Randoms 2016January

This blogitem is a random news tour on pilgrimage and place.

Just a few picks around the world from Lhasa, UK, Mecca, Pausanias, Tasmania, Iraq, London, UK again, Jerusalem, Franklin and Japan twice.

Different styles of pilgrimages, different meanings, different places.

Surprise yourself ;-)

Winter pilgrimage in Lhasa

"As the Spring Festival and the New Year on the Tibetan calendar approaching near, Buddhist disciples from all over Tibet have started their winter pilgrimages to Lhasa for pray and worship."
See all pictures here.

The Beatles revisited

A (commercial) pilgrimage to the Beatles cities Liverpool and London. An example of contemporary non religious pilgrimage. But perhaps still sacred.

See their site here.

Mecca for some

"Iranians are no longer allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.In a further escalation in tensions with Saudi Arabia, the Iranian government today banned its citizens from making the annual trip to Islam’s holiest city, a journey required at least once in a lifetime for all Muslims financially and physically capable of doing so."

See article here.

The ordinary of Pausanias

Huffington Post published an article "Pilgrimage and awe for the ordinary".

"Pausanias, a Greek geographer, was certainly interested in the so-called sacred, but the connections that Pausanias the pilgrim makes between the various locales he visits show how someone can be fascinated by the entirely ordinary or familiar."

See article here.

Jacobean Tasmania

"A new Christian pilgrimage in Tasmania's south is being touted as the Southern Hemisphere's answer to Spain's famous El Camino de Santiago."

Complete with the Jacobean scallop!

See article here.

St Elijah's Monastery of Mosul destroyed

Losing a "reminder of the roots of a religion" and pilgrimage place for centuries.
Have no words...
See articles here and here.

Gustave Doré's pilgrimage in London

"In 1869, French artist Gustave Doré began an extraordinary collaboration with the British journalist Blanchard Jerrold. Together, over four years, they produced a landmark account of the deprivation and squalor of mid-Victorian London"

See the pictures here.

Also in the UK a 

"Pilgrim completes 'medieval'

journey from Southampton to Canterbury"

He carried however some non medieval items like an ipad...

See article here.

Pilgrimage road to Jerusalem identified?

".. archaeologists Yotam Tepper and Yigal Tepper describe what they believe to be a stone road in Israel on which ancient Jews would make their Jerusalem pilgrimage."

See article here.

Pilgrimage festival Franklin

"The Pilgrimage concept is based on traversing the musical and cultural influences of Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and throughout the Mississippi Delta, finding its home in Franklin."

See the site of this september 2016 country music festival here.

88 x Japan

This blog had earlier items on pilgrimages in Japan.

(Click on label Japan and Shikoku on the right for these)

"Japan hopes to follow Camino de Santiago's path to marketing success with 750-mile Buddhist pilgrimage"

See article on the 88 temple route (Shikoku) here.

Healing pilgrimage in Japan

"The Tamagawa baths, situated in the mountains of Japan’s Akita prefecture, have long been believed to hold medicinal powers. Today, the area attracts cancer patients from all over the country, who hope that the naturally acidic hot springs and radioactive stones might heal them."
See the article and the photographs of photographer Tsutomu Yamagata here.