Magic for death and remembrance

Death and remembrance bring some of the most elaborate rites in the world, aimed at guiding the dead, protecting the living and keeping the bond between them. They include the Hindu cremation and Pitru Paksha offerings, the Tibetan Buddhist bardo teachings, the Jewish shiva, Islamic burial customs, the Irish wake, Chinese ancestor offerings, the Mexican Day of the Dead, the Ghanaian fantasy coffin and Aboriginal mourning rules. This page describes them as customs.

Guiding the dead

Many traditions see death as a journey that needs help. Hindu rites are said to carry the soul onward, Tibetan Buddhist texts guide the dead through an intermediate state, and ancient Egyptian rites prepared the dead for judgement. In many Chinese and Southeast Asian families, paper money, houses and goods are burned so the dead are provided for. Many such customs came from a time when disease and decay posed real danger, and the rules about touching and washing the body reflect that.

Protecting the living

The dead can be feared as well as loved. Customs aim to keep them from returning wrongly: covering mirrors in Jewish and some European homes, leaving by a different door, throwing salt, and cleansing after a funeral. Some Aboriginal communities do not speak a dead person's name for a time. Mourners often observe set periods and then rejoin ordinary life. In Judaism and Islam, burial is quick and simple, and mourners follow a defined period of grief that gradually returns them to normal life.

Remembrance and ancestors

In Mexico, families set out an ofrenda with photographs, marigolds and the favourite foods of the dead. In China, the Qingming festival sees graves swept. In West Africa, the dead are honoured as ancestors and consulted. In Madagascar, the famadihana turns the bones of ancestors in fresh cloth. Such rites are an active relationship. Rites for the dead continue after burial: remembrance days, annual visits to graves and prayers that mark anniversaries keep the memory of each person present.

Law, cost and exploitation

Funeral cost can be heavy and open to exploitation, and fraudulent mediums prey on the grieving. States regulate disposal of bodies, and some traditions, such as sky burial in Tibet and Hindu open-air cremation, have been restricted at times. Grief support from friends and professionals matters beside any rite. Grief takes many forms, and a rite does not replace mourning, though many mourners find that a shared ritual gives the first days a shape and gives friends and relatives something to do.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Ushabti: Unknown author, CC0, source

Chinese burial money: Gary Todd, CC0, source

Scarab: Unknown author, CC BY 4.0, source

Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs: Hunefer, Public domain, source

Hypocephalus: rob koopman, CC BY-SA 2.0, source

Lecanomancy: Author Robert Burns Translator Alexander Smith Illustrator C. A. Vande, Public domain, source

Lithuanian mythology: Prussian historian Christophorus Hartknoch (1644-1687), Public domain, source

Djed: Anonymous ( Egypt ) Unknown author, Public domain, source

Isis: Ägyptischer Maler um 1360 v. Chr., Public domain, source

Menat: Anagoria, CC BY 3.0, source

Jet: Thmsfrst, Public domain, source

Ancient Egyptian religion: Moh hakem, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Domovoy: Ivan Bilibin, Public domain, source

New England vampire panic: no credited author, Public domain, source

Shi: Jason Zou, Public domain, source

Eye of Horus: Tangopaso, Public domain, source

Plummet amulet: The Art Institute of Chicago, CC0, source

Death and remembrance: practices that mark them