Death, with which all humans get acquainted, is a phenomenon that has been meditated and interpreted through the millennial ages in shape into varied perspectives throughout primal cultures. Deeply woven into spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, and philosophical frameworks, these perspectives offer deep insight into humans’ understanding of existentialism. However, these events are related to morality in the primal worldview despite significant differences in practices, beliefs, cosmologies, and social structures. (Clifton et al., 2019). Crude religious systems receive the universe as overlapping invisible and visible dimensions. One dimension of reality is represented by what is visible; the other dimension is hidden – it can be seen in dreams by many people and sometimes in wakefulness by some.
In some primitive societies, society depended on the remarkable people from within their kind who were specially trained to serve as media towards solving conflicts and maintaining harmonious relationships between humans and non-humans by mediating the humans’ needs that sabotage the interests of other beings and protecting them from being harmed by evil spirits through varied inimical activities (Pieper & Muslin, 2020). Each society has a specific specialist who is frequently consulted for healing.
Various characteristics reflect primal religion, including death, beliefs, rituals, and norms. Simple cultures typically provide themselves with spiritual and religious frameworks to help them explain life and death’s mysteries. In most cases, an afterlife has always been contemplated, but in different forms according to people’s beliefs. Some cultures have held to an eternal paradise or a place of torment, while others have embraced the belief in reincarnation, where the soul transits cyclically through forms of being (On & Cheang 2020). Death rituals found in primal cultures are not just practicalities but a deep form of expressing identity and spiritual ties.
Funeral ceremonies, burial practices, and cremation rituals are all filled with symbolism to describe the relationship between death and life. Culturally, this is also dealt with in this way; the mourning practices give people and communities a structure to grieve. Amongst primal cultures, they have taboos against death as expressions of respect for the dead. During such moments of death, there might be actions, behaviors, or places that may be sacred territories or forbidden to some extent (Pensel et al., 2020). The key to how they may see their way through the perplexing issues relating to death is inherent in the communal nature of the primal society. Community support is not an expectation but an essential aspect of how to face loss. Be it through preparing for the funeral or emotional sustenance; the community becomes critical in ensuring that the necessary support system is provided when one has lost.
Most religions provide excellent and evil destinies when considering the soul’s fate. All this makes it indicates that hell is divine suffering or utter destruction, like in the ancient Egyptian religion (On & Cheang 2020The positive, conceived as deliverance or emancipation, usually implies a triumphant over death – in that one attains eternal life in the presence of God such as in monotheistic traditions or, as in the eastern traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, one cease to partake in the cycle of birth and death.
Similar to conscious entities, souls are part of a universe of humans and can communicate with one another. At death, the soul or soul is irretrievably removed from the body to begin a separate existence in the spirit world, not with a body. The soul’s final destiny, however, depends on tradition. Souls can reincarnate in the clan or be transformed into ancestors; some remain around while somebody remains in the grave with the body, and others live in different places in the spirit world; some are lost and wander the earth. The spirit and material worlds are thus conceived as integral and constitutive of one another. Action in one is perforce manifest in the other (Clifton et al., 2019). This dynamic is frequently expressed in illness conditions as an effect in the material world directly affected by activity in the spirit world.
Funerals in primal societies occurred when some rituals were grouped months or years apart. These also include the rites of separation and bereavement, disposal of the body, journey of the soul, validation of social solidarity, protection against the dead, and purification from the pollution of death (Pieper & Muslin, 2020). The theme of matrimony also figures with great regularity in primal death rituals. Among the Kol people of India, for instance, the funeral entails a betrothal ceremony during which the deceased is united matrimonially to the individuals of the land of the departed.
Primal perspectives on death provide a rich tapestry of beliefs and practices that shed insight into the deeply interwoven relationships between culture, spirituality, and experience as human beings. From elaborate death rituals to philosophical outlooks nuanced by their mere presence, they provide valuable insight into how societies face the inevitable cycle of life and death and make sense of it.
References
Clifton, J. D. W., Baker, J. D., Park, C. L., Yaden, D. B., Clifton, A. B. W., Terni, P., … Seligman, M. E. P. (2019). Primal world beliefs. Psychological Assessment, 31(1), 82–99. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000639
On, L. K., & Cheang, S. C. (2020). Birth, Initiation, and Death Elements in the Folk Narrative of the Tambunan Dusun of Sabah, Malaysia. Malay Literature, 33(2), 169–192.
Pensel, M. C., Nass, R. D., Taubøll, E., Aurlien, D., & Surges, R. (2020). Prevention of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy: current status and future perspectives. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 20(5), 497-508.
Pieper, W. J., & Muslin, H. L. (2020). A Future Note on the Primal Instinct Theory. American Imago, 18(4), 383–390. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/26301887
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