Barefoot Pilgrims in Cyberspace: Lough Derg from Cave to Island to the Internet� Stephen D. Glazier

• This paper highlights new means of mass communication such as the Internet and the subsequent proliferation of virtual texts such as online travel accounts, weblogs, and Internet sites which evaluate and rate travel destinations, and the diversification of the motives of travelers to traditional religious sites.
• Victor and Edith Turner’s Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture gives greater attention (more mentions, more pages) to Lough Derg than to any other pilgrimage site in Ireland. They characterized Lough Derg as an ‘archaic pilgrimage’ due to its hybrid nature and its being shaped by older practices and traditions. The Turners also portrayed Lough Derg as a center for Irish nationalism. Not all Irish Catholics see Lough Derg that way. Many area residents have never done (nor do they intend to do) a pilgrimage to Lough Derg.
• Traditionally, L ough Derg ritual is intense: fasting, sleep deprivation, prayer, and exposure to jagged rocks and the cold. Believers do not portray Lough Derg as a "pleasant" place (the Local Tourist board feels differently and boasts of numerous vacation homes, several high-end resorts, a monastery, and a yacht club). The Lough Derg website compares Station Island's climate to that of Alcatraz.

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History of Lough Derg Pilgrimage�

• Celtic Monastery
• Spiritual practices that were part of life in the Celtic monastery on Saints Island in the early medieval period still live on in the Three Day Pilgrimage: the out-of-the-way location, keeping vigil, frugal fare to eat and drink, sustained vocal prayer, immediate contact with nature and weather, and bodily prayer practices – kneeling, standing, praying with arms extended in the shape of the cross. Station Island – the name refers to the practice of penitential devotions – was the place apart to which the monks could withdraw for more intense prayer. Monastic hospitality welcomed penitents and devout Christians as pilgrims to Lough Derg.
• Augustinian Period
• Around 1220, Lough Derg became an Augustinian priory under the Abbey of Sts Peter and Paul in Armagh, and the Celtic monastic rule gave way to a spirituality that was more pastoral in approach. In this phase ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’ became renowned across Europe, drawing intrepid pilgrims from as far away as Spain, Italy and Hungary. Vivid accounts of the experience were circulated widely, and literary references occur in Dante and Shakespeare. Early printed maps of Europe always include St Patrick’s Purgatory.
• Franciscan period
• In the Reformation period, the Priory was dissolved, its lands confiscated, and in the following centuries the pilgrimage was ruthlessly suppressed. Catholic clergy were outlawed, but from 1594 to 1780 Franciscan friars ministered to the pilgrims who continued to come in their thousands over the summer months. The Station Prayer of the Three Day Pilgrimage in its main lines is mentioned from this period.
• Diocese of Clogher
• Since 1780, Lough Derg has been under the care of the Diocese of Clogher. The title of Prior designates the priest with responsibility for the pilgrimage and its facilities. Dedicated to St Patrick, the main church on the Island was built through the 1920s and honoured with the title of basilica by Pope Pius XI in

Lough Derg 1747

• While the general physical layout of Station Island is very much the same as the map drawn by John Richardson in 1747, the basilica has been expanded on pilings and new dormitories have been built. As Reckwitz correctly argues, architecture is a special type of technology and "built architectural spaces are made for and correspond to specific practices." This is especially true at Lough Derg. The construction of new dormitories and the expansion of the basilica in the 20th century dramatically altered the physical organization of space: the number of bodies accommodated; how these bodies are gathered and/or separated one from another, and how close and/or distant they are. With respect to experience, the island is a very different place than it was in 1747.

���Prayer circles at Lough Derg

• Lough Derg pilgrimage is an intense bodily experience. It incorporates all the senses: sight, sound, touch, and smell. Pilgrimage sites are affective places and Lough Derg is experienced viscerally. The Lough Derg experience consists of a barrage of sounds, sights, smells, and bodily sensations. All pilgrims to Lough Deerg must remove their shoes. Peter Tiernan highlights the smells of feet: "Lough Derg is a great place to study feet; all shapes and sizes. As the rounds of the 'beds' are made, it is impossible not to notice feet as they curl and twitch over sharp and often wet stones.." Again, the blood of Christ is remembered on the bloodied feet of pilgrims as they struggle on the sharp stones of penitential beds.
• The goals of visionary experiences have changed over time. Since the 18th century, there has been less emphasis on ecstasy (what Colin Braga calls fisi -- eschatalogical revelations which take the form of psychanodias) rather than on physical bodily experience (somanadias).
• Modern visions, Braga contends, are anchored in bodily experience. They are not free flights of imagination (raptus animae).
• While scholars might quibble over some of Braga's distinctions (e. g. psychanadias and somanadiasa overlap), the focus of pilgrimage to Lough Derg has clearly moved from fisi to bodily experience. Can this bodily experience be duplicated virtually?

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Welcome to Virtual Pilmirage at Lough Derg

• Virtual pilgrimages are highly selective. The principle of synecdoche (= the extent to which a part stands for the whole) frequently comes into play. Attention imust be paid to the analytical triad of person/place/text as suggested by John Eade and Michael Sallnow (2000 ) .
• Texts, places, and persons are deeply interwoven, signifying and shaping pilgrims’ motives, movement, perceptions, and experiences. Texts, places and persons, through their different combinations, may help to reestablish sites of pilgrimage practice away from original centers themselves, complicating the distinctions between “site” and elsewhere.
• Virtual pilgrimage to Lough Derg may supplement rather than substitute for the physical journey. As Coleman and Elsner (1995) note, “sites offer religious experiences that do not rely exclusively on textual knowledge” (p. 208). Pilgrimage and the way it is experienced are influenced by the materiality of pilgrimage sites.

The Lough Derg Bell is a Midday Call to Marian Prayer�

• Lough Derg is both "modern" and "timeless." It blends ancient ritual and theology with 21st century technology. Pilgrims' blogs mention Medieval notions of sin and salvation/ Heaven and Hell. But they have incorporated these ideas as their own. Their visions (fisi) of Heaven/Hell are understood as direct experiences of the sacred – experiences unmediated by the institutional Church.
• Pilgrims have travelled to Lough Derg for over 1500 years. Martin Behaim's 1492 world map gives only one toponym (place name) for all of Ireland: "the penitential island of Lough Derg."
• Laura Shalvey described Lough Derg as "a bubble with its own rules, changeable and evolving and yet asserting its eternal nature. It is an archive of places and spaces, nestled together in ever-diminishing containers." More recently, pilgrim John Lynch described Lough Derg as a place "with its own vocabulary, culture and ethos." Lynch underscores the intensity of the ritual and emphasizes that "there are no short cuts on this tiny island."

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The Newly Refurbished Lough Derg Pilgrim Path

• The Pilgrim Path was originally created in 1997 by kind co-operation with the Heritage Council and Coillte Teoranta, the state forestry service, on lands that belong to them. In 2014 it became part of Pilgrim Paths Ireland, a network of 12 traditional pilgrim routes scattered across the island of Ireland.
• After the first 2 km, it follows a pilgrim way that was used in the Middle Ages by pilgrims to St Patrick’s Purgatory, coming not only from Ireland but from as far away as Spain, Italy and Hungary.
• The Pilgrim Path begins and ends at the Visitor Centre at the lakeshore at Lough Derg. There are toilet facilities in the Centre. The Path is waymarked by black recycled plastic markers, recognisable by the yellow Pilgrim Symbol, with arrows showing the direction to be taken. At various points along the Pilgrim Path there are information boards showing the whole path.

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Fr La Flynn on his weekly Pilgrimage along the Pilgrim Path at the Lough Derg Lakeshore�

• 2020 marked the first virtual pilgrimage. Prior La Flynn invited prospective pilgrims to complete a 3-Day virtual pilgrimage from "wherever you are." This virtual pilgrimage was intended for annual pilgrims, but it also attracted a limited number of "first-timers." According to La Flynn, 2020 was the first time since 1828 that summer pilgrimages at Lough Derg were suspended. About 200 pilgrims participated in virtual pilgrimage.
• Over the past 40 years, Priors at Lough Derg have tried to make Lough Derg less intense and more accessible. In his daily blogs and tweets, Prior LA Flynn underscores the need to attract a more diverse group of pilgrims – including casual visitors and non-Catholics. To this end, he attends ecumenical workshops and invites non-Catholics to the island. He also sponsors weekly sermons by Protestant ministers.
• To what extent does the virtual pilgrimage of 2020 represent a radical departure from past practices and to what degree is it a continuation of changes implemented over the past two centuries?
• The major challenge of a virtual pilgrimage is to re-create the "affect" of Lough Derg island on-line. It is easier to re-create affect for return pilgrims than for "first-timers." While it may be possible to approximate some of the bodily sensations/movements in a virtual pilgrimage, it is much more difficult to replicate the emotional/affective/geographical sensibilities associated with an actual journey.

Children’s Book from the Lough Derg Giftshop

• Lough Derg theology is perhaps best illustrated in a children's book -- "Peggy Goes on Pilgrimage" -- available in the Lough Derg giftshop. The book's main characters are Peggy (a ferry boat) and the lake. The book's message: "Pilgrimage solves the problems in your life.“
• Lough Derg's theology is practical and unambiguous. Pilgrims' blogs and tweets reference the vision of St. Patrick: "When Patrick endeavored to convert the Irish people to Christianity by preaching to them of the happiness of heaven and the misery of hell, they turned a deaf ear to him, and said that they would never be converted by his words and miracles, .unless one of their number should be permitted to see with his own eyes the torments of the damned and the bliss of the saved. Upon this Our Lord appeared to him, and led him into a desert place, where He showed, him a certain round pit, dark within, and said, " Whatever man, being truly penitent, and armed with a lively faith, shall enter that pit, and there remain for a day and a night, shall be purged from all his sins, and going through it shall behold not only the torments of the lost but the joy of the blessed."
• Lake water is a powerful symbol of the pilgrimage. The most prominent decorations in the basilica at Lough Derg are fonts containing Holy water. Replicas of these fonts are among the best-selling items at the Lough Derg gift shop. Smith underscores connections between water and purification. Just as Lough Derg pilgrims draw power from repetition -- stations, circuits, rosaries, prayers – the lake's ebb and flow of water "remembers that power in its hydro-social and socio-ecological arrangements." Water facilitates isolation. It is a physical and an ontological boundary – separating the everyday from the extraordinary. Richard Scriven further suggests that it is the position of Station Island on the water of Lough Derg that gives it its transformative power.