02/07/2026
Every last Sunday of July, tens of thousands of Irish pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, many of them barefoot on the quartzite scree that makes the final ascent genuinely punishing. 🙏 This is Reek Sunday, the annual pilgrimage to the summit of Ireland's holiest mountain, where St. Patrick fasted for forty days in 441 AD and reportedly drove the snakes from Ireland by ringing his bell and throwing it from the mountain's edge, an act that in the older pre-Christian version of the story is connected to the expulsion of evil spirits and the purification of the land.
The mountain had been a sacred site long before Patrick climbed it. The summit of Croagh Patrick was a pilgrimage destination in the Neolithic period, the alignment of the conical peak with the setting sun on certain days of the year almost certainly connected to astronomical observance by Ireland's earliest inhabitants. Patrick chose it for his fast because it already carried meaning, and the Christian tradition simply continued and deepened a sacred relationship with this particular mountain that had been forming for thousands of years before he arrived.
The view from the summit on a clear day is one of the most dramatic in Ireland. 💚 Clew Bay spreads below in every direction with its 365 islands, one for every day of the year according to the local saying, the Atlantic beyond stretching to the horizon without interruption. People climb this mountain in pain and arrive at the top and weep, not only from the physical effort. There is something at the summit of Croagh Patrick that does not require explanation. You feel it or you do not, and the ones who do tend to come back.
