Across cultures, death rituals give mourners a chance to grieve. But they also offer one last opportunity to help the deceased as they transition to the next stage of existence.
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Articles on Afterlife
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There is often a distinct fragrance of pine or cedar, with some spiciness from cloves, cumin, myrrh, and warm notes from plants, flowers and trees.
Views on death and the afterlife vary from person to person and culture to culture. This course gives US Air Force cadets a broad perspective on mortality and its effects on people and society.
Ouija boards have been around for more than a hundred years.
Today viewers may be preoccupied by the methods used by spirit photographers, but spirit photographs had a notable impact on the bereaved who commissioned the portraits.
The afterlife envisioned by spiritualism appealed to women who rejected the idea that their unbaptized children could be damned to hell.
Ancient Christian and Jewish texts threatened women with hellfire if they stepped out of line – and those terrifying visions still resonate in U.S. society today.
Every day, the internet fills up with more and more dead people while our ability to reanimate them grows. The dead are more robust and more vulnerable — and we’re not ready for any of this.
Taiwan’s death rituals come from multiple spiritual sources. A Taiwanese-American scholar explains what changes for those who make their home in the US.
The meaning of hell might have changed over the centuries, but for devout Christians it remains a core part of their faith.
Top contributors
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PhD Candidate and Public Scholar, Communication Studies, Concordia University
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Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross
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Associate Professor of Christian Origins, University of Dayton
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Associate Professor, Boise State University
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Professor of Pedagogy in Biology, Emory University
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Assistant Professor of Philosophy, United States Air Force Academy
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Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Sheffield Hallam University
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PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol
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Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University
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Professor of Comparative Religion, Miami University
