ABSTRACT
Out of all the forms of travel and tourism, pilgrimage may best be associated with emotion, with a captivating and all-encompassing sense of passion that undertakes a participant's very being, often changing his very cosmology. Many scholars have attempted to posit a satisfactory definition of pilgrimage, but, like tourism, it is an activity whose meaning varies not only from culture to culture and epoch to epoch, but from person to person. Fundamentally, however, a pilgrimage is a ritual journey from the quotidian realm of profane society to a sacred centre, a passionladen, hyper-meaningful voyage both outwardly and inwardly, which is often steeped in symbols and symbolic actions, and 'accretes rich superstructures' of mythological representations that passionately captivate their practitioners. They celebrate, singing songs, clapping and whistling as peregrinos do during Mass at the basilica of Santiago de Compostela, marking the completion of their Camino by wildly swinging an immense incense-spewing censor.
