Secular pilgrimage to places associated with writers, musicians, and visual artists

Abstract

In 29 informal interviews and 91 online questionnaires, we asked people about secular pilgrimages mostly to places associated with writers, musicians, and visual artists. Pilgrims often felt strong emotions at their destinations: mean ratings of how moved they felt on 0-to-10 scales in the informal and online studies were 6.56 and 6.14, respectively. In the online study 26 people made visits to writers’ locations, 47 to musicians’ locations, and 18 to locations of artists of other kinds. We compared these with people who had not made pilgrimages. Higher life stress experienced during the previous five years predicted whether people went on artistic pilgrimages during that time. There was, however, no association between making a pilgrimage with overall well-being, or with fantasy and perspective taking. Some participants who did more reading were disappointed by their visits to places associated with writers. Motives of art pilgrimage include renewal and cultural change, therapy, curiosity, homage, meaningful experience, and enhancement of visited places. Art pilgrims take with them a piece of inner imagination so that it can become more complete in their outer perception of the place they visit. An intense emotion at a destination indicates the importance of the artist to the pilgrim.

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