5 posts tagged “cultures”

I was always interested in the ancient belief in magic from the perspective of history. It was always amazing to learn how different cultures tried to attach to natural phenomenon supernatural powers. After all, magic, sometimes also known as sorcery, was formed as the whole conceptual system that asserted human ability to control the natural world, including events, objects, people, and physical phenomena, through mystical, paranormal or supernatural means. The term can also refer to the practices employed by a person asserting this influence, and to beliefs that explain various events and phenomena in such terms. Even today, as well as in the past, in many cultures, magic is under pressure from, and in competition with, scientific and religious conceptual systems. As a web analyst I had to go through so many Internet documents to understand how ancients view magic. I learned many things about magic when I was doing a new salvo of researches for my funeral home directory.

So, let's start with the land of magic, India. All in all, it has been often stated that India is a land of magic, both supernatural and mundane. Hinduism is one of the few religions that has sacred texts like the Vedas that discuss both white and black magic. There are Vedas  that deals with mantras that can be used for both good and bad. The word mantrik in India literally means "magician" since the mantrik usually knows mantras, spells, and curses which can be used for or against forms of magic. Many ascetics after long periods of penance and meditation are alleged to attain a state where they may utilize supernatural powers. However, many say that they choose not to use them and instead focus on transcending beyond physical power into the realm of spirituality. Many wizards, called siddhars are said to have performed miracles that would ordinarily be impossible to perform.

You know, what they say - death is a part of life. Before I started working for funeral home directory, I was always history, music, art, and literature fan, over the years I built a close circle of friends who share same interests with me. I guess, this is why I want to write some blog entries about life and death and funeral traditions that vary all over the world. So people developed very interesting rituals in various cultures. I got somehow very passionate about these topics.

As you know, a funeral is a ceremony marking a person’s death. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor. These customs vary widely between cultures, and between religious affiliations within cultures. In some cultures the dead are venerated; this is commonly called ancestor worship. The word funeral comes from the Latin funus, which had a variety of meanings, including the corpse and the funerary rites themselves.

Funeral rites are as old as the human race itself, as well as other hominids. I read in a local library that in the Shanidar cave in Iraq, Neanderthal skeletons have been discovered with a characteristic layer of pollen, which suggests that Neanderthals buried the dead with gifts of flowers. Go figure! These Neanderthals also believed in an afterlife, and in any case were aware of their own mortality and were capable of mourning. Isn’t that something?

It is very interesting phenomenon: mostly all Austronesian people, Including Polynesian trace their origin to some mystical land that they call Hawaiki. While doing my research for web analytics company, I found something else. Polynesian cultures have ancient oral traditions that say that they migrated from their homeland Hawaiki to the islands in the Pacific Ocean in open canoes. Maori people of New Zealand also trace their ancestry to groups of people who traveled from Hawaiki in open canoes.

In the same oral traditions the legendary land of Hawaiki also serves like some kind of place where the spirits of Polynesian people return to after death. In New Zealand Maori people even give possible pointers to the direction in which Hawaiki may like.

Before the advent of DNA analysis many anthropologists doubted that a deliberate migration in open canoes ever happened. They preferred to believe that the migration occurred accidentally when seafarers became lost and drifted to uninhabited shores.

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As with many concepts in the Kalachakra Tantra, the idea of Shambhala has alternative meanings. Shambhala is not an ordinary country. It exists as a physical place, although only individuals with the appropriate karma can reach it and experience it as such. One can not actually arrive there, unless he has the merit and the actual karmic association.

Various cultures place Shambhala in central Asai, north or west of Tibet. Some texts identify it with the Sutlej Valley in Himachal Pradesh. Mongolians name the location of Shambala at certain valleys of southern Siberia. But they all see Shambhala kingdom as enlightened society that people of all faiths can aspire to and actually realize. The path to this is provocatively described as the practice of warriorship — meeting fear and transcending aggression, and of secular sacredness — joining the wisdom of the past and one’s own culture with the present.

According to "Secrets", one of the underground colonies, was also the seat of government for the network. While the whole place is an inner continent, its satellite colonies are smaller enclosed ecosystems located just beneath the Earth’s crust or discreetly within mountains. Cataclysms and wars taking place on the surface drove these people underground. The Sahara, Gobi, the Australian Outback and the deserts of the southwestern US are said to be but a few examples of the devastation that resulted. The sub-cities were created as refuges for the people and as safe havens for sacred records, teachings and technologies that were cherished by these ancient cultures.

The inhabitants of Agartha are said to have scientific knowledge and expertise far beyond that of the people who live on the surface of the planet, and lost technology from the days of Atlantis. They all follow what is known as the Ancient Path and do not interfere in the lives of humans that live above the surface. Nor is there any interaction between them. All entrances to Agartha from any other part of the planet are hidden safely. They are secured by illusory technology that is beyond the comprehension of modern science.

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