burial ceremonies and rites

There are 3 most important ceremonies and rituals related to 3 most important parts of someones life. The first is of course the birth, second is when you are getting married and death. All of these are important because you are making some kind of crossing over. First is more than obvious, you are starting your life. Second is the moment when you are crossing from childhood into adult period of your life and the last one is a terminate one, or maybe not so terminate as more as a crossing over. In many cultures there is a belief in life after death.

Not in all civilizations the cult of dead is seen in the same way. Even though in many traditions you will find that death is not a terminal thing and it just represents a crossing into another way of life? and in some cases in another form of living. Not sure if I can say living here, but anyhow, the crossing over is never simple and some rites must be performed to ensure the safe crossing over. From the rites as placing coins on the decedent’s eyelids, so the deceased could pay his crossing to the other side. (example: Greek mythology, crossing over river Styx), etc.

And above all, the rites are also performed because no one wants a vengeful spirit to hunt you over. In Mongolia it is known that lamas put blue stones with the body to prevent the spirit to come back. In some cultures no animals are allowed to enter in the room where the dead body is, because it is believed that the spirit can enter into the animal and from there can travel anywhere. Also after taking the body to the place where it should be buried, everything must be cleaned and all the garbage should be thrown through the window, it must be somehow related to cleaning the space of that death related atmosphere.

In Serbian mythology for the first time we find a therm, you all know, “vampire”. This is probably the only word from this language used in all other languages. Contrary to believing that vampires come from Transylvania, this phenomena is first born in this country. Lets see how the cult of dead is related and described in the culture where the vampire is “born”. Vampires are demons related to the cult of ancestors. Vampire is a dead body who “came alive” in the middle of the night and wonders around, and often strangles people and sucks their blood. Not all the bodies can turn into vampires. Only the ones who died in unnatural way or the ones committed suicide, the bodies of the ones who were not grieved enough, the ones who died in dark…etc. Most of the time vampires are correlated with the demonic spirit, but it is also known that vampires tend to help their families. To prevent someone of becoming a vampire, there are some rites which are to be done. An egg should be broken on the place where the body was lying or on the place where the dead man head was an iron nail should be nailed and an olive or silver coin should be put under the decedent’s tongue. After all this the grave should be rimmed with sand while magical words are said: “When you count all this sand, than you can rise from dead”. If a vampire anyhow comes back from the dead, the grave is found with a completely black horse. Where he stops, the dead body is dig out and stabbed with wooden stake and than it is burned.

Burning the dead body was a practice for a long time. With the Christianization the burying of the body in the ground became a “trend”. You will still find this is India and some other countries like Bali, etc. This was noticed in Indian culture, too. This was also something what Vikings did. Since they were known as the men of the sea, dead bodies were placed into the boat and burned, leaving the boat to burning and floating on the water. All that fire never brings any good. It is known for many years that a woman was sacrificed with burning alive along with personal belongings and her late husbands dead body. Specially if some great warrior or a noble man dies, the woman was burned along with him. Vikings, as cruel as they are, they went even further with it. The deceased’s wife was passed from man to man in his tribe, who all made love to her (some would say raped) before strangling her, and placing her next to the body of her man. Thanks to new age this came to an end.

One of the best known burials is Th Sky Burial. In Tibet people are not buried into the ground, but the body is left to be eaten by animals. This sounds bad when I say it like this, but first lets take a look on facts. Tibet, the country surrounded by snowy peaks, and ground too solid for traditional earth interment it sounds practical. But this is not only a practical thing it a cultural thing, too. Buddhists on Tibet perform Jhator. The worthless body provides sustenance to the birds of prey that are the primary consumers of its flesh. To Buddhists, the body is an empty shell, worthless after the spirit has departed. So, before you call someone barbaric you must know all the facts. All of this sounds logical to me. I don’t know why Chinese outlawed the practice after taking control of the country in the 1950s.

There are a lot of different burial ceremonies and rites which are so amazing, because dealing with death and lost is not an easy thing. Never was and never will. Cooping with the fact of being mortal is though. Today even more, when most of the beliefs are gone and the only explanation the science is giving us is that when you are gone there is nothing, people feel a little bit lost. Death will fascinate as well as life. There are no real right rites and right way of burring someone. It all comes to what you are believing to be the right thing. With one notice: Do not kill anyone!

Author: Stela Todjeras Copyrighted © paranormalhaze.com