Death, Ritual, and Belief
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Book Overview
Describing a variety of funeral ritual, from major world religions and from local traditions, this book shows how cultures cope not only with corpses but also create an added value for living through the growth of afterlife beliefs. The key theme of the book is the rhetoric of death -- the way cultures use the most potent weapon of words to bring new power to life. Human identity and its transformation through mortuary rites is explored through the mummies of Chile and Egypt; African sacrificial deaths; Indian cremations; immigrant cemeteries in the USA; ancestor rites in Eastern religions and Mormonism; and the freezing of the dead in cryonics. Research findings are presented on cremation and afterlife beliefs, especially reincarnation, sensing the presence of the dead, and the death of pets in Britain, to show how mortuary rituals are constantly changing in response to death as a major feature of the human environment.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0304338222
ISBN13:9780304338221
Release Date:May 1998
Publisher:Bloomsbury Academic
Length:272 Pages
Weight:0.90 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"
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