"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" - this phrase from the prayer is familiar even to those who have never crossed the threshold of the church. She is consonant with the phrase from the book of Genesis: "We are made of dust: you are dust and you will return to dust …". In Christianity, death is central. After all, its main symbol, the crucifixion, is an instrument of torture and execution. Christians even have special death days, such as Good Friday and All Saints' days. Indeed, the days of most saints are celebrated on the day of their death, and not on the day of their birth. Virtually all cultures have death rituals that range from simple to complex, and in some cases, they are downright awful.
For example, the Bushmen from the Kalahari Desert leave the bodies of the dead where they died and leave these places for many years. Which is completely different from the burial rituals in modern Western culture, with expensive and cozy mahogany or walnut coffins.
In many Mediterranean and Asian cultures, professional mourners loudly mourn the dead, in some cases cremating or even removing flesh from bones. The Zoroastrians placed the dead on the tops of specially built towers, and the Tibetans still practice “heavenly burials”, leaving the bodies of their loved ones on the tops of the hills.
Muslims, for example, try to bury the body as quickly as possible - ideally before the next sunset. In Indonesia, funerals take months or years after a person's biological death. For this, the corpse is mummified and remains in its home. He is dressed, just doesn't speak, as if he were still human. After a few years he is buried Even a few years after the funeral, he may be exhumed, put on new clothes and buried again.
Why are death rituals so universal and so universally diverse at the same time? Why is there so much noise around death? Many religious traditions answer that this is done for the good of the dead, in order to facilitate their transition to the afterlife. However, psychologists believe that death rituals are invented by people in order to suppress their own sorrows and anxieties. Indeed, there is ample evidence that rituals serve to control emotional responses.
Research conducted by researchers at Harvard University has shown that rituals dull feelings of grief, including grief over the death of a loved one, help you cope with bereavement, control your emotions and not feel helpless in the face of death. It turned out that the lack of funeral rituals causes a long-term feeling of grief.
Rituals also serve to overcome your own fear of death. In addition, rituals attended by a large number of people strengthens a sense of cohesion, which helps to feel stronger and more confident. There is another interesting idea that is found in the works of Sigmund Freud, but has not yet been sufficiently studied, death rituals help people cope with feelings of guilt when they are disposing of a corpse. People need symbolic rituals to help them understand that the dead cease to be human and become objects that can be abandoned.
In a sense, death rituals, in which the dead are not buried for many years, are no different from Muslim or Christian traditions, where corpses are cremated or buried underground. Yet despite the vast variety, death rituals serve to make people feel less helpless in the face of grief and fear.
Promotional video:
Voronina Svetlana