Boiling water and hot embers

Related Dispatches:

Full Frame: Walking through fire, literally

Priests flagellate themselves with boiling water and walk across hot embers in a Shinto purification ritual.

Full Frame features photo essays and conversations with photographers in the field. See more Full Frame galleries here and here.

Purification rites are at the heart of Shintoism. Perhaps the best known is the ceremony performed prior to the creation of a new building — a ritual many in the auto industry have witnessed before the construction of a new Japanese car-manufacturing...

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