[Introduction] Developing new religious pilgrimage routes and trails

Abstract

Religious pilgrimage has long been a driver of human mobility. Since the beginnings of humanity, people have traveled in search of meaning and to petition for worldly and otherworldly blessings. Some of the oldest human-made structures, such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, the Temple of Amada in Nubia (Egypt), Stonehenge in England, and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum and the Ġgantija temples in Malta, were dedicated to enacting spiritual and religious rituals and sacrifices. Over time, pilgrimage routes developed as people traveled to various human-built and natural axis mundis. Vast pilgrimage economies were developed to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the pilgrims, replete with accommodations and growing numbers of religious sites vying for the attention of religious travellers through purported miracles, religious relics and icons, and museums. These pilgrimage networks today underlie much of the modern economic and transportation corridors. The growing demand for pilgrimage today can be seen in the (re)development of pilgrimage routes and trails, many based on the recent popularisation of the Camino de Santiago. At the same time, enterprising groups and individuals developed new pilgrimage routes and trails. For example, in Britain, the closure of religious sites led to a rise in ‘churchwalking,’ where people would walk in small groups through the English countryside to small rural churches.