ABSTRACT
Certain kinds of New Age pilgrimage seek to seduce their participants with a vision of the past as a source of power and wisdom and as inspiration for spiritualities that provide a counter to present-day conditions, including those generated by patriarchal religions and materialistic forms of healing. Particular places associated with such pasts provide the physical settings for connecting with spiritual forces that are believed to be dormant or overlooked in the contemporary world. These places are clothed in the mantle of constructed and often revisionist narratives of the past, and their messages are reinforced with rituals performed either at the sites or elsewhere on the journey, and with objects carried to or from the pilgrimage sites and imbued with personal and collective meaning.
