Performing the Divine: Neo-Pagan Pilgrimages and Embodiment at Sacred Sites

Body & Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, 95-115 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X06070886
© 2006 SAGE Publications

Performing the Divine: Neo-Pagan Pilgrimages and Embodiment at Sacred Sites

Kathryn Rountree

Massey University, Auckland

This article discusses Neo-Pagan journeys to archaeological or heritage sites (such as ancient temples and stone circles) associated with pre-Christian religions and deities. It argues that within the rationale of a Neo-Pagan worldview, several common binaries dissolve and reveal themselves as continuities at sacred sites: human body and earth body, the past and the present, inner and outer worlds, self and other, human and deity. In the course of Pagans’ bodily performances at sites, inner and outer landscapes co-create and flow into one another: the lived body becomes a fundamental text and starting point for knowledge. Through somatic modes of attention - by attending to and with their bodies in surroundings that frequently include the embodied presence of others - Neo-pagan pilgrims experience themselves not as isolated subjectivities but as sharing an intersubjective milieu with other pilgrims and with the Earth itself. For women in particular, journeys to sacred sites potentially contribute to a radical re-inscription of the female body by exposing women to alternative representations of the feminine and by providing contexts in which the feminine can be re-imagined, re-experienced and performed differently through symbolic activity and ritual. In Butlerian terms, women potentially perform gender differently at sacred sites. 

Key Words: embodiment • liminality • Neo-Paganism • pilgrimage • ritual performance • sacred site