Kumbh Mela
Kumbh Mela is a Hindu religious festival held every three years and rotating among four different sites in India, forming a twelve-year cycle. It involves bathing in a holy river, but it is also a huge fair and entertainment spectacle. The event is the world's largest gathering of religious pilgrims. The Hindustani Times claimed that attendance for the nearly two-month-long festival in 2019 was 240 million.
The event is also a gathering of naga sadhus and naga babas, holy men who have renounced everything, including clothing.
These naked holy men, their bodies smeared with ashes, are everywhere at the festival.
This well-endowed guy, with a cowboy hat and sunglasses, looks less holy to me, but what do I know?
The penis is not only exposed by these men, it seems to be actively featured by many of them. It is apparently considered a repository of sacred power. This guy has a padlock in his penis.
The penis is also used as a demonstration of ascetic control by performing what we might call "dick tricks." This holy man is winding his penis around a rod. Others wind their penis around a sword blade (ouch).
This guy is taking it one step further. Having wound his penis around a rod, he has an assistant climb up and stand on the rod. Is all his weight being supported by the holy man's penis? Not really. His feet are pressed against the holy man's thighs, which are supporting his weight. But it's a good trick.
But this dick trick doesn't seem to be faked. This holy man is lifting a pile of bricks with his penis.
Finally, we have a procession of 36 naked holy men. This isn't from Kumbh Mela, and they are not smeared with ash (an improvement, in my opinion), but it shows the reverence that the people have for these naked men.
2 comments:
There is a tribe in The Horn of Africa, the Nuer I think, where the women paint the men’s penises with milk to ensure fertility of the women, cattle, and crops.
It is apparently considered a repository of sacred power.
it's the truth!
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