How the Occult Brought Cremation to America

[icymist]

Cremation has become so popular in America that if current trends continue it will be the funerary choice of half of Americans within four years. Time Magazine reported this surprising fact in a recent cover story on the rise of cremation -- yet the otherwise probing story omitted, as do many studies of cremation, how the ancient and Eastern practice got its start in America. To understand this requires uncovering a leaf from occult history.

Cremation was introduced to America in the 1870s by a retired Civil War colonel, Henry Steel Olcott. As a Union Army staff colonel and military investigator, Olcott had amassed a distinguished record, which included routing out fraud among defense contractors and making some of the first arrests in the Lincoln assassination. In his post-military life as a lawyer and journalist, Olcott developed a deep interest in the esoteric and paranormal -- which drove his fascination with the then-exotic rite of burning the dead.

While cremation possessed ancient roots, it was little known among Victorian-age Americans. Indeed, to most late nineteenth-century Westerners, the concept of cremation seemed otherworldly and even un-Christian. Americans associated funeral pyres and crematoriums with pagan antiquity or the mists of the Far East. Modern people buried their dead, and that was that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitch-horowitz/how-the-occult-brought-cr_b_3880620.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

1. This was interesting. I had no idea that cremation in this country...

had these kinds of roots.

I'm sending the link to my dad, I'm sure he'll find it interesting as well.
(Side note) He once had a client (back when he was a practicing lawyer) who was in the funeral home business. The guy had a neat idea (for the time anyway) where he contracted with a company that made those paper based milk cartons. They would make coffin sized 'milk' cartons for the funeral home to use in the cremations, which cut down on costs and was more environmentally friendly. That was back in the late seventies to early eighties, so I'm sure they have better methods these days.
(please forgive me for rambling-on. The article reminded me of the story and I just felt the need to share )


Personally I'm still trying to find out if I can have a funeral where they set me out in a small skiff made to look like a longship at which point they shoot at it with flaming arrows, setting me aflame.



Those that I ask always give me funny looks or ask if I'm just trying to waste their time.

[love_katz]

2. Most interesting.

Thanks for posting this, Icy Mist.

I became somewhat aware of the origins of funeral customs during high school, when one of my teachers, who is Lakota talked about how peculiar mainstream ideas are about burial, cremation, etc. in comparison to how his people view this subject.

I have also experienced some frustration when trying to perform pagan style honoring of my ancestors, most of whom were cremated rather than buried. The mausoleum is quite restrictive on what they allow and don't allow.

It is interesting that some people became quite upset when Henry Olcott tried to perform what was publicized as a 'pagan' cremation, to the point where they wanted to riot. Since some Christian religions seem to believe that they will be resurrected in the same bodies that they had during life, that is apparently why their religions demand burial rather than cremation.

Tyrs: I hope you get your choice, and get sent off in a replica of a Viking ship, when it is time for your to cross the Rainbow bridge. My Lakota friend said that under current burial laws, these things have to be done within about 24 hours of the persons death. Supposedly, this has to do with laws regarding the control of disease that date from the time of the Black Plague in Europe. I have also read that our culture's process of embalming can be dated all the way back to ancient Egypt, when the dead were embalmed so that they would have intact bodies to use in the afterlife. If that is the case, then all the shouting the fundy fanatics want to do against occult practices becomes rather humorous.

[icymist]

3. I consider any shouting the fundy fanatics do funny.

Back in the day, I used a separate altar which was dedicated to honoring my ancestors. That has since turned into books upon books of genealogical research. It's my way of sharing with the part of the family that doesn't understand my pagan practice.

[LibertyLover]

4. Embalming as currently practiced

has very little in common with mummification like in ancient Egypt. It actually got its start during the Civil War because dead soldiers' bodies were supposed to be returned to their next of kin and there is very little that says "decomposition" more than having a body lie out on a battlefield in the weather for several days.