Volume: 4  Number: 2  Page: 116–135  doi:10.2167/jtcc054.0

Neopagan Pilgrimages in the Age of the Internet: A Life Changing Religious Experience or an Example of Commodification?

Maria Beatrice Bittarello School of Modern Languages, Culture and Religion, Stirling University, Stirling, Scotland, UK

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of Neopagan ‘pilgrimages’, which are advertised on the Internet and directed to various ancient sacred sites in Greece and in the Mediterranean Sea. After showing how travellers to Greece in the Modern Age have been inspired by classical myths and have often represented their trips as ‘pilgrimages’, the paper examines how Neopagans, women belonging to the Goddess Spirituality Movement, use travels to ancient sacred places as a way to reconstruct their own identity. Therefore, the perception and representation of the tourist journey as ‘pilgrimage’ obscures the reality of the commodification of religious experiences, in a globalised context in which different consumers ‘buy’ different experiences of ancient Greece.

Keywords: commodification, Goddess Spirituality, myth, neopaganism, pilgrimage, sacred travel

© 2006 M.B. Bittarello

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