Dead are brought out from their Tomb and their cloth changed- Indonesia

Indonesia: In Tana Toraja, Indonesia, the dead are removed from their tombs to replace their clothing each year.

 

The Toraja people have fascinating rituals surrounding death and the afterlife.

When someone dies, their ritual states that the deceased are to be buried in the town they were born in (and not necessarily in the town in which they have died).

Further research into the term “ Rolang” uncovered a Tibetan connection.  This one is even more freaky.

In this scenario, a holy man (a “ngagspa”) gets shut up in a dark room with the newly deceased and lies on top of the corpse, wrapping his arms around it and placing his mouth over the mouth of said dead person (EWWW!).

By breathing into the dead body’s mouth, the corpse is eventually revived, and leaps to it’s feet, attempting to escape the grasp of the ngagspa.

The holy man must hold onto the thrashing corpse, or he will be killed.  Oh, and he has to wait for it to stick out its tongue, so he can bite it off.

Apparently the tongue makes  a powerful magic weapon used in healing etc.

Most of the population is  Christian, and others are  Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk (“the way”).

The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo (“Way of the Ancestors”).

Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity.

Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi  highland region.

The picture below which was first placed on the indonesian blog mamasa-online.blogsport.com talks about a personal story involving the walking corpses of Tojara, Indonesia. But only recently the picture is gaining attention.