As Bali is becoming increasing modern, one has to visit its villages and attend some of its festival to feel its soul and heart. The Balinese village pays tribute to Man’s harmony with nature. Every thirty meters or so, one will see the same proud brick gate with the same lintel decoration. Hidden behind the mud walls will be the same red tiles of the family pavilions, located thirty meters away, with their thatched puppet houses functioning as the family temple (sanggah/merajan). Under the shade of the tall coconut trees will be the imposing figure of a waringin.

The Balinese desa (village) is typically host ro a set of three-village temple. Instead of being closed, roofed structures, the temples are open spaces, demarcated only by wall and carved gates, with trees alongside thatched shrines in their inside: the gods thus enter the villages as Nature itself.

After a festival villager chitchat to maintain good social relationship

Typically, the Balinese village is host to a set of three temples called the kahyangan tiga. Each is related to a focal aspect of the village symbolic life: the origin with the pura puseh (navel temple) located mountain ward, where the tutelary gods of the village and its founders are worshiped, the territory itself with the pura desa located in the center of the village, where the “Lord of the territory” (sane nruwenang jagat) is worshiped and where the meeting of fertility are held; and finally, teh temple of the dead (pura dalem), located downward, where the forces of death and the netherworld are worshiped, and near which burials take place. To these temple must be added family and clan temples.

The temples are at the heart of Balinese life. They have their anniversary every 210 days, when the gods come down for visits, during which they are welcomed by dance, “feted” with offering and provided with symbolic resting place. It is when the village comes to life, and color takes it over.

Besides the temple anniversaries, Bali has two sets of island-wide festival that correspond to the “new years” of the two Balinese calendars: the Nyepi of the lunar-solar Saka year and the Galungan of the 210-day Pawukon calendar.

The Day of Silence

In more than way, Bali is the exact opposite of in the West. While Westerners usher in the New Year in revelry, the Balinese greet their own New Year in silence. This is Nyepi Day, the Balinese day of Silence that falls on the day following the dark moon of the spring equinox, and opens a new year of the Saka Hindu era that began in 78 A.D.

Now Nyepi day, which starts with sunrise, don’t expect to be able to do anything. You will have to stay in your hotel. No traffic is allowed not only of cars but also of people, who have to stay in their individual houses. Light is kept to a minimum, radio tuned down, and no one works, of course. Even love making, this ultimate activity of all leisure-timers, is not supposed to take place, nor even attempted. A whole day simply filled with the barking of a few dogs, the shrill of insects and simple long, long quiet day in the calendar of this hectic island.

The Ogoh-ogoh carnival is held on the night before Nyepi (Day of Silence)

Nyepi is a religious event. Bali is a Hindu society, one that believes in the karmapala principle, according to which the dynamics of life and of Man’s individual fate is set in motion by “action”. Man is I the midst of a Samsara cycle of incarnations, each of which is determined by the quality of his actions (karma) in his former existence. His “ideal” is thus to put the system to rest, i.e., to control one’s actions, and thus to subdue one’s “demon”. Only in such a way can Man hope to achieve “deliverance” from his cycles of life (moksa) and eventually merge with the Oneness of Void, the Ultimate Silence of Sunya.

The day of Silence is a symbolic replay of these philosophical principles. At the beginning of the year, the world is “clean”. The previous days, all the effigies of the gods from all the village temples have been taken to the river in long and colorful ceremonies. There they have been bathed by the Neptunus of Balinese lore, the god Baruna, before being taken back to residence in their shrines if origin. They day before Nyepi, all villages have also held a large exorcist ceremony at the main village crossroad, the meeting place of the demons. In addition, at night all the demons of the Bali world were let loose on the roads in a carnival of fantastic monster, the Ogoh-ogoh.

The parade is held all over Bali after sunset. All the banjar neighborhoods and hundreds of youth associations make their own Ogoh-ogoh monsters. Some are giants from the classical Balinese lore, while others are guitarists, biker or even AIDS microbes. All with fang, bulging eyes and scary hair, illuminated by torches and with the accompaniment of the most demonic gamelan music (bleganjur) of the Balinese repertoire. They surge suddenly by the hundreds from every street, some more “horrible” than the others; each carried on the shoulder of four to thirty youths, jerking this way or that way so as to give the impression of a dance, or suddenly turning in a circle, much to the fascination of the spectators. And, believe it, this is not a small “procession”: it lasts for three to four hours, as if Bali has an inexhaustible pool of demons. No more than it gods and goddesses for sure.

Thus, on Silence day, the world is clean and every thing starts a new, with Man showing his symbolic control over himself and the “force” of the World. Hence the mandatory religious prohibitions of mati lelangon (no pleasure) mati lelungan (no traffic), mati geni (no fire), and mati pekaryan (no work).

The Galungan Festival

Among the many holidays in the Balinese 210-day calendar, the most prominent are undoubtedly those of Galungan and Kuningan; the former on the Wednesday of the Dungulan week and the latter on the Saturday on the Kuningan week. Due to their frequency-roughly once every seven Gregorian months-these festivals are not celebrated as national holidays, but don’t try to do anything between Penampahan Galungan (the day for slaughter of the pigs that precedes Galungan) and Manis Galungan, the day following it, or on the Friday preceding Kuningan; everything is closed. People go back to their village of origin to present offering of their ancestors and village temples.

Visitor are warmly welcomed to village contest

Unlike most Balinese festival which celebrate the particular anniversary of temple, and are therefore scattered across the calendar, Galungan and Kuningan are all-island holidays, everywhere, temples are all dressed up, with batik and white or yellow cloth wrapped around their individual shrines as a sign that they are “occupied”, meaning the gods are visiting their descendants. The ritual involved id a reminder of the strong ancestor’s cult aspect of the Hindu-Balinese religion. When it took root in Bali, Hinduism, instead of throwing away the older tradition as Islam and Christianity tended to do, integrated elements of ancestral beliefs and natural animism into its corpus, the rationale being that everything and every belief can be interpreted as “ray” or a manifestation jof the “Ultimate Sun” of Surya (Siwa).

Villager carrying janur or young coconut leaves to be used as offering and temple decoration.

The ancestors do not come before being properly “invited” They are expected to come on the Sugihan Jawa day when one makes offerings for the welfare of the world. The call is made in familiar language: “Mai jani mulih. Uba Yang ngaenang banten. Mai deloking damuh-damuhe”, which means: “Please, come back home for a visit, we have prepared you food, please come and visit your descendants”. This is all the more important for “dead souls” that have not yet undergone the whole cleansing process. If the dead is still buried in the cemetery, the soul is thought to be still hanging around nearby, provisionally entrusted to the god, the deity Prajapati. Thus is has to be handled with special care, and given the right punjung offering, lest it wreaks havoc among the living. But if the soul has been cremated and enshrined in the family temple, the danger is lessened and the chances are that its influence will be beneficent. The language will change, though, to become more formal and religious, and the offering will be different, too this time it will be a saji.

All you can eat in open-air traditional market.

The visit of the ancestors is expected to last until Kuningan. They will have feasted long enough and it will be time for them to go back to their realm of death. Another injunction will do “Mangkin mantuk ke kedituan”, which means “Go back over there to your abode of the dead”. The shrines are then undressed and the temples return to quietness, waiting for another festival.
So, if you happen to be in Bali for one of these two festivals, either Nyepi or Galungan, don’t miss a visit to the villages.