accessibility to sacred sites.

Reflections on Conflict and Culture on the 40th Anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War

This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies sets out the scope of the collection of articles which reflect in different ways on conflict and culture on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War. The special issue highlights the diversity of practices of cultural production in response to the war and its legacy. The articles examine: how the war has been remembered in Britain since 1982, materials which inform diplomatic practices through which the war is remembered in Argentina and the Falkland Islands, memories of the Malvinas War from the perspective of Argentine military veterans imprisoned for crimes against humanity, UK military veteran practices of return and/or pilgrimage to the islands, and the use of hyper-realistic painting by an Argentine pilot-turned-artist in reproducing and reconstructing some of the war's events.

Sacred Places and Cultural Memory on a Triple Border: Revitalizing Veneration of the Hermit Saints at Osogovo Monastery

This article presents the results of fieldwork at Osogovo Monastery, that took place during the major Christian Orthodox holiday the Dormition of the Mother of God (Mac. Golema Bogorodica), as well as on the day of the patron saint of the monastery, St. Joachim of Osogovo. The article observes and analyzes contemporary rituals and pilgrimage practices related to local religious beliefs and cultural memory in the border area between Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Serbia, as well as the existence of transborder religious tourism.

“You were not commanded to stroke it, but to pray nearby it”: debating touch within early Islamic pilgrimage

ABSTRACT Early Islamic texts record a series of ongoing debates about a fundamental component of ritual performance: the act of touch. During the hajj, Muslim pilgrims participated in intensively haptic devotional activity in the holy city of Mecca, where they thronged to grasp objects and places associated with Islamic history and worship. Such rituals were carried out, and approved of, by many early Muslims, who considered these as important acts in the performance of Islamic identity. Yet in narrative histories and juristic discussions about the appropriate ways of interacting with and “sensing” pilgrimage places, many Muslim voices note the perceivably idolatrous connotations of touching objects and spaces. They often associate such haptic encounters with religiously marginalized others, including pagans, women, and sectarian groups. Bringing these sources into conversation with scholarship on ritual constructions of religious identity – and on the role therein of the senses – this article highlights the disputed role of touch in demarcating correctly Islamic pilgrimage practices, and thus the contested place of touch in the emergent Islamic sensorium.

«Посольство Русской Церкви»: восстановление отечественных па-ломнических связей с Ближним Востоком в 1964 году

The relevance of the research topic is due to the significance of the academic understanding of the phenomenon of Orthodox pilgrimage to the Holy Land of the citizens of the USSR, as well as the need to fit this phenomenon into the history of international relations of the Russian Orthodox Church. The purpose of the research is to identify the main features of the first pilgrimage trip of Soviet citizens to the Middle East in 1964. Objectives: to study the organizational characteristics and event content of the journey of a group of believers from the USSR to the territory of historical Palestine in 1964, to identify degree of compliance of this journey with tra-ditional pilgrimage norms; to characterize the features of the representation of the trip in the memoirs of members of the pilgrimage group; to analyze the influence of the factor of Soviet citizenship of pilgrims on their behavior and communi-cation in the Holy Land. Methodology. The conducted research combined work with archival documents reflecting the goals and progress of the 1964 pilgrimage trip, as well as published memoirs of its participants. In the process of analyzing memories the method of content analysis was used - a qualitative and quantitative study of their texts. In addition, historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods were used in the course of solving the tasks. Results. The paper demonstrates the inconsistency of the first pilgrimage trip of Soviet citizens to the Middle East with the traditions of Orthodox pilgrimage formed within the framework of Russian culture in the previous centuries. This discrepancy was determined by the lack of personal initiative, sacrifice, asceticism on the part of the group members, their dependence on church and state institutions, as well as the representative functions assigned to them. The study demonstrated that the delegation that went to the Holy Land had important church-diplomatic tasks that did not allow believers to focus on religious practices. The need to observe political loyalty to the Soviet state caused the pilgrims to be limited in words and actions, and also determined the choice of their subsequent memories. Conclusions. The article concludes that the trip of believers from the USSR to the Holy Land undertaken in 1964 became a significant event in the history of international relations of the Russian Orthodox Church and had a wide resonance in Orthodox circles of the Middle East. This event nominally revived the practice of Russian pilgrimage to historical Palestine, but the actual pilgrimage component of the journey turned out to be far from traditional ideals and norms.

The Role of Pilgrimage in the Formation of a Religious Identity (on the Basis of the Kazakh Culture)

This paper discusses the role of pilgrimage in the modern Kazakh culture. Studies of the individual religious experience of modern Kazakhs allow researchers to distinguish at least two basic points of view on the tradition of making pilgrimages to sacral places. Thus, representatives of official Islamic institutions often condemn the practice of pilgrimage, wheras common people see no contradiction between the tradition of visiting holy places and the norms of Islam. Moreover, they consider themselves ‘true Muslims’ while admitting the specificity of Islam in Kazakhstan and referring to the long-standing custom of ancestors. The inclusion of the ‘new’ objects of pilgrimage related to the names of national heroes into the general context of the worshiped objects suggests that the traditional notions of sanctity remain still topical at present and form the religious consciousness of the modern Kazakhs. The cult of saints is officially recognized as part of the national culture and constitutes, along with other ethnical and historical symbols of the present-day Kazakhstan, a particular direction of the state cultural politics. The positioning of religious objects in the historical context allows for a compromise of its kind between the views of those who stand up for the Islamization of the ritual sphere and the traditionalists fighting for the preservation of the ethnic specifics of the Kazakh culture. On the basis of the conducted research, the author concludes that, notwithstanding the official prohibitions and disapproval of pilgrimage by the adherents of the Islamization of the Kazakh culture, pilgrimage remains an integral part of the modern religious life of Kazakhstan and has distinct links with the national and religious identity.

Bristol Fashion: Reclaiming Cary Grant for Bristol – Film Heritage, Screen Tourism and Curating the Cary Comes Home Festival

This article re-examines Cary Grant’s star persona arguing that the importance of his Bristolian identity has been under-appreciated. Through a detailed discussion of attempts to promote his Bristolian roots including the biennial Cary Comes Home Festival (established 2014), the article argues that these activities have encouraged a re-evaluation of Cary Grant’s star identity, increased understanding of his importance to Bristol’s screen heritage, and helped promote film tourism to the city. The article outlines the history and development of the festival, critically reflecting on the curatorial practices that underpinned them. It is informed by three main interlinked theoretical areas: star studies; the literature on fan practices of cinematic tourism and pilgrimage, and festival studies. It analyses the ways in which expanded cinema programming provides opportunities for decentering the understanding of Grant’s persona as a Hollywood star, by exploring the festival’s programming of immersive cinematic experiences in locations that were significant to his Bristolian identity. The article also examines the impact of the festival’s role in relocating Grant within Bristol, the ways in which it has enhanced the city’s sense of its cinematic heritage – including achieving UNESCO City of Film status in October 2017 – and the ways in which Bristol has become a living archive through which and in which Cary Grant’s star persona is constructed and circulates, which has helped promote film tourism to the city today.

Peace, Politics, and Piety: Catholic Pilgrimage in Wartime Europe, 1939–1945

During the Second World War, the disruption and shortages of wartime life had a significant impact on the ability of Catholics to engage with their usual practice of pilgrimage in many parts of Europe. Transport was difficult, accommodation and sustenance lacking, many sites inaccessible, and some pilgrims viewed with suspicion. Yet wartime pilgrimages were popular, as people prayed for peace, appealed for aid for their friends and family, sought spiritual support, maintained the bonds of the Catholic community, and even promoted political messages. Despite the widespread nature of these pilgrimages, they have only been considered in a local or national context. This article examines wartime pilgrimages across Europe for the first time to determine how and why they were affected by war, and how this reflected wider debates about the impact of war on religious belief and practice.

Shrine Politics and Non-Institutional Religiosity

The Mrtvalj spring is an integral part of a more complex sacred landscape, the center of which is the Shrine of St. John the Baptist located in Podmilačje near Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The shrine is a multi-confessional pilgrimage destination that is also very popular within the wider region. The Mrtvalj spring is one of the key stops in pilgrimage itineraries, but it is not only a sacred place within pilgrimage practices. In this paper the conceptualization of the Mrtvalj spring’s sacredness is examined as a reflection of the relationship between the religious and the political. The author analyzes the relationship between the shrine’s politics, which are based on the ideas of a “Bosnian Lourdes” and a shared shrine, and the spring as a focal point for the shared non-institutional practices of believers of various religious affiliations. She aims to show that a shared sacred site does not necessarily have to be controversial, and calls for a revalorization of non-institutional religiosity, which has proved to be a rich phenomenon for the study of interreligious relations

Cedar Hill: Frederick Douglass’s Literary Landscape and the Racial Construction of Nature

AbstractThis essay explores the overlooked significance of Cedar Hill, the landscape estate Frederick Douglass bought in 1877 near Washington, DC, both as a literary landscape and as a form of participation in the nineteenth-century elite culture of nature. Literary landscapes, associated with specific authors and their genius, emerged during the nineteenth century as important sites of memory and focal points for new practices of literary interpretation, tourism, and pilgrimage. The essay demonstrates Douglass’s self-conscious cultivation of Cedar Hill as a literary landscape that supported his claims for elite cultural status and full democratic citizenship. Cedar Hill allowed Douglass to claim both legal and symbolic possession over the landscape, establishing his connection with nature in ways that rivalled southern agrarian plantations and responded to his and other African Americans’ dispossession from the land through slavery. Cedar Hill was memorialized after Douglass’s death as a powerful site of African American identity, but its racial associations disqualified it as nature in the dominant white cultural imagination. Exploring Cedar Hill’s lost legacy as a literary landscape sheds new light both on Douglass’s identity and on the wider intersection of race, landscape, and nature in nineteenth-century and contemporary America.

Tibetan Buddhist Pilgrims and the covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Vajrayana Buddhism, like all of the world’s major religions, places high importance on the ancient practice of pilgrimage for spiritual development and maintenance of spiritual health. The negative mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the need for exploring efficacious methods of religious coping, especially those closely associated with culture and tradition. This qualitative hermeneutical study was aimed at examining the impact of prior pilgrimage participation upon individuals experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. Nine interviews were conducted with participants who had completed pilgrimage in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition and were enduring the COVID-19 pandemic while embedded in western culture. Results elucidated the mechanisms and impacts of pilgrimage components upon multidimensional aspects of participants. Beneficial effects of pilgrimage on mental well-being were found including resilience building enacted through enhanced religious and spiritual coping and promotion of integration.

«Женские практики» в неканоническом паломничестве в исламе

Analysis of some «women's practices» in non-canonical pilgrimage in Islam revealed that the specification of these pilgrimage practices follows from such factors as the status and role position of a woman in society, her main functions in the family and community, as well as her psychoemo-tional nature. There is a tendency on the part of women to assign to sacred natural objects a super-natural character and to endow them with magical power. This can be clearly seen both at the level of systematization and theoretical analysis of similar studies, and after considering the results of the author’s small electronic sociological survey. 54,5 % of respondents believe to some extent that sa-cred objects indicated in the survey possess supernatural powers. The same surveys revealed syncre-tism between pagan objects of religious worship and Islamic attributes of the religious life of Dage-stanis. At the same time, the perception of some natural objects as sacred ones differs in the regions of the republic.

Reconsidering the medieval experience at the shrine in high medieval England

ABSTRACT This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints’ shrines and relics in this period. Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint's shrine in these narrative sources; they are instead shown venerating at alternative places of devotion such as holy wells, empty graves and extra-mural chapels. It proposes that policies of restricted access were operated by many English cult centres earlier than is often imagined, and in discussing why ecclesiastical institutions may have distanced the laity from their principal shrines the article sets its conclusions within the wider religious developments of the time.

Experiencing maritime pilgrimage to St Mac Dara Island in Ireland: Pilgrims, hookers, and a local saint

With a focus on maritime pilgrimage to St Mac Dara island in Ireland, the authors discuss and examine how participation in maritime pilgrimages affects the participants and produces a unique pilgrimage experience. By using this research, the authors define the main characteristic of maritime pilgrimages and establish a point of reference for future maritime pilgrimage research, building their interpretation on ethnographic material. They argue that maritime pilgrimages produce a unique embodied experience because of the power of the seascape, which frames and shapes the experience of the pilgrims on maritime pilgrimage but also the embodied experience of the researchers. Although the reasons for going on maritime pilgrimage may change over time, and the role of the pilgrimage practice is different for the local community, the embodied experience of the pilgrims is still shaped by the seascape, becoming the most attractive and stable part of this pilgrimage.