What are the three unique customs of the Yi Torch Festival?

The Torch Festival of the Yi nationality is an important part of the colorful Yi culture, which reflects the Yi people's worship of nature for thousands of years, and also expresses the good wishes of the Yi people to pursue light, pray for a bumper harvest, drive away disasters and pray for blessing. So today, let's learn about the three unique customs of the Yi Torch Festival.

The Torch Festival of the Yi people is a sacrificial festival. Therefore, in traditional rural areas, grand sacrificial ceremonies are often held, and every Yi family attaches great importance to this. During this period, there are three unique holiday customs.

The sacrificial chickens for Torch Festival are carefully raised chickens, which must be golden hens that can't lay eggs, usually about a catty. Seven or three days before June 24 of the lunar calendar, people put this sacrificial chicken in an inverted bamboo basket.

On the morning of Torch Festival, the elders of the family took chickens to the fields to offer sacrifices to the fields, and said some blessing words to various crops, such as avoiding natural disasters, praying for God to bless the healthy development of crops, praying for a bumper harvest, driving away evil pests and diseases, and then tearing off some branches and leaves of crops and going home together.

At about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, a special kind of sacrificial branches and leaves are soaked in a cold water basin, the branches for sacrificial chickens are pressed on the neck of the chicken, the head of the chicken is immersed in the basin, and then buckwheat noodles, highland barley noodles or oat noodles are stuffed into the mouth of the chicken. Repeat these two actions until the chicken suffocates, then depilate, shave and chop the chicken. After chicken wings, chicken feet, chicken tails and chicken hearts are roasted, they are sprinkled with appropriate amount of salt and put into traditional wooden utensils of the Yi people for sacrifice. Other parts of the cooking method is the same, sacrifice first and then enjoy.

This sacrifice is a two-step process. The first step is to take the chicken outside the door and sacrifice it to nature or heaven. The second step is to simply adjust the meat in the plate and bring it to the altar in the main house to sacrifice to the ancestors. This is a very solemn ceremony. People should be serious unless necessary, and don't speak at will. Irrelevant chickens, dogs and cats can't go to the scene to find food before the sacrifice is over; Pot water and chicken feathers soaked in sacrificial branches and leaves can't be dumped immediately. They should be dumped on the day when the fire is sent, together with the torches sent away.

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