ABSTRACT
Grounded in careful observations and interview material recorded during a pilot study in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, this chapter explores how the pilgrim's ritual engagement with the "Holy of Holies"—namely the alleged sites of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and his burial—exhibits an exceptional kind of place-making strategy. The inability to be affected in a manner anticipated while ritually engaged in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, namely to experience the feeling of communion with God (the Son), a sense of elation or rapture, or a deeply felt pathos for Christ's trials and tribulations in his final hours, forces a curtailment, indeed a postponement, of a fully articulated sense of place. Finally, the chapter develops a complementary cognitive model in an attempt to better understand "place" as a constantly transforming mental representation, and the role of emotions in that process.
