7 posts tagged “life”

There were other, officially proscribed varieties of Christianized magic. The demonology and angelology contained in the earliest grimoires assume a life surrounded by Christian implements and sacred rituals.

The underlying theology in these works of Christian demonology encourages the magician to fortify himself with fasting, prayers, and sacraments, so that by using the holy names of God in the sacred languages, he could use divine power to coerce demons into appearing and serving his usually lustful or avaricious magical goals. Not surprisingly, the Church disapproved of these rites.

As I already mentioned before, magic as part of ancient history became one of most popular object of study and multiple researches for many scientists and enthusiasts, especially, in the last two decades. Magic is generally seen as a ritual or supernatural practice to influence the world, but distinct from religion or science.

In the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans, the public and private rituals associated with religion are accepted by historians and archaeologists to have been a part of everyday life. Ready examples of this phenomenon are found in the various state and ancient cult temples, Jewish synagogues and in the early Christian cathedrals and churches. These were important hubs for the ancient peoples of the Greco-Roman world that were representative of a connection between the heavenly realms and the earthly planes.

As I already mentioned, I am engaged in a lot of researches based on history and culture of various nations. I have to travel a lot because my assignments and research differ. For example, recently, my employer - funeral home directory asked me to find out more about Sikh funeral traditions. Here is what I found in brief.

In Sikhism death is considered to be a natural process. An event that only happens as a direct result of God’s will. To a Sikh, birth and death are closely associated, because they are both part of the cycle of human life which is seen as transient stage towards Liberation, complete unity with God. Sikhs also believe in reincarnation. The soul itself is not subject to the cycle of birth and death. Death is only the progression of the soul on its journey from God, through the created universe and back to God again.

The public display of grief at the funeral, such as wailing or crying out loud is discouraged and should be kept to a minimum. Cremation is the preferred funeral method of, although if this is not possible any other methods such as burial at sea are acceptable. Worship of the dead with gravestones, etc. is discouraged, because the body is considered to be only the shell and the person’s soul is their real essence.

On the day of the cremation, the body is taken to the home where hymns, the Sikh Scriptures are recited by the congregation, which induce feeling of consolation and courage. The relatives of the deceased recite sitting near the coffin. At the conclusion of the service, the coffin is taken to the cremation site. The ashes are later collected and spread in the nearest river. Sikhs do not erect monuments over the remains of the dead.

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?

Naturally, our famous pirates were not unemployed, there was a constant demand from France and England for able and ruthless sailors that could be used as a striking force. Infamous great pirate Henry Morgan was on the rise when he started recruiting his sailors from Tortuga for his great and cruel expeditions against Spanish colonies. France was also trying to bribe the pirates, so it could create a stronghold in the Caribbean.

The fun for the pirates ended with the Treaty of Ratisbon in 1684 signed by major European powers. The piracy in the Caribbean grew to such extent that part of this treaty is dedicated to the united decision to put an end to piracy in and around Tortuga. And several years earlier English parliament forbade pirates to sail under foreign flags. The punishment for disobedience was death in the gallows.

Most of the pirates, especially those who had families did not want to end their life dancing on the rope, so they had to join English fleet and hunt their own pirate buddies who were still sailing under the flag of a Jolly Roger. That was the end of the free pirate life on the Turtle Island.

In the 18th English nobleman Matthew Robinson suddenly became a big supporter of baths. He was born in the aristocratic family and later inherited a title of Lord Rokeby. Matthew was acting normal for the first part of his life but later changed his ways and became quite an eccentric. We don’t know what happened, it might well be midlife crisis. We just know when his eccentricity originated. When Matthew inherited big estate new Canterbury. That is when he became an extreme enthusiast about baths.

This passion was definitely very bizarre even for our modern times, so you might imagine how it looked like in the eighteenth century. Lord Rokeby daily went to the seashore to swim in salt water regardless of the weather. He spent so much time there that sometimes he even fainted and had to be rescued. Most of the times his servants had to come to the seashore to convince Matthew to return back home. Along the route to the beach he built drinking fountains and in the end of the road, right on the seashore he built a hut. His servants would follow Lord Rokeby in the carriage with full livery while he walked all the way to the hut. And if he noticed a person drinking from his fountain, he would give him a tip.

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Japanese concept of chivalry Bushido, which means "Way of the Warrior", is a Japanese code of conduct and a way of life. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery and honor unto death. Bushido expanded and formalized the earlier code of the samurai According, to the Bushido ideal, if a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by performing seppuku. It was a detailed ritual of suicide, that was committed voluntarily by the samurai.

But not many Westerners, know that there was another form of seppuku. Unlike the seppuku that we saw in Kurosawa movies, in practice the most common form of seppuku was obligatory. It was a form of capital punishment for disgraced samurai, who committed a serious offense such as unprovoked murder, robbery, corruption, or treason.

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