Not to make a review of someone's work all about me, but as a relative newcomer in this world I approach most of the books I read for review as a student to the material, for better or worse. However, a thing that I have actually done for many years is travel with my partner. We have the great good fortune of being able to hoard resources such that occasionally we go on grand adventures throughout the world, and because of personal interests we have made several trips that focused on sites of significance to our personal spiritual paths. Stone circles in Ireland, sacred groves in Greece, uncovered temples and shrines all over the place... I may not be an expert but I'm at least a seasoned practitioner. And so, for once, I come to Thea Prothero's A Guide to Pilgrimage with more than just dewy-eyed wonder but an actual understanding - not to claim superior expertise, merely a basic comprehension - of the material.
So what did I come away with after reading A Guide to Pilgrimage? Encouragement, with a side dish of inspiration. Prothero's writing is very approachable, and she comes at the subject with deep personal experience that she shares to punctuate her advice. She describes numerous pilgrimages she set out on over the years, from places of personal importance such as the grave of Sylvia Plath, to huge sites of historical significance such as the last pilgrimage she describes, to St. Wite's Shrine in Dorset. As she describes in her book, despite "pilgrimage" as a word having a typically religious connotation, what it boils down to is a journey to a specific destination, usually a place with a meaning of some sort (religious, personal, familial etc...) to the traveler. That's it. What she helps the reader to do, should they wish it, is identify when your thoughts of traveling somewhere are attached to more than a simple "I hear there's cool stuff there". I can't keep away from stone circles, for example. The first few that I sought out, I didn't really know why, but I've been to dozens at this point and being with them alters my frame of mind. Whether that's magic or psychology doesn't really matter; what matters is that it happens. If I had the advantage of Prothero's book 15 years ago, I could have used her suggestions in how to explore the idea of the place that is calling me: meditation, dreaming, journaling and so on. She offers very specific prompts that can help you along this exploration. "A Guide to Pilgrimage" isn't just a rumination on the value of the path, though, it also includes practical advice on preparing for the journey. This, though, is not the strongest portion of the book as it relies heavily on the author recounting her own preparation, with callouts to her lessons learned scattered within. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with such an anecdote, but it is the only way that the information is presented; gleaning her advice ought not to be an exercise.
Prothero helps guide you through the process of understanding pilgrimage and identifying places that might be calling on you to make a journey. She gives you some advice on how to prepare, and how to conduct your travel. The best parts of the book are the chapters on what to do or what to look out for when you are at the site you've traveled to. She even provides advice for returning to your regular life and how you might absorb and reflect upon a pilgrimage. Truly, the biggest flag I'm duty-bound to wave as you consider your purchase is that, just from a craft-of-writing perspective, A Guide to Pilgrimage is either a weakly-written or poorly edited text. It's not incomprehensible and I'm not even making it an "official" suggestion not to purchase but know thyself; if you have in the past stopped reading a book because of writing that could have used another pass or three with an editor, don't set yourself up for frustration. Otherwise, however, there's a lot of good to be had from this book.
~review by Wanderer
Author: Thea Prothero
Moon Books, 2024
104 pp. Paperback $12.95 USD £9.99 UK
