Limited Time Offer: Cast Off Your Dark Side!

DallasNews Religion today featured an e-mail from Amy Martin, an organizer of the local “Winter SolstiCelebration.” Martin is asking for a volunteer to act out the role of the Boogeyman during the festivities. She explains:

Based on a tradition in India, the Boogeyman would roam the village and those seeking to transfer their dark side for a year and gain good luck would touch his cloak…

I am looking for some who would want to play this role for the community, perhaps as a part of your own process of coming to grasp with your own dark side (we all have one). But the cloak you wear is what bears the burden. After the event, you surrender the cloak and it is ceremonially burnt in the following 4th quarter of the Moon.

What an evocative ritual to embody the process of casting off one’s dark side, especially at this darkest time of the year. We’re approaching the end of the year, moving through a time of memory, reflection, and togetherness. And at the end of this time, we’ll enter the season of starting fresh, of trying to carry forward the things that sustain us, and leave behind the things that burden our hearts.

I would like to learn more about the origins of this ritual, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to find much information yet whether the ritual is used in other places, or what Indian traditions it may have been inspired by. I will write more if I find additional details.

Update 12/3/07:

I contacted Amy Martin she was kind enough to e-mail back during this busy time. She couldn’t recall all the details, but told me what she remembered of how the ritual developed:

It came from a lecture, I think. And in India, the tradition goes by another name now. It is tied up with India’s pilgrimage tradition of men, and sometimes women, whose children are grown giving up their possessions and going on pilgrimage for years. The boogeyman thing often precedes their leaving. Wish I could help more…

Fausto also suggests some possible leads in the comments:

Is there a corresponding Yule ceremony from North European Druidism? Just as the European languages have ancient Indian roots, I’ve read that some anthropologists believe Druidism to be a variant form of early Hinduism that evolved in a sightly different direction, but maintained many similarities also, as Indic peoples migrated into Europe at the end of the Ice Ages.

The Boogeyman (if it is authentic) also has strong sympathetic overtones with the traditional Christian understanding of Christmas as a time when the darkness encumbering the world is lifted. Which is probably no accident, since the decision to celebrate the Nativity at midwinter rather than spring or summer (when shepherds really did abide in their fields by night) was arbitrary rather than Scriptural, and was made at least in part due to the similar meaning that rival pagan traditions ascribed to their midwinter celebrations.