The word “Odalan” is believed to have come from the root word “Wedal” and one of its meanings is “birth”. “Odalan” is to use to describe a religious ceremony commonly held to mark the birth of a temple.

This is usually the day when the temple buildings are blessed for the first time, or the day where Balinese Hindus commences to bring offerings and pray in the temple. Temple festival may come once in 210 days following the “Wuku” calendar, Bali kind of calendar, thus a semi-annual celebration, or they may be an annual ceremony if they follow the lunar calendar. The later usually falls on the full moon (Purnama) and the most favorite full-moon-days are those in the fourth month in the Balinese system known as “Purnama Kapat”, full moon of the fifth “Purnama Kelima”, and the tenth “Purnama Kadasa”. The opposite, the new-moon-days “Tilem” is not usually chosen for a temple festival.

Temple festival can be a small ceremony with limited number of offerings or it can be very big one with many offerings which are compulsory, takes months to prepare and cost a lot of money , energy and time. The villagers who are responsible for looking after the temple and ceremonies, the Pemaksan, will take pride if they can perform a big “Odalan”, and they are ready and willing to contribute to the success of the ceremony. A big temple festival includes activities such as “Melis”, a purification procession to the sea or the holy springs, “Mepada”, a “Parade” of animals that are going to be used or killed as required by the ceremony, a number of religious dances such as “Pendet”, mask dance and shadow puppet play, “the wayang kulit”, are all arranges strictly following religious procedures.

At least two kind of offerings are made e.g. the “Caru”, held sacrifice functioning to cleanse the place or in a wider sense to clean and cleanse the universe. The impurities, polluting the universe come from the wrong doing of the devils. “Caru” is also directed to purify the devils themselves so that they are free from evil tendencies and become beneficial to man. One of the expected outcomes of a “Caru” performance is to make the devils, the “Butas” or “Olas” helpful. The holy verse, among others, that is said “Bhuta Olas, Dewa asih” translate to “the devils helpful, the Gods kind”.

There are thousand of temple in Bali consisting of public temples, the family shrines and the “functional” temples such as those devoted to the goddess of trade, the rice goddess, and each of them has an Odalan festival, so practically speaking, there isn’t any day free from Odalan or ceremonies of the like, on the Bali Island. If you want to witness one of those interesting odalans, you we can arrange the itinerary for you to see temple festival or Odalan.