#natural burial

[lifeafterlifeparks]

Did you know that although parasitic fungi can be scary, many species actually have positive benefits!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Re your tags about burial:

Caitlin Doughty from the Ask-a-mortician youtube channel has lots of resources about alternative burial methods that are perfectly legal but people don't know about, like natural burials and avoiding embalming. It's mostly US-based, but maybe it'll help.

I also know that in some countries, you can get exceptions from burial laws for religious reasons, like casket requirements.

I mean my current plan is to become a tree but excellent resources all around

[altarflame]

“In America, where I live, death has been big business since the turn of the twentieth century. A century has proven the perfect amount of time for its citizens to forget what funerals once were - family and community-run affairs. In the nineteenth century no one would have questioned Josephine’s daughter preparing her mother’s body - it would have seemed strange if she didn’t. No one would have questioned a wife washing and dressing the body of her husband or a father carrying his son to the grave in a homemade coffin. In an impressively short time, America’s funeral industry has become more expensive, more corporate, and more bureaucratic than any other funeral industry on earth. If we can be called best at anything, it would be at keeping our grieving families from their dead.”

-Caitlin Doughty, in “From Here to Eternity”

[alterboyx]

What is going on??

I saw the shocking headline of this article, but upon reading it, I'm pretty confused?

This is about a funeral home that does environmentally-friendly return to nature burials, meaning no embalming and decomposing in open, natural conditions. This is a completely safe and respectable practice that has had to fight hard to be allowed, since the US funeral business is deeply misguided at best. My gut reaction is "well shit, now it's going to bring even more unnecessary restrictions and negativity to the practice." But of course, if a funeral home of any kind is desecrating corpses, it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

Okay, that sounds bad, but...it sounds like they just weren't stored embalmed or frozen? Is this just the area the funeral home uses to let the bodies begin to decay? Or are they actively desecrating corpses?

I'm not sure what the rash is supposed to mean. One of the people at the scene got a rash and someone looked at it. Is this a biohazard situation? Is this dangerous? Or did someone just. Get a random rash?

And my favorite part,

Wait, YOU DON'T KNOW IF A CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED? They are saying how they'll have to do extensive DNA testing to identify all the bodies and it will take months. I don't know if that means the home didn't keep track of who was laid where, but after this big scary article, they don't even have a suggested crime that has been committed here? I'm not saying there couldn't be something nefarious going on, but right now it kinda sounds like the funeral home was doing their normal practice and people busted in to disrupt the graves?

I am not an expert in the laws around this by any means and cannot personally vouch for the funeral home but I'm confused as to what the actual problem is??? But don't worry, they are going ahead and declaring it a disaster and an emergency. wtf

[hollistercrowley]

2nd dark naturalist attempt

[argonavta]

Jan 31st ‘23

See you on the other side little beast.

[thefisherqueen]

I want to be buried beneath a tree

[lifeafterlifeparks]

Sky Burial: Learning from Ancient Deathcare Practices

The idea of giving one’s body back to the earth as a form of charity is an ancient idea. One form still practice in parts of the world even today is Sky burial, also known as celestial burial - a traditional funeral ritual practiced by Zorastrians and Tibetan Budists in parts of India, Buhtan, Mongolia, and China. This ancient ritual involves placing the deceased on a mountaintop or other elevated location where vultures and other scavenging birds can consume the body. The remains are believed to return to nature, and the act of feeding the birds is seen as a form of charity.

The practice of sky burial has a deep spiritual significance in Tibetan Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, where it is believed that the body is merely a vessel, and that the soul has moved on to the afterlife. The act of giving one's body back to nature is seen a gift, and a way of showing respect for the natural cycle of life and death. Additionally, the vultures are believed to carry the soul to the afterlife, which is seen as a sacred act.

Sky burial is also a practical solution for those living in remote areas where burial or cremation may not be possible due to lack of resources, such as wood for cremation or land for burial. In these cases, sky burial is seen as a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional burial or cremation.

While sky burial may seem like a gruesome or macabre practice to outsiders, it is important to understand the cultural and spiritual significance it holds for those who practice it. It is a deeply meaningful and respectful way of honoring the dead and giving back to nature.

In India, following the rapid expansion of urban population and the near extinction (97%) of the indigenous vulture population due to agricultural pesticide use – sky burial practitioners have been forced to adapt. They have begun using solar cremation in leu of what the vultures used to provide for them. However, repopulation efforts for the endangered birds are being pushed by arbiters of the religion.

The link between deathcare and conservation has deep roots. At Life After Life, we find ourselves interestingly in parallel with the philosophy to deathcare that these ancient religions hold. At the intersection of many different religious philosophies is a similar vein of thought. One of giving back to the earth. For the past few centuries our culture here in the United States diverged into a deathcare tradition of taking and preserving. It is time to go back to a “circular economy” philosophy of funeral practice.

By choosing eco-friendly burial options such as natural burial, which involves burying the body in a biodegradable casket or shroud without embalming chemicals, the bodies stored nutrients are allowed to return to the earth naturally, without harming the environment. Through Life After Life, this practice allows patrons to remediate pollution and build new, critically-endangered habitat that would otherwise never be redeveloped.

The ancient principles of sky burial remind us of our interconnectedness with the natural world and the importance of respecting and caring for our planet. By giving back to nature in ways that each of us can, we can honor those who have come before us and ensure that future generations have a healthy and sustainable planet to call home.

References:

https://https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sky-burial

[federalmemorial]

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[fantasticwolfpenguin]

Yes, but having the comfort of something beyond might help others. And I love to keep both no matter how conflicting it is.

Mushrooms and rot as psychopomps. Flies and worms and vultures, heralds of the life after this one. Scavengers which bring our buried bodies back to the dirt it came from; the unification through the mycelium, through the digestive tracts of countless thousands of insects, through the decaying into the soil from which flowers and fruit will be grown. Death is a process of dissemination of your last piece of identity, transforming you into everything except that. The soil in your yard is made of other people and such. We exist walking upon our afterlife. Isn't that enough? Isn't that enough to believe in?

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

I don’t know where you live but it’s possible you might be able to find a natural burial cemetery! Either an ecologically minded one or a religious one. If I remember right you are Jewish? I think Jewish burial laws are similar to Islamic ones (again if I am remembering right) (please forgive me if not) and I know in my area (I live in the US) there are a couple of Islamic cemeteries that do traditional Islamic no embalming/no casket burials. So you might be able to find something! I wish you luck 💙 (PS I love your blog I’ve learned so much)

Oh yeah I"m already on the case for that. Think Adama even has started a tree-jewish cemetery thing

but, ya know, death is hard to talk about xD

glad you love the blog!

[tsmom1219]

Here's how some Chicagoans are taking an eco-friendly approach to funerals

Read the full story in the Chicago Sun-Times. As traditional burials increasingly fall out of favor — 60% of interments are now cremations — more people are considering green funerals than at any time in recent memory. Sixty percent of Americans are interested in exploring green funeral options, according to the National Funeral Directors Association’s 2023 consumer survey.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.

There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.

And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.

I've always wanted a green burial, and I find it comforting that when my remains are laid in the ground, they'll be accompanied by the tiny ecosystems I spent a lifetime tending, and who will return the favor by sending my molecules off in a billion new directions.

[canisalbus]

i've returned for 2 seconds to tell you that they're not leaving my head. (sort of unrelated but i've been thinking as well. what if vasco died before machete ? what would go down)

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