In the southwestern reaches of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, among rice paddies and palace ruins, live the Bugis—a people of seafarers, merchants, and poets whose worldview refuses to be confined to a standard binary. Their language recognizes five distinct terms for various combinations of sex and gender: makkunrai (cisgender women), oroané (cisgender men), calalai (trans-masculine), calabai (trans-feminine), and bissu. While the first four categories belong to the earthly realm, the bissu occupy a space entirely their own. According to The Conversation, they are a class apart.
The bissu are not merely a fifth gender in a sequence, but rather something that exists above it. This is a gender that either encompasses all others or belongs to none—it essentially transcends the concept of gender altogether. It is precisely this sense of wholeness that grants them their sacred function. As priests and mediators between humanity and the spirit world, the bissu offer blessings, guidance, and healing, while also consecrating marriages, homes, and harvests.
The logic behind this is as rigorous as it is beautiful: as one bissu explained to anthropologist Sharyn Graham Davies, neither a man nor a woman possesses enough spiritual power (sakti) to be possessed by a deity (dewata). Since one cannot be a bissu without the capacity for such possession, being "in-between" is not a weakness but a prerequisite for contact with the divine, according to reports from PAIR and other sources.
The roots of this tradition are found in the La Galigo, one of the longest literary works in human history. This mythological creation epic was recorded by the Bugis in the ancient Lontara script between the 18th and 20th centuries, though it is based on a far older oral tradition. Its plot is a cosmogony of the world's origin. The earth (the "middle world") lay empty until the gods of the Upper and Underworlds decided to populate it by sending down their children: Batara Guru descended from the heavens, while We Nyiliq Timo rose from beneath the waters. They became the progenitors of the twins Sawerigading and We Tenriabeng; however, the brother’s forbidden love for his sister eventually drove him across the sea to China, where he married We Cudai, who resembled his sister, and their son, I La Galigo, traveled the entire world. Far more than a mere legend, the text served the Bugis as a calendar, a legal code, and a guide for living. These records are preserved through Wikipedia and other historical archives.
Crucially, only a bissu can properly recite the La Galigo. They are the masters of the sacred "language of the heavens"—Basa Torilangi—in which the manuscripts are written. The reading itself is performed as a solemn ritual. It begins with a rhythmic drumming and the burning of incense; once the drumming ceases, the bissu chant mantras and ask for forgiveness from the gods whose names are about to be invoked.
The most spectacular evidence of their mediation, however, is the trance state. At the climax of their rituals, the bissu perform the maggiri dance. During this ceremony, a divine spirit enters the bissu’s body, causing them to lose consciousness and gain invulnerability to sharpened iron. The maggiri involves ritual self-piercing: the bissu forcefully drive a sacred kris dagger into their most sensitive areas, such as the neck, palm, or eye. If the blade fails to penetrate even under heavy pressure, the bissu is considered "impenetrable" (kebal) and possessed by a powerful spirit—and thus capable of bestowing a potent blessing. According to local belief and research in Sage Journals, entering this trance is only possible by physically fusing masculine and feminine movements.
Remarkably, the arrival of Islam in the early 17th century did not initially disrupt this system. While the spread of Islam challenged the bissu’s claims to divine status, the priests peacefully coexisted with the new faith for a long time. The true catastrophe arrived later—and from within Indonesia itself.
In the 1950s, a rebellion led by Kahar Muzakkar’s "Islamic State of Indonesia" declared the bissu to be violators of Islamic principles. They were hunted down, murdered, or forced to behave as "normal" men. The campaign was named, without a hint of irony, "Operation Repentance." Those who survived were forced to hide in caves.
Today, the tradition rests on just a few pairs of shoulders. Anthropologists estimate that fewer than forty bissu remain in all of South Sulawesi, and not all of them are still capable of performing the maggiri. Elders are passing away, and there is a shortage of successors. Nevertheless, every planting season, bissu like the aging Nani lead processions to the water for the mappalili ritual, walking beneath ornate ceremonial umbrellas. Though they number fewer than forty, they remain a vital bridge between the human and the divine.
