Let’s take a closer look at one of the most interesting religious festivals I have ever attended in my life. The Melasti festival.
Melasti takes place in Bali, every year, two days before the Balinese New Year. You need to know that Bali is an amazingly beautiful Indonesian island but it doesn’t have almost anything in common with the rest of Indonesia. Their own culture, their own traditions and their own religion. Despite the fact Indonesia is a Muslim country, in Bali the main religion is Hinduism. So, the Balinese New Year is called Nyepi.
On that day the whole island is under a total lockdown. Airport doesn’t work. Television channels don’t work. Radio doesn’t work as well. Restaurants and bars and shops are closed. Nobody is allowed to step out their house. If you’re a tourist you’re locked down too. You can be allowed to use the swimming pool in your resort only if it is not visible from the street. Balinese people use to spend the Nyepi at home, with their relatives, not talking and not eating. It is a day of deep soul reflection.
Trying to “summarize” the just ended year and making good wishes for the new year. Everybody at home, no lights and no noise. Why? Because on that day devils and demons use to fly over the island. If they (demons) don’t see anybody and no lights, then they won’t stop on the island but they keep on flying to some other lands. But to be ready for the Nyepi, Balinese people should purify their souls previously. This is the purpose of Melasti. That is the day when every single person tries to take out from his/her soul the demon that inevitably got inside during the year. The purifying element for the Melasti is water. So, people use to meet in the temple close to the place where they live and from the temple they go all together to the beach. All of them dressed in white color.
It’s an ocean of white dressed people! So I tried to become less visible and not to disturb the ceremony.
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Till this moment the atmosphere is extremely happy and relaxed.
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From the temples, people use to bring to the beach some “mobile temples” on wheels.
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As I said before, the purifying element is water. So, first of all, as soon as they are on the beach, they collect some water from the sea and they use it to pray.
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This is the moment when the atmosphere begins to change. The joy and smiles, which were everywhere, start to let the place to serious expressions. That’s why from this moment all photos will be in black&white to add more “mood” to the story.
People start to prepare themselves to “take out” the demons from their souls. Men and women behave differently starting from this moment. Women begin to cry, to be almost unable to stand. The trance is about to come! They shake, they scream, they fall down. The process has started…
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In that moment you can clearly hear women crying so deeply that they can barely breath! At this point, you audience are already taken by the heavy atmosphere and all your senses are sharply activated. You have seen nothing yet.
This is the moment for men to “charge” themselves to reach the level to enter into trance and to take out the demons from their souls. You can see them praying in a very intense way and you see how they accumulate the “energy” which will put them in trance and it will lead them to the next step. The strongest one!
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From the mobile temples they take out several short swords. They (the swords) are not sharp but they are anyway metallic long and hard. They use them to give themselves pain. They push those swords on their bodies with intense strength. They don’t reach the point to cut themselves. They won’t bleed but you can clearly see that what they are doing is painful with no doubts. They shout loud and they push those swords against their bodies shaking, shivering, crying and almost falling down to the sand.
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To avoid that they can accidentally fall down on the swords, and to be sure they won’t overact, they have constantly other people around checking them and ready to stop them in case of…
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Now guys, I have to underline that I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God. I even dislike the concept of gods and religions in general. So I’m not a person who can be easily shocked or scared. Anyway I have to admit that this experience was pretty strong to me. Moreover there were some things I didn’t manage to explain to myself.
One of those things is the noise of a person vomiting. Several times I clearly heard it loudly. That was the demon leaving the body of the guy giving pain to him. Then, when finally the demon goes out from the man you can hear a loud satanic laugh flying away from that place. These “sounds” are repeated several times so I was very careful watching at everybody there to see who was “playing” that part. I didn’t see what I was supposed to see. Those noises come out from……..nowhere!
When every man finds himself again after the trance then you can see that he is visibly tired, squeezed, empty.
