The pilgrim roads

The teaching

As each road's own tradition, from the Codex Calixtinus to the customs of Shikoku teaches it.

The Way of Saint James

The Camino begins with a story. James, son of Zebedee and brother of John, preached the gospel in Spain, the tradition says, and went back to Jerusalem, where King Herod had him put to the sword. His disciples laid his body in a boat, which an angel guided across the sea to Galicia, and there they buried him, and the tomb was forgotten. Long afterwards a hermit named Pelayo saw lights and heard singing over a wood; the bishop found the tomb beneath, and the king came to venerate it. Popular tradition reads Compostela as campus stellae, the field of the star.

The scallop shell, which pilgrims of old picked up on the Galician shore at the end of the road, is the badge of the Way, its ridges gathering like the many roads that meet at the tomb.

The scrip and the staff

The Codex Calixtinus holds a sermon, Veneranda dies, that teaches the pilgrim's gear as a lesson. The scrip, the pilgrim's bag, is narrow, because the pilgrim trusts in God and carries little; it is made from the hide of a dead beast, because the pilgrim should put to death the vices of the flesh; and its mouth is never tied shut, because the pilgrim shares what he has with the poor and is ready to receive. The staff is a third foot to lean on and stands for faith in the Trinity; with it the pilgrim drives off wolves and dogs, which are the snares of the devil. In the old rite of setting out, the priest blessed scrip and staff and gave them to the pilgrim, as a knight receives his arms.

Arriving at Santiago

A pilgrim today carries a credencial, a card stamped at churches, hostels and inns along the way; walked on foot over at least the last hundred kilometres, or ridden by bicycle over the last two hundred, it earns the Compostela, a certificate in Latin. Behind the high altar a narrow stair leads up to the jewelled statue of the seated apostle, which pilgrims embrace from behind, and in the crypt below a silver casket holds the relics.

At some Masses the great censer, the botafumeiro, is swung from the crossing: eight men in red robes haul on its rope until it flies in a high arc across the transept, pouring incense over the crowd. In a Holy Year, when the feast of Saint James on 25 July falls on a Sunday, the Holy Door is opened, and many walk on to Finisterre, once held to be the end of the earth, to watch the Sun go down into the ocean.

The house that Ibrahim raised

The hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is one of the five pillars of Islam, owed once in a lifetime by every Muslim able in body and in means, and its rites retell the story of Ibrahim. At God's command Ibrahim left his wife Hajar and their infant son Ismail in the barren valley of Mecca. When their water ran out Hajar ran seven times between the low hills of Safa and Marwa, searching for help, until the spring of Zamzam burst from the ground beside the child. Later Ibrahim and Ismail raised the walls of the Kaaba as a house for the worship of the one God, and Ibrahim called all people to it.

The days of the hajj

At the boundary of the sacred land the pilgrim enters ihram, the state of consecration. Men put on two plain white unsewn cloths, women modest everyday dress with face and hands uncovered, and for those days no one cuts hair or nails, wears perfume, quarrels, hunts or comes together as husband and wife. The pilgrim calls again and again the talbiya, labbayk Allahumma labbayk, here I am, O God, here I am, and in Mecca walks seven times round the Kaaba from the corner of the Black Stone, then seven times between Safa and Marwa, as Hajar ran.

On the eighth day of the month of Dhu al-Hijja the pilgrims go out to the tent city of Mina. On the ninth comes the heart of the hajj, the standing at Arafat: from noon until sunset they stand and sit on the plain around the Mount of Mercy, where the Prophet gave his farewell sermon, praying and asking forgiveness, for, in a saying of his, the hajj is Arafat. At nightfall they move to Muzdalifah, pray under the open sky and gather small pebbles.

On the tenth they throw seven pebbles at the largest of the three pillars at Mina, where tradition says Ibrahim drove off Satan, who tempted him to disobey God. They sacrifice an animal, as Ibrahim offered a ram in place of his son, and Muslims everywhere keep the day as the Feast of the Sacrifice; men shave their heads or cut their hair, women cut a lock, and all return to circle the Kaaba again. For two or three more days they stone all three pillars, and before leaving make a farewell circuit. When the hajj falls in summer the heat is fierce, so pilgrims drink often and keep to the shade, and those too weak to stone may send another in their place.

The pot of nectar

The Kumbh Mela takes its name from a pot, kumbha, and its story from the Puranas. To win back their strength, the gods joined their rivals the asuras to churn the ocean of milk for amrita, the nectar of immortality, with Mount Mandara as the churning stick, the serpent Vasuki as the rope, and Vishnu, as the tortoise Kurma, bearing the mountain on his back. The churning brought up a deadly poison, which Shiva drank to save the world, so that his throat turned blue; then came many wonders, and last of all Dhanvantari, physician of the gods, carrying the pot of amrita.

Gods and asuras fought over the pot, and as it was carried away across the sky drops of the nectar fell at four places: Prayag, where the Ganga and the Yamuna meet the unseen Saraswati; Haridwar on the Ganga; Ujjain on the Shipra; and Nashik on the Godavari. The Kumbh Mela is held at each when the Sun and Jupiter stand in the signs that mark it, so that each returns about every twelve years.

Bathing at the Kumbh

Pilgrims come to bathe, for a dip in the river on the chief days is held to wash away sins. The first baths belong to the akharas, the orders of ascetics, who march to the water in a fixed order with banners and drums, the naked Naga sadhus smeared with ash going first, before the millions follow. Many householders keep kalpavas at Prayag through the month of Magh, living in tents on the sands, eating once a day and bathing at dawn. The crowds on the chief days are among the largest on earth, and people have been crushed in them, so a newcomer does well to bathe on a quieter day, keep with companions and follow the police lines.

Walking with the Daishi

The Shikoku pilgrimage is a ring of eighty-eight temples, about twelve hundred kilometres round the island where Kukai, honoured as Kobo Daishi, the great teacher of the Shingon school, was born. Pilgrims hold that the Daishi walks the route with each of them, and their hats bear the words dogyo ninin, we two, travelling together. Most go clockwise from Temple 1, Ryozenji, to Temple 88, Okuboji, and many then go on to Mount Koya, where the Daishi is held to remain in meditation.

The four provinces are four stages of the way: Awa, now Tokushima, the place of awakening the resolve; Tosa, now Kochi, of ascetic training; Iyo, now Ehime, of enlightenment; and Sanuki, now Kagawa, of nirvana. The pilgrim wears a white jacket, the colour of the dead, as one ready to die on the road, and carries a staff that is the Daishi himself: each night its foot is washed before the pilgrim's own, and it is not tapped on bridges, for the Daishi, it is said, once slept under a bridge when no house would take him in.

At each temple

At every temple the pilgrim rings the bell, rinses hands and mouth, and goes to two halls, that of the temple's Buddha and that of the Daishi, lighting a candle and incense at each, leaving a slip with name and prayer, and chanting the Heart Sutra and the Daishi's mantra, namu Daishi henjo kongo. The temple office then writes the temple's name in ink in the pilgrim's book and stamps its red seals. People along the road give pilgrims settai, gifts of food, money or a bed, and the pilgrim does not refuse but gives a name slip in thanks, for the gift wins merit for the giver and the pilgrim carries the giver's prayer.

Emon Saburo

The first pilgrim, the story says, was Emon Saburo, the richest man in Shikoku. A begging monk came to his door; he refused him, broke his bowl and drove him away. Then his eight sons fell ill and died one after another, and he understood that the monk had been the Daishi. He walked the island round twenty times seeking forgiveness without meeting him, then walked it the other way, until he collapsed near Temple 12; there the Daishi appeared and forgave him, and Emon asked to be born again in a family that could restore a temple. He died holding a stone, and soon a baby was born with a stone in his fist that read, Emon Saburo is reborn; grown, he restored the temple that keeps the stone today, Ishiteji, the temple of the stone hand. So the road gives alms, and is a road of forgiveness.