Mortuary Practices
Famidhana
As early as the 18th century, the native peoples of (Highland) Madagascar have been practicing a mortuary ritual referred to as Famadihana. Famadihana means “overturning” and/or “betrayal”. In most recent times, it’s meaning is understood as “secondary burials” or "turning of the bones". The ritual is not relegated to one area of Madagascar, nor is it a clear-cut discipline. However, through the variety there is
relativeness in the practice. During the dry
winter months (July – September), the
deceased are taken from the tombs in which
they reside and are essentially
given an upgrade. The deceased are wrapped and
rewrapped each time they are unburied in
winding sheets of silk to ensure longer
prevalence of the corpse. After the ceremonial
burial, festivities follow, often lasting for
several days. The general purpose is to honor
deceased ancestors. By doing so, this can
ensure the living kin good health and
fertility. While there is no set time for
intervals between the ceremonies, six or seven
years is common, when a family can afford it
(Hould 2016). If several years have gone by
without Famadihana, the deceased become
restless in their tomb and manifest themselves
in the lives
of living lineage. The deceased individual’s
demands for attention are often made apparent
through threats of violence or upheaval of
disaster in the living individuals lives.
In these tombs, more than one body may (most
often) be located inside, especially in cases
of bodies that have been there longest. This
is because families are kept together. When there is more than one body that has been there for some amount of time, they are wrapped in the same sheets. Items of value (grave goods) are also often buried with the dead. The types of items that were buried with the deceased individual were pertinent to their interests while alive.
A native woman named Irina has a story of an ancestor that would visit her kin in their dreams to conger the family to perform a Famadihana. When this phenomenon had first happened in Irina’s family, they were quick to aid their deceased relative. While trying to complete the ritual in a timely manner, the family forgot to rewrap a few individuals that were in the tomb. The afternoon that they completed the ritual, the town had caught on fire. The following night the deceased relative made a visit while the living slumbered and threatened, “… Next time, I’ll outright kill you” (258). The very next day, the family rewrapped all of the individuals inside the tomb.
- Amanda Barmore
Santa Muerte
Santa Muerte is a female cult saint, worshiped primarily in Mexico and in some Mexican American communities in the US-Southwest, who governs the lives of lost souls and hopeless cases. She can be invoked to protect one’s self from death and to wish death on one’s enemies. For people who feel left behind by traditional religions or feel the need to augment their spirituality with a saint that better reflects the realities of their daily lives, there is Santa Muerte. Santa Muerte appears as a skeleton in a nun’s habit and seems to function as a guardian deity who grants the favor of her protection to some and culls others. The Boney Lady can be invoked and honored with a variety of votive candles, each providing a different miracle: Green for law and justice, Red for success in love, Gold for wealth and prosperity, Blue is for wisdom and knowledge, White is for purity and to cleanse the spirit, Purple is for healing, Brown is used to call spirits back from beyond the grave, and the 7 color candle for multiple miracles. However, there is also the black candle that is used particularly by narcos (drug traffickers), the police who arrest them, and the indigent poor who are caught in the middle. There have been many cases of the bodies of those who have been murdered being placed under her alters, and even a few cases of people being ritually sacrificed to appease her. With Santa Muerte, Revenge is made holy, her habit is a shield from the hatred and the bullets of others; her skull shows both compassion and dispassion. The popularity of Santa Muerte is such that she is featured in cinema and television depictions of Mexican cartels and the violence they purvey, but to many poor Mexicans, she is the most relevant of the saints. She is a saint that accepts all those who have been left behind by the rest of society.
“White Lady, I kneel at your feet to ask you and implore that you make those who try to destroy me feel your strength, power, and omnipresence. Lady, I implore you to be my shield and guard against evil, such that your protecting scythe levels the obstacles that may arise and that closed doors are opened ant the paths are revealed. My lady, there is no evil that you can’t vanquish, nor impossibility that doesn’t wither when faced with your intercession. I surrender Myself to you and await your benevolence. Amen”—Prayer of The Protecting Scythe
“O Saint Death, protect me and deliver me from my enemies. Ambush them, torture them, sicken them, kill them, grind them up. O Saint Death, you who rule the world, in the name of those who are here prostrate, I as you for power against my adversaries, that they don’t crush me, arrest me, or kill me. I ask you, my Saint Death, not to abandon me at night or during the day and to defend me from betrayal on the part of both enemies and friends. Also I ask you for the violent deaths of those who would do me harm. Take them to the House of Darkness where the dead shiver from the cold. Take them to the House of Bats amid the cries and fluttering of those who been shot and stabbed. Take them to the House of Knives, to the sound of clashing steel. You, who can do everything, Saint Death, grant me this favor. Amen”—a prayer given by the cartel capo (leader) the governor of state of Sinaloa, the catholic bishop of Sinaloa, the head of the judicial police, and even a brigadier general from a noverl called, “La Santa Muerte,” by Homero Aridjis, a novel that the author claims are based on true events, with only the names changed. The scene ends with three rival cartel members sacrificed with an obsidian knife, to appease Santa Muerte.
-Jordan Ballard
Zombies
The myth of the zombie is that of an undead monster to descend from Afro-Haitian mythology, rather than European mythos. Much of that tradition categorizes zombies as a representation of whiteness, as well as providing a commentary on subjects such as slavery, racial issues, the intersections of capitalism and consumption, bodily excess, and cannibalism both real and metaphoric. In Haiti, the zonbi has been around since at least the 1700’s, appearing in writing 1797 about Haitian slaves’ belief in souls returning from the dead, something similar to a ghoul or a revenant. By the early 20th century it had shifted from souls being returned from the dead, to bodies being returned from the dead, without souls or souls without bodies. Astral zonbis are fragments of souls and can be contained, through ritual, to be released and set upon others to lead them to misfortune. They are thought of as living beings, and must be fed tribute, usually rice or other food. When the owner of an astral zonbi is no longer able to feed it, it can rise up, like an oppressed slave, and consume its “master”. The zonbi kò kadav are walking corpses, created by secret societies through spirit extraction, to work sugar cane plantations as mindless slaves. The voodoo tradition of punishing people through turning them into zombies and enslaving them mirrors the historical treatment of West and Central Africans in the past, where Africans were seized, kidnapped, bound, whipped, sold, and forced to labor. White American who visited Haiti in the early
1900’s brought back accounts of zonbi rituals and stories of cannibals, which soon found their way into popular media. The early zombie movies depicted zombies as barbaric and cannibalistic versions of Caribbean blacks, rising up to consume their white employers. The faces of zombies have changed throughout the years, as the popularity of the monster has spread throughout the world, but the themes of mass rebellion, anarchy, death of consumerism, apocalypse, the toppling of governments, and the soulless, shuffling masses, have not. The zombie represents both societal death and karmic retribution.
-Jordan Ballard
