Sunday, November 29, 2009

Mijajima Firewalking Festival

A couple of weekends ago we went to Miyajima for a Firewalking Festival. It was some Budhist thing where they build a fire out of little paddles that people write prayers or something on them, then the priests bless them before they are thorn into the fire. Once they're all thrown in, the fire gets layed down and the head priest blesses it and throws salt or something around. Then the priests get's women's purses or bags and puts them over the fire and blesses them also (which I had done :) ). After that, the head priest walks over the fire, then his lower priests, then it's open to the public. We had planned to do the walk, but after 60 people walking over it, there was a pathway made which was all burned down and only black cold sut. So we didn't feel like waiting for the other 200 people to go through and wait our turn. So we left and had lunch. Here are some pictures from that day.



The stairs up the hill to the temple.

As you were going up the stairs if you looked down to the side there were all these cool monk statues everywhere.





All the people at the ceremony.









That is the head monk in the purple





They are getting the walkway made.


The old people walking over it.



A nice close up of someone walking over it.







Next time we'll have to get there early and get a spot at the front so we can walk over it!

1 comment:

Gma & Pa Haslam said...

So how did you get the purse blessed. What does it do? Do you want to walk the coals when they are red? Sorry so many questions.