La Historia. Agenda Cultural: The Spiritual Traveler: Spain. A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes

lunes, 25 de mayo de 2009

The Spiritual Traveler: Spain. A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes

The Spiritual Traveler: Spain

A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes

by Beebe Bahrami

Available May 2009 from HiddenSpring Books/Paulist Press

368 pages 5 3/8 x 8 1/4

978-1-58768-047-2 Paperback $24.00

The Spiritual Traveler: Spain—A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes is a celebration of the truly sacred and spiritual places, traditions, peoples, and roads of Spain. It is a non-denominational and deeply anthropological and folkloric travel book on Spain's prehistoric, pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim past. It is also a spiritual exploration of the country's diverse present, such as in emerging communities dedicated to Buddhism, Hinduism, animistic Earth-based spiritualities, as well as current revivals of the land's connection to the three Abrahamic faiths. Each chapter explores a region, a thematic route, and the most vibrant spiritual life of that area.

Spain is an ancient land with a continuity of many eras and many peoples who inhabited the peninsula for over 40,000 years. The Spiritual Traveler: Spain explores these rich layers, from the original Paleolithic inhabitants, to ancient Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Jews, Visigoths, Arabs and Berbers, to the emerging Castilians, and to recent spiritualities that blend old and new, native and imported. The Spiritual Traveler: Spain takes a rich journey north, south, east and west, from Paleolithic Altamira, to Celtic castros, to the medieval pilgrim's road to Santiago, to the multi-faith splendors of Toledo, Cordoba and Granada, to St. Teresa's mystical Avila, and onward, toward uncovering and celebrating the sacred in Spain, past and present.

Beebe Bahrami (www.BeebesFeast.com) is a cultural anthropologist and writer. She writes extensively on the western Mediterranean world. Her writing appears in many publications, including Michelin Green Guides, National Geographic books, TransitionsAbroad.com, the Pennsylvania Gazette, Expedition, Archaeology, and Bark magazine. Beebe Bahrami has over 23 years of experience in living, traveling, exploring, and writing about Spain's mystical depths, as well as the country's everyday life, food and wine, culture, and natural splendors. She has infused this book with rich mythic, folkloric, historical, cultural, and spiritual insights, along with selecting some of the richest and most moving sacred places and pilgrimage roads in Spain.