Religion is something that every individual can be very dedicated to but there are many weird traditions that no one can deny. Sometimes people practice some rituals which are adopted as a part of religion. There are a lot of traditions that seems really bizarre to the world where it is not followed.
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Weird Rituals Around The World
Here are ten weird Rituals that are still observed around the world.
10. Tooth Filling Ceremony
Tooth Filing Ceremony is one of the biggest Hindu religious ceremonies. This ceremony is executed by smoothing down tooth and eye-tooth. In Hindu Balinese belief system, this celebration helps people to free themselves from all invisible evil forces. They believe that the teeth are the symbol of lust, greed, anger, confusion and jealousy and the custom of filling teeth renders a person physically and spiritually. This ceremony is also a symbol that the person normally female has entered from adolescent to adulthood.
9. Satere-Mawe Bullet Ant Ritual
The Satere-Mawe is a native Indian tribe they live in the Amazon, in this tribe they have tradition that when a young man is entered to manhood he has to wear glove which is full of fainted satere-mawe, bullet ants. When the men wear this glove, ants are awakened and bite on his hand which he has to wear for ten minutes. The bite of the bullet ant is more painful than the bite of any other creature in this world. It is said that it has to be repeated several times in a year.
8. Men’s Beauty Pageant
In the African tribe of Wodaabe, it is the men (and not the women) who dress to impress. Men of this tribe value beauty, and often spend most of their days grooming and adorning themselves, in order to appear attractive to the women. The preening takes on epic proportions, especially during their annual courtship festival, called “Gerewol.” In this week-long festival, the men dress to the nines and enter a dancing competition called the “Yaake.” In this dance, the competitors form a single line and dance away, while being watched by a mostly-female audience. The judging panel itself usually consists of three women, who choose the winners based on their dancing skills and overall good looks. While it’s mostly fun and games for the women, the festival is no cakewalk for the men involved—the dance itself takes place in the sweltering heat, for several hours a day.
7. Sweat-Scented Hankies
If the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then for women it must be the nose—according to some very innovative lotharios. In some anecdotal accounts, European men (and a few others in different parts of the world) would wear handkerchiefs underneath their armpits before attending a dance. Afterwards, the man would use his sweat-scented hankie to wipe the perspiration off his love interest’s face. Presumably, the girl would find the scent irresistible and fall madly in love with the man. If you think that’s gross, during the 19th century some women in the rural parts of Austria would feed their men an apple slice they had lodged in their armpits during a dance. Even the royal folks could not resist the allure of the other sex’s scent, as exemplified by one noble who fell in love with the owner of a sweaty chemise that he had mistakenly used as a towel. Clearly there’s something to this olfactory business.
6. Sepik Skin Mutilation
In Papua New Guinea, there are some communities living around the Sepik river who hold an even more bloody and painful rite of passage. The communities’ teenage boys (though they are referred to as little girls during the rite) are gathered together, stripped naked and have insults shouted at them. They then must lay down on their fronts while their elders make crocodile skin-like patterns on their backs by making hundreds of small cuts into the skin and flesh. After enduring this process, which leads to not insignificant blood loss, initiates are visibly weakened and often unable to walk or even stand up. The ritual lasts for days, sometimes even weeks, with further humiliation, cutting and even whipping of the boys until they emerge from the process as men in the eyes of the tribe.
5. Sati
Practiced intermittently since at least 400 CE and as recently as 2008, Sati was the suicide of Indian widows at their husband’s funeral by leaping onto a burning pyre. This particular ritual has always been controversial, with the most notable ban being legislated by the British in 1829 but forbidden as early as in a 10th century-dated chapter of the Padma Purana (for certain castes). While the practice was relatively uncommon, British records from the early 19th Century indicate that in Bengal, over 500 incidents of sari took place each year between 1813 and 1828. One remarkable aspect of sari was that the process is often described as being undertaken voluntarily, though instances of forced sati have been recorded. Though the practice is banned by today’s Indian government, incidents of sari have taken place at least three times in the past ten years.
4. Human Sacrifice
Cut a Person Open from Throat to Stomach and Rip out Their Heart as an Offering to the Gods (Aztec). Human sacrifice was not only an Aztec attraction; it was also a part of their religion and a way to please the gods and avoid disaster. The Aztec believed that the best way to repay the gods was to offer up blood in regular rituals. So, instead of killing their enemies in battle, they would sometimes capture them and take them back to the village to be offered up to the gods. In one ritual, the prisoners were forced to walk up the many stairs of the temple. Once they reached the top, the priest would cut open their stomach from throat to stomach. They would rip out their heart to offer it to the gods. The bodies were then pushed down the stairs. At the bottom, the body would be dismembered or carried off, depending on the ritual. Because the objective of Aztec warfare was to capture victims alive for human sacrifice, battle tactics were designed primarily to injure the enemy rather than kill him. Slaves could also be used for human sacrifice, but only if the slave was considered lazy and had been resold three times.
3. El Colacho: Baby Jumping (Spain)
El Salto del Colacho (The Devil’s Jump), or simply El Colacho, is a traditional Spanish holiday dating back to 1620 that takes place annually to celebrate the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi in the village of Castrillo de Murcia near Burgos. During the act, girls throw rose petals on babies who were born during the previous twelve months of the year. Then a priest blesses the babies and a man dressed as the Devil (known as the Colacho) jumps over the babies, who lie on mattresses in the street. The origins of the tradition are unknown, but it is said to cleanse the babies of original sin, ensure them safe passage through life, and guard against illness and evil spirits.
2. The Viking Funeral
Hindi women clearly had it tough — but so did the slave girls of Viking noblemen. According to the historic account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th century Arab Muslim writer, the ritual following the death of a chieftain was exceptionally brutal. Once dead, a chieftain’s body was put into a temporary grave for ten days while new clothes were being prepared for him. During this time, one of his slave girls would “volunteer” to join him in the afterlife; she was then guarded day and night and given copious amounts of intoxicating drinks. Once the cremation ceremony got started, the girl went from tent to tent to have sex with every man in the village. As the men were having sex with her — or what today we woud call “rape” — they would say, “Tell your master that I did this because of my love for him.” Following this, the girl was taken to a tent where she had sex with six Viking men, was strangled to death with rope, and finally stabbed by a village matriarch. And for the coup de grace, the bodies of the chieftain and slave girl were place onboard a wooden ship that was set alight. The Vikings did this to ensure that the slave girl would serve her master in the afterlife, while the sexual rites were a way to transform the chieftain’s life force.
1. Yanomami Death Rites
The Yanomami tribe of Brazil and Venezuela believe, like many cultures, that proper treatment of a deceased person’s body is essential for that person’s soul to be at peace. Like many cultures, they also believe that the body should be cremated rather than buried; however, instead of scattering the ashes as many would in the West, the Yanomami mix a some of the combination of funereal ash and crushed bone remains with a sweet banana-based concoction. The remaining ashes are then buried beneath the deceased family’s home. Oh, and the ash/bone/banana drink is consumed by the people of the village.