From Victor Turner

One of the Turners' fundamental ideas was that pilgrimage centers are typically located out there. This peripherality is both geographical-locational and cultural; the sites are marginal to population centers, and indeed to the sociopolitical centers of society. These peripheral centers are often located beyond a stretch of wilderness or some other uninhabited territory; ... (Turner 1973; Turner and Turner 1978)...The remoteness expresses the separateness of the sacred cultural-religious center from the everyday sociopolitical center. This emphasizes the supremacy of the unifying all-human spiritual values over the divisive and dividing values of everyday life.