A chapter on the myths of death and the afterlife from around the world in honour of Samhain from my upcoming book,"Circle Of Genuine Meaning": - Mairead Ashcroft 31/10/16
Death
"For centuries, artists produced 'memeto mori', works of art that would remind their viewers of death and usually featured a skull and hourglass.The point of these works wasn't to make people dispair but to help them use their thought of death to focus on the real priorities. Vivid reminders of mortality and the transient nature of life put our prosaic obsessions to question. When measured against the finality of death, the true insignificance of some of our worries is emphasised and we're given an opportunity to feel a little braver about what we really want to feel...." (The Book of Knowlege)
Heavenly Bodies and Empire of Death by Artist Paul Koudounaris
Is
it the dread of the absence of life, the only state of being that most of us
has ever known, that creates our angst around death or is it possibly the fear
of the most allusive, the unknowing of what may lie ahead, that promotes the
idea of life after death? Buddhist and Hindu religions believe in life after
death in the form of re-incarnation. They believe that if you live a righteous
life you will return, possessing a higher level of existence. This is a very
basic descriptions of the philosophy of Karma. The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Bardo Thodol, was brought to light in to the general population somewhere between
1326 and 1386. This Buddhist, Nyingma literature is a directional manual for
those who wish to master transformation from re-birth or the Bardo in the
afterlife. Christianity teaches life after death in the presence of heaven and
hell. Both Christianity and Judaism recognise the body as belonging to the
earth and the soul as belonging to God. Jannah is an eternal place for Muslims,
possibly the Islamic concept of paradise or heaven. Apparently, King Solomon said, “The dust will
return to the ground as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it”
(Ecclesiastes 12:17) It would seem that the religions of the world find it
necessary to provide some sort of comfort to its people with regards to the
finite nature of death. Like the Vikings longing to go to Valhalla and the
Egyptians wishing to be chosen by Osiris, cultures globally, sought answers to
their fate after death. “Mankind everywhere, in Mexico and Iceland, in Zululand
and China, makes more or less the same wild guesses in its convulsive effort to
solve the riddle of existence…In very early times that idea flourished not
alone among the Babylonians and Egyptians, but also among the barbaric tribes
in and around Greece…These mysteries [came] down from Thrace or across the sea
from Egypt and Asia Minor…They declared that for every man, no matter how poor
or vicious, there was a place in heaven.”
(Lewis Browne, 1926)
According to Greek Mythology, Eos
is goddess of the dawn became infatuated with the young Tithonus but
experienced such distress at the thought that he was not immortal, as she was
that she begged Zeus to grant her lover immortality. Myth says that Eos,
“cherished him in her house and
nourished him with food and ambrosia”. Sadly,
as happens to all human bodies and minds, Tithonus aged, becoming so depleted
of physical strength, “that he could not even lift his withered limbs. Eos was
unable to cure him of his miseries, but because of Zeus’s intervention she was
equally unable to let him die. Finally, she laid him in a room and put to the
shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength such as
once he had in his supple limbs.” (Atul
Gawande, 2014) Among
traditional Indigenous Australians beliefs there seems to be no such thing as a
natural death. All deaths may be considered to be the result of evil spirits or
spells, usually influenced by an enemy. “A dying person may whisper the name of
the person they think caused their death. If the identity of the guilty person
is not known, a "magic man" will watch for a sign, such as an animal
burrow leading from the grave showing the direction of the home of the guilty
party. This may take years but the identity is always eventually discovered.
The elders of the clan or tribe of the deceased then hold a meeting to decide a
suitable punishment. A Kurdaitcha may or may not be arranged to avenge them.
The practice of Kurdaitcha had died out completely in Southern Australia by the
20th century although it was still carried out infrequently in the North. The
practice, in regard to bone pointing by itself, does continue into modern times
albeit very rarely.” (Baldwin Spencer
& F.J. Gillen, 2010)
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| Eos and Tithonus |
Even as a child I have always been
somewhat in wonder of death and what it might be like to exist without the life
force that keeps us animated as we know each other in daily life. I have often
been drawn to the macabre elements that exist in the experience of being human
and have at times been tagged with the “weird” label which I am quite ok with.
I have been known in the past, to wander cemeteries and been fascinated by
stories that I have conjured up in my own mind about what the diseased person’s
life may have been like. Of course I was only able to make limited assumptions
and guesses with the often small amount of information shared on their tomb
stones. But as the old quote by Mark Twain says, “Never let the truth get in
the way of a good story.” As a Catholic child who was also born into Celtic
traditions of songs and sometimes bizarre and wonderful legends, I was often
excited at the time of all souls and all saints day, celebrated on the 31st
October and the 1st November every year. I loved the thought of
ancestors being free to roam the earth at will and looked forward to a time
when I would have this experience. Yes, I suppose maybe I am little weird!
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| Wiccan Wheel of the Year |
I hope you enjoyed this little intro to my knowledge on some of the global myths around death and the afterlife.
My book " The Circle of Genuine Meaning", will hopefully be ready to purchase mid 2018 depending on the happenings of life. I am still in the editing stage so I apologies for any spelling and grammar mistakes but I hope you connect to the energy.
References:
-Atul Gawande,2014, Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters in the End
-Baldwin Spencer & F.J. Gillen, 2010, Native Tribes
of Central Australia, Cambridge University Press, Pg.476 – 477
-Devros Isabelle, 2014, Little monsters play on All Hallows Eve,10-31
-Lewis Browne, 1926, This Believing World, Pg. 96-99
-The Book of Knowledge, Memento Mori, Self- Knowledge:
Chapter 4, thebookoflife.org
-Robert Chambers, 1954, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, Volume 1
-Yanagita 2015. When" is Obon. Spiritual Dance in Midsummer Night
Live your Bliss
Mairead
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