(Re)Inscribing Meaning: Embodied Religious-spiritual Practices at Croagh Patrick and Our Lady’s Island, Ireland

Responding to calls for critical interrogations of pilgrimages, our paper examines how different religious meanings are (re)inscribed in spaces through the performance of annual events in a post-secular context. This focus reveals how pilgrims’ embodied practices are fundamental to continuing defini...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Scriven, Richard (Author) ; O'Mahony, Eoin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Dublin Institute of Technology [2020]
In: The international journal of religious tourism and pilgrimage
Year: 2020, Volume: 8, Issue: 4, Pages: 1-13
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Croagh Patrick / Religious festival / Pilgrimage / Embodiment / Spirituality / Ritual
RelBib Classification:CB Christian life; spirituality
CD Christianity and Culture
KBF British Isles
Further subjects:B Pilgrimage
B Sacred Space
B Ireland
B embodied practices
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Responding to calls for critical interrogations of pilgrimages, our paper examines how different religious meanings are (re)inscribed in spaces through the performance of annual events in a post-secular context. This focus reveals how pilgrims’ embodied practices are fundamental to continuing definitions of these locations as sacred places. Using accounts of the Croagh Patrick and Our Lady’s Island pilgrimages in Ireland, we trace the movement of people in these spaces focusing on how meanings are forged, refracted, and challenged through the performances. These mass embodiments assert traditional understandings of Christian worship and looser spiritual interpretations, while simultaneously involving secular concerns. The paper advances discussions of pilgrimages through an examination of the processes of embodied place-making found at two Irish pilgrimage sites informed by considerations of the increasingly complex religious-spiritual spatialities. We contend that the processes of inscription centre on the corporeal spatial practices which sustain, enhance, and unsettle the (re)creation of these places as sacred.
ISSN:2009-7379
Contains:Enthalten in: The international journal of religious tourism and pilgrimage
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.21427/fwx6-ps31