A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: Grandier’s Funeral Pyre by Elvenking

Throughout history, burial rituals have existed in basically every culture ever. What these rituals look like will change depending on which region or time period one looks at, but they’ll be there. But what does this mean with paganism?

Many pagan practices from before Christianity had their own practices and superstitions, including those surrounding the dead rising from the grave to haunt the living. These practices, at least in Europe, as far as I’m aware, are the root of a lot of superstitions surrounding vampires and similar ideas.

What does this have to do with my writing? I’m glad you asked. Everything. This is a pagan blog, come on.

Many of these superstitions surrounding the dead rising can be dismissed as unfounded superstitions in the modern day. However, it is still interesting to think about where these ideas came from and what they’ve inspired in popular media.

A common portrayal of the dead rising in modern media is vampire related media. (Think Twilight or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the TTRPG system Vampire the Masquerade.) With these portrayals, various stereotypes have come about concerning how the abilities vampires hold. (Superhuman strength and speed, being irresistible to mortals, being immortal, hating garlic, hating crucifixes, etc. Though, granted, the hating crucifixes thing comes from Christianity, and Christianity is a rant for another time.) These abilities will change somewhat depending on the media of choice, but a common thread is that vampires are immortal (to an extent) and are generally nocturnal. Why this is, I’m not sure, but I can’t say I blame them, in all honesty.

Now, how do burial rituals tie into all this? Stay with me here, this may get chaotic.

Burial rituals, as I said earlier, have been a part of pretty much every culture. These practices include leaving things in a person’s grave or on their pyre that would be considered important to have in the afterlife, or for their spirit to carry with them as offerings to gatekeepers of potential afterlives. This is why ancient graves that get excavated sometimes have tools or weapons buried with the remains of the deceased.

But how does this tie into vampires and other superstitions surrounding the undead? It makes sense. Remember that one skeleton of a child that was buried with a brick in its mouth (the Vampire of Lugnano)? It also had an abscessed tooth and, by my understanding, was from a time of what was likely a malaria outbreak in the area. However, because of superstition, the people burying this child put a rock in the mouth to avoid it coming back to life and wreaking havoc on the living.

There are more examples of skeletons being excavated having been buried in similar fashions, many of them tracing back to similar superstitions, from what I’ve seen. This is a topic that is really interesting to me, as it can tell a lot about past traditions and point to where some traditions that were adopted (albeit in a bastardized form) by the Christian church come from. It is an ever expanding base of knowledge and information, and I enjoy keeping up with it, even peripherally.