Galungan 2025

Man, the day has been quite busy for me. Back to work for a day, with a 2.5-hour bike ride one way is not fun, and I am quite exhausted really after the trip. But as I don't want to lose my streak. I will continue to write the story about the ceremony this Wednesday. If you want to read the pleliminary, please head on to this post here

On Wednesday, it is called Galungan Day and it is one of the main day for the two-week-long ceremony, which is held every six months in the Balinese Calendar, which is about every 210 days. And I think this ceremony is only held by the Balinese Hindu, and I don't think there is any similar ceremony for other Hindus. Galungan is a Balinese holiday celebrating the victory of dharma over adharma.[1] It marks the time when the ancestral spirits visit the Earth. The last day of the celebration is Kuningan, when they return. The date is calculated according to the 210-day Balinese Pawukon calendar.. So yeah it is the day where we Balinese Hindu celebrate the victory of Good over the Bad, and we celebrate it through bring offerings and praying in some of the temple around the house, usually it is done in some of the main temples at the Traditional Village that most of us Baliense are tied to. Most of the traditional Village in Bali has 3 main temples, a cemetery temple (Pura Dalem) to worship Shiva, Pura Puseh to worship Wisnu, and then Pura Bale Agung to worship Brahma, three of the main temple and God that we worship in the Balinese tradition.

We (my wife and I) started the ceremony early at around 5.30 am, but there are many villagers who started even earlier than us. haha.

We started from the Cemetery temple, which unfortunately I didn't take any photos of, as it was still a little bit dark.

Then we moved to Pura Bale Agung, I managed to take the photo below. Teh sun has risen, and it was quite bright already, and you can see many villagers were also busy praying.

Then after that we continue to the Pura Puseh, as you can see it was already crowded as well.

After we done praying in the village main temple, we continue to pray in some of our personal temple.

Like the one below, is the temple of my big families. And from what I know, this temple has been pass down for almost 7 generation. And those who come and worship to this temple are those who are coming from the same anchestor as me. I have tried to track down the family tree, but unfortunately can't find the first generation, we only have the record from the second generation down. I was a little bit late to ask my elderly as the are now already deceased, and from our beliefs, this is the palce where their soul (after many after-death ceremony) will be placed, and we as their offspring should worship them.

Next is the other temple that we have. This one is bigger, and we have three different big families that worship in this temple. unfortunately, I could not find the exact stories about this temple, and how these three big families only who worship in this temple.

This one below is the main gate to the main compund of the temple.

One of the shrine that we have in the entrace.

on of the shrine inside the temple.

here is a few others.

and this one is the biggest building inside the temple compound.

Next is this another family temple, this one is on the smaller scope. Here in this temple, only the offsprings from my greatgrandfather who worship here. so this is the main temple of my closest family in my family tree. It is located in family land, which now only two of my uncles who lived there.

And then the last photo that I have here is own family temple. We called it Sanggah Kemulan. Kemulan means the core, so this is the core temple for each family, althogh we usually will make this temple if we make a new house compound. As you can compare above in my great grandfather temple, it was the place where my father was coming from, and then as he opened a new house compund and started a new family, then he build this temple for my family, from my father, to me and my brother and maybe to my son or my niece. As I lived in another house now. But as of now, I still go back home when there is a ceremony, and I don't plan to build another Sanggah Kemulan* in the near future. Still too poor to buy a bigger land to build the bigger house and the temple.

That is all for now, I wish that I can get my massage across. You can get a glimpse of idea of my culture and my beliefs.

	I am a Balinese man, a father of a toddler son, working in the hospitality industry, who has recently found a passion for macro photography. I want to share the photos that I've taken here on Hive. I appreciate any comments or feedback you leave on my posts and kindly invite you to be part of my journey in this vast Hive Ocean. Thank you very much