Category: Funeral Rites and Rituals Around the World

Dargavs’ City of the Dead Holds Centuries of Mysteries

Agricultural prosperity, Christian churches, and the City of the Dead attract tourists from all over Russia. In North Ossetia, there is a village called Dargavs, which has a peculiar history behind it. The City of the Dead, as the village is known, is the location where people who lived in surrounding valleys buried the ones they loved. Nearly 100 ancient stone crypts can be found in this cemetery – turned town. This open air museum for Ossetians stretches for seventeen kilometers and gives an understanding of how their ancestors lived more than 400 years ago. Belongings and clothes are also ... Read more

Dakhmas: Towers of Silence

The Zoroastrians believe that death is evil triumphing over good and, once the body is dead, demons have the ability to contaminate the corpse.  As the bodies could pollute everything due to their uncleanliness, a system of funerary rites was developed to ensure the body was disposed of as safely as possible. Hence the Dakhmas, or Towers of Silence, were born over 3000 years ago. Towers of Silence were cylindrical structures built of concentric stone slabs circling a central pit, and were typically built at the tops of hills.   The corpses of the deceased were placed onto one of four concentric ... Read more

Ghana’s Fantasy Coffins

Funerary tourist attractions?  It may seem like a long stretch, but the fantasy coffin market in Ghana has brought in tourists from all over the world eager to catch a glimpse or two of the weird and wonderful caskets.  If ever you’ve thought of wishing a loved one a fond farewell in a coffin shaped as a lion, plane, mobile telephone, bottle of beer, or a large shoe, you will find these odd creations and more, in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Joseph Ashong, known as Paa Joe locally, began making custom fantasy coffins in the 1950s at the ... Read more

New Orleans Jazz Funeral

New Orleans Louisiana is famous for its music, food, and voodoo, among other things, so it comes as no surprise that within the rich tapestry of New Orleans culture and history, there exists an equally rich funeral procession.  The jazz funeral incorporates New Orleans’ unique history of music with the city’s long-standing superstition of the dead, as well as the type of flair that only The Big Easy can manage. Unlike your typical service, the jazz funeral has an entire brass band waiting quietly outside for the church service to end and the coffin to be brought to the hearse. ... Read more

Space Burial

If you’re looking for a more futuristic way to say goodbye to your loved ones, why not blast their remains into space?  That is exactly the funerary service that’s been catching on thanks to private ventures like Elysium Space and Celestis, Inc. For just under two-thousand dollars, you too can send off a “symbolic portion” of a loved one’s ashes into orbit. After your loved one’s ash sample is loaded into a tiny capsule, the capsule is attached to a spacecraft along with those of others paying for service.  The spacecraft will be launched into orbit and remain in orbit ... Read more

Hanging Coffins of the Bo People

On a Cliffside in Sichuan province of southwest China hang over three hundred coffins, all of them several hundred feet up a sheer rock face.  While various forms of coffin hanging existed around China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, this particular location was done by the Bo people of southwest China. The Bo people flourished in Hemp Pond Valley for approximately four hundred years, three thousand years ago until mysteriously disappearing, leaving only their hanging coffins and cliff wall paintings. A small minority, the Bo people existed at a time when southern China was experiencing, famine, crop devastation, and more.   Their ... Read more

Sokushinbutsu: Buddhist Self-Mummification

Over one thousand years ago a priest known as Kuukai founded the Buddhist sect of Shingon in Northern Japan. Based on the sect’s belief that physical punishment was the path to enlightenment, the practice of Sokushinbutsu, or self-mummification, was born: a decade-long process of slowly poisoning the body in the hopes of achieving successful mummification of the tissues.   It is widely held that hundreds of Buddhist monks may have attempted self-mummification, but only around two dozen self-mummified bodies have been discovered to date. Monks who embarked down the path of self-mummification endured as much as ten years of torturous physical ... Read more

Famadihana: The Turning of the Bones

Every two to seven years, families of the Malagasy people of Madagascar gather for famadihana ceremonies to honour their deceased loved ones.   Known as “turning of the bones,” these ceremonies, which take place at the family crypt, are cause for joyous celebration.   The remains of the loved ones are brought out from the crypt, sprayed with perfume and wine, and wrapped in silk.  This vital part of their culture is how the Malagasy people maintain connection with the deceased. Famadihana is a huge two day festival in which the entire extended family travels in from far and wide to attend.   ... Read more

Aboriginal Death Ritual

The beliefs and rituals of the Australian Aboriginal peoples vary from tribe to tribe, region to region, all loosely pertaining to their concept of the cosmos and afterlife, known as “The Dreaming.”   Oftentimes, any number of methods may be used to dispose of the body and free the soul, including cremation, decay by exposure, and mummification.   There are different but distinct stages to these rituals, marking the separation of spirit from body. One interesting ritual involves laying out the deceased on a platform, with the body covered in branches and leaves, and the corpse is left to decay naturally.   The ... Read more

Tibetan Sky Burial

This is the first article in a new blog series brought to you by Sussex Funeral Services exploring funeral rites and rituals around the world.  Join us as we look into how different peoples both mourn and celebrate death. Jhator is the ancient ritual of death among Tibetan Buddhists that dates back over eleven-thousand years, and is still in practice today.  The earliest writings of this ritual are found in the Buddhist Book of the Dead, a guidebook on Buddhist customs surrounding death and reincarnation. It is believed to have been written sometime in the twelfth century, dictating a funeral ... Read more

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