Pilgrimage and Psychomachia

The conception of life as a journey is implicit in the entire tradition of the ‘pilgrimage of life’ allegories, and is also one of the fundamental figures of the human condition, recurring throughout widely different cultures with broadly analogous functions. The wayfaring hero, figure of man, is at present in an incomplete or unfulfilled state of being, and his journey always denotes some sort of transformation, a ‘becoming’, a quest for an as yet elusive identity. The Christian conception of the journey, while it is largely shaped by biblical motifs, reverberates nevertheless with echoes of older narratives rooted in an archetypal pattern of departure and transformation, such as classical stories of Odysseus, Perseus, Jason, Theseus and Aeneas, or the more humble forms of the folktale and legend. Among the biblical sources, the Old Testament narratives of the exile and wandering of the people of Israel in the Pentateuch are the earliest to develop the metaphor, especially the episodes of Exodus, the Darkness of Egypt and Abraham in search of God in the desert. This understanding of human existence as ‘exile’ is fundamental, and these Old Testament narratives become foundational for the later developments of the Christian notion of pilgrimage as transmitted by the Epistle to Hebrews 11:13–16, where imitation of the Old Testament figures as models for Christian faith is encouraged. The Exodus of the people of Israel becomes an image, a paradigm of the individual Christian's journey towards God, thus prompting early Christian monastic communities to seek voluntary exile in the desert.