Rituals are usually confused and reduced only to the practices of witchcraft, processions and religion. However, these actions are much broader and deeper expressions for different societies.
It should be noted that religion, customs and culture are factors that have determined these practices throughout life. For this reason, from different perspectives they could be strange, even incomprehensible, from one culture to another.
Here we present to you the three strangest rituals in the world:
Thaipusam Festival
It is a Hindu religious festival in honor of the Tamil community that is celebrated every year coinciding with the full moon of the Thai month (between January and February). Thaipusam is celebrated in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.
According to Europa Press, during the festival devotees make a procession between one Hindu temple and another. As an offering, they perform different acts, ranging from carrying jugs of milk to carrying bulky structures attached to their skin through ‘piercings’.Its peculiarity is that pilgrims pierce their mouth, tongue, arms or back with needles or hooks that support those metal structures where offerings are placed.
Buñol’s Tomatina
This festival began on the last Wednesday of August 1945 and was born when a group of young people who witnessed the parade of giants and big heads and other acts of the celebration took place, however, due to a whim of fate, people began to throw tomatoes until they the forces of public order put an end to that vegetal battle.
The following year, the youths voluntarily repeated the altercation and brought the tomatoes from their home and so on over the years. La Tomatina was banned in the early 1950s, but this did not in any way deter its participants, who were even arrested.
The party began to be popular in the rest of Spain thanks to the report by journalist Javier Basilio, which was broadcast on the Spanish Television program “Informe weekly” in 1983. Since then, the number of participants has grown year by year and the enthusiasm for La Tomatina.
The Yanomami and their death ceremony
This tribe inhabits areas of the Amazon in Brazil and Venezuela, and performs a special ritual to remember their dead and help them rest. When a member of their group dies, the group gathers, burns the body, and takes its ashes to mix with plants. Relatives of the deceased must drink the substance in order for the soul to live in his family group.
