At two weeks away....what is it?

Although the Camino is becoming very popular, with nearly 200,000 pilgrims travelling the Camino last year, some people have never heard of it. The Way of St. James, el camino de Sant Iago, is a route to the burial site of one of Jesus's disciples, James. Tradition says that after Jesus died, the disciples scattered to spread the word and James arrived in Spain and converted nine Iberians to Christianity. When he returned to Jerusalem, James was martyred, decapitated, and buried. Legend says that James's body was later disinterred with head now attached and travelled by stone boat to Spain, where the body was reburied in a Roman burial ground, around 44 A.D. Then around 812, a hermit saw a bright star hovering over a field and, voila!, James's undecayed body was found. In this "saint" form, riding a white horse, James helped the Christian Spaniards drive out the Muslims (Moors) and Jews, and later conquer the Americas. James became the patron saint of Spain and his burial spot became the most sacred location in Spain and the site of a series of churches. To the Christians of the Middle Ages there was only one Church and three locations that told their story. Any Christian who made a pilgrimage to one of these places was assured of extraordinary blessing. Anyone who travelled to Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified, was called a palmer; if you travelled to Rome, where Peter founded the Church, you were known as a romero ; but only those who made the terribly hazardous trip to Compostela, the point from which Europe had been evangelized, were entitled to be called pilgrims. According to legend, the Santiago trail was used by the Celts in pre-Christian times as a path of initiation. Veins of electromagnetic power in the earth and lines of energy (called fey lines) are said to be aligned with the Milky Way along the entire trail. There are several routes to Santiago, depending on your starting point in Middle Ages Europe. People of those times simply walked out of their front doors and were on the way. Common converging points were Paris, Italy and along southern France, and north through Portugal. The route that I will follow is called the Camino Frances and most commonly starts in southwest France. In two weeks I will arrive at point zero! l