The hidden energy of grief rituals

Source link : https://bq3anews.com/the-hidden-energy-of-grief-rituals/

In Tana Toraja, a mountainous area of Sulawesi, Indonesia, villagers pour large assets into funeral rituals: lavish feasts, ornate effigies and prized water buffaloes for sacrifice.

I witnessed this funeral ritual in 2024 whilst accompanying pupil Melanie Nyhof on her fieldwork. Households have been anticipated to level funerals that matched the social status of the useless, even supposing it supposed promoting land, removing loans or calling on far away relatives for assist.

In my very own paintings of learning communal mourning rituals, I participate in ceremonies to look how they spread.
At one of the crucial ceremonies I attended in Tana Toraja, masses amassed as gongs echoed in the course of the valley. Visitors have been served foods over a number of days, dancers in shiny headdresses carried out for the gang, and water buffalo – essentially the most treasured present a circle of relatives may give – have been led into the courtyard for sacrifice. Mourners described those acts as tactics of honoring the deceased.

It wasn’t simply within the villages of Tana Toraja that households and clans used rituals to specific loyalty for other people they knew individually. I noticed the similar dynamics in towns, the place nationwide funerals can draw tens of millions of strangers right into a shared revel in of harmony and loss for an individual they by no means met.

As a pupil who additionally research the psychology of rituals, I discovered that rituals can also…

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Author : bq3anews

Publish date : 2026-01-15 15:10:00

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