The world of the living and the world of the dead. Connection of the world of the dead with the world of the living Music as a key to the world of the dead

Numerous historical facts, documented and confirmed by independent investigations, confirm that this is not a myth, but an objective reality.

Usually such intermediaries are called "mediums" or "mediators" - since the word "mediator" itself is translated as "intermediary".

One of the well-known mediators was the English woman Rosemary Brown. Despite the lack of a serious professional musical education, the woman became famous for composing works in the style of famous but long-dead composers.

Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov - when professional music researchers analyzed the opuses written by Rosemary Brown, an almost literal match of styles with the manner of composition of great authors was confirmed.

Once, during an interview, Rosemary Brown told a correspondent that the spirit of Franz Liszt was currently in the room. The journalist decided to check the reality of the presence of the great composer and began to speak in German, which Rosemary Brown did not know. For Liszt, German was his native language.

After that, the female medium told the correspondent that, as confirmation, Liszt had put the dead mother of the interviewer into the room. What was the reporter's astonishment when Rosemary described in detail the appearance of her dead mother. Although, it is clear that the possibility of their meeting with Rosemary in the past is practically zero.

Music as the key to the world of the dead

Talented musicians often perform as mediators between the world of the dead and the living. Some modern composers are distinguished by their ability to create works in the style of famous composers of the past with the utmost precision, down to the smallest detail.

In particular, the members of the Beatles in their later work released collections of songs, each of which was very accurately written in a style that the guys definitely did not have enough time to study in detail.

Imagine - twice a year the Beatles, who did not have a regular musical education, released two albums of 12 songs, written in completely different styles of different times and peoples.

There is only one conclusion left here - John Lennon and Paul McCartney acted as mediators between the world of the dead and the living.

There is a case with the British pianist John Lill. As the performer himself said, during the concert he suddenly noticed that a certain vague figure was watching him, in which the musician saw the famous composer Beethoven.

The presence of such a great musician from the past inspired John Lille and helped him perform his part superbly.

Another British musician, Clifford Entiknap, recounted that the spirit of Handel appeared to him and handed over for publication and performance an oratorio that had never been performed or known at all. Musical critics confirmed that the work exactly corresponds to the style of the legendary polyphonist Handel, moreover, in the smallest details.

Here we can assume that the famous composers of the past, now deceased, did not have time to fully realize their creative ideas. Thus, through intermediary mediums, composers who have gone to another world, often by a very premature death, are trying to realize interrupted creative plans.

From the point of view of rigorous science, these amazing facts are quite understandable.

The universe is a kind of information-time continuum, in which, like in a broth, absolutely all the information that has ever appeared is “boiled”.
Mediums have an incomprehensible ability to enter the space-time continuum of the universe and extract from there some information that dead people possessed, who did not have time to publish their creative products during their lifetime.

However, mediators between the world of the dead and the living found not only in the world of art, but also in other spheres of life.

Healing Mediums

The Brazilian miner Jose de Freitas, who received almost no education and did not study at medical schools, over the years of his life managed to make accurate diagnoses and help several million people heal.

José de Freitas received about 1,000 sufferers a day and instantly, after one glance at the patient, sketched a diagnosis and a prescription on a piece of paper.

Doctors analyzed the treatment methods of Jose de Freitas, conducted research and found out that more than half of the recommendations helped people to recover. By the way, the rest of the exact diagnoses turned out to be unconfirmed only because the researchers did not have the necessary modern medical equipment at their disposal.

How could a simple miner without education make such accurate diagnoses and prescribe effective treatment? Presumably, José de Freitas became an intermediary between the deceased doctors and patients.

Famous healers of the past, who are now deceased, were invisibly present at every reception of patients by José de Freitas. It was they who gave the healer and the medium exact recipes and recommendations on how to treat this or that patient.

How to become an intermediary between the world of the living and the dead

Unfortunately, such "schools of wizards" as described in Emily Rose's Harry Potter novels do not exist in the real world. Often the reason that appear mediators between the world of the dead and the living become tragic events.

Often, people who have received complex injuries of the head and body, who have experienced severe mental shocks, become mediums.
Some people are born with the ability to mediate, but do not know about it until they come to the attention of professional psychics.
With long and intense practice, almost anyone is able to master psychic abilities.

How do mystics explain all this? The bottom line is that the average, ordinary person is overloaded with everyday worries, as a result of which there is simply no energy left for the perception of other worlds.

People who have experienced serious traumas and tragedies suddenly begin to realize and understand that everything that we pay so much attention to in everyday life does not really matter much.

Having ceased to worry about the routine, a person accumulates excess mental energy. And then, upon reaching a critical level of energy, the perception of other worlds occurs by itself.

And traditional rituals such as mirrors and glass balls, dark rooms - all this is just a way to get rid of the remaining doubts and blockages of the mind.

The world of the living and the land of the dead

Another symbol of the spiritual world was the realm of the dead - "an unknown land from which there is no return to earthly wanderers" (79) .

“A common idea regarding the fate of the souls of the dead,” writes the famous historian and ethnologist S. A. Tokarev, “is the belief in a special world of souls (“the other world”), where they go after the bodily death of a person. Almost all the peoples of the world have this faith, although with great differences” (80) .

Concepts about the location of the world of souls are very diverse. The location of the land of the dead among different peoples depends on the living conditions, the surrounding landscape (steppe, mountains, forest, sea, island), on the level of development, on acquaintance with the outside world, on burial customs.

Among the most backward peoples, ideas about this are extremely vague: the world of souls is “somewhere out there” (sometimes a certain direction is indicated) - beyond the forest, beyond the river, beyond the mountains.

Talking about the ideas of Australian aborigines, J. Fraser writes: “When asked where a small body (that is, a soul. - Auth.) left after death, some answered: it went behind the bushes, others - it went into the sea, and still others said they did not know ”(81).

Usually in such cases, the realm of the dead is separated from the world of the living by a water barrier - a river, a sea.

Among the coastal peoples and islanders, especially in Oceania, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe afterlife, located somewhere overseas, on an island. Among the peoples of Oceania and Eastern Indonesia, one can observe various shades of the idea of an island world of souls; for some it is one of the neighboring islands, for others it is a mystical island somewhere far to the west. Since the islanders of Oceania do not know any other form of earthly land, except for the island, then the land of the dead is drawn to them as an island; where the souls of the dead go. This is the case, for example, with Polynesian beliefs.

Perhaps these beliefs reflected the influence of the practice of water burial, especially in its more complex form - sending the corpse in a boat to the open sea: it is, as it were, sent to the overseas world of souls. Such, perhaps, is the origin of this belief in Melanesia, where the island of souls is not the mythical Far Island, but one of the nearby islets.

It should not be thought that such ideas are peculiar only to the primitive peoples of Oceania or Australia. In ancient times, they existed everywhere, including in continental Europe, where the role of the "island of souls" was played by "foggy Albion" - the current Great Britain, separated from Europe by a strait. Procopius of Caesarea, historian of the Gothic War (6th century), gives a story about how the souls of the dead are sent by sea to the island Brittia.

"Along the coast of the mainland (France. - Auth.) live fishermen, merchants and farmers. They are subjects of the Franks, but they do not pay taxes, because from time immemorial they have had a heavy duty to transport the souls of the dead. Every night the transporters wait in their huts for a conventional knock on the door and the voices of invisible beings calling them to work. Then people immediately get up from their beds, impelled by an unknown force, go down to the shore and find boats there, but not their own, but others', completely ready to go and empty. Carriers get into the boats, take up the oars and see that, from the weight of numerous invisible passengers, the boats are sitting deep in the water, a finger from the side. In an hour they reach the opposite shore, and meanwhile, in their boats, they could hardly have managed to overcome this path in a whole day. Having reached the island, the boats are unloaded and become so light that only the keel touches the water. Carriers do not see anyone on their way and on the shore, but they hear a voice that calls the name, rank and kinship of each arrival, and if this is a woman, then the rank of her husband ”(82) .

At a time when a significant part of the Oikumene had already been explored and settled and there was no place left for the land of the dead, the world of souls began to be placed underground, under water, in the sky. There was an idea of three tiers of the world, in which the middle tier is the ordinary world - the “world of the living”, and the other two tiers - the upper (“sky”) and the lower (“underworld”) belong to the world of spirits. The main division remained the same: into the world of the living and the kingdom of the dead.

ill. 29. The world of the living and the country of the dead according to the ideas of the inhabitants of the island of Kalimantan, Indonesia.

“According to the views of many peoples, the universe consists of three spheres: the underworld, the world of people and the heavenly world. Through this three-part division, the more ancient one, the two-part division, is clearly visible” (83) .

In Oceania, there is a belief about the world of souls under the water: it is noted in New Caledonia, in the Bismarck archipelago (the souls of the dead are in the river under water), in the Marquesas Islands, in Samoa, etc.

The idea of underworld shower. It is possible that this idea was influenced by the custom of burying the dead in the ground or burying them in caves (84) . But there were other roots of this belief; in particular, they point to its connection with volcanism: where there are active volcanoes, there is often a belief that the souls of the dead descend through the crater of the volcano into the underworld. This is the case, for example, in South Melanesia.

Finally, many peoples place the world of souls On sky. This idea is, for example, among some Australian tribes: Kurnai, Wakelbura, in some places also among the peoples of Oceania.

Sometimes the location of the souls of the dead is localized more precisely: the stars, the Milky Way, the Sun. The connection of the dead with the stars is noted in the beliefs of various peoples - from the same Australians to the peoples of Europe. Some authors point to the connection between the idea of the heavenly world of souls and the practice of cremation: the rising smoke from a burned corpse symbolizes the rise of the spirit of the deceased to heaven.

With the complication of religious ideas and the development of social differentiation of society, the geography of the kingdom of the dead also became more complicated. It began to appear heterogeneous, divided into different areas intended for the spirits of various categories of people.

“Among the overwhelming majority of peoples,” noted S. A. Tokarev, “and even among relatively backward ones, the idea of the location of the souls of the dead is differentiated and the same place is not indicated for all the dead (just as the same place is not used for all funeral ritual). The motives for which one place in the afterlife is destined for one dead, and another for the other, are different. Sometimes moral motives are indicated: they say that the good will go to some bright place, and the evil ones to a dark one.<…>Various afterlife is associated in many peoples with the type of death, and with the performance by relatives of the funeral ritual, with their observance of established customs and restrictions ”(85) .

In developed religions, combined options for the location of various parts of the afterlife are offered. For example, Christian church tradition places the abode of righteous souls in heaven, and the prison of the souls of sinners, where they endure torment, in the underworld.

However, in all cases, the "kingdom of the dead" was presented as a kind of parallel reality, inhabited, unlike the world of the living, not by bodily beings, but by the souls (more precisely, spirits) of the dead (86) . That is, by and large, there are two worlds - our ordinary world and the world beyond the grave. “In my opinion, he is somewhere outside this world,” shared his opinion, who lived in the 4th century, St. John Chrysostom in conversations on the epistle to the Romans (31, 3-4).

And our contemporary American Orthodox ascetic Seraphim Rose spoke more extensively. In his opinion, “these places are outside the ‘coordinates’ of our space-time system; an airliner does not fly "invisibly" through paradise, and the Earth's satellite - through the third heaven, and with the help of drilling it is impossible to get to the souls awaiting the Last Judgment in hell. They are not there, but in a space of a different kind, starting immediately here, but stretching, as it were, in another direction” (87) .

Thus, being seemed to be split into the physical world and the spiritual world.

According to the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, Death and Sleep were brothers, the sons of Night, who lives in a country that the sun never illuminates with its rays.

“There are chambers of motionless sleep.

Does not reach there, neither ascending, nor ascending, nor descending,

The sun from the century as a ray: clouds and fogs in a mixture

There the earth evaporates, there is a vague twilight forever.

With its song never there, a sentinel bird with a crest

There are no dogs, no geese, the minds of dogs surpassed.

There is no cattle, no beast, no branches under the windy wind

They can’t make a sound, no human disputes are heard there.

Complete peace reigns there,

Reported by Ovid (88).

From this we can conclude that the parallel world we are considering is devoid of ordinary life manifestations, material properties.

Researchers of ancient cults and superstitions note the opposite of the properties of the world of the dead and the world of the living. In the “other world” everything is different, “everything is the other way around” - a thing broken in the human world will turn out to be whole there, a person who died here will live there. The image of spirits walking "knees back" (89) also belongs to similar ideas.

According to the Ainu, pokna mosir(the lower world where the dead dwell) everything is different than on earth ainu mosir- Ainu country): people walk upside down, trees grow upside down, etc. (90)

Thus, it is emphasized that earthly laws do not operate in another world, and the properties of this world are opposite to the properties of ours, the physical world.

The idea of the inversion (reversal) of the “other world” in relation to this was also preserved by later religions, in which this idea was interpreted in the spirit of the doctrine of posthumous retribution. Let’s take a look at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God (as opposed to this world, which belongs to the rich and noble. - Auth.);

Blessed are the hungry (hungry. - Auth.) now, for you shall be satisfied;

Blessed are those who mourn now, for you will laugh;

Blessed are you when people hate you (in this life. - Auth.) and when they will excommunicate you, and will vilify<…>Rejoice in that day and rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven<…>.

On the contrary, woe to you rich! for you have already received (here. - Auth.) your consolation. Woe to you who are now satiated! for you will hunger (you will starve in the other world. - Auth.). Woe to you who laugh today! for you shall mourn and mourn” (Luke 6:20-26).

It turns out that this and that worlds are mirror opposite, like the world and the anti-world. Knowledge of this made it possible to give quite practical recipes for how to secure a better fate for oneself in the "other world."

In the physical world, the life of people is short-term, transient, because the inhabitants of this world are mortal. And in that parallel world there is no death, but there is eternal existence. You can, of course, try to get along well in this life, get all the pleasures that it can provide from it, but all this will soon pass, as a hangover or love ecstasy passes, and then you will have to pay for these short-term pleasures for an eternity, dragging out a miserable existence in "underworld". Is it not worth sacrificing the fleeting pleasures of this temporary life for the sake of eternal bliss in that one? And for this, you must deliberately deprive yourself here of what you want to receive there and, on the contrary, subject yourself to those troubles that you would like to avoid in eternal life.

Sell all your possessions and give money to the poor - in this way you will secure wealth for yourself. Leave your family and children - this will allow you not to be left alone in toy life and live forever surrounded by loving relatives. Put on rags, take a beggar's bag - and go begging. Then you will never be in need and will always be fashionably dressed. Even better, catch some nasty disease that will ensure you eternal health. If you are afraid of physical pain - ask to be whipped or something heavy dropped on your leg, at worst, pinch your finger in the door. If ambition gnaws at you, if you secretly dream of fame and fame - well, try to lead a lifestyle that everyone condemns, dishonor your honest name with bad deeds, or better yet, commit such meanness that your fellow citizens curse you as a traitor and expel you. from the city - then for sure in the next life they will honor you as their ruler and erect a monument during your lifetime.

It may be said that we are exaggerating, but how else can the following statements be understood:

“Indeed, this is the highest asceticism when [a person] suffers from an illness. Who knows this, acquires the upper world ”(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, V, I).

“Whoever leaves houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands,<…>receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Matthew 19:30).

Nemo sine cruce beatus - “There is no happiness without the cross (suffering. - Auth.)” ( lat.).

Via cruces via lucis - "The Way of the Cross is the way of salvation" ( lat.).

Some early Christian heresiarchs, on the basis of such considerations, prescribed strict asceticism, and sometimes castration - in anticipation of endless centuries of pleasures, others, on the contrary, recommended unbridled debauchery and all forms of crime in order to enter a new life as unshakable righteous. It is difficult to judge the reliability of such testimonies, because they are drawn from the indictments, while the heretical writings themselves were usually burned, often along with their authors.

We are interested in something else, namely, similar statements from various sources that the properties of the parallel world are completely opposite to the properties of our world. From this we draw a simple and obvious conclusion: if our world, as we reliably know, is material, then that other world, in everything opposite to ours, is non-material.

This text is an introductory piece. From the book Words and Things [Archaeology of the Humanities] author Foucault Michel

From the book Symbolic Exchange and Death author Baudrillard Jean

DRIVING THE DEAD Compared to the savages who called "humans" only members of their tribe, our definition of "Human" is much broader, now this concept is universal. In fact, this is what is called culture. Today people are all people. AT

From the book Eden Unchained author Stolyarov Andrey Mikhailovich

6. IN THE KINGDOM OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD Man is a by-product of love. Stanisław Jerzy Lec From the Darkness The “Freudian” division of the psyche into consciousness and subconsciousness, which apparently began about two million years ago1, can be, regardless of beliefs, religious or

From the book Course in the History of Ancient Philosophy author Trubetskoy Nikolai Sergeevich

The Cult of Heroes and the Dead and Religious Psychology In addition to numerous gods and demons, the Greeks honored heroes and the dead. Homer's epic knows only living heroes; its dead are bloodless, powerless and unconscious shadows, like dreams and so unable to

From the book Discourses on Religion, Nature and Reason author Le Bovier de Fontenelle Bernard

DIALOGUES OF DEAD ANCIENT AND MODERN PERSONS Anacreon, Aristotle Aristotle. I would never have believed that a songwriter would dare to compare himself with such a glorious philosopher as I am! Anacreon. You attach too much importance to the word "philosopher"! As for me, I

From the book Gods, Heroes, Men. Archetypes of masculinity author Bednenko Galina Borisovna

CREATION OF "LIVING" MECHANISMS The revival of the inanimate is the prerogative of only two types of gods in different mythologies. The artisan gods animate the masterpiece he created, the deities of the magical sense create a living thing almost out of nothing, from what came to hand, from various

From the book Fundamentals of the Science of Thinking. Book 1. reasoning author Shevtsov Alexander Alexandrovich

Conclusion of living reasoning Living reasoning is not at all like the reasoning of logic. And I begin to understand why logicians, the further, the less they say that logic is the science of reasoning. She really went from reasoning to something else, let's say, to a work

From the book Risk Society. On the way to another modernity by Beck Ulrich

Solidarity of Living Beings At the heart of this solidarity is fear. What is this fear? How does it affect the formation of certain groups? What worldview is it based on? Impressibility and morality, rationality and responsibility, which in the process of realizing the risks then

From the book The Atman Project [A Transpersonal Perspective on Human Development] author Wilber Ken

Tibetan Book of the Dead Something happened to you even before you were born. You can think of it metaphorically, symbolically, mythically or take it literally - but something definitely happened to you before you were born. In this chapter I

From the book On learned ignorance (De docta ignorantia) author Kuzansky Nicholas

CHAPTER 9 CHRIST, THE JUDGE OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD What judge is more righteous than the one who is justice itself? Christ, the pinnacle and beginning of every rational creation, is that greatest reason (ratio), from which every reason, and reason, after all, makes discerning judgments; That's why

From the book War and Anti-War author Toffler Alvin

Risen from the dead All these tensions widen other global chasms. The rise of religious fanaticism (not just fundamentalism) is infecting the whole world with hatred and suspicion. A handful of Islamic extremists are spouting ravings about a new crusade when

From the book Shameful Pleasure. Philosophical and socio-political interpretations of mass cinema author Pavlov Alexander V.

From the book Problems of Life and Death in the Tibetan Book of the Dead author Volynskaya Ludmila Borisovna

Why the Tibetan Book of the Dead is close to me We are all born in an unconscious state and do not remember our birth. Consciousness and memory come to us gradually. At about three or four years of age, the child emerges for the first time out of chaos, out of the oceanic waves of the unconscious and

From the book Jewish Wisdom [Ethical, spiritual and historical lessons from the works of the great sages] author Telushkin Joseph

Different status of the living and the dead For the sake of a one-day-old baby, you can violate Shabbat. But for the sake of David, king of Israel, already dead, Shabbat cannot be broken. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 151b The Talmud naturally refers to the infant whose life in

From the book Process Mind. A Guide to Connecting with the Mind of God author Mindell Arnold

CHAPTER 12 The Ghosts of the Dead in Your Body Symptoms The process mind helps you deal with internal problems, bodily tensions, and social conflicts. In all these areas, we have considered you, your body or other people as possessing

From the author's book

Ghosts of Dead Soldiers One way to learn more about ghosts is to read what people write or say about life before they die. What they write continues to live after death. For example, in the April 2, 2007 issue of Newsweek, I read the article “Voices of the Fallen,”

A small chapel is located on the territory of a Buddhist temple complex in the city of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture (in the early 2000s, this area became part of the "Greater Tokyo"). The architects not only reconstructed a forty-year-old building, they built a complex path to it, filled with traditional symbols, but in line with modern ideas about the farewell ritual. Firstly, the high fences separating the buildings of the complex were removed. Secondly, the path leading from the temple and the hall of farewells to the ossuary, where the burials are located, was made perfectly straight and planted with trees and flowers (a visual demonstration of the change of seasons and the passage of time). Thus, it was possible to clearly distinguish between the zone of burial and the zone of veneration. Around this path, a symbolic path of tranquility and remembrance was organized with a cleansing washbasin, benches, several statues of the Buddha and Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha.

Ossuary Chapel of Hassoden © Masao Nishikawa

In order to finally get into the ossuary, one has to cross the steps of a small artificial reservoir, symbolically separating the world of the living and the world of the dead. The total area of the three-story building, trimmed on the outside with black wooden planks, is less than 200 m 2. The architects chose the shape of a regular octagon, symbolizing the universe. There is a mandatory washbasin at the entrance. The dim light in this zone helps to prepare psychologically for the changing worlds. Further, the visitor gets to a winding staircase placed in an earth-filled volume with a light hole at the very top and finds himself almost literally underground. The space of the ossuary itself continues to form a model of the Universe: rays of light breaking through the cracks of the black bamboo ceiling are perceived as stars, and the illuminated cell doors represent planets.

Ossuary Chapel of Hassoden © Masao Nishikawa

The architects emphasize that they thought of their building not as a gloomy temple of sorrow, but as a place of bright memory and the triumph of life, important and even attractive for many generations. Such an integral and natural part of family leisure: children first come here very young, with their parents, and play in the water of the pond, then, having matured, already with their own children, and at the end of their lives they find rest here and their already grown children bring little ones to the temple grandchildren. It turned out to be an extremely visual image of the eternal circle of life. And unexpectedly symbolic in this context is the name of the bureau that turned the “architecture of death” into the “architecture of love”.

Ossuary Chapel of Hassoden © Masao Nishikawa

History of Religion Zubov Andrey Borisovich

"WORLD OF THE DEAD" AND "WORLD OF THE LIVING"

“They buried their dead in the ground,” wrote S. G. F. Brandon, “because they were convinced that the abode of the dead was underground ... The provision of the dead with objects that they needed in this life, apparently, can be explained by that primitive people were absolutely unable to imagine life after death in any other way than the life that they knew here on earth. This statement of the largest religious scholar in a special work devoted to the posthumous judgment in the beliefs of various peoples is remarkable for its specificity. But in reality, it is very stupefying to the ancient man, who knew perfectly well that the interred dead man lies where he was buried, does not use any tools and does not eat anything from the food left in the grave.

The funeral rite of prehistoric man should at least assume that in the minds of those who performed it there was an idea of the duality of human nature, of the body rotting in the grave, and of the soul that descends into the "abode of the dead." Accordingly, the soul needs not the material objects themselves, but their “souls”. Just as on earth a corporeal person eats material food from an earthen cup and strikes the enemy with a battle ax, so in the world of souls, the soul of the deceased is able to eat the soul of food and strike the soul of the enemy with the soul of an ax. In order for a person to “give up his spirit”, for the soul to be separated from the body, the death of the material body must necessarily occur. In order for the souls of objects to become part of the world of the deceased, they, as material objects, must also die. Hence - a fairly common custom of later centuries - to kill slaves and wives on the graves of their masters and husbands and the tradition dating back to the Neolithic of breaking dishes and other household items on the grave. The tearing of clothes as a sign of mourning for the dead goes back, perhaps, to the same series of symbols.

But, although knowledge of the fact of the dual, and even ternary (spirit, soul and body) nature of man can already be found in the earliest eras of the existence of the genus Homo, in the middle and even in the early Paleolithic (Zhou Koudian's Sinanthropes), his explanation of the fullness of the funeral ritual hardly possible. First, the body is buried, the body is given a fetal or sleeping position. This means that they believe in awakening, in the rebirth of the body, which means that the ancient otherness of man is not limited by the life of the soul, but they are waiting in the future for some wonderful moment when the souls will reunite with the bodies and the dead will wake up. Secondly, the breaking of gifts for the dead is a rather late and not universal custom. Rather, here we are faced with a secondary rationalization of the funeral ritual. Initially, the posture given to the body of the deceased, and food, and objects of labor, and weapons placed in the grave, emphasized, symbolically denoted that the deceased was alive, that death was his temporary state.

In other cultures, to signify this fact, they resorted to other symbolic rows and did not accompany burial with objects of earthly life. Yes, and the tradition of the earth, recorded from the Mousterian burials of the Neanderthals, arose not from the desire to “bring” the deceased to the underground abode of souls, but rather from a simple and at the same time infinitely deep conviction that Mother Earth, from which the body was taken, should be returned to her. And she, the Earth, when the time comes, will revive the seed of heavenly life, the Eternal Sky. And again, only a secondary rationalization connected the abode of souls, the kingdom of the dead, with the underworld, precisely because the bodies of the dead were placed in the earth from ancient times in anticipation of the resurrection. We will see how they fight, how the heavenly, extraterrestrial and underground locations of the souls of the dead coexist in the most ancient written cultures - in Sumer, in Egypt.

Neolithic burials, in comparison with the Upper Paleolithic ones, may surprise you with the poverty of grave goods. In the protoneolithic and early neolithic period, the dead become part of the world of the living, and therefore their life does not need to be marked with funeral "gifts". The skulls of the dead stand in the house next to the hearth, the bones rest near the altar. With those who no longer “exist”, this cannot be done. The dead in that era were not only considered alive, but their life was the most essential support for the life of the living.

In those cases where burials were made in the open air, we find a thick layer of ash on the mortuary altars. In Nahal Oren, it reaches half a meter. To whom sacrifices were made on the graves of ancestors - the deceased themselves or their Creator - is not clear. But one thing is absolutely clear - the fiery sacrifices could not be offered to those who live "under the earth." Fire ascends from earth to heaven, and the object of the sacrifice of the Natufians (Nakhal-Oren, one of the Natufian settlements in Palestine) had a heavenly nature. When the ideas about the underground topography of the world of the dead became fixed, the sacrifices to the dead began to be performed differently - the blood of sacrificial animals was supposed to nourish the earth, and the altars themselves, for example, in the Greek hero cult, were arranged below ground level.

Burials with hoofed horns in the hands or on the chest of the deceased (for example, Einan), and later with amulets in the form of bull heads (Sesklo, Thessaly, VI millennium BC) certainly indicate the purpose of the posthumous journey - to Heavenly God. The expectation of a journey is indicated by the frequent finds of dog skeletons near human burials (Erk el-Ahmar, Ubeid, Almiera). Sbaka, the hunter's guide in this world, turns out to be an understandable symbol of the right path during the transition to other existence. Dog-headed Anubis, Kerberos are a late memory of this early Neolithic image.

Burials under the floors of houses and inside settlements, characteristic of the early Neolithic, remain common in the sacred cities of the 7th-6th millennia. More than five hundred burials were found in Catal Huyuk on an excavation area of half a hectare. They buried under the beds of residential buildings, and men - under the corner bench, and women along the long wall. Mellart suggests that living men and women slept on these same benches. In addition, many burials were found in oval pits outside the houses. Quite a few people are buried in shrines. In the sanctuary VI. 10, 32 skeletons were found, in the sanctuary of vultures (VII.8) - six burials. Mellart notes that the clothes, jewelry, and belongings of those buried in sanctuaries are usually much richer and more varied than those of those buried in houses and oval pits. The scientist suggests that the remains of high priests rested in the sanctuaries, who during their lifetime performed sacred rites in them. It is noteworthy that burials are completely absent in utility yards and storehouses. This indicates that the choice of burial places by the Chatalhuyuk people was not accidental. They were buried not there "where it is simpler", but where they considered it necessary.

The location of the bones of the skeleton, the incompleteness of the skeletons indicate the secondary nature of the burials in Catal Huyuk, and it was impossible to do otherwise with the desire of the townspeople to live in the same houses with their dead. A number of sanctuary wall paintings show that the bodies of the dead were left outside the city on light platforms for excarnation (disintegration of soft tissues). Then the cleaned bones were wrapped in clothes, skins or mats and buried in houses and shrines. The remains were sent in ocher and cinnabar, the skulls in the neck and forehead were painted with blue or green paint. Small “gifts” were placed with the buried, but there are no figurines and ceramics in the graves of Çatal Huyuk. Sometimes the skulls, as in the beginning of the Neolithic, were separated from the skeletons and placed openly in sanctuaries.

The "holy cities" seem to complete the tradition of the 10th-8th millennia BC. Since the 6th millennium, a new trend towards the division of the worlds of the dead and the living has become more and more noticeable. In the Hassun culture (Mesopotamia, 7th-6th millennium), the dead, as a rule, are already buried outside the settlements. Only the bodies of children and adolescents continue to be buried under the floors of houses. In Byblos of the 6th millennium, only children's burials were found under the houses, in which human bones are sometimes mixed with sheep's. Such burials were made in special small vessels. The almost complete absence of adult burials indicates the presence of special cemeteries.

Such "cemeteries" or transitional forms such as "houses of the dead" were soon discovered. In Byblos, this is the building "46-14", under the floor of which more than 30 people are buried, in Tell as-Savan (Middle Mesopotamia) - building "No. 1" of the VI millennium, under which in the pits for 30-50 cm more than a hundred secondary burials were located below the floor level.

At the same time, the skulls of deceased relatives, which used to be often placed along the walls and around the hearth, also disappear from the interiors of dwellings. The same tendencies are noticeable in the burial customs of the Danube Plain of the 6th millennium. Adults here are now rarely buried under houses, but usually outside the settlements, in caves or in special cemeteries.

The reasons for the change in a seemingly established custom can be understood, since the change did not extend to children. For some reason, the inhabitants of the Middle Neolithic believed that it was precisely those who died in adulthood that needed to be separated from their homes, interred in the ground or in cemeteries or in special "houses of the dead." But how are children different from adults?

Like Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, the inhabitants of the Neolithic settlements believed that dead children would become adults in other existence. In the same Tell as-Savan, children's burials are indistinguishable from adults in terms of inventory, they do not contain special children's things. Therefore, it was not age itself that confused the living, but something only partly connected with the years of earthly life, and not with “age” in eternity. It should be noted that even at present in India, the common law for all Hindus on the cremation of the dead does not apply to children under five or six years of age and to saints. These “exceptions” are usually explained by the fact that small children are still free from sin and therefore do not defile the earth with themselves, and the holy ascetics destroyed everything sinful in themselves through asceticism. It is very possible that people of the middle Neolithic thought in this way and therefore stopped burying adults in their dwellings. The adults were wrong.

The concept of sin is one of the most important in most religions. Its essence is that a person willfully violates some laws established by the Creator of the world. If everything in the world - both living and non-living - naturally follows the rules that are laid down in the foundation of the universe, then a person may or may not do it. He's free. This freedom is not unlimited. In some way, like all living beings, a person instinctively obeys the natural law - he is not able to freely refuse to drink, breathe, sleep, although he can significantly limit his needs and desires by an effort of will. But somewhere, and in a very vast area of his actions, a person is completely free. He can do bad things to other people, or he can help them, he is able to sacrifice himself for the sake of his neighbor, he loves, and he can even demand sacrifices from other people. Each of us makes many times a day, often without noticing it, such choices between good and evil, good and bad. For the religious mind, good is not just what people have agreed to consider as such. Good is an objective institution of God for man, it is the will of God in relation to man, it is, if you like, the law prescribed to him by the Creator, following which he will certainly achieve happiness, since God is good.

On the contrary, evil is a departure from God into self-will. Contempt for the law given to man by the Creator. Since God is the only primary source of life, the departure from Him is death, the transformation into nothing. Sin - this is such self-destruction, although from the point of view of the person who commits the sin, he asserts himself, realizing the goals he has set for himself. A person cannot fully understand with his mind, for some reason it’s good, but this is bad, and the desire for something bad, moreover, often obscures his eyes. Hence, the law is the objectified, but not explained, will of God. In many religions, it is the divine law that is the thread leading a person to his Creator, to bliss and immortality.

The separation of funeral customs, differences in the topography of the burials of children and adults with the greatest certainty can be explained precisely by the consciousness of the sinfulness of an adult. But so is the conviction of the sinlessness of babies. Therefore, we can assume that in the Neolithic era, sin was considered the work of man himself, his free volitional choice. It is clear that the baby cannot yet make such a choice and therefore retains sinlessness. The deceased adult begins to be recognized as a receptacle of sins that can pass on to the living, who continue to live in the house where he rests. After all, the idea of the interchange of forces between the living and the dead over several millennia of the division of the house and the cemetery has already formed the basis of the religious existence of man, bringing to life, as we suggested, both settled life and domestication. But then, in the Protoneolith and Early Neolithic, this "reciprocity" was perceived as a blessing, but now - as a harmful danger. And the dead leave the world of the living. From now on, their abode is the necropolis - the city of the dead, the cemetery.

It is noteworthy that around the same time, the sanctuary finally turns into a temple, separating from the dwelling. The living, not only the dead, but also themselves, do not consider themselves more worthy of constant standing before God and the shrine. They are sinful in their daily lives, and therefore, in order not to provoke the wrath of the Divine, it is better to separate His house from one’s own and visit the House of God on special days in a state of purity, purity.

Isn't this exacerbation of the experience of sin connected with the penetration of anthropomorphism into the iconography of the Creator? That is, when people were able to liken God to themselves, thereby saying that they are like God, they carry His image in themselves, they acutely felt their own imperfection, that the divine in them was suppressed by the human, the good - by the evil.

Be that as it may, but at that time in the burials, still poor in inventory, often only one deliberately placed object is found - this is a vessel of various shapes, but always small. Sometimes there are several such vessels. They are placed at the chest and arms, less often at the feet and crown of the deceased (Tell as-Savan). In the burials of the Samara culture (Mesopotamia, 6th-5th millennium BC), a small stone figurine with a cup on the head was placed in the hands, on the chest or at the head of the deceased. J. Ots, who devoted a special work to these figurines, noticed that the decorations of the figurine and the body of the deceased, near whom it was placed, coincide. In the Ubeid culture (4th millennium), ceramic plates with cups overturned on them are found in burials.

Judging by the later analogues of already historical time, all these vessels and cups contained vegetable oil. Apparently, it is from the 6th-5th millennia that the custom of anointing the bodies of the dead, which is widespread and now in many religions of the western half of the world, comes. What did oil symbolize?

Funerary vessel from Tell Arpachia

The drama of the struggle with death is beautifully depicted in a burial vessel from Tell Arpachia (Mesopotamia,VImillennium). A skull was buried in it. The outer wall of the vessel is ornamented with Maltese-type crosses and bull heads. Also depicted is a huge burial vessel, over which two people leaned. Between their hands is a cup, apparently full of oil. The inner wall contains a scene of the battle of the deceased with death, personified by a predatory beast. There is also a bull and two women with flowing hair and underlined gender signs are holding a funeral cloth.

The hot and dry climate of the Near East quickly dries out the skin. Under the merciless rays of the sun, it cracks, begins to ooze with ichor, causing severe suffering to a person. But, if vegetable oil is rubbed into the skin, the suffering stops. The skin becomes elastic and soft again, painful cracks are quickly healed. This softening effect of the oil must have attracted the attention of ancient man. In addition, oil feeds the fire of the lamp. The wick saturated with it burns, but does not burn out. The second quality is a beautiful image of prayer, the first is mercy. The combination of these two qualities in one substance corresponded very well to the religious feeling - a prayer directed to God evokes His mercy, which softens the wounds caused by sin.

The dead are all the more in need of God's mercy. He is already powerless with good deeds to correct the evil he has done in life. Relatives of the deceased can only hope for the mercy of the Creator. And therefore, vessels with healing oil are placed near the body of the deceased. Oil is a symbol of God's healing of a person suffering from the flame of sin.

The feeling of sin, the experience of one's own poor quality, depravity, materialized in the separation of the house from the cemetery and the sanctuary, in the widespread use of oil in the funeral rite - a feature of the Neolithic. Realizing his inconsistency with the Creator, a person with a new dramatic force begins to look for ways to overcome the clearly seen gulf between himself and God.

From the Sutra of the Basic Vows of the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha author Buddhism Author unknown -

Benefits for the living and the dead CHAPTER SEVEN At this time, the mahabodhisattva Ksitigarbha said to Shakyamuni Buddha, “World Honored One, I can see that the beings in Jambudvipa committed sins in body, speech and mind. If they have any opportunity to do something good, then

From the book Afterlife the author Fomin A V

ABOUT WHY NOT ALL LIVING INTERCESSION IS BENEFICIAL TO THE DEAD, AND NOT ALL DEAD ARE BENEFICIAL INTERCESSION OF THE LIVING Man must live for God and for his neighbors; the name of God must be sanctified in his life and work. Activity must be founded, dissolved and directed by the heavenly,

From the book History of Religion author Zubov Andrey Borisovich

“WORLD OF THE DEAD” AND “WORLD OF THE LIVING” “They buried their dead in the ground,” wrote S. G. F. Brandon, “because they were convinced that the abode of the dead was under the earth ... Providing the dead with objects that they needed in this life, apparently, can be explained by the fact that

From the book On learned ignorance (De docta ignorantia) author Kuzansky Nicholas

From the book Explanatory Bible. Volume 5 author Lopukhin Alexander

2. And I have blessed the dead, who have died long ago, more than the living who live until now; 3. And more blessed than both of them is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. Violence, the oppression of the strong and rich over the weak and poor, has penetrated to such an extent

From the book Explanatory Bible. Volume 12 author Lopukhin Alexander

19. And when they say to you: turn to the callers of the dead and to sorcerers, to whisperers and ventriloquists, then answer: should not the people turn to their God? Do the dead ask about the living? These signs are sufficient for the believer. To nothing therefore to turn to a different kind

From the book God and Man. Paradoxes of Revelation author Pechorin Viktor Vladimirovich

Chapter XV. About the resurrection of the dead. Closely connected with the belief in the resurrection of the dead is the belief in redemption (1-34). How the dead will rise and in what body they will exist (35-58) 1-34 From ecclesiastical, moral and liturgical questions Ap. now proceeds to the dogmatic question -

From the book of the Bible. Modern translation (BTI, per. Kulakov) author bible

From the book You can't live without love. Stories about saints and believers author Gorbacheva Natalia Borisovna

God is not of the dead, but of the living 23 On that day the Sadducees came up to him, who claim that there is no resurrection of the dead, and asked him: 24 “Master! Moses said: “If someone dies childless, then the brother of the deceased should marry his widow and continue the family of his brother

From the book Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Volume II author Bulgakov Makariy

God is not of the dead, but of the living 18 Also the Sadducees, who claim that there is no resurrection of the dead, came to Jesus and asked Him: 19 “Teacher, Moses gave us this ordinance: “If a brother dies childless and leaves his wife a widow then let another brother have it

From the book Conversations on the Gospel of Mark, read on the radio "Grad Petrov" author Ivliev Iannuary

God is not the dead, but the living 27 Then some of the Sadducees came up to Jesus (they deny the resurrection of the dead) and asked Him: 28 “Teacher, Moses gave us this ordinance: “If someone’s brother, being married, dies childless, then let him brother will take his widow as his wife and

From the book The voice of the devil among the snows and the jungle. Origins of ancient religion author Beryozkin Yury Evgenievich

From the author's book

§ 263. Preliminaries of the universal judgment: a) the coming of the Lord, Judge of the living and the dead. The coming of the Lord to earth as Judge of the living and the dead: this is the first great event that will take place on the last day of the world! 1) The reality of this future, the second

From the author's book

§ 264 b) Resurrection of the dead and change of the living. On the same last day (John 6, 40, 44) and at the same time as the glorious descent of the Lord from heaven to earth, surrounded by celestials, He will send His angels before Him with a great trumpet voice (Matt. 24, 31), and

From the author's book

8. God of the living. 12.18-27 - “Then the Sadducees came to Him, who say that there is no resurrection, and asked Him, saying: Teacher! Moses wrote to us: if anyone's brother dies and leaves a wife, and leaves no children, then let his brother take his wife and restore seed to his brother. There were seven

From the author's book

Feast of the Living and the Dead Let's go back to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. In one of the showcases of the department of South America, an exhibit that is not very remarkable at first glance is exhibited - a wooden flute that has dried out from time to time, or rather, a pipe about a meter long. Visitors

“They buried their dead in the ground,” wrote S.G.F. Brandon, - since they were convinced that the abode of the dead was underground ... The provision of the dead with objects that they needed in this life, apparently, can be explained by the fact that primitive people were completely unable to imagine life after death in any other way than the life they knew here on earth.”

This statement of the largest religious scholar in a special work devoted to the posthumous judgment in the beliefs of various peoples is remarkable for its specificity. But in reality, it is very stupefying to the ancient man, who knew perfectly well that the interred dead man lies where he was buried, does not use any tools and does not eat anything from the food left in the grave.

In order for a person to “give up his spirit”, for the soul to be separated from the body, the death of the material body must necessarily occur. In order for the souls of objects to become part of the world of the deceased, they, as material objects, must also die. Hence - a fairly common custom of later centuries - to kill slaves and wives on the graves of their masters and husbands, and the tradition dating back to the Neolithic of breaking dishes and other household items on the grave. The tearing of clothes as a sign of mourning for the dead goes back, perhaps, to the same series of symbols.

First, the body is buried, the body is given a fetal or sleeping position. This means that they believe in awakening, in the rebirth of the body, which means that the ancient otherness of man is not limited by the life of the soul, but they are waiting in the future for some wonderful moment when the souls will reunite with the bodies and the dead will wake up.

Secondly, the breaking of gifts for the dead is a rather late and not universal custom. Rather, here we are faced with a secondary rationalization of the funeral ritual. Initially, the posture that was given to the body of the deceased, and food, and objects of labor, and weapons placed in the grave, emphasized, symbolically denoted that the deceased was alive, that death was his temporary state.

And again, only a secondary rationalization connected the abode of souls, the kingdom of the dead, with the underworld, precisely because the bodies of the dead were placed in the earth from ancient times in anticipation of the resurrection. We will see how they fight, how the heavenly, extraterrestrial and underground locations of the souls of the dead coexist in the most ancient written cultures - in Sumer, in Egypt.

Fire ascends from earth to heaven and the object of the sacrifice of the Natufians (Nakhal-Oren - one of the Natufian settlements in Palestine) had a heavenly nature. When the ideas about the underground topography of the world of the dead became fixed, the sacrifices to the dead began to be performed differently - the blood of the sacrificial animals was supposed to nourish the earth, and the altars themselves, for example, in the Greek hero cult, were arranged below ground level.

Burials with hoofed horns in the hands or on the chest of the deceased (for example, Einan), and later with amulets in the form of bull heads (Sesklo, Thessaly, VI millennium BC) certainly indicate the purpose of the posthumous journey - to Heavenly God. The expectation of a journey is indicated by the frequent finds of dog skeletons near human burials (Erk el-Ahmar, Ubeid, Almiera). The dog, the guide of the hunter in this world, turns out to be an understandable symbol of the right path during the transition to other existence. Dog-headed Anubis, Kerberos are a late memory of this early Neolithic image.

In addition, many burials were found in oval pits outside the houses. Quite a few people are buried in shrines. In the sanctuary VI. 10, 32 skeletons were found, in the sanctuary of vultures (VII.8) - six burials. Mellart notes that the clothes, jewelry, and belongings of those buried in sanctuaries are usually much richer and more varied than those of those buried in houses and oval pits. The scientist suggests that the remains of high priests rested in the sanctuaries, who during their lifetime performed sacred rites in them.

It is noteworthy that burials are completely absent in utility yards and storehouses. This indicates that the choice of burial places by the Chatalhuyuk people was not accidental. They were buried not there "where it is simpler", but where they considered it necessary.

The "Holy Cities" seem to complete the tradition of the 10th-8th millennia BC. Since the 6th millennium, a new trend towards the division of the worlds of the dead and the living has become more and more noticeable. In the Hassun culture (Mesopotamia, 7th-6th millennium), the dead, as a rule, are already buried outside the settlements. Only the bodies of children and adolescents continue to be buried under the floors of houses.

In Byblos of the 6th millennium, only children's burials were found under the houses, in which human bones are sometimes mixed with sheep's. Such burials were made in special small vessels. The almost complete absence of adult burials indicates the presence of special cemeteries.

Such "cemeteries" or transitional forms such as "houses of the dead" were soon discovered. In Byblos, this is the building "46-14", under the floor of which more than 30 people are buried, in Tell as-Savan (Middle Mesopotamia) - the building "No. 1" of the 6th millennium, under which there were more than one hundred secondary burials.

At the same time, the skulls of deceased relatives, which used to be often placed along the walls and around the hearth, also disappear from the interiors of dwellings. The same tendencies are noticeable in the burial customs of the Danube Plain of the 6th millennium. Adults are now rarely buried under houses here, but usually outside the settlements, in caves or in special cemeteries.

Pages: 1 2