This fire ritual in Bulgaria involves a barefoot dance on smouldering embers Cylonphoto/Getty Images
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“I always feel my stomach churn when I look at someone being impaled by a spear through the cheeks,” writes , an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut specialising in the study of extreme rituals. The version of the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual found in Mauritius is his favourite – if that is quite the word. Devotees endure many piercings, from a few needles through their cheeks to several hundred spikes perforating their entire body, “as well as hooks from which…
