A Blessing from the Gods
After days of preparation, early morning trips to the local market and lots of craftworks constructing the offerings, Bali Dive Cove was ready for its Opening Ceremony!
A few weeks earlier, owners Kadek and Wayan headed over to their resident Holy Man to decide a date for the opening of the shop. The Balinese believe that the Moon is very important and it affects a lot of what people do here. The date the Holy Man gave us was the 31st of January - as some of you may know this was a Full, Super, Blood, Blue Moon AND the first lunar eclipse of the year! So surely we have some good luck on our side. :) Bali mainly follows a Hindu religion which involves some very important religious rituals. For any marriage, baby born, or in our case, opening a new business, you have to undergo a blessing from the gods and give offerings so that everything will run as smoothly as possible in the future.
Full, Super, Blood, Blue Moon AND the first lunar eclipse of the year!
So the 31st was to be the day of Bali Dive Cove’s grand opening and blessing. The day started with cleaning the whole shop, arranging the final pieces of furniture, a bit of decorating and touching up the paint work. Wayan and his brother had gone to Amlapura to pick up Bali Dive Cove’s new van, as we were also going to do a blessing for the van at the same time. Our families were busy at home preparing delicious Balinese foods - pork and fish satay made with coconut and cooked traditionally over a fire, chopping and mixing the vegetables and cooking tonnes of rice! Our good friend Josh also arrived from Australia especially for our opening ceremony. He came bearing many goodies for the dive shop including our excellently serviced regulators from our friends at Dolphin Scuba in Perth. It was like Bali Dive Cove’s Christmas and birthday all rolled into one!
At 4pm our close family and friends started arriving and we began getting everything ready for the praying. January is known in Bali as the rainy season, so we were really hoping that the rain would hold off until the rituals had taken place! The Holy Man arrived, dressed head to foot in beautiful white, ‘the boys’ were wearing their best shirts and sarongs whilst and the girls wore a delicately patterned blouses known as a kebaya. Blessings were displayed over the building, inside and out, while the Holy Man said his prayers. When the Holy Man was ready, everybody else came to sit beside the building to pray alongside him. For each prayer you offer up flowers in your hands and use the scent of the incense to reach the gods. After each prayer you place the flowers either in your hair or behind each ear, and then at the end the Holy Man offers you holy water and some rice to place on your forehead as a symbol that you have prayed.
After the ceremony, the eating and drinking could commence! More friends and family arrived and we could finally indulge in the food which had taken almost 12 hours to prepare. Bintang was the choice of drink and the babi guling (spit roasted pig) went down a treat! Lucky the rain held off until after everyone had eaten; then, with the monsoonal rain falling, we all moved inside to enjoy the large chill out area upstairs of the shop, with music, laughter and stories.
