Essay:
On the Beaten PathOn the revival of pilgrimage.
( 1 ) In his 2024 book, Mysticism, philosopher Simon Critchley explores the resurgence of interest in mystic practices during the pandemic. He observes: “It was as if something archaic—elemental, primeval and long dead—awakened in the plague. Some began to wonder about the nature of these archaic feelings and how they might understand the mysticism that had revived, like some unbidden ghost."
( 2 ) Climbing Mount Kailash is regarded as sacrilegious, and there have been no known successful ascents. Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner was offered the chance to climb it in the 1980s by the Chinese government, which controls the area as part of the disputed Tibet Autonomous Region. He declined, saying, “If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people’s souls.”
( 3 ) Folklore has long held that salmon return to the exact stream where they spawned. Studies have shown this is largely true, despite salmon spending between one and five years in the ocean. It is believed they use an acute sense of smell to locate the stream once in the estuary of a river and rely on the Earth’s magnetic field when in the open ocean.
Nine hundred years ago, a small boat moored on the jagged coastline of Orkney, the largest landmass in a windswept archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. Back then, it brought the body of a man revered as a saint; today the ferry that plows the same cold, shifting sea brings pilgrims who have set out to follow the route along which the saint was carried to his final resting place.
Tall stones were once erected at the points where the coffin-bearers paused to rest, but only a few of these remain. Recently, however, those who wish to follow in their footsteps have had an alternative: an app which guides the modern pilgrim along the St Magnus Way, with checkpoints announced by a volley of bagpipes.
The app—and the reinvented route—come amid a resurgence of interest in pilgrimage. Historic Christian routes in Europe, such as the Camino de Santiago in Spain and the Via Francigena, which runs from Canterbury in the UK to Rome, are seeing record numbers—over half a million completed the Camino in 2023.
( 1 ) In his 2024 book, Mysticism, philosopher Simon Critchley explores the resurgence of interest in mystic practices during the pandemic. He observes: “It was as if something archaic—elemental, primeval and long dead—awakened in the plague. Some began to wonder about the nature of these archaic feelings and how they might understand the mysticism that had revived, like some unbidden ghost."
( 2 ) Climbing Mount Kailash is regarded as sacrilegious, and there have been no known successful ascents. Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner was offered the chance to climb it in the 1980s by the Chinese government, which controls the area as part of the disputed Tibet Autonomous Region. He declined, saying, “If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people’s souls.”
( 3 ) Folklore has long held that salmon return to the exact stream where they spawned. Studies have shown this is largely true, despite salmon spending between one and five years in the ocean. It is believed they use an acute sense of smell to locate the stream once in the estuary of a river and rely on the Earth’s magnetic field when in the open ocean.
