On Thursday, September 6, the City of Santa Fe, NM, hosted the annual “Burning of Zozobra.” Zozobra is a fifty-foot-tall bogeyman, Old Man Gloom in effigy. Each year he is set before an audience of thousands and burned. (Burn, baby, burn!) Most onlookers are ecstatic to see him go; others feel sorry for him in the end.
The ritual was started by artist William (Will) Howard Shuster, Jr. in 1924 and incorporated into the almost 300-year-old Fiestas de Santa Fe. According to the “Will Shuster’s Zozobra” website, Shuster’s “inspiration for Zozobra came from the Holy Week celebrations of the Yaqui Indians of Mexico; an effigy of Judas, filled with firecrackers, was led around the village on a donkey and later burned. Shuster and E. Dana Johnson, a newspaper editor and friend of Shuster’s came up with the name Zozobra, which was defined as ‘anguish, anxiety, gloom’ or in Spanish for ‘the gloomy one’.”
Watch the two-part documentary of the 2005 burning made by producer, director, and writer DL Fitch. You can decide for yourself what you think about the ritual. No matter how you feel, you’ll probably agree that the notion of releasing gloom — letting go of heartache and jealousy, giving up anger — is a powerful intention.
Again from the website, there is this quote from A.W. Denninger:
Zozobra is a hideous but harmless fifty-foot bogeyman marionette. He is a toothless, empty-headed facade. He has no guts and doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. He never wins. He moans and groans, rolls his eyes and twists his head. His mouth gapes and chomps. His arms flail about in frustration. Every year we do him in. We string him up and burn him down in ablaze of fireworks. At last, he is gone, taking with him all our troubles for another whole year.
For this writing topic, watch the videos. Then do a 15-minute writing practice starting with the words, “I want to let go of… .”
Now Go!
These videos are fantastic. Zozobra reminds me of the face of Nosferatu (LINK). And the scale and size remind me of Heart of the Beast here in Minneapolis.
I had not heard of the ritual before. The idea of letting go really appeals to me right now. And fire has always been a traditional way of ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I talked to a friend yesterday that mentioned that we are at the end of a 10 year period of shedding. And over the next 3 weeks is a good time to do some final purging of anything burdensome that’s been hanging around.
A lot of my friends have moved over the last year and gotten rid of tons of material things. I also moved and purged last December. But I have a lot left to go. I think the material is linked to our spiritual cycles.
This topic seems ripe for its time. I’ll do a few practices on it over the next week and post one of them.
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I get distressed by any burning of a human figure in effigy, however symbolic. I know it is an ancient and primitive practice, probably hard-wired in human brains, but it’s just too symbolically close, in my own subconscious, to the burning of people, of lynchings and crematoriums. I know, I’m a party pooper. But those are my associations.
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Now this I have to see in person! Really great video. I have already reached a junction in the road where material possessions matter less and less…but the idea of being being able to burn away burdens and bad things…I love both the symbolism and simplicity to it all.
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Yes, the video is great.
The idea of using fire in purification rituals crosses all cultures, religions and times.
The idea of letting go of materialism is great.
It’s the human figure in effigy that bothers me. In the context of a country at war.
Am I the only one who sees this?
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TIV, no I don’t think you are the only one at all. I have a few friends who feel the same way about anything having to do with the burning of bodies, however symbolic, with fire. This includes cremation. I think for them it is cultural and a fear that has been passed down for generations. It is in their bodies as a generational memory.
Your thoughts, ideas, emotions about the Zozobra ritual are equally valid. And I think it’s mentioned in the piece that some are very uncomfortable with the burning in effigy. You bring up a lot of valid points. I had not connected it to the war until you mentioned that.
It reminds me of a memory I have from the Vietnam War. My memory is fuzzy, but I think there was a photograph in Life magazine at the time of a monk burning himself in effigy for the war. I was quite young but remember being horrified at the photograph. And at the same time, I was trying to imagine how strong his beliefs must have been to do something like that.
There are many associations with rituals around fire. And I appreciate you sharing yours.
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As a teenager and young woman, I wanted to see the burning of Zozobra. I’d heard about it from friends who mainly saw it as a reason to get drunk. I moved to Santa Fe when I was about 23, and sometime in the years immediately following I finally went.
The atmosphere was wild. People were anticipating the burning, and they were drinking (it was, in fact, a debauched weekend, kicked off by Zozobra). There was music and dancing, and I was almost overwhelmed by the crowd. Especially the locals (“natives,” a label worn on bumper stickers, probably because Santa Fe has become a home or second home for so many not born there) were getting into it, chanting “Burn him, Burn him, Burn him.” It was intense and got more so once the burning started.
I was one of those who felt sorry for this helpless big ogre, what with him moaning and wailing and flailing, and the crowd jeering and cheering. It was horrible to watch, and I couldn’t get into it the way everyone else seemed to.
It’s definitely part of our culture, now after 80+ years of doing this. I don’t have a hard time with it in the larger sense, only in terms of my particular sensitivities. In other words, it doesn’t bother me in the context of the war or world events. I guess that’s because I know where and how it originated, and it’s taken on those associations. But personally, I couldn’t relax into it. I do, however, appreciate what it represents — a desire to let go of one’s troubles. I’d like to go again someday; I’ll probably have the same reaction, but who knows.
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whew, was that comment long enough???
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Reminds me of the Burning Man Festival (LINK). According to their website, “Burning Man annually attracts as many as 40,000 participants in the last week of August. The climax of the event is the burning of the effigy on Saturday night.”
Must be something ancient or generational to attract so many people to ride out the desert winds in order to see the burning.
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Actually, I really appreciate all the thought you both put into your responses. Quoinmonkey, I, too, have stuck in my mind an image of that monk, not burning himself in effigy, but ACTUALLY burning himself to death. Dousing himself with gasoline and lighting a match. It was such an act of desperation, expressing the pain of that entire war.
Ybonesy, your own initial response to the actual event as being “horrible to watch” I think is a good thing. Symbolic violence desensitizes us to real violence. Don’t let yourself get desensitized.
There are so many terrible times in history when drunken, raucous crowds gathered around the gallows or the stoning or the beheading or the burning alive of a human being. It just sickens me, thinking about it.
Thank you both for being open to my thoughts and feelings about it.
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All that said, back to your original topic, this Thursday is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, exactly the time of year when I should be thinking “I want to let go of…,” so thanks for the prompt. I am likely to post something related to it.
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TIV, thank you for commenting with your own feelings and thoughts. All voices need to be heard. That’s part of why we’re all out there blogging.
You are right about the monk during the Vietnam War – it wasn’t just effigy. He actually lit himself on fire. It’s such a powerful image and will always stick with me.
I remember watching the evening news during the Vietnam War and seeing images of the horrors of war on the TV screen every night. I think it kept Vietnam at the forefront of mainstream America’s minds in a way that just isn’t happening with Iraq.
I do think the world in general has become desensitized to violence. I watched a PBS documentary this weekend and when a gang member was asked what age he was and how he learned to use a gun – he said, “I was 8 or 9. No one taught me. I learned it watching TV.”
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ybonesy, I’m glad you shared your personal experience with Zozobra. It’s important to remember the cultural context of such rituals. And your sharing added a richness for me. Rituals are often rooted in places far different than the associations we cast on them from our personal experiences.
I personally would go crazy being in a crowd that large and charged up about something. I don’t think I have it in me anymore. I even have a hard time at large concert events. I wonder if that’s just an effect of age? If you ever go again, it would be interesting to see if/how your perceptions have changed.
You know, all this lends me to think about the books we as writers write, publish, release to the world. And how later, we might change what we feel, think, perceive about the subject – yet the book we wrote is still out there, floating about in the world. It’s important to read pieces of work in the context of the time they were written. And as authors, once something’s out there – it’s out there. It has a life of its own.
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I totally get where you are coming from TIV. I guess the fact that I’m seeing it built there, with a large community of volunteers working side by side, makes it more “Art” than human to me. I did not even associate it with the human aspect.
I’m reminded of a trip I made to a concentration camp in Berlin, one that was not generally know to the public like Auschwitz. The people there had worked very hard making it a respectful place to honor the memory of it’s innocent victims. I remember how silent and somber I felt walking through. I had grown up with a family who’s Grandfather had a tattoo number on his arm and I am part German decent.
What these people had not thought of…and what haunts me to this day…were the walkways that lead people through the buildings and museums. It was paved with small, stones and the crunching sound under my feet absolutely unnerved me in the silence. I felt as if I were walking on these poor souls very bones. I had to remove myself quickly. I still remember the look on the attendence face as I left only 20 minutes after I arrived.
I’m sure they thought I was disrespectfully rushing through.
I don’t think anyone else made that connection to the past.
It just goes to show how individual we all are in our views of this world we live in and how we need to think about how our actions affect the others around us.
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QM…on a totally unrelated subject. Your Twin Cities is about to open a retrospective of Frida Kahlo in honor of her 100th Birthday.
The Walker Art Center will hang about 50 of her paintings (one third of her total output) and I believe it opens September 27th.
You lucky dog! 🙂 H
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I had never heard of the Zozobra until this post. I know that Mexican’s do something similar with an effigy of the Old Year on New Year’s Eve.
Finding a symbolic way to rid ourselves of worry and doubt seems healthy to me. I also found the whole process of building such an elaborate statue and then burning it to be somehow satisfying, kind of like the wind wiping away a mandala, or the waves washing away a sand sculpture. Nothing’s permanent.
The writing prompt was cathartic for me as well. I focused on letting go of all my fears, from the most petty to the most profound. Now I’m going to go back and put the writing into some kind of semi-coherent list, maybe a poem.
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That’s a great idea. If you post it on your site, you might want to include a link here in the comments. (Of course, I always check your blog, so I’ll probably see it no matter.)
I did a writing practice on the topic myself, and I found my piece to be depressing, only in that it really opened my eyes to what I’ve been holding on to for too long. Maybe I’ll do one more practice, in the hopes that I’ll write myself into really letting go.
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[…] most recent writing practice on Red Ravine has to do with letting go. This was a difficult topic for me, simply because there are so many […]
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Thanks for linking me! I always mention this blog- I think it’s an awesome site for writers. 🙂
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I watched these videos in horror and fascination, with a visceral fear and discomfort. They remind me uncomfortably of the practice of burning heretics and witches at the stake, of the show and spectacle this became for viewers and of the scapegoating such acts represent. For me there is an element of shame and sadness in such a ceremony, which was countered inthe videos by the yelling and cheering crowd, the almost holiday atmosphere, and were I present there would have responded with a sombreness not in keeping with the celebratory common crowd reaction. i suspect i would not be alone in such a response.
i will spend some time on wrtiting practice of this prompt. G
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Suburbanlife, you are right! I thought my reaction was just due to being a daughter of concentration survivors, but I also live in Massachusetts and worked in or next door to Salem for sixteen years. The witch trials! Of course. Burning the witches at the stake. It’s a huge thing around here, that whole horrible history. There is a Salem Witch Museum and a symbol of witches on broomsticks all over Salem, so the straw also reminded me of the brooms. It all looked so eerily, horribly familiar to me. Now I get it.
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G– I’ll watch for your post.
The associations Zozobra invokes are all fascinating for me to hear about, and I can relate. In some respects, I wish I could just celebrate the intention of the ritual and let go of the rest (speaking of letting go), but no matter how hard I try, I tend to see many facets of whatever it is I’m looking at.
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Reading these far ranging responses to Zozobra is a reminder of how articulate the defense of a postiion–any position–can be. Your post and this net of comments, all provocative and worthwhile reading. Thank you.
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Deborah, thank you. I find one of the most amazing things about the immediacy of blogging is hearing other people’s opinions, thoughts, and feelings almost as soon as they have them. And we all bring to the page the things that we carry inside. The things we carry – they are very powerful.
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Heather, I totally missed your comment on Frida Kahlo coming to the Twin Cities! That is a must see for me. I was listening to NPR yesterday, too, and they were talking about how progressive the Walker Art Center is about pulling in work from other cultures.
We had a Guestwriter, Laura Stokes, who did a piece on red Ravine in July about seeing the Kahlo exhibit in Mexico City this year:
Dreaming Of Frida Kahlo (LINK).
Maybe we’ll do a follow up to Laura’s piece. She’s got some great photographs there, too. Thanks for your comment, Heather.
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ybonesy, I read that the annual Burning of Zozobra was yesterday in Sante Fe, New Mexico. Did you hear anything about it? I wondered if it rained. And does it still burn if it rains?
Here’s the website link for anyone who wants to read about this year:
The 85th Annual Burning of Will Shuster’s Zozobra – 2009! (LINK)
This Writing Topic is a good one. It makes me want to do another Writing Practice on Letting Go.
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Hey, QM, one of my best pals called on Tuesday to see if I wanted to go with her and her sister to see the Burning of Zozobra last night. I couldn’t. Too much going on with kids (Dee’s first Tennis match was last evening; she won!) and the upcoming show. But it’s a great way to let go of any gloom that has been haunting you, and to start afresh. That was what my friend planned to do, and I think it’s an amazing opportunity, a great cultural event, part of Santa Fe and NM history, to be able to join in the festivities.
I did hear on the news last night that it rained at first but that as is often the case in NM, it later cleared. Plus, the rain doesn’t stop New Mexicans from going out. We tend to be like the frogs when it rains, probably because the rain is rare.
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ybonesy, congrats to Dee on the Tennis match! Way to go. Ah, wondered if you had thought about going to the Burning of Zozobra. I know what you mean about the rain. I’m always surprised by how quickly storms pass in New Mexico. Was like that in Montana, too. I’m guessing partly because of the mountains. The rain — boy, we sure could use more rain. It’s supposed to rain today but haven’t seen it yet. We’ve had a very dry summer and spring. I actually love when it rains. Seems very cleansing. Fire and water — ways to start anew.
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Old Man Gloom burned again tonight. Twas time to let go of what’s holding you back. 8)
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I saw this on the news and thought of your piece. It’s an old ritual that we pull into the present. Letting go of what’s holding us back. 8)
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