Mountain, Pilgrimage and a Returning Home to the Self

I grew up at the foot of a mountain in Connemara called Cnoc Mordáin. According to local lore, it was named after the Tuatha de Danann’s “King of all ghosts”. The Tuatha De Danann were the ancient mythical race in Irish mythology. 

It's an interesting experience to grow up with a mountain at your back. I loved to watch it as a child from the kitchen window and observe its changing moods. Shadowy and soft on misty days. Sharp in howling wintery gales. I loved its bright, shining face in Easter sunshine and how restful it looked on Summer evenings. I particularly loved seeing the shadow cross the face of the mountain when the clouds passed it by. 

At night, the mountain was a different being. Haunting. Its brooding shape seemed to change and loomed larger, real and yet unreal, alive with a dark mystery. I felt it was, for sure, the king of the ghosts. When I accompanied my father to the turf shed, with the job of holding the torch for him while he gathered peat for the fire, I both feared and loved the mountain. I felt partly comforted, too, by its company in the darkness, its shelter of us, its ever-present witness. 

Mountains - Sacred Places of Wonder

Mountains have been sacred places of wonder, ritual and pilgrimage across cultures and throughout the centuries. In Jungian Psychology, mountains and the idea of a pilgrimage are archetypal motifs, meaning they are archaic, ancient images in our Collective unconscious, shared across humanity. Jung defined an “archetype” as a habitual pattern in the unconscious shaped by inborn instincts as shared by us all. As he wrote in The Undiscovered Self, [The form of an instinct], when represented to the mind, appears as an image which expresses the nature of the instinctive impulse visually and concretely, like a picture (1).

Painting by Lucy Campbell, commissioned for Deepening the Senses

An archetype, then, is an image created by the mind in response to some instinctual urge in the collective unconscious. 

So, the human instinctual urge to go on a pilgrimage or a voyage of discovery is archetypal and shared by many worldwide. Psychologically, it is symbolic, too, for our urge to grow and become whole. A pilgrimage may be an intentional desire and practice to expand our awareness and consciousness and get to know ourselves better. 

James Hillman, the Jungian psychologist, once wrote:

“I never cease to marvel at the capacity of men and women to leave home and venture into the unknown. I never cease to admire the courage of those who first crossed mountains, who navigated the wine-dark seas, who went down into Hades' Kingdom and wrote 'sonnets to Orpheus' or the fifth symphony. And I ask myself as Yeats did "why should we only honor those that die upon the field of battle, a man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself'.” (3)

By visiting such sacred sites as those majestic mountains or going on a pilgrimage, we come to a newer understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. It slows us down, too, so we can listen with the inner ear to what is calling our attention and what we yearn for and need. It supports us in connecting back to ourselves, the parts of ourselves that we may have become disconnected from, and our path in life. 

Pilgrimage and the Journey of Individuation 

When we engage with our inner world, it is akin to going on a pilgrimage within. Our individuation journey in life is rarely a straight line. Individuation is not linear but a spiral journey towards wholeness where the head and the heart work together, a lifelong process of integrating the opposite, the conscious and unconscious,  bringing split-off parts into awareness and thereby becoming more whole, more ourselves. We meet ourselves time and time again on that spiral, encountering the old aspects of ourselves once again, but always on the spiral with a deeper understanding each time we meet ourselves anew. 

To climb a mountain, like the path of individuation, is to take a series of meandering loops towards the peak. It is also a strenuous path, which one makes with intentional and conscious effort. When you are on a pilgrimage, you may encounter others walking their own path, which also brings us into a shared intentional journey we are all on in life. The pilgrimage in religious calendars often takes place at a particular time of year to engage in community and ritual together. It is both a solitary and a collective endeavour. 

Pilgrimage, Imrama and the Celtic Journey to the Soul 

For our ancestors, the landscape of Ireland itself was a sacred thing. It was the personification of the gods and goddesses themselves. You entered the otherworld through the sidhe, the hollow hills of Ireland or across the seas.  In Irish mythology, embarking on a journey to an unknown destination is featured in many of the tales. Such a journey was called an Imrama, ‘a great voyage’ or ‘Journey of the soul’. It is a journey into an unseen world, a mysterious other place. Indeed, a voyage of self-discovery is a voyage of exploration beyond the horizon of human consciousness. It is a journey to the soul Self. 

The purpose of a pilgrimage is to set aside a long period in which to focus on ‘entering the abyss of oneself’. The focus is to be with the matters of the soul. It might at first look like a way to get away, but often, it is a metaphorical journey home to oneself. We are disconnected from the heart of ourselves, we yearn to return, to a sense of home within. We feel exiled from our core selves. 

A pilgrimage need not be a huge epic odyssey. It can be a daily intentional meeting of yourself. It is a conscious awakening to the beauty of life and the sacred. It is looking out the window at the changing face of a mountain and finding yourself there in the reflection.

And there, we find also, the eternal. 

The birds have vanished 
into the sky
and now the last cloud
drains away
we sit together 
the mountain and me,
until only the mountain 
remains

L I  P O
(701–762)
from the Tang Dynasty 

Polaroid Photograph by Brandon C. Long

References: 

(1) C.G. Jung. The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society by Berkeley publishers. 2006.

(2) The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1) (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung).

(3) James Hillman -The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling. Ballintine books. 2017.