Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger project on pilgrimage and religious tourism. It highlights new means of mass communication such as the Internet and the subsequent proliferation of virtual texts such as online travel accounts, weblogs, and Internet sites which evaluate and rate travel destinations, and the diversification of the motives of travelers to traditionally religious sites. Virtual pilgrimages are highly selective. The principle of synecdoche, the extent to which a part stands for the whole, frequently comes into play. Attention is paid to the analytical triad of person/place/text that Eade and Sallnow (2000 [1991]) suggested. Texts, places, and persons are deeply interwoven, signifying and shaping pilgrims’ motives, movement, perceptions, and experiences. Texts, places and persons, through their different combinations, may help to reestablish sites of pilgrimage practice away original centers themselves, complicating the distinctions between “site” and elsewhere. Virtual pilgrimage to Lough Derg may supplement rather than substitute for the physical journey. As Coleman and Elsner (1995) note, “sites offer religious experiences that do not rely exclusively on textual knowledge” (p. 208). Pilgrimage and the way it is experienced are influenced by the materiality of pilgrimage sites.