Today is All Souls Day, known as the Day of the Dead, which begins on this date of November at the initiative of St. Odilon, abbot of a monastery in France, in 980. Today, as more than a thousand years, praying for the souls of the faithful who have died. Both Catholics and Orthodox Christians and Protestants, each with variations in the rites, we pay tribute to those who have left their earthly life. For Catholics, with special emphasis on those who are in a state of purification in Purgatory , unlike the Orthodox and Protestants who deny the existence of this place.
In most countries, especially America and Mexico, the conclusion is different from the other Christian countries, as this celebration was combined with many of the rituals of our history pre-Columbian Indians. I have been fortunate to witness some of these rites in several countries in America and Europe and I have no doubt that in our way of life directly influences how we perceive death.
Paradoxically when talking about death, we celebrate life and not think about the past, but we care about the future, because if one thing is certain, is the departure from this world. History tells us that all peoples have their own version of Judgement and step beyond the call . Let me tell you about three ancient peoples from three continents.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the spirit of the deceased was conducted by Anubis into the room the two truths, the place Judgement, which was presided over by Osiris, god of the resurrection. The Ib , or heart of the dead and a symbol of morality, was weighed in the balance against a feather representing Maat , the concept of truth, harmony and universal order. Depending on the answers to the questions put to him the deceased in this trial, the heart weight increased or decreased. If the end result was favorable, your heart would weigh more than the pen and then the spirit was moved to Paradise Aaru ─ ─ in this mythology, and if the opposite was true, if the heart was lighter than the feather, amniotic , the devourer of the dead ─ a creature with crocodile head, mane, torso and arms of a lion and hippopotamus legs ─, destroyed his heart and prevented the immortality of the court.
The ancient Greeks should bring a coin to pay for the services of Charon, the ferryman of the Acheron River to reach the World Below in Hades reigns. Once you arrive there souls, judge their actions in life. The honorees drink the waters of Lethe to forget unpleasant experiences as well, and are then driven the Champs Elysees where you will find peace. The souls without honor is unfair and leads them into Tartarus, a place of the underworld, where they must serve their sentences. Finally, those who dared to offend the gods, they fall under cruel punishments, like Sisyphus, forced to push a rock to the top of a hill, and once it did, the rock rolled down must repeat This movement for all eternity.
For ancient Mexicans, there were different ways that they would take the dead no matter how they lived, rather, depending on how they died: in The Tlalocan were those who died by disease, in The Omeyocan because of the war in The Mictlán those who died of natural causes, to tour the way to the latter, the deceased was buried with a dog, that would help him cross a river and come to Mictlantecuhtli, who had to give some offerings to continue. The interesting thing is that the dead children lived in the Chichihuacuauhco, where he was a tree that gave them milk as food. These children would return to earth when the human race was destroyed and so the death reborn life. In This is a clear analogy with the teaching of most Christian churches as there will be a general resurrection at the "end times."
