Chapter 8
SOULS, GHOSTS, AND DEATH
Souls and Ancestors
 Soul is a spiritual part of a person and usually
has an existence after death
 How many souls does a person have?
 Some believe that the soul can travel
 Shamans
 During dreams
Souls
 There is a lot of variation
on what this means
 The concept of a souls is
found in all cultures
 Some believe in multiple
souls
 Ex. The avenging soul
(miusak) of the Jivaro led
to the practice of
headhunting and shrunken
heads to keep this soul
from revenge
Souls and the Afterlife
 The idea of a soul is tied to death
 Souls may linger with family, go to an
afterlife, or be reincarnated (into people) or
transmigrated (into animals)
 The soul’s final place is not in the physical
world
 Heaven, Valhalla, Reincarnation…
Examples of Souls
 Yanomamo (Brazil) believe in complex souls
 Main part of soul becomes no borebo at death
and moves through different layers of worlds
 Other parts of the soul stay in the jungle,
some stays in the liver of living people, and
some in an animal that grows alongside that
person
Examples of Souls
 Hmong believe in different numbers of souls
 The soul is connected to health
 A soul can be frightened or stolen
 How does the soul play a role in the novel?
Examples of Souls
 Hinduism and Buddhism believe in karma (a
person’s actions and consequences) and
reincarnation
 However, in Hinduism, the soul moves up the
spiritual ladder and tries to become better
each time
 Connected to caste system
Examples of Souls
 In Buddhism, the soul is five different parts
 Physical body, feelings, understandings, will, and
consciousness
 Through the Four Noble Truths and the
Eightfold Path, the souls will be free of
suffering and hopefully reach Nirvana
Examples of Souls
 The Wheel of Life is 31 planes of existence
that the soul can be reincarnated into
 Includes hells, hungry ghosts, animals, humans,
and gods
Ancestors
 Some cultures believe the souls of ancestors
stay in the home
 They are revered and people also participate
in ancestor worship
 This belief is directly tied to the importance
of kinship in the community
Ancestors
 Ancestors can provide guidance and blessings
and can also punish inappropriate behavior
 The funeral rituals of the deceased family
member are an important way to make sure
the soul gets to its final resting place
Bodies and Souls
 In some instances people believe the body
can become disconnected from the soul,
though the body is still in the realm of the
living
 We will discuss
 Vampires
 Zombies
 Ghosts
Ghosts
 A soul and a ghost may seem very similar but
a soul is essentially good while a ghost is
usually bad
 Souls usually go to a final resting place and
ghosts tend to linger around this world
Bunyoro Ghosts
 The Bunyoro of Africa see ghosts as the
disembodied spirit of someone who has died
 They are one source of illness
 You only see ghosts in dreams
 One can catch the ghost (using special
techniques or rituals) and destroy it
 This idea gives the Bunyoro a way to explain
illness and death and promotes proper
behavior
The Living Dead
 Vampires and zombies have become very
popular but they are common in many
cultures’ religious beliefs
 They also have historic and scientific
beginnings
Vampires
 Much of the vampire legend in America and
Europe came from Bram Stoker’s Dracula
 But the idea of vampires traces its history to
Eastern Europe
Vampires
 Vlad Tsepesh, or Vlad the
Impaler, was a prince in
Romania
 Vlad is rumored to have
impaled his enemies,
causing them a slow,
painful death
 In Austria, people
became obsessed with
vampirism in the 1800s
and commonly
unearthed death bodies
to kill them again
Vampires
 In today’s video “Vampire Princess,” you will look at
the Vampire Scare in Bohemia in the 1700s
 You will analyze the religious and scientific views of
vampires
Vampires
 What are some common symptoms or
characteristics of vampires?
Vampires: Scientific View
 When the body decomposes, it fills with gas
 This can lead to a red color of the skin or to
blood appearing in the eyes and mouth
 Gums recede, which makes canines look
larger
 The gas can move, making the body move or
sound as though it is moaning
 These reasons may have accounted for the
idea of the undead
Vampires
 Vikings believed in the
draugr, which was an
animated corpse that
wandered the earth
 It had enormous
strength and magical
abilities
 Could change shape, see
the future
 These undead had to be
fought and then burned
Vampires
 Video: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/vampires-
folklore-fantasy-and-fact-michael-molina
Zombies
 Zombies are closely connected to the Haitian
practice of vodou
 These zombies are soulless creatures that
roam plantations; they are pitied, not feared
 A psychiatrist, Dr. Douyon, claimed there was
a powerful powder that could make a person
seem dead
 You will analyze this in your ICA and HW
Zombies
 Vampires and zombies
have been influenced
by media and pop
culture
 George Romero’s Night
of the Living Dead
(1968) is responsible
for the stumbling,
flesh-hungry undead
that we think of today
Zombies
 Zombies are popular
because they play on
our fears of an
apocalyptic world,
mass plague, and
social collapse
ICA
 Read the handout on zombies and vampires and
then, in groups, answer the questions
Death Rituals
 Death rituals (including funerals) are an
important rite of passage for a person to
leave the living and enter the world of the
dead
 They also give people a proper channel with
which to mourn and help explain what
happens after death
Funerals
 There is a huge amount
of variation in the types
of funerals around the
world
 And in the way people
treat their emotions
 Some cultures (British,
US): emotions are sad
but subdued
 Others: very dramatic
wailing is a sign of
respect
Funerals
 The point is that there is expected proper
behavior at these rituals
 In our culture, what is expected in:
 Dress?
 Decorations?
 Emotions?
Treatment of Dead
 There is also variation in how to treat the
dead
 People in Victorian era took death
photographs
 Photography expensive
 Posed corpses as though the person were still alive
Victorian Death Photos
Victorian Death Photos
Disposal of the Body
 This is a very important part of death rituals
and includes burial, cremation, and
mummification
Burial
 Probably most common
 Can be buried in a specific burial ground, near
a home or underneath the home
 Dress, position of body, and objects are
symbolic and ceremonial
Burial
 For a long part of US history, the poor or
disenfranchised were buried in unmarked
graves outside the city
 There are rules to burial grounds:
 Some are specific to religion
 Some are for one type of person (military)
 Within grounds there can be simple to very
elaborate grave markers, mausoleums, etc.
Secondary Burial
 In some cultures months or years after the
first burial the body is exhumed and re-buried
 This second phase marks the end of
mourning
 Relics, such as bones, can be kept
Saint Catherine of Siena died from a
stroke aged 33 in Rome. However, the
people of Siena wanted her body back for
veneration. Realizing that they couldn’t
take the entire body back, they cut off her
head and placed it inside a sack. The head
is still on display in Siena, along with Saint
Catherine’s dismembered thumb.
After Buddha was cremated, his left canine tooth
was found in the ashes by his disciple Khema,
who gave it to King Brahmadatte so that it may
be venerated. Legends began to circulate, the
most prominent of which was that whoever
possessed it had the divine right to rule
Brahmadatte’s kingdom. The tooth was said to
be responsible for converting many Indian Kings
to Buddhism, performing miracles each time it
was threatened with destruction. It is now placed
within several golden caskets and displayed only
for special ceremonies.
Cremation
 This involves turning the body into ashes and
either storing or scattering ashes
 Some cultures are endocannibalistic
anthropophagers, or people who eat their
relatives’ remains
 Ex. Yanomamo put ashes of relative into their
food to eat them and keep the relative with
them
 Ex. Fore eat the brain of their deceased
Mummification
 Embalming is used to
preserve the body for
short or long periods of
time
 In the US this is used to
keep the body preserved
for the funeral, where it
will be seen
 In ancient Egypt, it was
used to keep the body
preserved so it would be
used in the next life
Days for the Dead
 There are days that are connected to the
realm of the dead
 Halloween came from the Celtic festival
Samhain, which held that the gates between
the living and dead were opened
 This changed to Christian All Saint’s Day, then
to All Hallow’s Eve, then to Halloween
 Used to honor those who have died
Dia de los Muertos
 Mexican ritual, held on
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Nov. 1&2
Way to honor the dead
Graves and shrines are
dedicated with the
deceased’s favorite things
It is viewed as a family
reunion and celebration
Elaborately designed skulls
and skeletons are
common, along with
flowers (chrysanthemum)
Connected to their Aztec
heritage