Returning to original form; A central dynamic in Balinese ritual

Abstract

Descriptions by western scholars of Balinese religious beliefs and rituals have long been dominated by images of balance, harmony and order. Anthropologist Hildred Geertz (1995) has recently challenged these well established stereotypes, suggesting that concerns with spiritual or magical powers, and transformations of such powers, are more relevant for making sense of the puzzling and dazzling variety of Balinese religious life than are concepts of balance and hierarchical ordering. She points out, for example, that the propensity for Balinese gods and goddesses to take on terrible forms is well known, but has been little attended to by western scholars (Geertz 1994:32,1995). What seems to me to have been almost entirely overlooked is the crucial process whereby these terrible deities are restored to their origi nal, beneficent form. In this paper I will discuss evidence suggesting that, in Balinese belief, all the destructive and negative forces present in the cosmos originate from creative, positive powers and, furthermore, possess the poten tial to return to their original positive state. This casts a very different light on the whole nature of Balinese religious ritual. Rather than an orderly or balanced system, the Balinese cosmos, I suggest, is better conceptualized as a constant flux or cycle of transformations of powers moving between posi tive and negative poles, and always liable to switch from one to the other. The process of returning to a peaceful or benign form is referred to in Kawi as mar?pa somya.1 The concern to reorient dangerous, destructive forces in a

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