For some, the sacred journey begins in the desire to participate in a ritual cycle concerned with the round of passing seasons, like the pilgrim festivals of Old Testament times — Weeks, Tabernacles, and Passover — when all Hebrew men would come to the temple at Jerusalem. Or it may have to do with the human life cycle, as among Hindus, for whom pilgrimage often serves as an initiation into a new stage of life. Children are fed their first solid food at pilgrimage shrines, or have their hair cut for the first time. The first act of newlyweds is often to make a pilgrimage. The elderly and the sick congregate at shrines in the belief that death at a pilgrimage center will free them from the cycle of rebirth.
— Jennifer Westwood, On Pilgrimage