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NYEPI
A day of complete silence.
(This year, on March 16, 2010)
Once every year, at the spring equinox, every community holds a general cleaning-out of devils, driving them out of the village with magical curses and rioting by the entire population. This is followed by a day of absolute stillness, the suspension of all activity, from which the ceremony takes its name. Nyepi marks the New Year and the arrival of spring, the end of the troublesome rainy season, when even the earth is said to be sick and feverish (panas). It is believed that then the Lord of Hell, Yama, sweeps Hades of devils, which fall on Bali, making it imperative that the whole of the island be purified.
There is great excitement all over Bali at this time, and on the days before nyepi everybody is busy erecting altars for the offerings and scaffolds for the priests at the village crossroads. The day before Nyepi known as Pengerupukan, stands in stark contract to what follows. The night is consumed with massive parades of giant paper-mache monsters or Ogoh-Ogoh, lovingly built by each community in the weeks prior to the celebration. Since no cooking is allowed on nyepi day, the food for the next day is prepared and there are melis processions all over Bali to take the gods to the sea for their symbolical bath. The celebration proper extends over a period of two days: the metjaru, the great purification offering, and nyepi, the day of silence. On the first day the Government allows unrestricted gambling and cockfighting (not now-“Management”), an essential part of the ceremony, because the land is cured by spilling blood over impure earth.
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