Video: El Colacho family rite: the devil jumps over babies
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Family rites is an amazing mixture of pagan beliefs, magic, folklore and religion. Sometimes this cocktail becomes so nuclear and dangerous that one wonders. An example of this is one of the weirdest children's rituals in Europe: jumping over children day in Spain, or " El Colacho". Yes, yes, you heard right: the inhabitants of the city of Castrillo de Murcia really jumping over newborns!
From the 1620 year Catholic Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ (this year - June 26) in a Spanish town Castrillo de Murcia is somewhat unusual. One of the residents of the city dresses up in a bright red and yellow suit with a mask, depicting the devil or a devil (actually, El Colacho). And in the local family rite, he belongs, perhaps, the most responsible role in the world: the life of babies depends on the strength of his legs.
Colacho's task is to jump over all the children born in the period from the last rite. Parents lay out their children on bedspreads, and Colacho … does his job. The local brotherhood "Santisimo Sacramento de Minerva" monitors the observance of all rituals. Actually, the purpose of the ceremony is to make the children jumped by the devil saved from the evil eye, disease and evil spirits … And this is not yet the most radical way in history to protect oneself from demons: in some tribes people are given many names for this, in others they apply special tattoos, in others they eat their own nails … Magic is a serious matter.
Family Rite of El Colacho in many sources it is called "the most dangerous tradition in the world." This is easy to understand: I think most readers will be shocked by the very idea of jumping over babies. But if we count the number of children injured or killed during El Colacho, then we will calm down a little: this number equals zero for all four hundred years of tradition (at least there is no information about such cases).
Catholic Church does not approve of this rite; however, if you look at it objectively, the custom of rinsing children in cold water during baptism is much more dangerous. The most amazing thing about the Colacho ritual is that it is carried out in modern civilized Europe: perhaps civilization cannot expel the magic and the miraculous from family rituals, even if it is associated with danger.
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