ABSTRACT
Although the current interest in Celtic spirituality is ‘perhaps most evident in the form of attractively packaged commodities which can be purchased at the postmodern spiritual supermarket’ (Bradley 2010: vii), despite this more commercial manifestation, interest is also demonstrated in the popularity of pilgrimages to Celtic holy sites and workshops. Modern-day pilgrims to these Celtic sites include ‘New Agers, feminists and deep ecologists, as well as liberal, evangelical, and charismatic Christians, [who] identify with its ethos and message and call for a recovery of its key principles’ (Bradley 2010: viii). In his 2009 book Pilgrimage: a spiritual ana cultural journey, Bradley points out that over 250,000 people visit the tiny isle of lona each year, with as many as 1,600 each day in the summer months. This is significant on a small island that has only just over 100 year-round residents, and as it takes such a long time to travel there.
