Blavatsky H.P. - The Efficacy of Funeral Ceremonies: Difference between revisions

{{Style P-Signature|Yours fraternally,

“N. D. K.,” F.T.S.}}

The writer of the “Fragments” having gone to England, some time has to elapse of course before he can answer the questions. Until then as a student of the same school we may, perhaps, be permitted to say a few words upon the subject.

In every country, as among all the peoples of the world from the beginning of history, we see that some kind of burial is performed—but that very few among the so-called savage primitive races had or have any funeral rites or ceremonies. The well-meaning tenderness felt by us for the dead bodies of those whom we loved or respected, may have suggested, apart from the expression of natural grief, some additional marks of family respect for them who have left us forever. But rites and ceremonies as prescribed by our respective Churches and their theologians, are an afterthought of the priest, an outgrowth of theological and clerical ambition, seeking to impress upon the laity a superstition, a well-paying awe and dread of a punishment of which the priest himself knows nothing beyond mere speculative and often very illogical hypotheses. The Brahmin, the Mobed, the Augur, the Rabbi, the Moolah and the Priest, impressed with the fact that their physical welfare depended far more upon his parishioners, whether dead or alive, than the spiritual welfare of the latter on his alleged {{Page aside|506}} mediatorship between men and God, found the device expedient and good, and ever since worked on this line. Funeral rites have originated among the theocratically governed nations, such as the ancient Egyptians, Aryans, and Jews. Interwoven with, and consecrated by the ceremonies of theology, these rites have been adopted by the respective religions of nearly all the nations, and are preserved by them to this day; for while religions differ considerably among themselves, the rites often surviving the people as the religion to which they owed their origin have passed from one people to another. Thus, for instance, the threefold sprinkling with earth with which the Christian is consigned to the tomb, is handed down to the Westerners from the Pagan Greeks, and Romans; and modern Parseeism owes a considerable portion of its prescribed funeral rites, we believe, to the Hindus, much in their present mode of worship being due to the grafts of Hinduism. Abraham and other Patriarchs were buried without any rites, and even in Leviticus (chap. xix, 28) the Israelites are forbidden to “make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks” upon themselves. In the same manner the oldest Zoroastrian books, the old and the new Desatir, with the exception of a few acts of charity (to the poor, not to the Mobeds) and the reading of sacred books, prescribe no special ceremonies. We find in the Book of the Prophet Abad (Desatir) simply the following: