THE SACRED EXTREME OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF PILGRIMAGE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of pilgrimage as a multidimensional spiritual and cultural phenomenon that combines religious motives, existential experience, psychological transformations, and social practices. The aim of the study is to conceptualize pilgrimage as a form of intensive religious experience, to identify its phenomenological and psychological structures, and to outline the boundary between authentic spiritual experience and extreme forms of religious intensity. The methodological framework is based on phenomenological, psychological, and sociocultural approaches, which make it possible to comprehensively reveal the liminal nature of pilgrimage, the specific features of experiencing sacred space, and the significance of embodied practices in the process of inner personal transformation. Pilgrimage is considered a particular type of religious experience in which human interaction with the sacred is accompanied by the experience of the numinous, the reinterpretation of personal meanings, and the formation of new patterns of self-perception. The article analyzes the phenomenological aspects of sacred journeying, ritual practices, the bodily dimension of pilgrimage experience, emotional states, the symbolism of sacred space, and the psychological significance of voluntarily accepted hardships as a factor of spiritual transformation. Particular attention is paid to the social dimension of pilgrimage, including the formation of communitas, group interaction, and the role of pilgrimage practices in the construction of religious identity. The study also examines the relationship between pilgrimage and religious tourism in contemporary culture, where sacred experience is increasingly combined with elements of mobility, cultural consumption, and tourism infrastructure. It is determined that in the contemporary Ukrainian context pilgrimage performs an important function in preserving historical memory, contributing to the spiritual renewal of society, and shaping cultural and religious self-identification, while remaining a universal practice that combines the bodily and the spiritual in the search for the transcendent.