Pilgrimage today: the meaning-making potential of ritual

Abstract

Pilgrimage on the Road to Santiago is flourishing, even in late modern times characterised by detraditionalisation, individualism and pluralism. A large number of these pilgrims is either not explicitly religious at all, or only moderately religious. Why, then, do they submit to this ancient Christian ritual, and what are the psychological consequences? After a short introduction to the study of implicit religiosity and different perspectives on rituals from the past to today, current research on pilgrimage is reviewed and pilgrimage to Santiago is analysed as a personal ritual from a perspective of implicit religiosity. In the psychological theory of implicit religiosity, rituals are identified as one of three universal religious structures (along with myths and experiences of transcending) with strong meaning-making potential. Personal rituals are defined as formalised patterns of action, pointing beyond the actual event to a particular meaning imbued by the actor. Data from 85 pilgrims on the Road to Santiago are presented. Motives for peregrination, base-line sources of meaning, experienced meaningfulness and crises of meaning are reported, as well as changes in sources of meaning, meaningfulness and crises of meaning immediately after the pilgrimage and four months later. The majority of pilgrims (about two third) is motivated by a “need for clarification.” Multidimensional scaling shows that pilgrims either travel for explicitly religious reasons (conviction) or in search of clarification (quest); they either draw motivation from vertical transcendence (religiosity or spirituality) or from apparently purely secular reasons, such as athletic challenge. Religious and spiritual motives are mostly reported by highly religious individuals. A need for clarification is primarily stated by individuals who suffer from a crisis of meaning. Crises of meaning are significantly more frequent among pilgrims before the journey than in the general population. For the entire sample of pilgrims, the meaning-making potential of pilgrimage is supported by the data. Directly after the journey, as well as four months later, pilgrims experience life as significantly more meaningful, and crises of meaning are overcome. Pilgrims also report a strengthened commitment to vertical selftranscendence, horizontal selftranscendence and selfactualisation. These changes occur independently of the motivation for pilgrimage.

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