Thailand's Vegetarian Festival 10 Horrific pictures from the world's most dangerous and biggest piercing festival [Graphic Content]

 Gruesome images have emerged from an annual vegetarian festival in Thailand where attendees pierce their faces with sharp objects and swords.

 

Gruesome images have emerged from an annual vegetarian festival in Thailand where attendees pierce their faces with sharp objects and swords.

The ritual, which is considered a tradition at the nine-day Taoist celebration has little to do with food, instead an assault for the most devout, on the body itself.

Celebrated among ethnic Chinese Thai, Thailand's Vegetarian Festival shows striking images of men and women with their cheeks and mouths pierced with large blades, needles, guns and other objects.

Other ceremonies are also held to invoke the gods such as fire walking and acts of self-mortification. The spectacular scenes attracting thousands of tourists each year.

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival is a colourful event held over a nine-day period in October, celebrating the Chinese community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health and peace of mind.

Though the origins of the festival are unclear, it is commonly thought that the festival was bought to Phuket by a wandering Chinese opera group who fell ill with malaria while performing on the island.

They decided to adhere to a strict vegetarian diet and pray to the Nine Emperor Gods to ensure purification of the mind and body. To everyone's amazement the opera group made a complete recovery. The people celebrated by holding a festival that was meant to honour the gods as well as express the people's happiness at surviving what was, in the 19th century, a fatal illness. 

Subsequently the festival has grown and developed into a spectacular yearly event that is attended by thousands with participants flying in from China and other Asian destinations.