Power Trips: Making Sacred Space Through New Age Pilgrimage

Ivakhiv, Adrian

doi:10.1163/ej.9789004153554.i-484.91

Cited by 25 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…For the purposes of this discussion, I focus on pilgrimages as physical journeys undertaken with spiritual intent by contemporary Pagan and New Age adherents. Because New Age and contemporary Pagan movements understand the world to be animated by sacredness and divine energies, these energies can manifest in many guises and many places (Fidele 2009; Ivakhiv 2001, 2007). A Pagan or New Age adherent, therefore, may appreciate the spiritual power manifested in a shrine venerated within another religious tradition.…”

Section: Defining Pilgrimagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Places sacred to Native Americans that draw New Age attention include Mount Shasta, in California, and Sedona, in Arizona. As in the third example above, the sacred power of these sites is reinterpreted out of specific indigenous mythological contexts and into a broader, pan‐religious understanding of sacred earth energies (Coats 2009; Ivakhiv 2001, 2007). Some practitioners apply similar interpretations to Hawaii (Rothstein 2007) and to indigenous sites in places such as South America and Australia (York 2002, p. 149).…”

Section: Contemporary Pagan and New Age Pilgrimagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, given the demographics of contemporary Pagan and New Age practitioners, it is important to emphasize that most travelers from these religions exercise social and economic privilege in their ability to undertake the kinds of pilgrimages they choose (Peskowitz 2001). As Ivakhiv (2007, p. 283) argues, New Age pilgrimages are:…”

Section: Tourist or Pilgrim?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rountree 2002 also addresses ruins in Turkey. For Machu Piccu, see Arellano 2007 and Ivakhiv 2007, p. 266. For ruins in Greece, see Dubisch 2009a.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1998; Pike 2001, 2004; and Cowan 2005 discuss Contemporary Paganism. On eco‐spirituality, see Taylor 1995, 2001, 2009; Ivakhiv 2007; and Bowman 2007. On spiritual feminism, see Bednarowski 1992; Eller 1993; Christ 1987, 1997; Salmonsen 2002; and Griffin 2005.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities

Zwissler

2011

Religion Compass

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Burgeoning literature on sacred travel among contemporary Pagan and New Age communities draws on previous anthropological categories, but also offers new perspectives on important theoretical debates within pilgrimage studies. New religious movements’ adherents often travel for spiritual purposes to places traditionally held as sacred by other, more established religious traditions or to places popularly understood as secular tourist sites. This offers opportunities to think through theoretical debates in the field, including distinctions between tourists and pilgrims, and whether the pilgrimage experience is one mainly comprised of shared feelings of togetherness and community, or alternatively, one fraught with competition to define the ultimate meaning of the journey. Communitas theories, based on Victor Turner and Edith Turner’s argument that pilgrimage creates community and cooperation among fellow religious travelers, contrast with conflict theories, first offered by John Eade and Michael Sallnow, who argue that pilgrimages are grounded in competing discourses, both among pilgrims and between them and institutional religious authorities. By defining spaces in new ways and offering alternative explanations for the sacredness of particular sites, religiously motivated Pagan and New Age travelers highlight the contention, emphasized by ethnographers of more traditional sacred travel, that pilgrimages are the sites of contested meanings, in which not only different theological interpretations and values, but even different religions and cosmologies, coexist.

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Section: Defining Pilgrimagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contemporary Pagan and New Age Pilgrimagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tourist or Pilgrim?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rountree 2002 also addresses ruins in Turkey. For Machu Piccu, see Arellano 2007 and Ivakhiv 2007, p. 266. For ruins in Greece, see Dubisch 2009a.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities

Zwissler

2011

Religion Compass

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Heritagisation of Temples of Humankind

Rech

2022

Damanhur

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John of God

Rocha¹

2017

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This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an increasing array of media. What sets John of God apart are his spectacular healing methods. He performs operations using kitchen knives, scissors, and scalpels without anesthetics or asepsis. He allegedly takes on “entities” (spirits) in a trance and does not remember the operations when he becomes conscious again. Most people claim they do not feel pain and do not develop infections. Drawing on a decade of multi-sited fieldwork in Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, Cristina Rocha provides a rich and important case study of religious globalization which embodies themes that are central to the spread and practice of faith and healing in the twenty-first century. Rocha explores the ways in which religion is both globalized and localized in late modernity and the strategies of cultural translation involved, the establishment of transnational communities of belief, the transformation of poor rural areas into sites of globalization, the efficacy of healing across cultures, the increasing appeal of traditional medicine in the West, and the prominent place of healing (of the body, the spirit, and the planet) in late modernity.

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Power Trips: Making Sacred Space Through New Age Pilgrimage

Cited by 25 publications

References 16 publications

Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities

Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities

Heritagisation of Temples of Humankind

John of God

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