The Easter rituals in Sicily, from the Palm Sunday to the Good Friday and the Easter Sunday, represent a narrative sequence of the religious Christian Commemoration but also a recall to a symbolic pre-christian ritualism where the Easter is a synthesis of the renewal, of the transit from the Death of Nature (Winter) to the Life and Awakening (Spring), as a passage from death to life of the Divinity. Several manifestations take place during this period all over the Sicily.
In some rituals Death and Devils are represented, as in the “Dance of Devils” in Prizzi (PA).
During the Easter Sunday, two processions take place in the opposite corner of the central way, one with the statue of Holy Mary and one with the statue of Jesus Christ, attended by two angels with a sword. At the time of the gather between the Holy Mary and Christ, two devils, wearing two red suits and a tinplate mask, and The Death, represented with a yellow costume, flounder running from a statue to the other one, symbolizing the attempt to avoid the gather between the Mother and the Son. This “Dance” is called “abballu di li diavuli” (Dance of Devils), and is interrupted from the action of the angels, whose hit the devils with the swords, and from the sound of the bells. Don’t lose this manifestation!!
We want also to wish you an happy and serene Easter.
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