Yesterday on May's eve and today on May day ( the feast of Bealtaine) at an ancient holy site and place of pilgrimage called The City in Shrone Co Kerry a steady stream of locals (many of my relatives among them) will 'make the rounds' or 'pay the pattern' as did our parents and our parents parents before us. The 'hallowing' of this site by human devotional activity has been continuous and complex- the history and prehistory of such activities stretch back a couple of millennia involving an unknown number of deities.
Nowadays it's a Marian shrine and place of pilgrimage though the mother aspect was ever present as The City sits strategically in the centre of the geological decolletage between two mountains called 'The Paps'-in Irish An Dá Chích Anann- The breasts of the Goddess Anu (Anu was a popular gal the Danube river is also called after her) but ancient as that dedication to Anu is she's just one of a chain of the divine tenants of this particular site.
The City is a designated 'holy' place and it continues to be so, in large part, because the community of pilgrims-in this context local people including myself- continue to 'hallow' the site. Whether the initial choice or selection of site and/or the collation, creation or recreation of a sites sacred or ritual narrative are the result of one person or of many, or if those processes are ancient or modern are, from the point of view of believers/users of the site, not ultimately the core matter. Though it does appear that for some sacred 'authenticity' in this context seems to correlate exclusively to old/ancient sites and rituals and sacred 'inauthenticity' correlates to modern or, perish the thought
, new sacred sites or rituals.
The original designation of a site as 'holy', it's creation myth if you like, is important-to a greater or lesser extent. A holy site and the rituals associated with it (however 'tasteful' or 'tatty') evolve in response to the needs of the community it serves over a long or indeed relatively short timespan. It also seems a holy site can, as in the case of the Cruz de Ferro and I suspect many other places, in a tatty, democratic, shambolically cumulative process be created (or recognised, selected, discovered, rediscovered etc)
Thus, as ever, pilgrims make it hallow by the hallowing.