Santiago de Compostela
Part 2. The original path
‘The reality is the opposite and the guide never fails to point this out. The Cantabrian Way follows very exactly the itinerary of medieval pilgrims. The problem is that this route is now covered with roads. The Path we follow is both authentic and unrecognizable’.1
This post is the continuation of: Santiago de Compostela. Part 1. The Path of St James.
Trailing the modern pilgrim’s favorite topic: How can I make my rucksack lighter? There is much discussion about ‘the original path’. But medieval circulation shifted with wars, the collapse or emergence of a bridge, building of a new monastery, and many pilgrims had their individual itinerary of relics to venerate and sanctuaries to visited along the way. Thus the original paths was a multitude of small paths.2 Sometimes mont-joies, small pyramids of piled up stones, were all that was marking a path over a plateau. Traditionally the general orientation was said to be that of the Milky Way.
Pilgrims imagined themselves to be guided by the blur of the Milky Way, which is still known in some parts as ‘the Way of St James’. Especially useful for those who set-off before dawn, or when heatwaves forced the pilgrim to navigate at night. Hence, the ever-alive reference to ‘the path of the stars’. The white road in the heavens had once been associated with Herakles and his mother’s milk, and with the glowing trail that was left by the dying sun as it descended towards the Ocean.3
Interestingly, long before the discovery of St James’ tomb at Compostela, St. James’ Path was named Via Finisterre (The Path to Land’s End). Celtic influence expanded over Iberian Peninsula around sixth century BC and pilgrims walked a path that led from the Pyrenees in Southern France, to the rocky cliffs of Finisterre, overlooking the sicking/dying of the sun into the Atlantic Ocean.4 The celtic sun-worship of Lugh replaced the prehistoric deities, and those gods in turn were supplanted by saints.
‘There are many sanctuaries along the route and next to every chapel or church there was and sometimes still is a grave-mound, a dolmen or a spring. … the pilgrimage path of the heretics. Only since religious wars had made it difficult to walk to Jerusalem, did Santiago acquire such importance among Catholics’.5
The Celts and Druids were not the only pre-Christian people who revered the Via Finisterre. In 200 BC, as Romans slowly conquered the area of the Iberian Peninsula, Brutus became the first Roman general to reach Finisterre and to marvel at the Phoenician Altar to the Sun (Ara Solis). To the Romans the Promontorium Celticum was then considered the westernmost point in Europe. Roman pilgrims made pilgrimages along the same path in honor of the god Janus. On the site of the Ara Solis at this End of the Earth, modern pilgrims burn the clothes and shoes in which they made the journey.6
At the end of the Roman empire, when the Church rewrote the histories of Celtic shrines. Images of Epona were converted into icons of St Martin on his horse. The goddess and the saint are often almost indistinguishable. Ogmios, the Gaulish Hercules, shape shifted into his Christian avatar St Christopher. Just as Caesar recognized the Roman pantheon in the deities of the Celts, a reincarnated Druid entering certain chapels would find himself among familiar figures.
The Finisterran Christ, a statue with a golden beard caught in a fisherman’s net, was interpreted as a miraculous image of Christ. But a golden beard had been one of the attributes of the Phoenician Herakles. Phoenician vessels passed the Altar of the Sun as they sailed north on the tin route long before the Roman empire.
‘… one of the highlights of the Way of St James: the Iron Cross. ... The cross had been erected there at the time of Caesar's invasion, in homage to Mercury. According to pagan tradition, pilgrims used to place a stone there from afar’7, the pebbles symbolizing their sins. It is a small iron cross on a high wooden pole under which lie thousands of little rocks, a rubble dump of the past.
Every pilgrim leaves behind a stone, the practice is much older than Christianity, since it was the Romans who already recorded the custom of carrying a stone to the Monte Mercurio. And this custom got revived, for many a modern pilgrim it is the actual focus point of their journey, symbolically leaving behind their worries or trauma.
The (post)modern path
“The ‘real’ historic path is a farce. The right path has nothing to do with geography. The Way of Saint James is made by those people walking it,” concludes René Feund.8
‘The path is not made to go quickly... it is made to get lost... Find a world on a human scale... Each new error is a new encounter, each step on a path digs deeper into existence on the earth's crust, and we zig-zag around modernity at four kilometers an hour. At the speed (so to speak!) of human walking. In another space-time’.9
One of the insight Alix de Sant-André shares in her book. Together with wisdom she received from fellow ‘jacquets’ like: ‘Beer is proof of the existence of God... Rioja is proof that God is good... Faith is believing that there will be a bar in the next village; the hope that it will be open, and the charity that you will buy me a drink there’. Or: ‘The tourist demands, the pilgrim thanks’.
‘The path entrusted me with its secret,’ writes Jean-Christophe Rufin.10 “Compostela is not a Christian pilgrimage but much more, ... a Buddhist pilgrimage ... the modern mythology of the Way, with its innumerable routes, its references to the 'crowds' of pilgrims of the Middle Ages, its ideal of poverty has finds an echo well beyond the Catholic world. The pilgrimage is in accordance with a contemporary spirituality that is more syncretic, more floating and much less supervised by the Church.”
He observes how the modern pilgrims are attracted by values of simplicity, union with nature and self-fulfillment. ‘Their approach is less Christian than postmodern.’ He meets ‘Yoga group’ T-shirt wearers seated in lotus position on the outskirts of the monastery, seemingly greeting the sunset.
‘It is through such experiences that the pilgrim measures the developments of this world. … The path is only one of the products offered for consumption in the great postmodern bazaar.’ Another Fucking Growth Opportunity (AFGO) in the abundance of spiritual 'opportunities' and New Age experiences (and as many fucking opportunist presenting them).
And whiles on the subject of New Agee experiences, the path seems full of Brazilians looking for the Paulo Coelho experience. His book: ‘Le Pèlerin de Compostelle’11 is some kind of initiation to ‘the order of RAM’ ( Regnum, Agnus Mundi), a supposed ancient Christian brotherhood founded in 1492 with a Knights Templar associations (I should have headed Eco’s warning)12 . ‘I had become a tree. … I remained there, branches outstretched, leaves shaken by the wind, wishing never to leave this position again’. The exercise of the seed, just one of a series of exercises, I later discovered the matching exercise book in a secondhand bookshop.
‘… almost everyone writes here. Except me,’ observes Alix de Sant-André. ‘I confirm to him that I am not writing: I came to walk the path, not to write; it wouldn’t be the same to make the journey with the idea of telling it afterwards; it would have a utilitarian, self-interested, ugly side. I'm making the journey, period. If I can do it, it will already be beautiful. …a writer is someone who smokes too much, who drinks too much, and who writes less than anyone else’.
‘What goes on inside your head when walking? When we ask each other what the other is thinking along the way, the other normally answers: ‘Oh nothing.’ And that is just about right. The path is a path into the present. … To be a pilgrim is an entirely un-intellectual experience. … Walking is the form of travel most suited in pace to perception. … Whenever you walk, you automatically gain introspection,’ shares René Feund. ‘What many people now look for in eastern religions because they feel it is missing from Christianity can still be sensed here – the spirit and the spirituality’.
‘We are pilgrims because other people see us as that. But since Cahors no one has made us feel like pilgrims anymore. Instead we are treated more like irritating budget holidaymakers, which is essentially what we are,’ he continues. ‘… people walking in Spain are unlucky as it is. The fact that walking is a luxury for the privileged hasn’t yet been fully understood because there are still too many people who have to walk because they have no other choice’. ‘Most pilgrims come from wealthy countries, because they can afford to seek out an impoverished lifestyle’.
This post will continue in Part 3. Europe was born out of the pilgrimage to Santiago.
Feund R., 2016 (1999). The Road to Santiago, Walking the Way of St James. (= On foot to the End of the World. Original German title: Bis aus Ende der Welt – Zu Fuß auf dem Jakobsweg). BookHaus, The Armchair Traveller. ISBN 978 1 909961 22 7
Barret P. et Gurgand J-N., 1985 (1978). Priez pour nous à Compostelle. Hachette, Le livre de poche. ISBN 2 253 02399 X
Robb G., 2013. The Ancient Paths, Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe. Pan Macmillan, Picador. ISBN 978 0 330 53151 1
Greenia, G., 2016. Santiago de Compostela. Europe: A Literary History of Europe, 1348-1418 (pp. 94-101). Oxford University Press. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/67
Feund R., 2016 (1999). The Road to Santiago, Walking the Way of St James. (= On foot to the End of the World. Original German title: Bis aus Ende der Welt – Zu Fuß auf dem Jakobsweg). BookHaus, The Armchair Traveller. ISBN 978 1 909961 22 7
Robb G., 2013. The Ancient Paths, Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe. Pan Macmillan, Picador. ISBN 978 0 330 53151 1
Coelho P., 1996 (1987). Le Pèlerin de Compostelle (= The Pilgrimage. Original Portuguese title: O Diário de Um Mago, "Diary of a Magus"). Éditions Anne Carrière. ISBN 2 910188 50 7
Feund R., 2016 (1999). The Road to Santiago, Walking the Way of St James. (= On foot to the End of the World. Original German title: Bis aus Ende der Welt – Zu Fuß auf dem Jakobsweg). BookHaus, The Armchair Traveller. ISBN 978 1 909961 22 7
Sant-André de A., 2010. En avant, route! Éditions Gallimard. ISBN 978 2 07 012837 2
Rufin J-C., 2013. Immortelle randonnée, Compostelle malgré moi. Éditions Guérin, Collection Démarches. ISBN 978 2 35221 061 0
Coelho P., 1996 (1987). Le Pèlerin de Compostelle (= The Pilgrimage. Original Portuguese title: O Diário de Um Mago, "Diary of a Magus"). Éditions Anne Carrière. ISBN 2 910188 50 7
‘You may not believe this, but the two need not be mutually exclusive. I’m finishing a thesis on the Templars.’
‘What an awful subject,’ he said. ‘I thought that was for lunatics.’
‘No, I’m studying the real stuff. The documents of the trail. What do you know about the Templars, anyway?’
‘I work for a publishing company. We deal with both lunatics and nonlunatics. After a while an editor can pick out the lunatics right away. If somebody brings up the Templars, he’s almost always a lunatic.’
Eco U., 1997 (1989). De Slinger van Foucault (= Foucault’s Pendulum. Original Italian title: Il pendolo di Foucault). Prometheus, Bert Bakker. ISBN 90 351 1929 0.