ThaumaturgyRelay/Death
- Back to CrunchRelay.
The fourth theme is: Death.
These are Rituals which people - of any sort - mark someone's death, worship the dead, give offerings to their ancestors, and so on. - chosen by FrivYeti, recorded by Dmccoy1693
The Ritual of Giving of Food and Flavor • -Dmccoy1693
While barbarians everywhere have to have various kinds of ancestor worship, those close to shadowlands in the north are particularly fervent. To the east of the Tear Easters Tribes, worshipping ancestors and wishing to gain their favor, is quite common. While particulars vary from tribe to tribe, all share numberous commonalities. Food is offered to their ancestors as a way of gaining favor so the tribe maybe blessed in other ways. The rituals generally include group dancing, reading of names, presenting the food to be sacrificed, burning it, praying to their ancestors, and spilling of some quantity of blood. Varions include on what kind of alter the food is placed on, the order and duration of each aspect of the ritual, the particular dance, who spills blood (i.e. just the shamen, everyone but the shamen, someone from the line of chiefs, captive sacrifice).
The Ritual itself does nothing but for the tribes directly. What it does do is help to send the sacrificed food off to the underworld for their ancestors to eat. The reading of names reserves the food particularly for those ghosts and must be first moved by them only. The real benefit of the ritual is that the ghosts who benefit from this ritual owe the tribe a • favor to be paid back to the tribe when the tribe wishes.
Comments
I know ThaumaturgyRelay is slow, but this one is dead. I think I'm going to archive this single rit and switch to something else. Perhaps we already have enough stuff to do with death? Ah well. Can always come back to it, eh?
-- Darloth
