We’re delighted to welcome Juliet Coombe as Women Love Travel’s new Asia Editor. Juliet is a British author and award-winning photojournalist who lives in Galle Fort on Sri Lanka’s south coast. A mother of two, an author and an award-winning storyteller and photo-journalist.
For her first story with us, she takes us into one of her adopted island’s most dramatic and least understood traditions: Thovil, the devil-dancing healing ritual. Masked dancers, fire and pounding drums have been used for centuries to drive out the demons behind illness. It’s wellness, but not as you know it, and there’s no better guide than someone who calls Sri Lanka home. Welcome aboard, Juliet.
– Robyn Foyster, Editor
Whirling scary masked demonic dancers seize the stage, spinning in frenetic circles as flames tear through the night air and the drumming rises to a deafening, hypnotic pitch.
Don’t mistake this for theatre at its most film noir; this is Thovil—an ancient psychological warfare against illness using terrifying devil masks.
Curing the afflicted person with shock treatments of fire, dramatic fast-paced drumming and dancing that pounds the ground re-earthing your bare feet. All with one aim to reset the troubled mind. Devil Dancing cures everything from crippling migraines to deep-seated anxiety and madness. This ancient practice of healing has been unbelievably successful for over 25 centuries. Proving at least through oral history that elaborate rituals like these could completely redefine the boundaries of global wellness curing physical and psychological afflictions with ancient fire dances and different types of drum music instead of never-ending tablets. Offering a fierce alternative to the West’s quiet mindful health retreats.
So if you ever wondered why you wake up often in the middle of the night and cannot get back to sleep, or what really caused your headache and the pains in your legs in the first place and are tired of taking endless pills. Then head to Sri Lanka and combine an Ayurveda clinic for a few weeks detoxing and at the same time check out the long-term healing powers of devil dancing.
Inside Sri Lanka’s Ambalangoda Mask Museum
Sri Lanka’s excellent Ambalangoda Mask Museum explains how they are used for much more than just storytelling and entertainment. They are also an intricate healing system, which is all about unmasking the causes of an illness and changing your lifestyle patterns so that the problem never returns. The devil dancers look deeper into your mind-body practices – performing extraordinary exorcisms with Sanni masks looking inside the mind to discover and fix why you are ill.
Sri Lankans also genuinely believe, at least outside the modern cities, that masks nailed to the front door protect you and your home from the “evil eye” and, even more importantly, the “evil mouth” that can lead to a person’s downfall. When all is said and done, gossip can harm not only someone’s reputation, but also their well-being. In Sri Lankan culture, this 3000-year-old belief system is taught from childhood. Despite the wave of new technology, the island people do not scientifically question what lies behind the healing powers of the Sanni devil dancing mask. They have learnt from their grandparents that these rituals successfully confront every type of medical problem if done at an auspicious time of night. The dancers having picked the best time for the treatment, put on specific masks to abandon their human identity and channel healing cosmic energy from the universe and supernatural powers from nature. Through ritualistic dances and drums, they ridicule the demon causing the affliction, and in the process remove its terrifying grip on the ill person’s mind. Observing these ancient rituals, one can see there is a great deal of logic to what they do. Due to its ancient roots and continued success in curing even the mentally insane—this unique way of dealing with wellness needs a far closer examination by the West to understand how it really works. It is not Harry Potter magic or witchcraft as some travellers have suggested.
The healers explain that the type of affliction determines which of the 18 masks they pick, as they believe it dictates what is required to cure the illness. So, the next time you catch a cold or fever, think: could this be due to a demon having entered your body, and could it be dispelled faster using a devil dancer than a hot brew of Lemsip and honey?
How Sri Lankan Devil Dancing Heals the Mind
So, how does it work? Sri Lankan healers never go to the sick person’s house as a layperson, they always dress up in devil dancing clothes and use techniques with, for example, the Cobra Naga Raaksha mask to cognitively shift the mind from negative to positive thinking. This mystical cobra helps the body dispel the wicked forces that are like snake venom poisoning your blood and therefore well-being. This is a very different kind of wellness session from the relaxing ones done with gong sound baths which are aimed at calming the nervous system. This, in contrast, is frenetic, with a series of distinct fast-moving drum beats, and dramatic dance routines. Combined with satire to bypass the ego and open the damaged mind using humour.
Humour is a cunning device to trick the malevolent spirits into withdrawing and, upon being given an offering of rice and curry, never returning. The people believe that once the exorcism ritual is done, they will think and act differently towards the same problem. In the West, they would call this a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)—the psychological changing of a damaged mind by engaging with the connections between your physical sensations and how you feel about something. It involves overcoming your irrational thinking processes that can trap you in unhelpful behaviour patterns, and in the process, change your feelings and reactions towards daily events so you can start to be proactive and positive in how you deal with them. This in turn improves your well-being and long-term work-life balance as if a fairy had waved a magical wand saying all will be well.
Observing Sri Lankan devil dancers, you can see how they successfully help reconnect your thoughts, feelings, and actions in a way that breaks unhealthy cycles of stress, anxiety, and even depression. They reframe situations, with the fire dancer shocking the body and mind into a reboot and replacing the negativity, which may have entered the family home due to perhaps a sudden death with a space for a more balanced perspective on this terrible moment in your life. The aim being to help you move through the upsetting circumstances and in the process learn even after we lose someone we can go on.
They believe masks do heal a person’s inner perception of a situation however awful. They also process even the most extreme traumas, like losing your whole family in the 2004 tsunami. The power these healers had on deeply distraught minds was documented at the time by other doctors, who came from around the world to help and witnessed extraordinary transformations. Like coastal people screaming and shouting, totally demented from losing everything, became calm during a lengthy devil dance. Viewing the afflicted holistically unravelling their pent-up feelings in what some might describe as a safe space created from the devil dancer’s dramatic performance, all while surrounded by their loving community, friends, and family.
Ultimately, mask dancing and music are about reframing and finding the pathway to healthier daily decision-making, whether it’s what you eat by putting more protein into your diet, the exercise you choose to take daily, or the range of people you surround yourself with. One very rich Western businessman had continual back problems and tried everything, including medicine and many operations that ultimately kept failing. However, after speaking at length to an Ayurvedic doctor in Sri Lanka, he was told the answer was simple: his office on top of the mountain was on a bumpy road, and biking up it was what was continually throwing out his back.
Going to a devil dance, where different healing masks were used and fire was thrown, shocked his mind into not just listening to their advice, but more importantly actioning it. Some people think it is the equivalent of jumping into a freezing bath of ice-cold water, which resets your cortisol levels. However, this is much deeper than that; it is acting on the advice of your unique circumstances, which have caused the problem in the first place. After returning home, the businessman moved his office, and his back issue has never returned.
The 18 Sanni Masks and the Demons They Banish
Shalini Gamage, who works in Sri Lanka’s hospitality industry and is closely connected to the traditional art of mask-making through her husband, artist Janaka de Silva, explains, “Masks are all about the power of believing in divine protection. They symbolise something much deeper than what we see painted on them. They are viewed symbolically, beyond their surface appearance, representing something more profound within us. The devil dancing masks we use for healing give our people the confidence to face our worst fears and, often without us realising it, help us deal with life’s challenges, however big, without falling apart in the process. There are no fixed boundaries or scientific proof for the success stories associated with devil mask dancing traditions. They are based on centuries of human observation and shared stories of healing, even from our Great Kings. Using masks for wellness is rooted in a deeply complex belief system. Even with AI influencing how we think about everything today, Sri Lankans continue to hold on to their inner emotional beliefs and rituals relying on ancient wisdom, passed down through generations to show them the way. Many believe that devil dancers wearing masks have divine powers to use cosmic forces from the universe to ward off evil, bringing healing to a person by drawing lots of positive energy into the body system and removing a malignant spirit that has entered and is playing havoc with their mind. Devil Dancing is always done with the aim of helping those experiencing deep mental trauma or incredible stress within their own families and communities to release it and look at the same problem in a different way.”
“They are based on centuries of human observation and shared stories of healing, even from our Great Kings.”
– Award-winning Sri Lankan artist Janaka de Silva
The main Sanni devil dancing mask, which you can see in the home of mask-making at Ambalangoda’s Mask Museum, is a symbolic representation of the 18 different physical and mental illnesses in the world, such as blindness, fevers, stomach pains, extreme migraines, and even toothache. Miyuru de Silva notes at Jetwing’s Mask & Tide in Ambalangoda that the team recognises the importance of sharing this lively, living wellness history, which treats the source of any health problem, even madness. He explains to bring back harmony into the body requires using the Ginni Raksha (fire demon) mask, with its terrifying, bulging, blood-red eyes that pop out of their sockets in order to shock the patient out of their fevered affliction. These highly detailed, demonic masks also feature flared nostrils, horrible, jagged, crooked, and broken teeth, large tusks or Dracula-like fangs, and a protruding red tongue, topped with a scary, Medusa-like head of cobras. The underlying philosophy is that these monstrous-looking, carved faces absorb the evil eye and stop it from entering your home—and, worse still, you.
Fire, Drums and the Thovil Ritual
Even today, if there is a serious problem in a community, an exorcist is called in to resolve the situation using Bali and Thovil—traditional rituals. These ceremonies are entirely distinct from the acrobatic Kandy fire dances created to entertain the king.
The demonic crew of healers wear a range of both scary and amusing costumes, they leap around until the early hours of the morning, or until they feel the spirits have departed. They use open flames and three distinct types of drums, playing each one to dismantle layers of destructive thoughts: the Gata Beraya, which produces a majestic sound often heard at Sri Lankan weddings; the Yak Beraya, a drum made from cow-stomach lining that induces a hypnotic trance; and the Dawla Beraya, a cylindrical drum that creates a heavy, echoing sound perfect for prayers.
Each drum alters the patient’s mental vibrations, repairing fractured thinking layer by layer by bypassing the conscious brain and interacting directly with the nervous system. This musical ensemble heals psychological distress, helping the person’s mind confront its inner fears within a safe, communal space. The rituals work like shockwaves, triggered by watching a performer swallow flames and spin fire torches in all directions without getting burned, even allowing the fire to touch their arms and legs. These sudden bursts of flame make onlookers fearful, serving as a powerful reminder of the importance of always living in the now—lest you find yourself singed by a fire-thrower because you did not move in time. It begs the question: where is your mind wandering to when they are leaping closer and closer, ankle bells ringing loudly and flames flying in all directions?
Janaka de Silva, an artist and curator of the Galle Fort and Underwater Gallery, explains that while many visitors buy these masks merely as souvenirs without realising their true significance, those who take his mask-making classes discover their immense cultural power. Creating a mask from a raw piece of balsa wood, he explains, becomes a wonderful form of mindful meditation; they forget everything else for a couple of hours as they concentrate only on carving the facial features of their mask with chisels and, once dry, painting them.
What the West Can Learn From Sri Lanka’s Devil Dancers
As the modern mental health crisis deepens globally, the West is looking with renewed interest at the power of unmasking illness through shock therapy, dance movement, and ancient frequency practices.
Janaka notes that this remains a vital heartbeat of the people who live down south in Ambalangoda’s rich cultural arts centre, where school children still craft masks like the Gini Jala Sanni (the disease-healing flame demon) after class, and generations of families sustain entire careers through carving and painting.
Today if you walk down the side streets of Ambalangoda and even on some houses in the ancient city of Galle Fort, these masks still guard the doorways of traditional family homes, serving as both art and armour against malevolent forces. Ultimately, the greatest lesson of the devil dance is not just about warding off internal demons, but about consciously choosing which kind of spirits we allow into our lives.
True wellness is far deeper than the food we consume or the daily yoga breathing we practice; it is found in the boundaries we draw, and having the courage to say “no” to toxic influences that drain our well-being.
Sri Lanka reminds us all of the importance of living in the present moment so we can fully experience and understand more about this fascinating transformative art form first-hand at either Elephant Drum events in Hikkaduwa or Ambalangoda’s Mask Museum.
