Before a Trunyanese person’s body ever lies under the Taru Menyan, their ari-ari—placenta—is buried in ceremony. This is the first burial, the first act of return, and it occurs at birth, not death. The placenta, which nourished the baby in the womb, is not discarded as medical waste. It is honoured, wrapped in white cloth, placed within a coconut shell, and buried beneath a specific tree in a grove known as the placenta cemetery.

The Trunyanese are not permitted to keep or bury the placenta within their own homes. This is partly because priests frequently visit households to conduct ceremonies and rituals that bind the community and maintain spiritual harmony. The presence of the placenta at home is considered too sacred and private, requiring it to be entrusted to the grove. Keeping it at home would risk disrupting the delicate balance of ritual life, as well as exposing it to everyday disturbances. The placenta must rest undisturbed, far from the bustle of daily life, in the quiet grove reserved solely for this purpose.

The site itself is humble. No grand offerings, no markers. Yet it holds deep significance. Boys are buried on one side, girls on the other, following the spiritual geometry of the village. Each tree bears silent witness to dozens, even hundreds, of such burials. The roots absorb not just nutrients, but lineage. Memory.

In Balinese thought, the placenta is often considered the baby’s spiritual sibling or companion—something intimately connected to the soul’s earthly journey. Its burial ensures protection and grounding. To walk the earth disconnected from one’s placenta would be, spiritually speaking, to walk untethered.

This act of returning something vital to the earth at the beginning of life mirrors the final act of returning the body after death. Birth and death are not opposites in this worldview—they are mirrors. One begins with a burial. The other ends with an exposure. Together, they create a circle that reaffirms the body’s deep, eternal belonging to the land.

By the time a Trunyanese person reaches death, they have already been symbolically buried. The body’s final resting place at Seman Wayah isn’t a sudden break. It’s the closing of a circle that started long ago, in the blood and breath of life’s first moment. Death folds the body back into the land, completing what birth began. In the bones. In the roots. In the lake’s ripple. In the smoke curling from incense laid gently beside the skull of someone once held, once loved, and still remembered.