IN A roar of orange flame, the body of Agung Suyasa, head of the royal family of Ubud, was reduced to its earthly elements, liberating his soul to fly upward, in a spray of sparks, through the night sky to the heavens.
In the most spectacular royal funeral in Bali in at least three decades, the energy, mysticism and creativity of the Hindu island came together in the mass cremation of three royal figures and 68 commoners.
In a Balinese tradition, the bod
ies of the commoners had waited to join Suyasa and two other members of his extended family in a royal cremation, although the pyres of the commoners were in a separate location.
All were on a journey of purification and renewal in which, according to Balinese belief, the soul can return to inhabit a new being, generally a member of the same family, until once again it is freed through cremation.
In the coming months, more ceremonies lie ahead to further cleanse both the soul of the departed and the people left behind.
"None of us is brand new," said Raka Kerthyasa, the younger half-brother of Suyasa. He oversaw the cremation and is now the guardian of the ancient but symbolic royal family. "We are part of the cycle of life," he said.
That ever-changing cycle may one day claim the cremation rites themselves, and some here say that in the face of a globalising world, Bali may never again see a cremation ceremony to match the one last month.
"They'll have things in the future, but elaborate and grand like this one, I don't think so," said I Nyoman Suradnya, an artist whose older brother was one of the commoners cremated.
In that spirit, the cremation was a day of raucous energy. Hunched under a giant bamboo platform, 200 at a time for 100-yard shifts, the porters bore an 11-ton tower, as tall as a three-storey building, that carried the coffin of Suyasa under a nine-tiered pinnacle.
Whooping and laughing, sometimes breaking into a run, the porters swung the platform crazily from right to left to confuse the spirits.
Along with it came a huge undulating dragon, terrifying to behold with its bulging eyes and splayed teeth. After that came a giant black wooden bull that would serve as the sarcophagus at the cremation.
"Strange as it seems, it is in their cremation ceremonies that the Balinese have their greatest fun," wrote Miguel Covarrubias in his classic work, Island Of Bali, published in 1946.
Porters carried Suyasa's coffin down a soaring white chute, then paraded it three times around the waiting bull, trailed by men and women with pyramids of offerings on their heads.
On the crematory platform, the hollow back of the bull was opened and the body was placed inside, its final stop on its earthly journey. A second, smaller bull stood by its side holding the body of another royal relative, Gede Raka.
The sun was sinking as the back of the giant bull was closed and the crematory plaza, packed with thousands of onlookers, twinkled with the flashes of cameras.
Suddenly, bright shoots of flame appeared under the belly of the bull, quickly caught the gold necklaces and travelled upward. Smoke seemed to pour from its nostrils and flames shot from its eyes. Its curved horns and ears were on fire.
As the bull fell away, the iron bars that formed its frame remained, and within them hung the burning skeleton, its skull tilted downward, its right foot spurting flames.
Acting with ritual disrespect for the now-useless body, workers poked and prodded at it with long bamboo poles to stoke the fire, and it swayed slightly in the flames.
The body disintegrated into its five earthly elements: earth, wind, water, fire and ether. Its soul disappeared into the night sky.
One of Suyasa's sons, Indrayana, sat on the ground nearby, dressed in ritual gold, holding his hands in prayer toward his father. Then, fire to fire, he lit a cigarette, looked up and inhaled.
