Sedekah Merapi, A Ritual on the Mount
Merapi Mount photo by indie_banget
One of cultural Tourism attraction in Indonesia is a ceremony called Sedekah Merapi. In this event, thousands of people from around the slope of Merapi Mountain followed a ritual at 1 Sura or the New Hijri Year 1431 which focused on Lencoh Village, Selo, Boyolali district, Central Java, Friday (18/12) early morning. They are enthusiastically following the annual ritual ceremony, with one of the ritual is sacrificing a buffalo head and a number of offerings into the crater at the top of Mount Merapi. The ceremony is aimed to avoid the natural disasters due to the most active mountain in Indonesia.
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Merapi Mountain ceremony performed every 1st Sura with the aim to ask the God a salvation for people who live around Mount Merapi and be protected from natural disasters arising out of Mount Merapi. The ritual is a traditional cultural performed by communities around Merapi and it’s been done for generations since the time of the ancestors to the present. This is a very interesting tourism attraction in Indonesia specifically in Yogyakarta and Central Java.
People here are not likely to leave the ritual ceremony because it is merged with local custom. Therefore, every citizen who will have their own celebration usually initialed with a traditional ceremony to make offerings of food available in surround the mountains. As such, they will be given safety and agricultural products are abundant and prosperous life as a result of soil fertility from Mount Merapi.
The ritual procession that followed thousands of residents of local communities and from outside the area began with buffalos paraded around the village before it was slaughtered and sacrificed the head into the crater of Merapi.
Head of Tourism and Culture Boyolali District, Sumantri said that the buffalo head wrapped in white cloth is completed with offerings such as tumpeng gunung (cone shaped rice) made from corn, and brubus from Lumbu leaves. In addition, there is also gomok, acung-acung, Bothok sempurno with crops, klobot cigarettes (made from corn’s ear), bananas raja, kantil flowers, turmeric, egg and cash Rp100.
Meanwhile, before the head of buffalo and offerings are thrown into the crater of Merapi at 00:10 am, the people is firstly sing songs to praise and prayer (hymn) to the God to avoid disasters due to the mountain. The Buffalo’s head that will be sacrificed then taken by four men who wear traditional Javanese clothes to the crater at the peak of Merapi which is about four kilometers and will take approximately four hours. After the buffalo head is appointed to the top of the mountain, thousands of people who follow the procession are competing to get the offerings, the cone shaped rice from corn which is the typical food people on the slopes of Merapi.
The culture of this mountain ritual is aimed also to attract local tourists as well as from international to get closer to know the culture of the people living on the surrounding mountains, especially supporting the tourism point of Solo-Selo-Borobudur. Tourists who are willing to witness this ceremony are better to stay in hotels at Solo or Yogyakarta.
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