Kulibul Banjar Ceremony

Swathed in black and white checked cloth, the bole of the ancient tree  receives the flicked blessings of sanctified water. The drops sparkle in the glare of fluorescent light as they arc from the frangipani flower held between the priest's fingers. They kiss the contorted tree, darkly smudging the pale complexion of the tree's cracked skin. The tree drinks them up, absorbing their import and their mark fades as the tree takes their offering to its heart.

Wreathed in the smoke of sweet incense, bathed in the rhythm of the drum and gamelan, the tree spreads its sheltering canopy over the men, women and children of the Kulibul banjar as it has for ever. No one knows its age. The oldest banjar members have no stories of a time when the tree's branches could be reached by an upraised arm.

Before this paved banjar courtyard, before the  temple, long before the adjacent road and its traffic which necessitates the placement of signs - "Hati Hati - Ada Upacara Agama"  (Take care - There is a religious ceremony) - the tree was here. Tonight's ritual is that of Tumpek Kandang, when offerings are made to Dewa Iswara, God's manifestation as creator of art and art's implements. But it is the tree that receives them, the tree under whose sheltering branches offerings have been made since before the name of Dewa Iswara was ever uttered here.

As the priest intones a prayer, women in temple finery place small, intricately woven leaf trays upon the bamboo shrine that stands before the tree. Campaka flower, rice and bright blossom, sweet confections, shredded pandanus leaf and tobacco.  The gentle metallic cadence of the gamelan orchestra swells and the accompanying voices raised in song are subsumed by a jarring staccato of hammers on bronze and the ringing fizz of paired brass cymbals. In the sudden roaring silence that follows, all eyes turn to the witch and lion that have glided from the outer darkness into the light that pools within the tree's embrace.

The witch, boar-tusked and shrouded in a fall of knotted hair like the plumage of some prehistoric bird, towers above the mortals arrayed before her. The sway backed, dark haired lion is dressed in golden jewelled armour and wears an ambiguous smile as he waits in the witch's shadow. A woman tentatively approaches the immobile and silent pair. The smoking oblation she carries bursts into flame as she waves it thrice before the witch. The woman keeps her face toward the pair as she retires after similarly swinging the flame before the lion.

Hammers once more trip lightly on metal bells and bars, but now the drums speak in a breakbeat like tabla interrupted and a frisson ripples through the crowd. There's confusion - an almost subliminal but swelling tension. A loudspeaker broadcasts instructions to the celebrants. The witch and lion, crowned with tall parasols held by attendants, silently move toward offerings placed on the courtyard pavement. Under the exhortations of the Master of Ceremonies, witch, lion, men and women describe a circle and perform a stately orbit of the fragrant pile of offerings. Once, twice, three times clockwise. Three times more, reversed.

The circle dissolves and witch and lion are once more standing side by side at the edge of the pool of light. The gamelan reaches another crescendo and suddenly a man is brandishing a kris, its wavy steel blade tilted upward and toward the impassive witch. He rushes her, screaming a challenge and stops, spittle flying from his lips into her face. He shudders, rolls his eyes and suddenly falls back and turns his blade upon himself. Waves of sound crash from the orchestra. Bedlam with a buried core of order. Men wrestle the possessed one to his knees and another takes the fight to the witch. Her magic turns him on himself as well.

We are witness to a Balinese archetype. The battle between good and evil personified in the forms of Rangda the witch and Barong the lion. The public performance of this ceremony is a well known staple of Bali's tourist agenda. The Barong Dance. But this is no performance and certainly no "dance".  We're not watching a production choreographed and sanitised for the tourism market and presented by a professional troupe. We are trepid guests at a private ceremony at our local banjar and the participants are our neighbours -  business proprietors, farmers, teachers, professionals, musicians, tradesmen...

A thin young man emerges from the huddle around the latest assailant of Rangda, shouts his challenge and charges. The tip of the kris gets to within an arm's length of Rangda and it's as if the attacker has run into an electric fence. He freezes, then jolts and shudders, the whites of his eyes showing. He staggers backward, turns and falls facefirst toward the ground, the kris turned inward, its point in his right shoulder, just above his breast. He falls on the kris and his legs skitter and jerk, his body rigid, clear of the ground. His feet scrabble on the pavement and propel him in a manic circle with the vertical kris as its centre, its haft pinned to the ground, its point still in his chest. There is blood and consternation - many eyes are wide.

Two pairs of hands reach for the young man spinning out of control on the pavement. The gamelan orchestra maintains its frenetic discord, although the heartbeat at its centre has begun to push its structured rhythm more widely through the body of musicians. The thin young man, now drenched in sweat and held firmly between the men who have lifted him to his feet, screams again and wrests free of his supporters' grasp. Still brandishing the kris, he streaks toward the crowd of men now surrounding Rangda and Barong. The throng parts and swallows him.

Before Rangda, two men hold a live duck. The duck is swathed in white cloth, immobile, its feet in the grasp of one of the men, its head held by the other. The duck's stretched neck and body a feathered bridge of the gap between the men. The kris reappears, held by a man who gesticulates wildly toward the rapt banjar crowd. He dances, wheels, and the kris blurs down to decapitate the fated duck. Falling blood is captured in shining vessels. The men close around the scene. The orchestra's rhythm is reestablished, then dissolves to chaos once more.

The knot of participants unravels to reveal another pair of men about to similarly sacrifice a chicken. Running from the group around the witch and lion, the chicken stretched between them as was the duck before, the men are pursued by another bearer of the kris. The gamelan and cymbals are a steel-struck crashing chaos as the one wielding the kris dashes in crazy loops around the evading pair with the luckless bird.

Within the gamelans' tumbled hammerings, a lone instrument's frenzied notes coalesce into a calmer cadence. The contending trio pause. The blade sweeps down.

After the ceremony, a soft and copious rain falls from the midnight sky - a sign the banjar regards as highly auspicious. God is pleased. This calm rain His blessing.

The rain washes the remaining speckles of blood from the paving above the deep roots of the tree and sets a diadem of stars amid its wide spread boughs. The tree, long witness to countless battles both symbolic and actual, gleams as it takes God's blessing to its heart.