The Seduction of Avalon: The Pilgrimage to Goddess and the Affect of the Tour
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v18i2.15424Keywords:
Avalon, Pilgrimage, Stendhal's Syndrome, Glastonbury,Abstract
Thousands of women, and men, have made the effort to go on pilgrimage due to epiphany or research or distrust of their née religions on a Pagan path. That path leads them to an ancient Celtic—or at least a simulacrum—way of being. They, we are drawn to the sites/sights and sounds of a European “homeland” we have never seen before. How do these people, many with non-European backgrounds, come to this particular pilgrimage? Why search for Avalon? This article looks at the phenomena that pulls a stranger/tourist/pilgrim population to a “homeland” they have never seen, never experienced, and only came to as an adult making a decision after searching, not as an enculturated child. Further, this article discusses those “quasi-Stendhalian” epiphanies that are evoked when one reaches such “sacred ground.” Women who come in pilgrimage to find the Goddess – in whatever form they might think of her – have a multitude of experiences at various venues and “hotspots” that abound in Glastonbury. Whether it is going to sacred water, either Chalice Well or the White Spring, climbing the Tor to the summit or as far as one can get, or attending one of the Goddess-centered events throughout the year, pilgrims come to connect with She That Is and with each other. What is this visceral experience of anticipation and completion upon reaching the goal at Glastonbury/Avalon? This is an introductory article to search for these answers.References
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——.“Learning from Experience: The Value of Analysing Avalon.” Religion 39 (2009): 161–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2009.01.016.
——.“Going with the Flow: Contemporary Pilgrimage to Glastonbury.” In Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred, edited by Peter Jan Margry, 241–280. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008
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Gitlitz, David M., and Linda Kay Davidson. Pilgrimage and the Jews. Praeger Publishers: Westport, Connecticut. 2006.
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Hambrick, Charles H. “World Messianity: A Study in Liminality and Communitas.” Religious Studies 15 (1979): 539–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500 011720.
Harvey, Andrew, and Ann Baring, The Divine Feminine: Exploring The Feminine Face of God Around The World. Berkeley: Conari Press, 1996.
Hayano, D. M. “Auto-ethnography: Paradigms, Problems, and Prospects.” Human Organization 38 (1979): 113–20. https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.38.1.u761n5601 t4g318v.
Heaven, Ross. The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions: Lost Traditions of Celtic Shamanism. St. Paul: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008.
“History: 1970.” Glastonbury Festival. http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/his tory/1970/.
Ivakhiv, Adrian. Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Kidd, Sue Monk, and Anne Kidd Taylor. Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece and France. New York: Viking, 2009.
Lindemans, Micha F. “Tuatha Dé Danann.” Encyclopedia Mythica, 2003. http://www. pantheon.org/articles/t/tuatha_de_danann.html.
——.“Selkie.” Encyclopedia Mythica, 1997. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/ selkie.html.
Magherini, Graziella. The Stendhal Syndrome. Florence: Ponte Alle Grazie, 1989. Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Artur. 1470 Facsimile of the copy in the John Rylands Library of University of Manchester. Early English Books Online. http://eebo. chadwyck.com/ .
Mitchell, Joni. Joni Mitchell: The Complete Poems and Lyrics. New York: Crown, 1997.
Prince, Ruth, and David Riches. The New Age in Glastonbury: The Construction of Religious Movements. New York: Berghahn, 2000.
Rahtz, Philip, and Lorna Watts. Glastonbury: Myth and Archaeology, 2nd ed. Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2009.
Smith, Julie Ann. “Sacred Journeying: Women’s Correspondence and Pilgrimage in the Fourth and Eighth Centuries.” In Pilgrimage Explored, edited by Jennie Stopford, 41–56. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 1999.
Stiver, Camilla. “Reflections on the Role of Personal Narrative in Social Science.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18(1993): 408–25.
Stone, Merlin. When God was a Woman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Stone, I. F. “Palestine Pilgrimage.” In The Best of I.F. Stone, edited by Peter Osnos, 213–18. New York: Public Affairs, 2006.
Tax, Sol. “Action Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 16, no. 4 (Dec., 1975), 514–17.
Tedlock, Barbara. “Braiding Narrative Ethnography with Memoir and Creative Nonfiction.” In The Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th ed. edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, 331–38. Los Angeles: Sage, 2011.
“Tours.” Glastonbury Online: Your Guide to Glastonbury. http://www.glastonbury. co.uk/pages/site.php?pgid=321.
Tuffy, Clare. “New Grange: A Passage to the Underworld.” http://www.knowth. eu/new-grange.htm.
Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner.Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
——.“Postindustrial Marian Pilgrimage.” In Mother Worship: Theme and Variations, edited by James J. Preston, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
——.“Performing Ethnography.” The Drama Review 26, no. 2 (1982): 33–50. https:// doi.org/10.2307/1145429.
Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Wall, Sarah. “An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5, no. 2 (2006): 147–60.
Watkins, Alfred. The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites, and Mark Stones. London: Abacus, 1974 [1925].
Bamforth, Ian. “Stendhal’s Syndrome.” British Journal of General Practice 60 (2010): 945–46. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp10X544780.
Beard-Moose, Christina. Private Indians, Public Cherokees: Tradition and Tourism on Tribal Ground. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2009.
——.“‘Glastonbury Syndrome’: An Ecstatic Moment in Pilgrimage.” In Sacred Lands and Spiritual Landscapes. edited by Wendy Griffin, 37–55. Tucson: ADF Publishing, 2014.
Benham, Patrick. The Avalonians. Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications, 2006.
Bochner, A.P. “Narrative’s Virtues.” Qualitative Inquiry 7 (2001): 131–57. https://doi. org/10.1177/107780040100700201.
Bowman, Marion. “Procession and Possession in Glastonbury: Continuity, Change and the Manipulation of Tradition.” Folklore 115 (2004): 273–85. https://doi.org /10.1080/0015587042000284266.
——.“Learning from Experience: The Value of Analysing Avalon.” Religion 39 (2009): 161–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2009.01.016.
——.“Going with the Flow: Contemporary Pilgrimage to Glastonbury.” In Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred, edited by Peter Jan Margry, 241–280. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. New York: Ballantine, 1982.
Bridger, Margarian. “Pagan Deism: Three Views.” The Pomegranate: A New Journal of NeoPagan Thought 1 (1997): 37–42.
The Burren Center. The Burren: A Living Landscape. Kilfenora, Ireland: The Burren Centre, Accessed 01/28/2015. http://www.theburrencenter.ie.
Butt, Riazat. “Glastonbury Pilgrimage Cancelled Due to Rising Fuel Prices.” The Guardian, 4 April 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/14/glast onbury-pilgrimage-cancelled-fuel-price.html.
Coleman, Simon. “Pilgrimage.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by Robert A. Segal, 385–96. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Cone, Elizabeth. “The Next Big (Lifetime Television for Women) Thing.” This is Not My Narrative blog. May 20, 2013. https://thisisnotmynarrative.com/2013/05/20/ the-next-big-lifetime-television-for-women-thing/.
Digance, Justine, and Carol Cusack. “Glastonbury: A Tourist Town for All Seasons.” In The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World, edited by Graham Dann, 263– 80. Wallingford, Surrey: CABI Publishing, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1079/978 0851996066.0263.
Eade, John, and Michael Sallnow. “Introduction.” In Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, edited by John Eade and Michael Sallnow, 2–27. London: Routledge, 1991.
Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2003.
Ellis, Carolyn, and A. P. Bochner. “Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject.” In The Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd ed., edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, 733–68. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2000.
Eogan, George. Knowth and the Passage-Tombs of Ireland. New Aspects of Antiquity Series. London: Thames and Hudson, 1986.
Fried, Ralph I. “The Stendhal Syndrome: Hyperkulteremia.” Ohio Medicine 84 (1988): 519–20.
Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
Gitlitz, David M., and Linda Kay Davidson. Pilgrimage and the Jews. Praeger Publishers: Westport, Connecticut. 2006.
——. Pilgrimage: From the Ganges to Graceland: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABCClio, 2002.
Graburn, Nelson H. H. “Tourism: The Sacred Journey.” In Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, 2nd ed., edited by Valene L. Smith, 17–32. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812208016.19.
Hambrick, Charles H. “World Messianity: A Study in Liminality and Communitas.” Religious Studies 15 (1979): 539–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500 011720.
Harvey, Andrew, and Ann Baring, The Divine Feminine: Exploring The Feminine Face of God Around The World. Berkeley: Conari Press, 1996.
Hayano, D. M. “Auto-ethnography: Paradigms, Problems, and Prospects.” Human Organization 38 (1979): 113–20. https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.38.1.u761n5601 t4g318v.
Heaven, Ross. The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions: Lost Traditions of Celtic Shamanism. St. Paul: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008.
“History: 1970.” Glastonbury Festival. http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/his tory/1970/.
Ivakhiv, Adrian. Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Kidd, Sue Monk, and Anne Kidd Taylor. Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece and France. New York: Viking, 2009.
Lindemans, Micha F. “Tuatha Dé Danann.” Encyclopedia Mythica, 2003. http://www. pantheon.org/articles/t/tuatha_de_danann.html.
——.“Selkie.” Encyclopedia Mythica, 1997. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/ selkie.html.
Magherini, Graziella. The Stendhal Syndrome. Florence: Ponte Alle Grazie, 1989. Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Artur. 1470 Facsimile of the copy in the John Rylands Library of University of Manchester. Early English Books Online. http://eebo. chadwyck.com/ .
Mitchell, Joni. Joni Mitchell: The Complete Poems and Lyrics. New York: Crown, 1997.
Prince, Ruth, and David Riches. The New Age in Glastonbury: The Construction of Religious Movements. New York: Berghahn, 2000.
Rahtz, Philip, and Lorna Watts. Glastonbury: Myth and Archaeology, 2nd ed. Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2009.
Smith, Julie Ann. “Sacred Journeying: Women’s Correspondence and Pilgrimage in the Fourth and Eighth Centuries.” In Pilgrimage Explored, edited by Jennie Stopford, 41–56. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 1999.
Stiver, Camilla. “Reflections on the Role of Personal Narrative in Social Science.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18(1993): 408–25.
Stone, Merlin. When God was a Woman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Stone, I. F. “Palestine Pilgrimage.” In The Best of I.F. Stone, edited by Peter Osnos, 213–18. New York: Public Affairs, 2006.
Tax, Sol. “Action Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 16, no. 4 (Dec., 1975), 514–17.
Tedlock, Barbara. “Braiding Narrative Ethnography with Memoir and Creative Nonfiction.” In The Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th ed. edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, 331–38. Los Angeles: Sage, 2011.
“Tours.” Glastonbury Online: Your Guide to Glastonbury. http://www.glastonbury. co.uk/pages/site.php?pgid=321.
Tuffy, Clare. “New Grange: A Passage to the Underworld.” http://www.knowth. eu/new-grange.htm.
Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner.Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
——.“Postindustrial Marian Pilgrimage.” In Mother Worship: Theme and Variations, edited by James J. Preston, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
——.“Performing Ethnography.” The Drama Review 26, no. 2 (1982): 33–50. https:// doi.org/10.2307/1145429.
Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Wall, Sarah. “An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5, no. 2 (2006): 147–60.
Watkins, Alfred. The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites, and Mark Stones. London: Abacus, 1974 [1925].
Published
2016-12-28
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Beard-Moose, C. (2016). The Seduction of Avalon: The Pilgrimage to Goddess and the Affect of the Tour. Pomegranate, 18(2), 150-175. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v18i2.15424
