'Ambiguous sanctuaries' are places in which the sacred is shared.
These exist in almost all religions: tombs of saints, mausoleums,
monasteries and shrines, a revered mountain peak, a majestic tree,
a cave or special boulders in the river. This book examines this
phenomenon in diverse parts of the world: in Europe, the Middle
East, Asia and Brazil. What these ritual spaces share is the
capacity to unsettle and challenge people's experiences and
understandings of reality, as well as to provoke the imagination,
allowing universes of meanings to be interlinked. The spaces
discussed reveal the many different ways the sacred can be shared.
Different groups may once have visited sites that are nowadays
linked to only one religion. The legacy of earlier religious
movements is subtly echoed in the devotional forms, rituals,
symbols or narratives (hagiographies) of the present, and the
architectural settings in which they take place. In some pilgrimage
sites, peoples of different faiths visit and take part in
devotional acts and rituals - such as processing, offering candles,
incenses and flowers - that are shared. The saints to whom a shrine
is dedicated can also have a double identity. Such ambiguity has
often been viewed through the lens of religious purity, and the
exclusivity of orthodoxy, as confusion, showing a lack of coherence
and authenticity. But the openness to interpretation of sacred
spaces in this collection suggests a more positive analysis: that
it may be through ambiguity transcending narrow confines that
pilgrims experience the sanctity and power they seek. In the
engaging and accessible essays that comprise Pilgrimage and
Ambiguity the contributors consider the ambiguous forces that
cohere in sacred spaces - forces that move us into the
inspirational depths of human spirituality. In so doing, the essays
bring us closer to a deeper appreciation of how ambiguity helps to
define the human condition. This collection is one that will be
read and debated for many years to come. Paul Stoller, West Chester
University, Pennsylvania, 2013 Anders Retzius Gold Medal Laureate
in Anthropology In a time of religious polarization, this fine
collection of essays recalls that ambiguity, ambivalence and shared
experience characterize the sacred as it is encountered in
pilgrimages. Readers will travel through the Mediterranean, India,
Pakistan and China, but also Western Europe and Amazonia, to
discover saintly landscapes full of multiple meanings. Alexandre
Papas, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Scientific
Research, Paris
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