Pilgrimage

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

bodhibliss
Working Associate
Posts: 1659
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2003 5:00 am

Pilgrimage

Post by bodhibliss »

Over the years I have travelled to several sacred sites in the United States, most - but not all - related to Native American traditions.

Of course, as Joseph Campbell notes, sacred places like Jerusalem, Mecca, Harney Peak in South Dakota, and elsewhere are metaphors, and not necessarily to be taken literally ... yet, at the same time, an act of pilgrimage can be a powerful ritual that enacts the hero quest and serves to midwife transformation.

I'm curious about your experiences of sacred sites. Who has been to the prehistoric caves in France, or sites sacred to the Goddess in Turkey, or the pyramids, the vortexes in Sedona, Macchu Pichu, and so on?

Have any Associates consciously set out on a pilgrimage (like Jean Shinoda Bolen in "Crossing to Avalon"?). What prompted your journey - what were you hoping to accomplish, and did you succeed? Was this a life-changing experience for you?

Of course, you don't need ot have set out on an exclusive pilgrimage to visit hallowed places to have a life-changing experience - a side-trip as part of a leisure vacation can be just as powerful.

Please share your stories of places that moved you, whether natural (sacred springs, sacred mountains), or manmade (pyramids, cathedrals, etc.)

Thanks,
bodhibliss

Clemsy
Working Associate
Posts: 10645
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
Contact:

Post by Clemsy »

Bodhi, what a great topic!

My family and I visited some very interesting places on a jaunt to England and France a few years ago, and lots came to mind, But I thought I'd share, for now, an unusual spot in Oxfordshire, England up in the chalk downs. Here, the turf is shallow, and if you cut through it you get to a layer of... chalk. We visited Uffington Castle, an early iron age hill fort:

Image

Near the base of the fort is a man-made mound which was probably used for religious rituals. In between the mound and the hill, and you can see it to the left in the above pic, is the Uffington White Horse. A 3000 year old carving in the turf that is only fully visible either from another hill a mile away... or from an aircraft.

Image

Very, very cool place.

We also visited Avebury, site of a staggering neolithic stone circle older than Stonehenge. (We went there too).

Image

Image

I have enough Celtic blood in me to have felt the presence of the ancestors. Stonehenge was truly awe inspiring... but you all know what that looks like.

Don't want to be a show off. Visited a couple wonderful spots in France... but I'll save them for another time.

Cheers,
Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

gentle71
Associate
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:06 pm
Location: Denmark

excellent topic indeed

Post by gentle71 »

I reaally love the idea of a pilgrimage - thats more or less how I have spend my vacations the last couple of years. By now the best have been a 2 week hiking trip in Norway - which virtually turned out to be an almost religious experience. I really didn´t expect something lifechanging to happen . I was just expecting 2 weeks of relaxing vacation - but the weather turned ugly and I took shelter with 2 english guys in a cabin where we spend the next 4-5 days talking about the meaning of life and how to change our lives - and finding the central mountain. I don´t know about the 2 others, but I went away a better man - or atleast I hope I did.

And then of course a 10 days vacation in Israel - much of it in Jerusalem. It´s very difficult to convey the feeling of being in the old city in Jerusalem - of suddenly being in a place you have heard so much about but never seen. At some places its like going several hundred years back in time.
The feeling you get is so intense - and if you can ignore all the people that tries to sell you the usual tourist crap you are in for a treat. But Israel is not just Jerusalem - Mesada and the dead sea is also worth a visit, not to forget Nazareth and Bethlehem.
I had a great time in Israel and its certainly a place I am going back to sometime in the future.

In May this years I am travelling to Egypt to see the Pyramids and the valley of Kings -
The Maestro says it's Mozart
but it sounds like bubble gum

bodhibliss
Working Associate
Posts: 1659
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2003 5:00 am

Post by bodhibliss »

Thanks for sharing gentle71 - I'm thinking I should start taking my vacations with you!

Intriguing how sometimes when we're not looking for a life changing experience, it sneaks up on us anyway ...

:D

boringguy
Associate
Posts: 459
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:36 am
Location: Idaho

Post by boringguy »

Hi all,


bodhi,
It is fun when it does just come out of the blue and surprize you. Here are a couple of places where it happened to me.

A few years back we were working in Montana the summer and some of that work was at Big Springs, a site up the valley from Lewistown where a very large springs gives birth to a fair sized creek. It is in the heart of what might be viewed as the land of the buffalo, where the great herds of many thousands would descend from Canada onto the Montana plains and tribes traveled great distances such as the Nez Perce from as far as Wallowa Lake in Oregon to hunt. The different tribes had areas that were generally considered their place to hunt, and as people will of course, some tribes had conflicts with other tribes. Big Springs however is considered a sacred place where all people could come and any conflict here would simply be a disgrace to oneself. After lunch, it became a habit for me to lie on my back in the tall grass under the aspen trees there and visit the border land between dream and wake. There is something about the shape, size, and spacing, I guess, of the leaves of the aspen that help give the effect in the breeze, but in this place from somewhere in that borderland, I first saw the leaves of the aspen truly dance.

There have been other unexpected places, such as the aspen on a quite mountainside in early fall at what is now Tamarack Resort, or at a friends cabin on the mountainside above Pallisades reservoir, home of some of the largest old aspen I know of. I love the Aspen as a symbol, as they are considered the largest known living organism, although personally I might reserve that title for simply Nature. I was in Sedona about a month ago, and athough there is an energy there, I certainly did not connect to it the same as these other times. Maybe connection is just the strongest wherever your symbols are.
At any rate sometimes the unexpected is as wonderful and as powerful, as the intentioned.


bg
___________________
just dance and the world might just dance with you
Last edited by boringguy on Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

S_Watson
Associate
Posts: 182
Joined: Sun Jan 03, 2010 4:17 pm

Post by S_Watson »

Bodhi asked:
I'm curious about your experiences of sacred sites. Who has been to the prehistoric caves in France, or sites sacred to the Goddess in Turkey, or the pyramids, the vortexes in Sedona, Macchu Pichu, and so on?
For me one of the most personally poignant ones was my visit to Canterbury Cathedral, the site of St Thomas Becket's assassination in the 12th century. Part of its personal significance to me was that my forefathers/foremothers were English Catholics, and Becket was murdered because he opposed the English King's attempts to subordinate all religion to the state. He was a forerunner of Saint Thomas More, who was "The King's good servant. but God's first", which perhaps paradoxically is OPPOSITE to what the likes of Sarah Palin believe in! (Palin and her kind believe in an idolatrous abstraction of "America" more than they believe in Christianity;; to them, the nation-state of "America" IS their religion! Hmm...)

The exact site of Becket's murder in the Cathedral, now has a memorial over it. However, the spot in the Cathedral where Becket's body used to repose for over 300 years, was destroyed by bloody Fat King Henry VIII, who desecrated and destroyed Becket's remains.

So, the first time I visited Canterbury Cathedral, I lit a candle in front of Becket's memorial and asked him to bless my sojourn in my ancestral country, England (a sojourn that turned out beautifully!), and then I went to the tiny Roman Catholic church almost next door and attended mass there.

As I'm of French descent on my mother's side (including aristocracy who went into exile during the anti-Christian French Revolution), another place of occasional pilgrimage is Notre Dame in Paris. Whenever I attend mass there, I say a silent prayer for the Templars who were burned at the stake as "heretics" in front of Notre Dame in 1314. The French Priest at Notre Dame always says to me, before communion, "The Body of Christ" and I affirm sincerely, "amen", and then I pray for the so-called "heretics" who were murdered there by order of the bloody Pope. (Not all Popes are bloody, but that one was, and he probably went to a Hell of his own making.)

Clemsy
Working Associate
Posts: 10645
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
Contact:

Post by Clemsy »

We visited the Bayeux Cathedral when in Normandy (and yes, we did view the Tapestry). Interestingly, there's this quite graphic painting of Becket's assassination:

Image

The cathedral is amazing. Found it to have more 'presence' than Notre Dame.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

S_Watson
Associate
Posts: 182
Joined: Sun Jan 03, 2010 4:17 pm

Post by S_Watson »

Clemsy wrote:
The cathedral is amazing. Found it to have more 'presence' than Notre Dame.
In my gut, intuitively, I too find Notre Dame (Paris) to be spiritually dessicated. I can't explain it logically. Notre Dame de Paris just feels spiritually "cold" to me.

Now diverging far away from the West: My favourite "holy place" in China is the "Great Bell Temple" in Beijing. It houses the largest bell ever made in China, made in the 1400s, inscribed with prayers in Chinese AND SANSKRIT! I especially like it because, to this day, it remains rather obscure, and it is attended by Chinese Buddhists who burn incense to icons of Guan Yin, the Chinese Buddhist equivalent of the Catholic Virgin Mary. When I lived in Beijing, this temple was my regular "place of worship", BECAUSE IT'S AUTHENTIC, quite UNLIKE any government-approved Chinese "Catholic" churches who swear allegiance to the atheist Communist Party! In other words, when I lived in China, I preferred to pray in THIS temple instead of any government-approved "Patriotic Chinese Catholic Church" run by atheists! At least the people who run THIS humble little Buddhist temple, are NOT controlled by any government! (Because this temple is so small and obscure, the government leaves it alone!... ;-)

Here's a photo of it: http://history.cultural-china.com/china ... 6e8706.jpg

honjaku
Associate
Posts: 350
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:40 am

Post by honjaku »

Edited
Last edited by honjaku on Wed Feb 23, 2011 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nermin
Associate
Posts: 520
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:31 pm
Location: London, Britain

Post by Nermin »

Hello Everybody.
To be honest, I'm not very familiar
with this idea of pilgrimage and still
ask what can be the secret behind the
powerful effect of these rituals carried
out at a particular place.
Architecture? Group effect?
Or Gaia?

honjaku
Associate
Posts: 350
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:40 am

Post by honjaku »

Edited
Last edited by honjaku on Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nermin
Associate
Posts: 520
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:31 pm
Location: London, Britain

Post by Nermin »

Hey did you read my essay above? That's a good example of a pilgrimage.


Yes, Honjaku, I did :)
That's very smooth & beautiful. That's also very modern.
Do you belong to a particular tradition?

Andreas
Associate
Posts: 2274
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:07 am

Post by Andreas »

From Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

The place where the Empress Theodora was watching the rituals.

Image

And one from below.

Image


And this one is from Chora in Istanbul.

Image

Image

There was so much story on the walls that I think it is amazing. The artistry and basically the whole thing was pulsing with energy. I definitely needed more time there... alone.
“To live is enough.” ― Shunryu Suzuki

honjaku
Associate
Posts: 350
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:40 am

Post by honjaku »

Edited
Last edited by honjaku on Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Neoplato
Associate
Posts: 3907
Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:02 pm
Location: Virginia
Contact:

Post by Neoplato »

honjaku wrote:
Enough time in post modern new age life made me appreciate the limits of the individual project. We do not exist as isolated units nor is it desirable to be so. When we look at it most of our daily preferences dont matter. There are limits to choice, there are limits to questioning. A system that keeps people questioning long after any answers would have been useful, that does not encourage finding of answers or teach how to accept answers, that's not a very useful 'mythology' is it? It has failed to perform its elemental functions. It will die out because of that, as such people invariably don't have children.
Sometimes I desire to exist in isolation…then I realize I’d get bored without anyone to talk to. :D

I disagree somewhat on the continuous seeking of answers. Once a person stops seeking, they have found “a truth” for themselves. We have enough conditioning from social, cultural, and ethnical traditions to accept what we’re told and don’t question. The desire to continue the journey is more important than finding an end. That doesn’t mean you can’t draw conclusions along the way, but when you stop refining your conclusions, you become complaisant.

BTW, I am such a person and I do have children. :shock: Sounds like you stopped seeking too soon. :wink:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

Locked