Galungan and Kuningan in Bali

May 1st 2006

Galungan and Kuningan are one of the most sacred holidays in Bali. Bali is full of mystic and spiritual island and the people of Bali are in the spiritual belief all their lives. They have so many symbols and philosophy of life. One of the daily philosophies of life is that their belief in ever existence of “Good” and “Evil” in whatever you do, see and experienced.

On every statues that we can see on the temples, bridges, the site of large trees, lakes and wherever sites they consider to be sacred, you can see many times that those statues are wrapped with “black and white” clothes like check boards, they are the same size and always there. This is symbolizing the constant fight between the “Good” and the “Evil”, it looks that they have the same strength and both are always exists to face each another.

If you are looking at puppet shadow plays in Bali, you will see a group of people who belong to the right side and a group of people who belong to the left side. The right side symbolizing the group of good people and on the left side symbolizing the group of bad people, they are constantly at war. In the beginning the bad always win, but at the end all the battles are won by the good people, so this is also their hope in life that the good one always overthrown the bed one.

Everyday people can watch the show of “Barong and Kris” dance at the village of Batubulan. The centre story that is brought by this performance is also the eternal fight between the figure of Barong (like lion) and the figure of Rangda (like witch). Barong is the symbol of Good Spirit and Rangda is the Symbol of Bad Spirit in Bali. On their fight in the show you can witness that the Barong of the Good Spirit always wins the fight against the Rangda of the evil spirit, but Rangda never dies.

In everyone’s body and soul we all have these 2 antagonistic spirits as well, part of us is having good spirit and part of us is having bad spirit. Spirits are always fighting within us self, if the good spirit wins we become a good person and when the evil spirit wins we become a bad and unaccepted person.

Now the Galungan and Kuningan celebration is to commemorate the winning of Dharma good spirit in the island of Bali. Every family is making great offerings to their forefathers on their family shrines, some people also go to their groups’ ancestral temples. If you wish to see celebrations everywhere in the island or if you are happens to be in Bali on those dates and around the dates, you will be quite lucky to see many colorful sights on the temples, villages, rice-fields as celebration is the way of life of the Balinese.