BALI TEMPLE FESTIVALS

Aside from the daily propitiation of the household spirits, Agama Hindu requires no regular act of collective worship from its devotees - no daily mass or weekly service - and so, for much of the year, Bali's temples  remain deserted, visited only by the village pemangku and perhaps the occasion of the temple's anniversary celebrations, or odalan - a three day devotional extravaganza held at every temple either once every 210 days ( every210 days ( every Balinese calendar years ) or every 365 days ( the saka year ). With a minimum of three temples gracing every sizeable community in Bali, any visitors who spends more than a week on the island will be certain to see some kind of festival. Most temples welcome tourists to the celebrations, provided they dress respectably and wear the temple sash and that they don't walk in front of devotees as they are praying. For details on the major island wide temple festivals of Nyepi and Galungan, Kuningan. Although the majority of the other rituals - birth celebrations, toothfilling, mariage and death - that punctuate every Balinese Hindu's life also have strong religious ramiflications, most of these are conducted within the confines of the family's own compound, and are described in here

           The larger, ealthier and more important the temple, the more dramatic the odalan celebration will be. Whatever the size, the purpose is always the same: to invite the gods down to earth so that they can be entertained and pampered by as many displays of devotion and gratitude as the community can afford. in the days before odalan, the pemangku dresses the temple statues in holy cloths, either the spiritually charged black and white kain poleng, or a length of plain cloth in the colour symbolic of the community begin to contruct their offering towers, or banten, and to cook ceremonial food.

          Odalan celebration start in the afternoon, with a prossesion of women carrying their offerings to the temple. At the pura, the offerings are taken into the inner sanctum where the pemangku receives them and then blesses the devotees with holy water.Sometimes the gods will temporarily inhabit the body of one of the worshipers, sending him or her into a trance and conveying its message trough gestures or words. Elsewhere in the temple compound, there's generally some performance going on: the local gamelan orchestra play, and often sacred dances are performed as well, particularly the pendet or offertory dance and perhaps a barong as well.