Most heads of state at one time or another would have had their
effigies burned by angry voters. I know that Obama and Putin had
the honor.
Two weeks ago, the Indians burned the effigies of the cricket
team because they lost the World Cup in cricket.
But to examine burning as a ritual, let’s go back to the Burning
Man Festival. It is a week-long event that begins on the last
Monday in August and ends on the first day in September, which
coincides with the American Labor Day holiday. In 1986 a man
called Larry Harvey together with a few friends burned a 9 foot
wooden man on Baker Beach, San Francisco. It was supposed to
depict “spontaneous creativity”. In 1990 the festival moved to the
Black Rock Desert in Nevada in the United States. This
“experience of reconciliation and rebirth” ignited a kind of passion,
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