RITES
AND FESTIVALS
RELIGIONS
WERE BORN OF MAN'S DESIRE
to understand and control the mysterious process of
nature. Fear of the eerie, unseen forces that cause
birth, reproduction, and death, awe before the power
of fire, wind, and water, made him worship the elements
of the teeming world in which he lived. Only by the
existence of psychic forces and powerful spirits could
he explain the perpetual motion of the sun and the moon,
the roll of the sea, and the movements of the clouds,
the wind that shakes the trees, lightning, thunder,
and rain. Health, fertility, and success he attributed
to his magic harmony with these forces, while for earthquakes,
volcanic disturbances, epidemics, and the loss of crops
he blamed the anger of spirits whom he had failed to
propitiate.
Eager
to place his fate in the hands of superior beings who
would take care of his needs and on whom he could place
the responsibility for his failures, man created a pantheon
of supernatural beings - protective gods and adverse
evil spirits - whose goodwill be aimed to gain by rites,
offerings, and sacrifices. Unconsciously, by elaboration
and by the adoption of new elements into the pantheon,
he ended by developing an elaborate system of ritual
and magic acts. Thus the primitive Balinese made of
their island a magic world populated by gods, human
beings, and demons. each occupying a level allotted
by rank: the deified spirits of their ancestors dwelling
in the summits of the volcanoes that form the island;
ordinary human beings living in the middle world, the
land that lies between the mountain tops and the sea,
which is the home of devils and fanged giants, the enemies
of mankind.
Placed
between these two poles from which emanate opposing
forces (the positive from the mountains and the negative
from the underworld), the entire life of the calm and
sensitive Balinese - their daily routine, social organization,
their ethics, manners, art; in short, the total culture
of the island - is moulded by a system of traditional
rules subordinated to religious beliefs. By this system
they regulate every act of their lives so that it shall
be in harmony with the natural forces, which they divide
eternally -into pairs: male and female - the creative
principle; right and left; high and low - the principles
of place, direction, and rank; strong and weak, or healthy
and sick, clean and unclean; sacred and powerful or
unholy and dangerous; in general: Good and Evil, Life
and Death.
|
INDONESIA
