Africa (Boshongo-Bantu): Bumba’s Creation
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LectureCosmicMythsAfterlifeRzd5221.pptxCosmic Myths
Part 1: Creation Stories
Part 2: Flood Stories
Part 3: Apocalypse Stories
Part 4: The Afterlife
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Cosmic Myths Part 4: Afterlife Stories
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
What happens when you die?
In this PowerPoint, I give you three different views of the Afterlife from a few different cultures.
Slides 3,4,5 is the Introduction to the Afterlife by mythologist scholar, David Leeming.
Slides 11 – 17 is excerpted from “Mythology” by Edith Hamilton.
Most information will be tested, unless otherwise noted.
Reincarnation
Part 4: Afterlife Stories INTRODUCTION excerpted from “The World of Myth” by David Leeming. Afterlife Stories, p.64
“The belief in some sort of afterlife is ubiquitous [found everywhere]. The human being finds the concept of total dissipation [the process of gradually disappearing] of self after death more difficult to accept than the notion of conscious existence after death.
The religious cultures that stress the struggle between god and evil in this world are the ones that divide the afterworld into areas of suffering and bliss. The Christian and Muslim concept of heaven and hell is only one example of this tendency.
Part 4: Afterlife Stories INTRODUCTION excerpted from “The World of Myth” by David Leeming. Afterlife Stories, p. 64
In the more mystical religious that stress the illusory nature of life, the afterlife may be a distinctly nonphysical realm, even a place where self loses its individual identity in a larger Self. In fact, such concepts as nirvana do not include a sense of place and are not properly thought of as myths of the afterlife, any more than is the Christian idea of the Kingdom of God. In one way or another, all afterlife myths, and even the lack of such myths, reflect cultural perceptions of this world.
Part 4: Afterlife Stories INTRODUCTION excerpted from “The World of Myth” by David Leeming. Afterlife Stories, p. 64
Part of the need for belief in an afterlife can probably be traced to humanity’s experience of the cycles of nature. As functioning part of the organism called Earth, we do not like to be left out. The paths of the sun and the moon, the rhythm of the tides, the menstrual process, and the seasons, all suggest a natural return of whatever is lost and lead naturally to the concept of life after death and ultimately some kind of restoration of life.
Part 4: Afterlife Stories INTRODUCTION excerpted from “The World of Myth” by David Leeming. Afterlife Stories, page 64.
Perhaps an even more important factor is consciousness itself…………..[…….]. It might be said that consciousness of the total life process – of life’s beginning, middle and end as a single plot – is [a being’s] defining characteristic. Without that consciousness, existence, itself – certainly our existence is threatened. That being the case, it is perhaps ultimately impossible to conceive of the permanent loss of consciousness. Even if we do not go so far as to believe in the physical restoration of our individual lives, we tend to have difficulty conceiving of life without the consciousness by which we perceive it. The afterlife is an almost inevitable result. And it should be noted that more often that not, the souls in the various underworlds – the heavens and hells of world mythology – are nearly always, in death, freed from the restrictions on knowledge of the future that are necessarily associated with the physical life – and with mortality itself. In the afterlife individual consciousness comes into its own as part of a larger consciousness that informs all things and actions.”
Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Egyptian Afterlife Stories (just a few of many Egyptian afterlife stories)
Osiris was a good god, loved by all. But his brother Seth was jealous. This is the story of how Osiris became the god of the underworld. See video below for the full story.
How to meet Osiris after death, if you’ve led a good life.
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Egyptian Afterlife Stories
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The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a series of magic spells to help you through the afterlife. The entire book is in PDF below.
Extra Credit: Tell which magic spell(s) is/are your favorite and why.
https://www.wm.edu/offices/auxiliary/osher/course-info/classnotes/derise.pdf
Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Egyptian Afterlife Information
The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids to protect the Pharaohs (rulers) in their afterlife.
For more information on Ancient Egypt, go to:
https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Egypt
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece
Persephone and Hades: Queen and King of the Underworld
Tartarus and Elysian Fields (Greek hell and heaven)
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued The following 7 slides are excerpted from “Mythology”, the chapter titled The Underworld, pages 42 -46, by Edith Hamilton
“……….In the Iliad, it [the Underworld] lies beneath the secret places of the earth, In the Odyssey*, the way to it leads over the edge of the world acr0ss Ocean. In later poets there are various entrances to it from the earth through caverns and beside deep lakes.
Tartarus and Erebus are sometimes two divisions of the underworld, Tartarus the deeper of the two, the prison of the Sons of Earth; Erebus where the dead pass as soon as they die, Often, however, there is no distinction between the two, and either is used, especially Tartarus, as a name for the entire lower region.
[…]
In Homer the underworld is vague, a shadowy place inhabited by shadows. Nothing is real there. The ghosts’ existence, if it can be called that, is like a miserable dream.
* The Land of the Dead need not be pleasant; one of the earliest literary example of an after life is the one recorded in Homer’s Odyssey. The Land of the Dead that Odysseus visits is a place of darkness, sadness, and despair. Yet it is not primarily a place of punishment (Leeming, 62).
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece. Excerpted form The Underworld from “Mythology”, by Edith Hamilton
[The Roman poet ] Virgil is the only poet who give clearly the geography of the underworld, [and unlike Homer, assigns punishments or rewards, the start of a trend]:
The path down to it leads to where Acheron, the river of woe, pours into Cocytus, the river of lamentation. An aged boatman named Charon (Ka ron) ferries the souls of the dead across the water to the farther bank, where stands the adamantine gate* to Tartarus…….
Charon will receive into his boat only the souls of those upon whose lips the passage money was placed when they died and who were duly buried.
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*[ A generic name for a very strong metal. In popular comics, like Marvel, it is the metal of the gods. “The gates to Tartarus were fashioned by Zeus and his brothers to imprison Kronos and the other titans within. The gates are made of adamantine, a nearly unbreakable metal, and can only be opened by the hand of a mortal, insuring that no other god would release the titans….”]
Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece. Excerpted form The Underworld from “Mythology”, by Edith Hamilton
On guard before the gate sits Cerberus, the three-headed dragon-tailed dog, who permits all spirits to enter, but none to return.
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece. Excerpted form The Underworld from “Mythology”, by Edith Hamilton
On his arrival each one is brought before three judges, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus, who pass sentence and send the wicked to everlasting torment and the good to a place of blessedness called the Elysian Fields.
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece. Excerpted form The Underworld pages 42-44 from “Mythology”, by Edith Hamilton
Three other rivers, besides Acheron and Cocytus, separatee the underworld from the world above:
Phlegethon, the river of fire;
Styx, the river of the unbreakable oath by which the gods swear;
Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.
Somewhere in this vast region is Hade’s [Roman: Pluto] palace, but beyond saying that it is many-gated and crowded with innumerable guests, no writer describes it.
Around it are wide wastes, wan and cold,
and meadows of asphodel*,
presumable strange, pallid, ghostly flowers.
We do not know anything more about it.
The poets did not care to linger in that
gloom-hidden abode.
*[ Asphodel Meadows is another name for the place ordinary souls go after death. Asphodel flowers are similar to Narcissus, but rather morbid as Hamilton suggests, not seen as pretty. ]
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece. Excerpted form The Underworld pages 42-44 from “Mythology”, by Edith Hamilton
The Erinyes (the Furies), are placed by Virgil in the underworld, where they punish evildoers.
The Greek poets thought of them chiefly as pursuing sinners on the earth. They were inexorable, but just. Heraclitus says, “Not even the sun will transgress his orbit but the Erinyes, the ministers of justice, overtake him.”
They are usually represented as three: Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Ancient Greece. Excerpted form The Underworld pages 42-44 from “Mythology”, by Edith Hamilton
Sleep, and Death, his brother, dwelt in the lower world. Dreams too ascended from there to men. They passed though two gates, one of horn through which true dreams went, one of ivory for false dreams.
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Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Excerpted form The Encyclopedia Britannica
For more information on Virgil: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virgil
(FYI: not on any of my tests)
Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius Maro, (born October 15, 70 BCE, Andes, near Mantua [Italy]—died September 21, 19 BCE, Brundisium), Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 BCE; unfinished at his death).
Virgil was regarded by the Romans as their greatest poet, an estimation that subsequent generations have upheld. His fame rests chiefly upon the Aeneid, which tells the story of Rome’s legendary founder and proclaims the Roman mission to civilize the world under divine guidance. His reputation as a poet endures not only for the music and diction of his verse and for his skill in constructing an intricate work on the grand scale but also because he embodied in his poetry aspects of experience and behavior of permanent significance.
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The type of hell you enter depends on your behavior during your life. You suffer in hell until all the bad karma is wiped away. Then you are reborn to start all over again.
Part 4 The Afterlife, continued Buddhism
Nirvana: a release from Rebirth
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Rebirth as Hell
Life is full of pain, suffering and misery of all sorts. To be reborn is hell. Enlightenment helps to release a person from rebirth. Enlightenment leads the way to Nirvana.
Alan Watts (American Philosopher) on Death: you go to sleep, then wake up as something else all over again without any moral justification. He then compares Western ideas with Eastern ideas
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Transmigration of the Soul (in reincarnation, it is the act of the soul passing from one form to another)
There is a story I read (but forgot the source!!) about a Tibetan whose beloved daughter fell off a pathway along the Himalaya Mountain to her death. This pathway would be treacherous for the ordinary person, but the Tibetans of this village traversed this same pathway safely daily. It is all in the manner of placing the foot along the path a certain way which ensured the safety of the traveler.
A few weeks later, a goat appeared in the village and attached itself to the man. There was something in the eyes of the goat’s that sparkled joyously, the tilt of the head, and the way it would pull on his sleeve the same way his daughter did. No one knew where this goat had come from; it belonged to nobody in this village or the next.
It was concluded, that the soul of the daughter transmigrated into the goat to better learn the ways of traveling treacherous pathways.
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Transmigration of the Soul
FYI This video is for your own edification. The contents will not appear on any of my tests.
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Bibliography
Long,Charles. Alpha: The Myths of Creation.
Leeming, David. The World of Myth.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Little, Brown & Company. Boston. 1942.
Encyclopedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virgil
Google images, bing images
Egyptian Book of the Dead:
https://www.wm.edu/offices/auxiliary/osher/course-info/classnotes/derise.pdf
https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_egypt/book_of_the_dead.php
http://www.touregypt.net/bkofdead.htm
Bishop, Phillip. Adventures in the Spirit of Humanities.
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