This week, since I finished up the Draupadi-narrated novel The Palace of Illusions, I decided to start my Wikipedia Trails journey off by reading about Krishnaa herself; it seemed like it would be interesting to see how much of the story was embellished by the author and how much directly followed the original Mahabharata.
1. Draupadi
As it turns out, Palace just about follows the source to a T, which I was really impressed with; all of the new interpretation comes from exploring Draupadi's internal state and narration, rather than any external changes.
I also learned that there's a Draupadi cult today that celebrates her as a village goddess "with unique rituals and mythologies." One of the ways the cult worships her is through firewalking, which seemed like something I had to learn more about.
2. Fire-Walking
Fire-walking—when someone walks across hot coals, stones, embers, and so on as a rite of passage or test of courage or faith—has been practiced during lots of different time periods by lots of different cultures, and is still practiced by some groups today. The most interesting modern examples I stumbled across involved young girls in Bali, who participate in a ceremony and "are said to be possessed by beneficent spirits," Bushmen in the Kalahari desert who use it as part of their healing ceremonies, and Pakistani tribes who use it to determine whether a person is innocent or guilty of a crime (the idea being that if they're successfully able to walk across without getting burned, they're innocent).
It also works as a group-bonding exercise, even if people throughout history probably didn't realize that it had that specific effect; scientists have studied fire-walking rituals and found "synchronized heart rate rhythms between performers of the firewalk and non-performing spectators."
3. Fire Eating
Next, I wandered over to "fire eating," in which a person uses his or her mouth to extinguish some sort of flame. It's often used in street performances and circus acts, but there's also a spiritual history for it in India. However it's used, the skill is passed on from a master to an apprentice, with lessons including technique, fire safety, chemistry, and physics. Interestingly, performer Daniel Mannix claimed that "the real 'secret' to fire eating is enduring pain; he mentions that tolerating constant blisters on your tongue, lips and throat is also necessary." Fire eater's pneumonia, which is rare among the public but considered an occupational hazard for these people, is also a risk.
The last tidbit that caught my eye was about Robert Powell, a fire eater in the 1700s who "allegedly not only swallowed fire but also red-hot coals, melted sealing wax and even brimstone."
4. Street Performance
I ended up on the page for street performers, which worked out pretty well for me, since I'm currently working on a novel about a street-rat necromancer and his ghost-whisperer partner, and they happen to do street magic for extra cash.
There are tons of different types of buskers, but they've all got it down to a science: there's a specific art to "bottling," or taking up donations, and to picking out the right type of time and location for an act, both of which determine the success of the performance. One of the risks buskers have to look out for is thieves stealing the donations; late American entertainer George Burns noted, "Sometimes the customers threw something in the hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they took the hats."
Back in his youth, Benjamin Franklin was a busker himself, till his dad insisted that it wasn't worth the hit his good name would take for it. This ended influencing his beliefs in the freedom of speech.
Image Credit: "Malabarista de Rua (Street Performer Using a Fire Devilstick)" by Eduardo Casalini. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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