The Lady Who Dances Beautifully

Toraja · deity · primordial / creation · deity

Indo' Belo Tumbang, 'the lady who dances beautifully', is the goddess of the medicine that cures the sick among the Sa'dan Toraja. She is invoked in the maro, the great ecstatic curing ritual belonging to the rites of the rising sun, in which chanting and trance-dancing participants seek healing; the central female celebrant of the ritual bears the title tumbang, which the goddess's own name echoes. Her worship attests the therapeutic dimension of the deata, the gods of the Toraja pantheon, alongside the funerary and cosmogonic concerns of the tradition.

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