Okay so I lied. I apologize. I know I promised a new entry in less than three months and it has been four!! How time flies to quote an old cliché. I will no longer make any promises about when my next entry will be. This will be the last for a few months at least as we are soon going to spend a month in Bali moving into our new home which is almost finished. But I digress….this post will talk about moving the spirits of the mountain from their old home to their new. You will recall that before we began to change the landscape of the mountain top that we had acquired, we needed to perform a ceremony to ask permission to live and work on the land. The mountain had long been considered sacred by the people living there. The ceremony of permission was successful and our terraforming of the mountain top began. The first significant structure was to be the temple; a new home for the resident spirits because as you might remember from the photos, their old homes were somewhat in disrepair. In the last post you saw just how the new temple was constructed.
After the construction was finished and new temples put on it’s top, a ceremony had to be performed in order to move the spirits to their new home. This entry will take you through the steps of this ceremony; briefly in words and mostly in photos.
The temple was decorated with many different types of traditional decorations. Many of these decorations were made by hand by some of the villagers and others were purchased and kept in storage for later ceremonies to come.
The music traditional to many parts of Indonesia is the gamelan. For large ceremonies an entire gamelan orchestra will play but since this was a small private ceremony for the workers and their families only two of the many instruments making up a gamelan orchestra were used.This is a photo of Wayan in his ceremonial garb.
A very important part of Balinese Hinduism is the placing of offerings . Each home has at least one small temple where offerings are placed each day. Often they are placed 2-3 times a day. Offerings do not have to be places only on the temples but they can be put anywhere. When walking down the street in Bali you will have to step around the many offerings lying here and there. If you get into a taxi you will most likely see an offering sitting on the dashboard of the vehicle. Offerings were placed around the property and also on the temples.
As with most other cultures in the world, feasting is an important part of many ceremonies and celebrations. This was the case for our ceremony also. The Balinese usually include roasting a pig in any significant ceremony.
One needs music for a celebration so Wayan is setting up the necessary equipment.In many of the photos you will see baskets of offerings of all sizes and shapes. Offerings can consist of food of all kinds, money, flowers and other plants, chickens, and handmade decorations.
The decorations are made by hand using a type of grass which is strong and very flexible.
Here you can see the gamelan instruments being played by local musicians.
The ceremony took eight hours to complete. The priest performed special blessings and prayers not only on top of the new temple but also by the old temples.
Here the priest has moved from the temple to the ground near the old temples that will be broken apart once the spirits are settled in their new place. It is not uncommon for a priest or priestess to go into a trancelike state while performing ceremonies.
The participants walk around the periphery of the property saying prayers and blessings.
Offerings are buried in certain areas on the property.
This offering was buried by the parking lot.Wayan places the offering in the hole and blesses it with holy water.
During one of the ceremonies one of the participants went into a trance. Wayan helps guide her back.
The pig has been roasting all day and is now ready to be cut up. Some of the meat will be eaten by the participants at the ceremony and the rest will be taken home to families in the village. Nothing gets wasted.
When the small temples were placed on top of the building a hole was left in one of them. Here in this photo the priest is placing more offerings. After the offerings are placed inside, the hole is sealed up.
Now it is time to see if the spirits will accept the offerings and prayers and follow the priest and villagers to their new home.
Offerings are placed on the top of participants heads and they carry a rope in a procession to the new temple. They hope that the spirits will be guided by the rope and the offerings and that they will accept their new home.
Participants have arrived at the new home for the spirits.They climb up to the top where many, many offerings of all types have been placed as welcoming gifts for the spirits.
