Sacred Places, Sacred Ways

Faith and religious worship are traits common to all human cultures. As individuals and communities seek meaning beyond their daily lives, they project their faith onto their physical environment. They link faith to place.

For indigenous communities, sacred places might include local mountaintops, rivers, and springs; on a global scale, the world's major religions all recognize and revere sacred places, a few of them visited by millions of pilgrims.

An additional common thread among communities of faith is to regard the journey to a holy place as sacred: the act of traveling to a religious destination is itself an act of devotion. This story explores a sacred place or pilgrimage for five of the world's great religions: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism.

It is the duty of all able, adult Muslims to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives.

In 630 Muhammed, founder of the Islamic faith, returned in triumph from exile in Medina to Mecca, his birthplace. He declared the city a site of pilgrimage, and in 632 established the rites of the Hajj.

During the few days of the Hajj, over a million and a half of the faithful converge on Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, to perform a series of rituals. The Hajj takes place during a five-day period; the date varies from year to year due to the Islamic calendar, which is based on the lunar cycle. 

A focal point of the Hajj is the tawaf, the ritual circling—seven times, counter-clockwise—of the Ka'aba, a cubical structure in the center of Mecca's vast Masjid al-Haram, the Grand Mosque. The Ka'aba is the holiest site, the "House of God," for Muslims, who face it from all points of the globe while performing their prayers. Three levels of broad walkways accommodate the circling masses.

The tawaf is performed twice by pilgrims to Mecca, once before and once during the Hajj, during which participants travel among several locations in and near Mecca.

With some 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, accommodating and controlling the vast crowds of Hajj pilgrims has become a major challenge. In 2015, over 2,000 pilgrims were killed in a crush during the Hajj. Officials continually monitor the Hajj route to eliminate potential choke points.

In recent decades Mecca has experienced a construction boom. Towering over the Sacred Mosque is the gigantic, $15 billion Abraj Al-Bait ("Towers of the House"), owned by the Saudi government and housing a variety of meeting areas, hotels, shopping malls, offices, and residences. The main tower is the world's third tallest building and features the largest clock face in the world.

The grand ritual of the Hajj brings Muslims of all sects and nationalities, and from all corners of the globe, together in peace.

The city most revered by Hindus embraces a broad curve of the great river Ganges in north-central India.

Varanasi is considered sacred by Hindus, but the river is the primary magnet and center of activity. A series of ghats, whose broad stone steps provide access from the cramped city streets to the Ganges, stretch for several miles along the river. 

About a million pilgrims visit Varanasi annually, most of whom gather on the ghats for ritual ablutions. Bathing in the Ganges is believed to relieve suffering and wash away sins. More than 80 ghats line the river in Varanasi; most are used for ritual bathing, while some specialize as cremation sites. Hindus believe that being cremated here is a means of achieving moksha, one of the four goals of a fulfilled life. Moksha can be described variously as a state of perfection, of liberation, of self-realization, and of transcendental consciousness.

Below, Varanasi and its many ghats crowd the left bank of the Ganges. On the opposite shore is a large sandbar and floodplain.

Religion, ritual, and history have reverberated in Varanasi for some 4,000 years. Its more than 20,000 temples primarily serve Hindus, but the city is important to Buddhists as well. It is thought to be where the Buddha gave his first sermon and founded the faith that millions still follow. Varanasi also has many mosques, some built centuries ago by Muslim rulers from the ruins of destroyed Hindu shrines.

The pilgrim route is for those who are good: it is the lack of vices, the thwarting of the body, the increase of virtues, pardon for sins, sorrow for the penitent, the road of the righteous, love of the saints, faith in the resurrection and the reward of the blessed, a separation from hell, the protection of the heavens.

– The Codex Calistinus, an 1173 anthology for pilgrims to Compostela

For centuries the faithful have traveled the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James, from locations throughout western Europe to the ornate Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. According to tradition the remains of St. James the Great, one of the apostles of Christ, were brought from Jerusalem in 813 and buried on the site now occupied by the Cathedral.

Pilgrimages to Compostela may take many routes. But the path mapped below is the most commonly traveled route from the French border, and passes through the cities of Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos, and León.

The Way terminates at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, whose ornate bulk looms over its city. The church's Romanesque core has accreted various Gothic and Baroque additions; the structure replaced an earlier church that was destroyed by a Moorish army in the tenth century. In the cathedral's dim interior stands an ornate altar canopy, within which is a decorated statue of St. James.

Traditionally the Way of St. James was, like other pilgrimage routes, a means of atonement for sins. Heavily traveled during the Middle Ages, the Way waned in popularity until the late 20th century, when the number of pilgrims surged, some traveling for religious purposes, others for pleasure. Since 1987 it has been a World Heritage Site. In contrast to the massive crowds of the Hajj and other religious gatherings, the Way of St. James is a contemplative, introspective journey through the rural landscapes of northern Spain.

The ancient, narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City teem with the faithful of multiple religions.

Contested by Israelis and Palestinians, cleaved into Muslim, Jewish, Armenian, and Christian quarters, considered sacred by Jews, Christians, and Muslims—Jerusalem defies its tumultuous history, continuing to thrive while luring countless tourists and pilgrims.

The ancient city hosts holy sites for three religions: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, and the Temple Mount and Western Wall for Jews.

The familiar, weathered stone face of the Western Wall is a small portion of the far more extensive structure built by Herod the Great as part of a quest to expand the Jewish place of worship atop the Temple Mount. The vast "Second Temple" that Herod envisioned required that the Temple Mount be modified into a large platform; the Western Wall was a retaining structure along one side of the platform.

Construction of the Second Temple was under way when the Roman emperor Titus attacked Jerusalem in 70 CE in retaliation to a rebellion by the Jews. The Roman legions destroyed much of the city, including the Temple. Spoils from the campaign funded construction of the Colosseum in Rome.

Jews pray at the Wall because of its proximity to the site of the Second Temple, now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Around the 14th century it became popular practice for Jews to avoid entering the Temple itself because they were no longer able to attain the necessary degree of ritual purity. And in a delicate dance between Israel and Palestine, the Old City is under Israeli control while the Temple Mount itself is administered by the Islamic Waqf. Due to these contemporary political tensions the Temple Mount comprises some of the world’s most sensitive territory. Activities are restricted: Jews and Christians are allowed to enter only at certain times, and are forbidden to pray there.

Jews have made pilgrimages to the Western Wall for centuries. Many believe that prayers made at the Wall have heightened power because of the proximity to the site of the Second Temple. Each year more than a million written prayers are placed in the wall's seams and cracks.

According to Buddhist legend, Maya Devi, queen of a local clan, gave birth to Siddhartha Gautama in a tranquil grove amidst the foothills of the Himalaya.

The birth occurred in the sixth century BCE in what is now southern Nepal. Her child later achieved enlightenment and became Gautama Buddha, founder of the Buddhist faith. Buddhists now make pilgrimages to several sites associated with Buddha's life, prime among them his birthplace, Lumbini.

An early pilgrim to Lumbini was Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan Dynasty. Ashoka's followers erected a pillar commemorating his visit; it is one of a series of "pillars of Ashoka" scattered across the Indian subcontinent. Over the centuries Lumbini faded into obscurity until Nepalese archeologists rediscovered the pillar in 1896 and identified the site as Buddha's birthplace.

The centerpiece of the sprawling, park-like complex is the Maya Devi Temple, a brick structure, built around the time of Ashoka, that replaced an earlier wooden building. The temple stands within a circular "sacred garden" near the southern end of the three-square-mile holy site. The compound is undergoing continuing restoration and development with the involvement of the Nepalese and Chinese governments and the United Nations.

Near the northern end of the site is a World Peace Pogoda, built by Japanese Buddhists and completed in 2001.

Lumbini was designated a World Heritage Site in 1997. It has become a pilgrimage destination for Hindus as well as Buddhists; some Hindus regard Buddha as a reincarnation of Vishnu, one of the principal Hindu gods.

For in their hearts doth Nature stir them so / Then people long on pilgrimage to go... / To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

For countless centuries distant shrines have beckoned. The urge to demonstrate devotion, to seek meaning in sacred places, to step away from quotidian routines to pursue a deeper purpose, persists despite the advent of jet travel, digital technology, and global communication networks. That craving, no doubt, will stir the souls of generations to come.

This story map was originally published in 2017 utilizing the classic Story Maps Cascade app.