Dewa visits the High Priest

Our driver Dewa visited a high priest this morning to help address his seven-year-old son's "bad character."  Dewa says his son is short-tempered, watches too much TV, and is always asking Dewa for money.

Despite his long association with Western tourists, Dewa's belief in the Hindu spirit world remains undiminished.

We may talk about ghosts and goblins and witches as fantasy figures that are real only in stories or in make-believe.  But Dewa's world is different than ours.  There are dark spirits in his world, gods that come down to earth at certain times of the year, magicians that can curse with dark magic, reincarnations of ancestors as newborn babies, and a local village skilled in the art of shape-shifting. 

Dewa is one of the most cheerful, kind and friendly people I've ever met.  We readily trust him with our children.  But I feel a tinge of unease that someone who believes in what I consider irrational, supernatural forces has care of our children at times.  What if he believed that he had come under the influence of an evil witch and that his actions weren't under his own control?  Fortunately that seems a farfetched notion, as we've never heard of anything remotely like that occurring.

That Dewa always has control of his faculties may largely be due to the rich spiritual life of the Balinese, which aims at keeping all the forces in balance.  The good and bad spirits are kept in their proper places, and for the most part leave people alone.

Part of me envies Dewa his beliefs.  The world he lives in is much richer than mine.  I inhabit a scientifically impersonal world without a manifest spirituality where one's actions and one's life may have no larger meaning.  For Dewa, the earth, trees, water, mountains, and even rice have a spiritual aspect that interacts with humans.  Dead ancestors do not disappear into the void but return to live on in one's children.  One's actions affect one's karma with direct consequences either in this life or the next, and priests can communicate with the spirit world and tap into their power to solve problems that are beyond our human ability to solve.

So Dewa woke up this morning at 4 am and drove with his wife and son to Karangasem, over an hour away in eastern Bali.  The high priest in Karangasem has known Dewa's son since he was a baby, and has a reputation for being able to administer the correct prayers for this occasion.

Today is Dewa's son's "oton."  An "oton" is the equivalent to a birthday, but the Balinese do not celebrate birthdays according to the Western calendar.  Rather, an oton is marked every 210 days - which is every six months according to the Balinese calendar - and is an occasion not for festivities but for special offerings and a ceremony to pray for health and happiness.  The oton for Dewa's son is an auspicious time for the ceremony with the high priest to set him on a better path.

Dewa, his wife and son waited over an hour for the high priest to awake and to connect to the gods.  The ceremony then began.  The high priest offered lengthy mudras, or prayers, for his son.  Then the high priest blessed them all.  The sense I got from Dewa was that the ceremony was a little overwhelming for his son.  It must have made an impression on Dewa's son, and it may have the intended effect.

The ceremony cost Dewa a million Rupiah, which is over $100.  This represented over two days revenue for Dewa, and after accounting for the expenses related to the car, may be the equivalent of several days' take-home pay.  In a country where the average daily wage is below $5, it was quite a significant outlay.

Dewa says that he won't know for a while how much effect the ceremony and blessings will have on his son.  He may need to repeat the ceremony on succeeding otons.

Dewa's son and wife after receiving the blessings from the high priest

Dewa also told the story of an even larger, earlier ceremony for his son, this one performed shortly after his son's birth.  Dewa's family history is that his grandfather moved from the east of Bali to the jungle interior in the west of Bali.  Dewa's grandfather cleared land for farming.  Over many years, and through clearing additional land, his grandfather eventually owned a large and prosperous farm.  They mainly grew coffee and also cloves and vanilla beans.  It was on this farm that Dewa grew up, as a relatively prosperous member of a high caste with good prospects.

An uncle became an airline pilot, his elder brothers received college educations.  Unfortunately his grandfather had a propensity for gambling on cock fights, and wasn't good at it, so over time his farm shrank to around half its former size.  Another uncle also had a weakness for gambling, and the farm shrank further.  When Dewa was starting college, his father, who was then running the farm, made the disastrous decision to cut down all their clove trees due to the poor price being paid for cloves, only to see clove prices skyrocket 800% or so shortly thereafter.  The stress from this decision likely led to his father having a series of strokes, which partially paralyzed him.  Dewa, as the youngest son, cut short his college education after only a few months and returned home to help the family.  His father died not long after and Dewa never returned to college.

According to family lore, Dewa's grandfather promised to make an offering to the gods of a suckling pig if his risky venture into the jungle proved successful.  But the offering was never made.  By the time of the birth of Dewa's son, Dewa was informed that in order to rectify that omission an offering of four suckling pigs was now required - one for Dewa's grandfather, one for Dewa's father, one for Dewa himself, and now an additional one for Dewa's son. 

Dewa therefore held a big ceremony at his family's village in the west.  The village was invited.  An offering was made of four suckling pigs.  Dewa had to go in the morning to fetch holy water from the high priest in Karangasem, and bring it that same day to be used in the ceremony far to the west.  It cost him 5.7 million rupiah, around $650 at today's exchange rate, which would have been a small fortune.  Dewa said he received some help from an American he was doing business with at the time.

Dewa is doing everything he can for his son, just as any concerned parent would.  But he is facing what every parent faces, that as a parent there is only so much influence one has to affect how one's kids turn out.

Two of the four Babi Guling, or roast suckling pig, from the ceremony several  years ago.

Photos by Dewa