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What they did with their dead ​….

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Markoid M
Markoid Jun 13, 2016 15:40:34
Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:
moss wrote:
Markoid wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Yes ,the more sanitised stuff is relatively recent and it's imagined that the beliefs and rituals are pretty similar even across Europe , when that is not the case .
Secondary burial is still carried out in southern and eastern Europe with attendant rituals that seem strange to us north westerners .
Rituals respect the dead and the living. I think that's where the word came from. A relegious term. Almost like a trance - like prayer.
Less sanitised, and please don't read the link if you are squeamish, is the Tibetan 'sky burials' and probably nearer in principle to the excarnation of the prehistoric period.

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~pamlogan/skybury.htm

It's likely that there was more to the rituals than just excarnation ,if contemporary practices from differing cultures are anything to go by .
Smearing yourself in the more liquid remains of the ancestors , takes a bit of beating .
Pretty much everything in meditation is to do with breathing. It is the essence and focus.

Try climbing in Nepal!

C carol27
carol27 Jun 13, 2016 17:42:36
Replying to Markoid

We seem to be so squeamish about death here. It's the one constant; it's what we all know will come & yet we tuck it away in sanitised rituals which are often deeply impersonal. I say keep me in the front room for a couple of days, just to make sure, then light a fire under me, somewhere else of course; though I do love graveyards.
I always think of the tale about Byron & Shelley when I think of grand gestures; where Shelley' s washed up on the shore, Byron plucks out his heart & a grand bonfire ensues. They knew how to do it in them days:)