10 strange funeral customs
Death can be a personal and distressing event, and sometimes it can be spiritual and public. Death, one of the two great inevitability of life (at least for now), has affected us since the existence of mankind. From a society's attitude towards death, we can gain insight into its customs, religious beliefs, social life, hierarchies, art, technology, etc., almost anything you can think of. However, the world has a huge population and a long history of mankind, so it is inevitable that there will be some strange funeral customs in response to death.
The funeral of Ifugao The original tribes in Ifugao Province in the Philippines have many names, and we simply call them "Ifugao" here. If a member of the Ifugao tribe dies, relatives and friends of the deceased will start preparing for the funeral, but it is clearly stipulated that the deceased's spouse is not allowed to participate. Male relatives would build a chair to support the body of the deceased during the (eight-day) funeral. The body was washed, blindfolded, and placed near the front door of the house, surrounded by flames throughout the entire time. This is to drive away mosquitoes and dry the bodies. Once people start offering sacrifices, spouses are no longer allowed to look at the bodies or immerse themselves in the funeral.
This means that during the funeral, the spouse stays in another room or simply stays in another house. If they only have one room, they can share one room together if their spouse promises not to look at the body. On the fourth day of the funeral, the body was removed from the chair and skinned. This is one of the local funeral customs, which they believe is good for productivity and fertile the land. Subsequently, the peeled skin was buried under the deceased's house. Usually the body will be buried under the deceased's house on this day or the eighth day. A few years after the funeral, some relatives and friends of the deceased may experience a serious illness, which is rumored to be disturbed by the soul of the deceased. To avoid such things, they would exhume the bones of the dead so that the souls of the dead could enjoy holiday banquets with them. Then, another funeral was held for the bones.
Itneg's funeral Itneg is what people call Tinguian. It is located in the Philippines, not far from the Ifugao tribe. Due to their geographical proximity, their funeral customs are slightly similar, but not the same. Like the Ifugao people, they would wash the body of the deceased, dress him and place it on a special chair. So far, this is their standard procedure. But the Itenigs care about evil souls, so they still have many necessary steps to ensure safety. For example, there is a demon called "Kadongayan" that likes to appear suddenly, like a demon clown, grinning and cutting off the mouth of the dead. To avoid this, they hang pig entrails outside the door during funerals.
In addition, they would hang a live chicken with a injured beak on the door next to the body to send a message to "Kadongayan" that people would do the same to it. They placed the plates under the body to prevent liquid from leaking out. These plates will also be taken to the grave during burial. The demon "Ibwa" used to be friendly at funerals, but once he accidentally got the plates and tasted human gravy. From then on, he often came to enjoy the corpses with his friend "Selday". The demon "Akop" will bring death to the spouse of the deceased. He has no torso, only a head and slender limbs. To avoid him, the spouse had to hide behind a pillow and sleep in a fishing net for three days. On the third day, tribal soldiers usually go to the surrounding tribal territories to hunt headhunting. Bodies are buried under houses because this is the best way to ward off demons. After the mourners were sprinkled with some pig's blood and lard, they could resume their usual lives. However, after the funeral, the spouse will be in mourning for an additional three months.
Cabi Tree Burial The Cabi residents are a group of Filipino Spaniards from the Cavite area of Luzon Island in the Philippines. Although they live on the same island with the Ifugao and Itanig people, their funeral customs are quite different due to the distance between their areas. Compared with the widespread practice of funeral ceremonies around the world, such as mummy burials, cremation, and even the most common burials, the Burial methods of the people of Cabadi are relatively simple and natural. They buried the dead in trees. The people of Cabite believe that trees give human life, so we need to return the care and care we get in return. When we die, our bodies are buried upright in a hollowed out tree to give vitality to the tree by entrusting the bones. Which tree to use for the tree burial is usually the choice of the deceased during his lifetime. When they are old, or when they are about to die for some other reason, they will choose the trees they use for tree burial. Overall, tree burials are similar to tree houses. And in recent years, tree burial has gradually become a more popular alternative to coffin-style funeral.
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Indonesian Ghost Festival Although people in many cultures have many strange ways to bury or cremate the dead, there is a group of people who like to bring the dead back to the world. The Torajans are indigenous Indonesians who dig up the body of their dead family members from the grave every three years and march him through the town. Locally, Ma 'nene is seen as a memorial event to remember the dead, exhuming the bodies of their loved ones from the graves, carefully dressing them, and spending time with them. In addition to new clothes, families will mummify the bodies to ensure they can be stored for as long as possible. There is a man named Piter Sampe Sambara who has been dead for more than 80 years, which means that his body has undergone more than 25 such rituals. Although he didn't look that attractive, considering that he died in 1932, his body didn't look as bad as it might seem.
Funeral of the King of Tonga Tonga is located in the Polynesia Islands, a small country consisting of about 170 islands. Its full name is "The Kingdom of Tonga" and it is the only island country in the South Pacific to maintain a monarchy. The Kingdom of Tonga has a constitutional monarchy for more than a thousand years. Although the last king, Tupou V, enacted a series of transformative laws to lead Tonga towards democracy, the people still respect the royal family with great respect. In the eyes of Tongan people, their king is extremely noble and cannot be touched by others throughout his life. After the king's death, only a small number of people had access to their remains. These people are commonly called "nima tapu", which translates as "Holy Hand." Once they prepared the king's body, they could not have contact with the outside world or use their hands until the end of the mourning period. The mourning period lasted for 100 days. Because this rule is a bit unrealistic, they have someone to take care of them during the mourning period to meet all their needs. If those who have come into contact with the Holy Body are dealt with according to the ancient method, they will either behead or hand. So in comparison, the treatment of these people is already good now.
The Fiji Islands is a very small country, so it's not surprising that some of their strange traditions have been followed by different tribes on the island. One death tradition is to kill healthy family members in an alternative way. One is when a person goes to his parents (or vice versa) and tells them it's time, they've caused too much burden, and it's time to end. Families will then discuss whether the parents choose to be strangled or buried alive by their children, but there is no room for discussion on whether to die or not. If the tribal leader died, the woman would beat the man with a leather whip, while the man would burn the clay with bamboo and throw it at the woman for nine days. Self-harm is also a common way of mourning. They would cut off their pinkie or little toe, and women would set themselves on fire. The last and most famous custom is to strangle people close to the deceased during his lifetime, including but not limited to the wives of the male deceased, because they believe that the deceased will be accompanied in the afterlife. The main factor behind this culture of voluntary death is that many Fijians believe that the state a person dies is the state they will be in in the afterlife, meaning that any disability or defect will always follow you. As a result, many people preferred to make this choice when they were healthy rather than risk permanent disabilities. Not surprisingly, this tradition gradually died out in the 20th century.
站图片位置Bali Cremation Cremation is a funeral ceremony carefully designed in Bali to purify the souls of the deceased and lead the deceased to the afterlife. Like many cultural practices, cremation is a celebration of life rather than a mourning for death. Because they believe that death means reincarnation. Before the official start of the cremation ceremony, the body was wrapped in cloth bags and laid flat in bamboo baskets, which was equivalent to a small bedroom. During this time, the family of the deceased rushed to make a living as usual, as if the deceased were just sleeping. Then, the bodies were temporarily buried in the temple of the dead (pura dalem) until the family of the deceased had enough funds for the cremation ceremony. Once enough money has been saved, the coffin is placed in a colorful, finely crafted tower that reaches a height of 9 meters (30 feet). At the beginning of the ceremony, the tower would be carried to the cremation site by several young people. There would be no rules to follow during the lifting process, sometimes rotating and sometimes walking, so that the souls of the deceased would not find their way back. The body was placed in a ox-shaped sarcophagus and then set on fire. The collected ashes of the deceased are scattered into the sea to purify souls.
South Korea, which makes ashes beads, covers an area of about 1 million square kilometers (the actual usable area is 39000 square meters)(roughly speaking, this is equivalent to Kentucky in the United States, or half the area of the British Empire), is not a vast country. South Korea currently has a population of 50 million and is a mountainous country, so it has created a huge problem-insufficient burial space. To solve this problem, the South Korean government passed a decree in 2000. The law requires all families to remove a relative from a cemetery 60 years after his death. This ruthless law sharply halved the number of burials over the next decade, and 70% of people chose to be cremated.
However, because Korean culture requires high respect for ancestors, many South Koreans do not agree with this funeral method of tearing the bones of relatives and raising ashes. This led to the establishment of Bonhyang Company, a funeral service company in South Korea. Bonhyang uses high-temperature heating technology to make the ashes of the deceased into jewel-like beads. These ashes beads vary in color, and the number of beads that can be made depends on each person's size and age. Because young people have higher bone density, they have more ashes to make ashes beads. Although eight cups of beads were made, they were not worn as jewelry. Instead, these beads will be collected in transparent cups and placed at home, providing a beautiful way for people to pay homage to the deceased. Some people have tried to make ashes beads in the United States, but they have not received any attention. Now, this way of using ashes beads to commemorate the deceased is mainly limited to South Korea. If you don't like ashes beads, you can also make ashes into ashes drills.
The Anga people live in the Aseki district of Papua New Guinea, an extremely isolated mountainous area. Although the outside world has been studying them for more than a century, they are ultimately isolated from the outside world. There is constant speculation about the origin of the mummies in this area, so many contradictory reports have been released. It was reported that they had a bad habit of cannibalism. Locals explained that although cannibalism had occurred on the island where they lived, it had nothing to do with them. In addition, there are claims that the Yangjia people once extracted dead people's oil for cooking. It is an indisputable fact that there are many mummies there. Some of them are curled up in baskets, some are supported by bamboo. Some people say that during World War II, the Yangjia people used salt to embalming the bodies of the dead to form these mummified corpses. A more widely circulated theory is that the mummies were formed as part of an ancient local ritual that took months of fumigation and then covered the bodies with red clay. In 1949, Christian missionaries abolished the practice of smoking corpses in Asic. However, the local people preserved these smoked bodies well, and to this day, we can still find smoked bodies in many places in the Asic District.
El muerto parao ("dead man standing") in Puerto Rico is a new wake ceremony in Puerto Rico. Instead of the traditional form of opening the coffin and displaying the body for people to mourn, Marin Funeral Home will use the body of the deceased to create a three-dimensional model to show the deceased's personal life during his lifetime. Damaris Marin, director of Marin Funeral Home, claims she has developed a secret recipe to effectively preserve remains so that carefully crafted scenes can be created from the bodies of the deceased.
For now, there is still controversy about whether the process is legal, but the final conclusion is that displaying the remains in this way does not break existing laws. There is a relevant example now. Boxer Christopher Rivera was shot dead in a corner of the boxing ring at the age of 23. Family and friends had his last photo before his death, and based on the photo, his body was displayed in the same shape. Other examples include David Colon who was shaped as if he were riding a motorcycle, the body of Edgardo Velazquez displayed in an ambulance, and Fernando de Jesus Diaz Beato displayed his body with his eyes open in March 2016. He was the first deceased person to bid farewell to his body in this way, which, of course, was a nice surprise for his family.