#10 Blackening of the Bride (Scotland)
Blackening is a strange wedding custom performed in the days or weeks prior to marriages in rural areas of Scotland. The bride and/or groom are captured by friends and family, blackened with feathers, treacle, soot and flour, and then paraded publicly for the community to see.
#9 Bullet Ants Ritual (Brazil)
The Sateré-Mawé people use bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior. A boy must wear a pair of gloves filled with bullet ants for more than 10 minutes. He must go through this ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several years to prove that he is deserving to be a man.
#8 Tibetan Sky Burial
It is a Tibetan funeral practice in which a human corpse is placed on a mountaintop to be eaten by scavenging animals. It is practiced in the Chinese provinces and autonomous regions of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, as well as in Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, and parts of India such as Sikkim and Zanskar.
#7 Baby-Dropping Ritual (India)
In this weird and cruel ritual, a baby is dropped from the roof only to be caught in a sheet held by waiting men at the bottom. It is practiced by both Hindu and Muslims. It is believed that this provides good health and luck to the baby.
#6 Teeth Chiseling Ritual (Indonesia)
The people of Mentawai tribe of Indonesia believes chiseled teeth make women beautiful. So, women of this tribe undergo this painful treatment to look more beautiful and to please their opposite sex.
#5 Hindu Thaipusam Festival Piercings
During the celebration of the religious holiday Thaipusam, Hindu shows their devotion to Lord Murugan by piercing pipes into their body parts specially tongue.This mainly happens in countries with Tamil community such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, India etc.
#4 Yanomami Death Ritual
The people of the Yanomami believe that the soul is only able to achieve a full salvation if the dead body is burnt after death and if the ash is eaten up by the family and the relatives of the dead person. So after the body is cremated, the ashes which includes crushed bones are given to the family to be eaten.
#3 Tongue Slashing (Vegetarian Festival)
The Vegetarian Festival celebrated in Thailand is best known for its many of the unusual religious rituals that are performed. Firewalking, body piercing and other acts of self-mortification undertaken by participants acting as mediums of the gods, are too gruesome to watch particularly the Tongue Slashing.
#2 Mourning of Muharram
In what can only be described as a gruesome display, followers of the Shi’a sect of Islam carry out the ritual of mass self-flagellation every year during the Holy month of Muharram. The men whip their bodies with blades attached to chains. In their state of religious trance, they apparently do not feel the pain. This Ritual is Celebrated in Iran, Bahrain, India, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan.
#1 Finger Cutting (Dani Tribe)
The Dani (or Ndani) tribe of Baliem Valley in West Papua, New Guinea have a ritual of cutting off their fingers to physically express grief. When a relative or loved one dies, women cut a segment of one of their fingers and bury it along with the dead body.
