Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone, I’m Angela and welcome to this Afterlife 10k Party. We are here to celebrate the 10 000 subscribers here on YouTube. I’m really, really happy for this. When I started the channel I never thought that we would hit 10 000 subscribers in just over a year, so I’m extremely, extremely thankful to you guys and it really means so much to me. Not just for my channel but because it really makes me acknowledge the importance that the academic studies of these topics, which are normally a bit understudied in academia. You made me realize and you allow me to show other people that it is important for you and for the community and there is in fact interest in the academic study of Magic, Paganism, Esotericism, Shamanism and these related currents. So thank you so much for being here for being part of the Symposium and this party is for you guys. And I have lots of special guests which I’m going to introduce in just a second and this party will be on afterlife, death, and near-death experiences we are still in the time of Samhain and Halloween so I thought it’d be a good idea to address a subject matter which we haven’t addressed yet on the channel.

So I have here with me a panel of academics plus an artist and my patron community, my Inner Symposium. So I will now start introducing them to you and then you will interact with them through the live chat; you can ask questions and I can pass them on to them and yeah and we will have this fun round table, Academic Fun of course.

So we have here in the panel Chris Deacy [DC] Head of Religious Studies at the University of Kent. He is currently leading a module or a course focused on death afterlife and near-death experiences.

We have David Wilson [DW] a religious studies PhD at the University of Edinburgh and author of the book “Redefining Shamanisms.” David specializes in Spiritualism and Western Mediumship as forms of Shamanism.

Then we have Giorgio Scalici [GS], another Italian, postdoctoral researcher at Nova University of Lisbon. He specializes in death rituals in Indonesian shamanistic traditions.

Then we have Jeffrey Albaugh [JA] program manager for the Conference on Current Pagan Studies and the Co-Chair for the Pagan Studies Unit at the American Academy Of Religion, Western Regional.

Then we have Jennifer Uzzell [JU] who you already know from a couple of previous videos, doctoral researcher at Durham University. Maybe you already know that she specializes in death rites in Druidry but maybe you don’t know that she owns a progressive funeral home.

And then we have Shanell Papp [SP] Canadian video and textile artist. Her research and art are focused on death images, the grotesque and labour.

And then last, but not least we have Veenat Arora [VA] Lecturer at Chandigarh College, India. She is a Sociologist of religion, specialising in death philosophy within Indian traditions.

So are you excited already? Because I surely am.

And then we have here my Inner Symposium, my patrons which I absolutely adore. It is thanks to them that I can keep doing this work for you guys and offer free academic, university-level content and also they are a great support even from a moral standpoint and yeah I absolutely adore them so I’m really happy. Happy that they’re here so I welcome Andrew, Dave, Jennie, João, and Theresa and Thomas, I guess, yes.

So yeah, now you can unmute yourself when you have to speak and also one thing before we start the round-table to all of you watching guys please, if you have a question, as opposed to you want to interact with other people in the chatbox, please start your question with the word QUESTION in capital letters. This way I can immediately see that it is in fact a question and pass it on to the people in the panel here, at the party. So happy 10 000 subscribers to all of us and let’s start the round table.

So who wants to have it first? Who wants to start? So we are here to discuss the afterlife, death, and near-death experiences. So who wants to start? Jenny, do you want to start since you also own a progressive funeral home which people didn’t know until now?

Jennifer Uzzell JU: Yeah okay, I can I can start. Okay yes, so my partner and I own a progressive funeral home in the northeast of England and by progressive, I mean that we do weird and wonderful things like put our prices on our website and ask people what they want rather than tell them what they’re going to have. This is the sort of thing we mean by progressive. It doesn’t mean that we don’t do traditional funerals. On the subject of afterlife beliefs, I carried out a survey online with Druids and other Pagans asking about funerals, funerary tradition, and afterlife beliefs and expected to get a handful of responses as people tend to when they’re doing survey work for PhDs and I ended up with 1 300 responses which means I think I am now sitting on the biggest resource in the world to do with Paganism and death generally. So if anybody has any questions about that I’m happy to try.

AP: What is, shortly, if that is possible, to make it short but what do Pagans believe comes after life?

JU: Okay, if you were to ask Christians, believe it or not, you would get a very wide range of responses. Asking Pagans gets you a much, much wider range of responsibilities.

AP: I’m not surprised at all, like not at all.

JU: I would say first of all, which might be the biggest surprise, there are Pagans who don’t believe that there is any life after death and they are not a tiny minority. They are a minority but they’re not in any way a tiny minority and I think that needs saying. So for those Pagans, very often they see the legacy the afterlife survival is in what goes back into nature. So, what did come out very strongly is that Pagans like the idea of natural burial, which is quite a big thing in the UK. And the idea that the elements that make them up, go back into the universe and that life after death,, for them, is understood in those terms and in what they leave behind them, whether that be their children or whether that be what they managed to do while they were alive. After that, the two biggest beliefs are in reincarnation of some kind or another. And what tends to be a big difference really between the belief in reincarnation in Paganism and the belief in the Dharmic religions such as Hinduism is that there isn’t necessarily an endpoint. Some Pagans believe that there’s an endpoint and that there is some sort of reunification with the universe, however, they understand that. But for a lot, because the world is not something to be escaped from, it’s something that’s divine in its own right that reincarnation may very well continue indefinitely, you’re not trying to get somewhere through it. And the other common belief is in some form of other world, whether that be described in terms of the Summerlands or Annwn or an ancestral world. The idea that there is a world sort of parallel to but different to this one in which it’s possible to make some form of contact with ancestors. But that is obviously a huge simplification.

AP: Yeah, thank you, thank you for that Jennifer. It’s actually pretty interesting to see the results from your survey which I know was a massive survey. Yeah, and I guess it may also depend on the location. I wonder whether Pagans from different countries may have different beliefs when it comes to the afterlife. Because from my… I haven’t done a survey so this is kind of anecdotal from my fieldwork but I’d say that the majority of Pagans that I have encountered believe in reincarnation. I don’t think that I’ve ever met a Pagan who believes that there is nothing at all after this life but yeah, of course, I would need to carry out a survey to have solid data to say that. Anyone else wants to join in when it comes to pagan beliefs?

Jeffrey Albaugh JA: Angela, if I may. First of all Jennifer, I’m so glad to see this work continuing because I had seen you at AAR, I think in Boston, about two years ago.

JU: It was actually San Diego, last year.

JA: Was it San…

JU: Yeah.

JA: I didn’t go to last year. So I’ve seen you somewhere present. At any rate, you were doing the Druid things which were really fascinating. This came up recently and it reminds me. Now I’m on the West Coast of the United States and Paganisms and Witchcrafts in the United States are regional. I’m sure they are everywhere, it’s not a big homogeneous whole, surprise, surprise, it’s the US but one of the things that came up in talking about reincarnation and it kind of reminds me and there’s… I don’t have an academic piece of this but I’ve seen this in various people speaking of these sorts of beliefs; is that we’re far more, Witches and Pagans seem to be far more involved with now, this life, right here and not worrying so much about some life that comes after. Which I think is interesting because Jennifer, you just said that the whole idea that there are more lives to come and about being here is what it’s about, we don’t escape the world, we’re embedded in it, we’re part of nature, where I’m part of this whole thing. And that may be part of it, you know, the work you’re going to do when you’re dead, whatever work that might be and work may be the wrong word, that happens when you’re dead. You’ll get there, we all will, it’s not like we have a choice but the work that we’re doing here and now is the important thing. So I’m just kind of riding on what you were saying, it brought up some very recent discussions that I’ve been having. So very cool, thank you.

AP: Yeah, thank you for that Jeffrey. And I also want to thank Richard. Is it Richard? Yeah, Richard Burke. Thank you so much for your donation. It really means a lot for me and the channel.

So is there anyone that wants to comment or ask questions about Pagan beliefs on the afterlife specifically?

Veenat Arora VA: May I say something, Angela?

AP: Yes.

VA: On reincarnation. Okay, I come from a nation where we have different religions and this reincarnation is the central death belief to Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. Okay, so in Hinduism precisely, our entire life is governed in a way that when we die we are going to come back to this earth in a new body and reincarnation would be getting a human body again. But there is a possibility that we also get into some animal form – that is transmigration. So we have this concept of Karma which is retribution. So if we want a better next life we are supposed to follow a pursuit while living this present life, which involves many things about dos and don’ts, you know. So in every aspect of our life, we are supposed to be alert that, okay, this can be harmful after we die and it could lead to some, you know, some kind of rebirth in the lower realm. So, as you know, the Pagans also believe, as it has been discussed. So the central idea is that there is one universe and all of us came from that and there is some element of consciousness within this material body which transmigrates or which reincarnates. And this present life could be one of those millions of lives that we might have had throughout this, I mean there is no end to the cycle as such, but yes there is something called the concept of Moksha, Moksha or Nirvana in Buddhism. Moksha, we use the term in Hinduism and in Sikhism they call it reaching Satgikand.(?) So it is the realm of supreme power which is from where we all generated. So once we all rectify our Karmas there is a possibility that we go back to that supreme power and then we are out from the cycle of birth and death. So this is the central aspect of most of the religious beliefs in my country. Thank you.

AP: Thank you. That’s really interesting Veenat. And what about you David, I can see David Wilson. I know that you studied Spiritualism and its relation to Shamanism so do you want to come in and say something about beliefs in the afterlife or yeah?

David Wilson DW: Yeah I can do. I mean the fundamental belief in Spiritualism is that when we die the consciousness, the soul, the spirit, whatever you want to call it, continues so that you are essentially the same person. You’ll become someone different but you have left behind this physical form and the other thing, of course, that Mediumship is focused on, is using the possibility of communication between people of spirit and people in this physical material plane as a way of demonstrating that continuing existence, continued personality. And you get, certainly, in the traditional spiritualist literature, there’s this idea that you work your way through a series of environments and spirit, as you progress, as an individual spirit. So traditionally, there are seven different levels, planes, environments, and dimensions, call them what you will but built on top of this world and gradually you work your way through, as you develop as an individual.

And I was interested listening to the discussion about some reincarnation because that’s a very highly contested subject in Spiritualism. The traditional position of Spiritualism, certainly in Britain, is that reincarnation does not happen but you get a lot of individual Spiritualists who personally have some interest in or will subscribe to some version of reincarnation. When you look at traditions like Spiritism in South America, which was based on the writings of Allan Kardec, the French Medium and also with the Theosophical tradition you find that reincarnation is very much more prominent as a taught doctrine. And that, traditionally, has been one of the dividing lines between Spiritualism and the Theosophical and Spiritist versions, if you like, but it’s interesting that it remains a very contested subject within Spiritualism of whether we actually come back into this world or not. That’s only because the traditional view of sound British Spiritualism is that we do not.

JU Can I just come back in on there, very briefly, as well on this idea of afterlife? Within Druidry, which is my major area of study. Reincarnation again, is probably the most common belief but a huge, a really central concern is with ancestors and with honouring of the ancestors and this particularly raises issues, obviously, around reincarnation because if people are reincarnated then what is it that is then existing as an ancestor?

DW: Yes, so this is one of the things that gets pointed out. You know if somebody’s being reincarnated you’re not then going to be able to communicate with them as a spirit in some other place than this…

JU: Only if you take the traditional view that you are composed of a body and a soul. And within Druidry, there is very often the idea and within Paganism more widely but specifically within Druidry, there is the idea that you may actually be composed of more than that. And the teaching that you hear, very often in Druidry, is the ‘three cauldrons.’ And the idea is that there are actually more than two aspects and the physical aspect returns to the earth but actually there is more than one aspect that survives. So though it is in fact possible to reincarnate and for something to exist in an ancestral realm as well.

DW: Yeah, I suppose simplistically Spiritualism adheres to the traditional view that you are a physical body and spirit. But there is a little bit more to it than that because as we spend our time in this world and we build up some conscious self-image. We are, if you like, weaving what you might call a spiritual body so that when you’re in spirit you also projecting and creating a body, a spiritual body if you like. It’s a finer material, it’s not made of the stuff in this physical realm but it does exist and there’s a kind of mental projection and self-presentation. So you’d also have an appearance and a form, although it’s not made of the same stuff as the physical stuff of this world. So it is a little bit more than just body and soul but certainly, like I said, the traditional Spiritualist view is that once you’ve left this world behind you can communicate, that you’re not going to come back, personally.

AP: There is a question from the chat, from Nick Tillman. Hi Nick. I believe he’s asking Jennifer. Nick is asking, have we seen Pagan ideas on the afterlife shift as a response or reaction to the concepts of Christianity?

JU: Oh, that’s interesting. There is a lot of conscious rejection of the concepts of Christianity and specifically, there is quite a lot of rejection within Paganism of the concept of judgement or divine judgement, I think and this is also, again the big difference between the concept of reincarnation in Paganism and the concept of reincarnation in the Dharmic religions. I hear a lot of Pagans talking about Karma but I don’t hear them talking about Karma, particularly with regard to reincarnation and that is really interesting and the connection that in Hinduism is absolutely integral between Karma and Dharma and Moksha is not there. So yeah, it’s a really interesting one. There are Pagans that talk about going to a spiritual realm after death and I suppose that whether you call that Heaven or not is purely a case of semantics. But you don’t hear a lot of talk about something else that judges you. So it may well be that there is some sort of consequence for how you behave but I would think how most Pagans would understand that would be much closer to what you see in Spiritualism which is that where you go is where you need to be in order to progress, rather than that something has judged you and put in a particular place. I don’t know if that answers the question or not but yeah, there is certainly a bit of a kickback I think.

AP: Yeah, I think that it does answer the question. Nick let us know if it does. Meanwhile Eric, hi. I just saw that you entered the roundtable, it’s nice to see you here.

What about you Giorgio what about the concepts of afterlife and that you have studied in Indonesia?

Giorgio Scalici GS: It’s totally different actually. It’s while I was listening I was like okay, it’s really it’s the opposite almost. In the community that I work with, the Wana of Morowali, there is no reincarnation because it will be seen as like, ‘again.’ Like, seriously I don’t want to do it again because there is all this idea that life is suffering. If this very negative view is that life is suffering so afterlife is a reward. I’m going to die I’m going to be finally happy.

AP: So not being alive is a reward in and of itself?

GS: Yes, because they believe they live in a kind of part as they live in misery. People that live in misery because us from the West took all their wealth, so we live in heaven but for them, when we die, is no heaven for us because we are dead, are in our heaven. While they’re suffering now, so they deserve to go to a heaven when they die. And the interesting thing is that you don’t, if you’re Wana you don’t actually die, you change place because they divided the world in the human world and the dream slash afterlife slash mythical time-world, spirit-world so when you die your soul does move from the human side with the mythical time. It’s a physical, actually a physical place actually where we live, the afterlife for them. So they believe that when they die they move here and they come back to a time when everything was possible and everything was full of power and everything was perfect.

AP Is this is this across Indonesian traditions or…?

GS: No, no. This is specific within my community, in the Wana, it’s strongly related to their social status in the area. It’s totally different and it’s changed a lot in how they experience life. Like, I think if you have a nice life it’s easier to feel like, okay I want to do it again. But they’re really like I don’t want to live it again, like once it’s enough for me. It’s very interesting. Actually, their life is not so bad, honestly but mythologically this is their point of view. You see that everybody is doing better than them. So they hope in the afterlife.

AP: Oh that’s interesting.

JA: It almost brings up the question of what’s the relationship between a group of people’s beliefs in the afterlife and how they’ve been colonized. So I wonder what the relationship would be there?

GS: Yes, there is. Because the thing is there’s a lot of mix. Jenny was talking about this final judgement and they have it but it’s clearly something that arrived later because they believe there is a man with a book with all the good people in the afterlife but like they don’t know how to read, how to write. So it’s clearly like something that arrived later. There are these things and then there’s all the relationship with the colonizer, like signs of the arrival of the Indian colonizer in Indonesia have been slaves. So like they have at least 1000 years of slavery history and they see people arrive and like control them, like using violence against them, it’s like okay we are doing very badly now but one day we are going to do better. And we are doing badly now because the people from outside took all our power. It’s very clear, it’s their history that shapes their afterlife, so they don’t live the moment, they live the future. It is also the past. This is too complex, their future is also the past.

AP: I believe that Andrew, one of the members of the Inner Symposium has a question. Andrew, do you want to step in?

Andrew: Yep thanks, I wonder about the concept of eternity, which is pretty much an Abrahamic faith type thing, where you’ve got linear time but in a lot of other societies it’s more cyclical. Just sort of generally, is there a concept where time is completely different in the after-world? Anyway, generally my question is?

GS: Is it to me?

Andrew: Sorry, yeah. It was general but yes because the shamanistic point of view would be, you know, very interesting, I think.

GS: The idea is, like cyclical, is a good point. The idea is that the time and space was one – and at a certain point split – the time and space split. For them, space is more important in time so on this side when the West, more or less. So the afterlife, the dream time, mythological time, space, and this is their life. One day in the future they will go back together and the initial purity, the initial density is like the big bang. It’s very interesting because the big bang’s idea is what’s all together explodes is losing power, like the thing that keeps everything together is expanding. But one day it’s going to go back to one. With the one is the same it’s expanding then losing power and one day is going to back to one and the mythical time and the historical time are going back together. So it’s cyclical, in some way, it’s also above together that’s kind of parallel. Shamans can jump between the two. Normal people don’t, they’re parallel. This is answering your question? Sorry, because it’s complex.

Andrew: Yes, Yeah actually more than I hoped, actually. That’s it’s very much reminiscent of Sir Roger Penrose’s ideas, but yeah, that’s fantastic.

AP: We also have a couple of questions from the chat so Nelson is asking, are there Pagan traditions where marriage is retained or continued in the afterlife? Anyone of you wants to try and answer this question?

JU: I have limited, I mean obviously it’s not something I’ve done a particular study of but I do know, I have spoken to Pagans who have said that when people marry, for want of a better word, or handfasting can be for a year and a day so with the option of, you know, if it’s not what they both want at the end of a year they separate and there’s no sort of come back, there’s no blame there, or it can be for life or it can be across lifetimes. So the idea that they will continue to meet and they will continue to be together in future incarnations and there are Pagans who undergo hand-fasting ceremonies that are intended to last across lifetimes. So it’s a thing that exists, yes, but I couldn’t tell you a huge amount about it.

AP: Yeah, I also have the same experience in Italy, with the Pagan community in Italy and it is very common that, yeah, I have met a few Pagans who actually wanted to have a handfasting which would last for the future lives as well. I’m not sure whether Nelson meant, you know, Pagan marriage is retained in an afterlife like in the Summerland or whether, yeah, because Nelson, when it comes to marriage and weddings Pagans normally do handfastings and they can last, as Jenny was saying, for a year or for a life or for even future lives but yeah, I don’t have any data or knowledge regarding whether marriages would kind of, I don’t know. Do you know something about a concept of afterlife? Of course, it also depends on the kind of Paganism because there are forms of Paganism like more traditional, reconstructionist forms of Paganism which tend to have different ideas of what the afterlife looks like. So yeah, I guess we are maybe referring mostly to the Neopagans, so the contemporary kind of Pagans, who are not following a specific reconstructed tradition like from the Roman or the Norse tradition or the Hellenic tradition and some may argue that even the Indian traditions like the Darshana may be considered as Pagan.

DW: Hi Angela, can I just, I’ll just jump in quickly? It’s not just Spiritualism, I’ve also spent quite a lot of time looking at the Evenki Shamanism in Siberia which is the tradition where we get the word, Shaman, from and I find in both Spiritualism and Shamanism there’s not really been any great expectation that marriages necessarily continue beyond this life. I know in Spiritualism the idea is that if people want to be together then that relationship can continue but the mere fact that people have been married or whatever in this life doesn’t necessarily count for anything once this life is over. And also with Evenki Shamanism, as well, it was the same sort of thing, you know, whatever relationships have existed in this world if people want to continue once this life is over then they can do but there are several obligations now.

AP: Thank you for telling us that David. Also, there is another question from RedFalcon, what have you heard about going to the blue light and not the white light which brings you back here?

I guess the question is whether you’ve heard about the blue light as opposed to the white light which brings you back to our world if I’m interpreting the question correctly.

JU: When I was studying for my masters which is a fair while ago now I did do quite a lot of looking into near-death experiences and the various arguments around them. And I have to say that is a new one on me. That is not something I’ve come across before. So I’ve heard a lot about, obviously, experiences of light and beings of light and obviously, by definition, the people whose reports we have are the people that came back. I haven’t, I am not aware of any cases where people have been told that if they go towards a blue light they won’t come back. There tends not to be and that the cases that I’ve looked at there tends not to be a huge element of choice. People are either told to go back… There’s interestingly, there’s a distinction here between Western and Indian cases. There was one study done looking at the differences between Indian and Western near-death experiences and in Indian cases, people were far more likely to be told that there was an error and that it wasn’t them that was supposed to be there, it was somebody else. Whereas in Western cases they were more likely to be told that they still had something to do and so they had to go back but in both cases there isn’t much choice involved, you’re told to go back. There may be something, I mean this was a good few years ago, there may have been something that’s come up since then but that’s that’s my experience.

AP: Eric, do you want to jump in and tell us what you just wrote in the chat. Seems interesting if you want to if you don’t…

Eric: Yeah, yeah, sure. It appears, from what I’ve read of ancient Egyptian Paganism that not only were people considered to still be married after they died but relationships such as masters and slaves and Pharaohs and subjects were also kept in the afterlife which could be quite nasty because sometimes slaves were even killed and buried with their master so they can serve them in the afterlife.

AP: Yeah, I guess the Egyptian case is pretty different from, I guess, the normal, the average Pagan view of the afterlife.

JU: Well there’s actually, there the only evidence that there is for human sacrifice in ancient Egypt is very, very early and it’s not uncontested. But later on, certainly, they were using Shakti figures rather than sacrifices. So the sacrificial element was something that didn’t last very long. But in the case in point, what I was saying earlier about there being more than one element to the human psyche, the Egyptians are the absolute case in point, there. You have the Ka the Ba and the Ankh which are all different elements of the personality and all of them have different afterlife destinations. So the Ka hangs around the tomb and is given mortuary offerings whereas the Ba is what goes on and hopefully enters as an ascended soul. So again you have this idea that there is more than one of what we in the west would call a soul.

AP: Yeah, Chris are you still with us?

Chris Deacy CD: Yeah I certainly am.

AP: Yeah, do you want to…

CD: I’m actually thinking in 19th century “The Gates Ajar” the Elizabeth Stewart Phelps novel which is all about this idea that the next life is going to be a very social continuation of this life with people in a relative’s sitting room, around the piano having lunch the idea that it’s very communal and an extension of the next life and I think also mixing in from a Christian perspective the Christian social movement of the 19th century this sort of idea that the next life’s going to be a better version of anything that we could expect to experience now and you know, you’ve got antecedents for that way back in the Early Church with people like Irenaeus, you know, the idea of there being re-compensation, justice in the next world which will be a better earth. So the afterlife, I was fascinated by what was said earlier, that in many cases you see this in reincarnation as well but the idea that it’s as much about this life and the idea that this life in a more fulfilled sense than about the afterlife per se. You’ll find apart from, I guess, Swedenborg really what 17th or so century, you don’t really have that much very specific information about what the next life is going to look like. It’s more about what it is in this life that we want to hold on to, which is why you’ve got all these debates about the resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul. It’s about our personhood continuing whether in an embodied or a disembodied form but it’s some essence of ourselves that we don’t want to let go of, that makes the afterlife so necessary in terms of justice and the idea that we must matter and our lives are too truncated at the moment to imagine that we can just cease to be when our earthly life comes to an end.

AP: Thank you, Chris, that was very interesting and also we need to go back to what Giorgio was saying in the chat next but there is a question, I think, for Veenat. The question is was there a practice in India when the wife of the deceased was sacrificed on the funeral pyre with their husband?

VA: Yes, it was there. It was, see Hinduism has evolved in phases. So it was the time when there is this text called Smriti texts were in practice. These texts were interpreted by or written by some people, Brahmans and Rishis. So when they wrote Hindu code of conduct so it was you know burning of this wife with the husband was more of a patriarchal idea and nothing about afterlife per se. It wasn’t that this lady is going to be the companion for many lives, the idea was that the lady doesn’t have an identity without a man. So if the man has gone, so it is better that she is burned along with the man, husband for that matter and because the rules for widows were very, very strict; so widowhood was even difficult to bear so death was an easier alternative to being a widow. So that was the rationale behind that and it wasn’t anything to do with afterlife for that matter, it was just that the life of the man is over, so women, the wife who’s left behind, has no one to look after, I mean, look as her master or somebody to serve so it’s better she also ends her life along with the husband. So that was the ritual however then it is banned now and these days it doesn’t happen like that.

AP: That’s good. I guess.

VA: So it was patriarchy and not afterlife.

AP: Yeah, thank you, Veneta. Gorgio do you want to step in and talk about what you were mentioning in the chat about the souls?

GS: Oh yes. We’re going to have a little guest, possibly. I don’t know. This is my son playing around. Yes, the community that I work with, believe in three souls; one is in the blood, one is in the shadow, and one is in the head, this is a kind of a dream agent. And it’s a very common belief among Shamanic culture that what we see in dreams is what our soul sees as well while it’s around when we sleep and for them, it’s also the same soul that goes in the afterlife. So being part of your being means that you don’t die. This community is interesting because for them you die, your body dies, but for the community, you die after like three weeks, after the community says that you can go in the afterlife. And they treat you as if you’re being still alive, they give, they talk to you. You are still there even if your corpse is dead, fine, your soul is there and you are still alive for the community. So it’s forbidden to cry because there’s no reason to cry for somebody who’s still alive. You have to wait for the end of the ritual.

AP: Yeah, I recall you at a conference it may have been the BSR Conference that you were showing a few photos from funeral rituals. Yeah, I don’t know why but your explanation just reminded me of that scene.

GS: The difference between being alive and being dead is not always so clear. It’s very clear for Westerners, like oh yeah, your heart stopped beating, you’re dead, more or less because on the medical side, it has become very complex. But for them, it’s not your body that says when you’re dead or alive, it’s your soul that is actually just changed status. It’s a completely different point of view on living and dying.

AP: Yeah, that is fascinating. And it is, yeah, I find it interesting to see how, across different countries and how in different parts of the world and different cultures, the conceptualization of death and the afterlife is rooted in how they view human beings, how they conceptualize our very presence, our life. Their way of seeing how we live determines how we die and what happens after we die if anything happens. On that note, I wanted to ask Shanell to talk about her art concerning death and the macabre. Shannell?

Shanell Papp SP: Hi, listening to everyone talk, it just makes me think about where I live currently. I will get to art, sort of in this, but I live in Canada, the southern part of Alberta and the history here isn’t like, as far as buildings and graveyards are, it’s very, very short like 100 years, maybe. And so like the whole like thing with faith and the afterlife is kind of like something no one ever talks about. Like funeral stuff is non-existent and the way that people talk about the afterlife basically non-existent. Like, we’re basically erasing any sort of death ritual. Like there are cremations, we do have a green graveyard in the city which was just approved last year but it’s all put under, this is environmentalism, this is not the closer connection to the earth, this has nothing to do with Pagan beliefs and actually in Lethbridge, they also have a real, like… I talked about this yesterday actually in another talk because I did a whole documentary on the ‘Satanic Panic’ in North America but just specifically in my home town. And so it’s called “fire ravages ‘Satan house’” [ Shows newspaper headline] but I’m just, yeah, so this is just to prove the sort of strangeness here, where they have like this sort of polarizing effect but there’s no real long history with these beliefs. Because there’s also the First Nations’ beliefs and here so it’s, kind of, still the wild west. As far as here goes, in my work, is because I want people to talk about these things more because they are present. And so with the work I make, I try and make textile-based labour-intensive artwork that’s about morbid subject matters like a whole human skeleton with organs and that sort of thing. So it’s soft and approachable and most people never see any sort of anatomical displays here because there are no medical museums or anything like that. It’s sort of like to get people to even talk about death or anything difficult you have to take sort of a soft approach. Whereas for me, I want to talk about this stuff all the time. But it’s hard because people don’t want to and you’ll be no, no, no we don’t talk about that, so with my work, I just try and present the difficulties for people.

JU: That’s really interesting to me because obviously, with my funeral director hat on, we do quite a bit with green burials which is taking off a bit. I think there are about 250 there may be more than that now sites in Britain and this sort of putting it into a box and saying well it’s environmentalism but it has nothing to do with the connection to the earth it’s really strange to me in terms of how you can separate those things. I know, obviously, I come at it with a Pagan perspective but my supervisor did a study specifically on a Church of England green burial site in Cambridgeshire and the reasons that people were choosing that and to my surprise, the language that Christians and Pagans use when they talk about green burial is virtually identical. The only difference that you might get is that Pagans very often conceptualize the earth herself as a Goddess. So it’s giving back to the Goddess whereas that’s not language that Christians use, obviously. But they do talk about giving back so there is this idea of the body as a gift and this reciprocity and I suppose going back to Marcel Mauss and Gift Theory. There is this idea that the body is the ultimate, inalienable gift that you can give and that language seems to be coming out of people regardless really of whether they are Christians or Pagans or nothing in particular. There does seem to be this idea of green burial as being in a relationship and gift-giving with the earth.

AP: Sorry, you were saying.

SP: My sort of thing about it is that it’s very capitalistic. Like in a way, people are like okay, since the green funeral doesn’t require me to get embalmed and I’m buried in a shroud, it should be a cheaper funeral or I’m gonna get cremated. It’s sort of how people talk about it. They don’t necessarily talk about it as giving a gift back to the earth and think about it even in that scientific way. The way people talk about it is like, you know, it’s over, it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t know. Does it sound awful? But that’s the sort of language around death that I’m…. Here people don’t talk about it, they just go, oh you could throw me in a ditch or you could cremate me or like it doesn’t matter, like the afterlife. Not saying that nobody has any faith-based beliefs but I think the whole funeral and the ritual around death is pretty much non-existent for most people around here. They will have a few, they will have like, someone will die and then they will wait months to have like an in memoriam if they have one at all. And that’s even more like that with CoviD because people aren’t doing the connection. So if you’re not doing the ritual what is the faith part of it like is it? It’s like they’re more concerned about property and wealth and passing that on than the spiritual aspect of it. So for me, I guess with my work I try and just maybe have a conversation in any direction around death.

AP: Yeah, I think that even in our Western society perhaps we need to talk more about that and have you know I guess an open conversation about it. Meanwhile, there is… Thank you, Shanell for your intervention… there is a question from Helena asking about the Spiritism movement in France that started with Allan Kardec. Is there anyone of you who wants to say anything about the Spiritism movement?

DW: I can maybe say a little bit. It’s not my specialism but Allan Kardec was a very famous 19th-century French Spiritualist and Medium and he became particularly influential through his written works, rather than through in-person demonstrations over time. But what was interesting about that is that his works have become extremely influential in South America and Brazil particularly and it has given rise to almost a kind of offshoot of Spiritualism which tends to be, people call it their Espiritism in South America and it’s very much focused upon the doctrines of reincarnation and spiritual healing. You know this was a very true, very prominent aspect of Spiritualism. So the healing is also very prominent in Anglo-American Spiritualism but not so much reincarnation. But it’s interesting that you do get one or two examples to the history of Spiritualism where a medium becomes particularly prominent and almost becomes the catalyst for a whole new tradition to be created.

AP: Thank you, David. There is also a question in the chat from my best friend. Hi Cipriano, I have to translate it because it’s written in Italian. So death, as an entity, spirits and Gods of death, pacts and attempts to manipulate death. Have you ever found any of these themes in the traditions, across the traditions you have studied? So that as an entity, spirits and gods of death, and pacts and attempts to manipulate death.

JU: Within Druidry, death is sometimes, I wouldn’t say actually so much the deities that are addressed in Druidry are very often the Celtic and very often actually mythological figures from the Mabinogi, which is a medieval Welsh document. And within that, there is a character called Arawn who is the Lord of the Annwn which is sort of an underworld and he has also been characterized in later Medieval legend as Gwyn ap Nudd, sometimes the King of the Fairies and sometimes the King of the Underworld and he is very often associated with death within Druidry. And what you sometimes get, particularly around Samhain, is you will get ritual drama where people will be, within a ritual setting, will confront death and will sometimes have some sort of dialogue with death. And the other figure that is sometimes associated with that is the Cailleach who is, the name means ‘The Veiled One’ and she is represented, usually, as an old woman, and the legends about her are mainly from Scotland and Ireland and she is a landshaper in that she’s seen as a sort of giant figure that is associated with winter and with the shaping of the land but she also, very often, is brought into the Samhain ritual. And again it’s a case of confronting fear and coming to terms with it. And people are very often asked to give things that they want to be rid of. Whether it’s attitudes or situations, they are asked to give these things into a cauldron that is carried around by the Cailleach and then they are burnt as part of the ritual. So yes, figures connected with death and a lot of Pagans that I know have figures, particularly at this time of year, that represent death in some way on their altars. What I haven’t come across is, within this and again I particularly studied Druidry and so I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I haven’t come across anything that I would say is an attempt to manipulate death. Within the studies that I’ve, within the cultures that I’ve looked at, the emphasis is very much on death being a part of a normal part of everyday life. And the enmity, I mean within Christianity, the rhetoric is very much about triumphing over death and conquering death and therefore death being seen as an enemy and that rhetoric is not there in Paganism. So death is not necessarily seen as an unfriendly force. I don’t know if anyone has anything to add to that.

AP Yeah any, thank you, Jenny, anyone else?

VA: Yeah, I’ll talk about the death god in Hinduism. So we have this God named as Yama. So this Lord Yama is a giant kind of personality. So when somebody dies Yama sends his two agents to pull the soul out of the body and you know, right from here the Karma starts working. So if you have been a good person. Good, now goodness is defined in Hinduism in its own way. So if you have lived life to those tenets then these two agents will be very kind and you know they won’t trouble much. But then if it had been the other way round it is going to be very, very painful and then the journey from the moment of death till the soul reaches the abode of Yama, it’s full of torments; it’s written in our text that there is going to be pain there is going to be harsh rivers to be crossed and there’ll be crocodiles who chase you and stuff like that. So what happens is now this afterlife. All this is written in our mythological books. Then the service providers, like the pundits who help in performing the rituals, they tell us what to donate and what to, you know, so it is so much money-making in the name of all this. So they will tell you to donate certain articles and food and lots of stuff, money and even a cow. The cow is very important in our philosophy so that helps the soul in the afterlife journey to reach this god Yama and once the soul reaches, with all these perks that we have given there in order to help it reach there. And then Yama evaluates the Karma’s good and bad deeds and then accordingly in his abode either he gives you very painful experiences or very pleasant. So Heaven and Hell are, basically, those are the part of abode of Yama where in heaven there are all pleasures and on the contrary, in the Hell, there are all bad things and once this fruit of Karma is over and then your next life is decided. So based on whatever you have done in your previous life, after bearing all this pain or pleasures, you will be given a new body it could be the human body or it could be a better life or it could be the worst life also. So Yama is the God.

AP: Thank you Veenat. Anyone has anything to share about attempts to manipulate death in the traditions that you have studied? I guess that’s no, which is not it’s not surprising. But Chris, was it Chris?

Eric: I can weigh in again with some ideas from Egyptian Paganism, at least at certain parts of Egyptian history, you know, it’s over 5000 years ago so it’s buried. The idea was that you need to learn certain passwords and rituals to get through various gates successfully after you died to get to the afterlife that you need to be in. And you could actually be destroyed or eaten if you did them wrong. They also appeared to believe that if your Pharaoh or whatever nobility you were under did those rituals correctly that they could bring you through so it wasn’t so necessary for everyone to have that done. And these rituals were also quite often apparently written on the bandages that people were mummified with, as a, I guess, sort of a crib note or something or just a magical talisman. And then there were similar beliefs in Central America outlined in a book called the Popol Vuh where you had to get through various, a cave-system with jaguars and other dangers after you died.

AP: Thank you, Eric. There is another question from Nick Tillman. Hi Nick. He’s another member of the Inner Symposium. So he asks what is the Pagan understanding of the role of the body post-death? How is the body seen in Paganism after death?

JU: Well, once again it varies usually, obviously. It also depends on the status the body has in life and whether in fact the body is the whole person and that is a very complicated discussion as well. But I think I’ve already kind of touched on this in that for a lot of Pagans and I know that this is an idea that reaches into Tibetan Buddhism as well to some extent, the body is the final thing you have, that you can give as a gift. So within Buddhism, I know that there is the idea with Sky Burial as the body is Danna(?) but is given us food to the animals, which is a little bit illegal here. So the idea of the body being, you know, the green burial – a lot of Pagans think of it in these sorts of terms. And there’s also a lot of discussions that I see about cremated remains being put in a pot with a tree and I wish people would just pack this, the hell, in because it doesn’t work. There is no surer way of killing a sapling than putting a whole person’s cremated remains near it. And what I will say is if that’s what you want to do that, scatter it around some trees, that will be helpful. But again, you know, anyway that you look at this it’s the idea of the body as a gift and the idea of the body as the elements returning to the earth from which they came.

There’s also in sort of more ancient Pagan traditions, there’s the idea of an underworld and this gets me back to another main area of my study which is burial mounds and modern burial mounds and the idea of going into and under the earth and continued existence there. That’s a whole different issue but it’s there. What I will say, in funeral rituals, a lot of Pagans, again generalization, a lot of Pagans are a lot less squeamish about being around a dead body than perhaps the wider population is. So you are more likely to get Pagans coming into, for example, the funeral home and spending time anointing, actually touching. I mean obviously not at the moment [Covid-19], it’s the world’s gone mad and a normal circumstance is actually spending time, maybe singing to the body or talking to the body or anointing the body with oils. So that the body as the locus of the person is sometimes in that liminal space between death and whatever the ultimate destination of the body is. There is perhaps more of an honouring of the body that has become normal in wider society, again generalization though.

AP: Thank you, Jenny. There is also another question from João, Hi João. He says the first haircut is important for Hindus, shedding the undesirable that comes back from a previous life (correct me if I’m wrong) do other cultures have similar rites of passage to a new life? Any other cultures you know of which have rites of passage, once you enter a new life like cutting hair or something else?

VA: I would like to clear here that cutting hair is not something which is done for entering the new life in Hinduism. It is basically, the person who is doing who’s the performer, I mean who is performing the cremation on the deceased. So it is like a tribute from his side, so it is that kind of connection and it is not that the cutting the hair here is done. I mean it’s something to do with the or it is like connected to the next life. So the person who is performing the cremation is mostly, in Hinduism, the son of the deceased. It is like that father has to be given the last and you can say funeral right, father deserves a funeral right from the son that is the theory. Father also and even everyone, the mother also. So the son who is performing this cremation is supposed to shave the head or you know. So that is a kind of purification, cleaning, a cleaning ritual, more of that before doing something which is giving the last rights as an honour to the person who is dead. And when it comes to this preparation of the corpse for the burning. So they do the cleaning they kind of shaving is done, cleaning of the body is done it’s just like cleaning in terms of giving the regards to the person who is deceased so it is like that.

AP: Thank you Veenat for clarifying things. Chris, do you want to jump in and tell us something more about your module and what it is that you address?

CD: No, perfect timing because I was just thinking that that question about manipulating death is something that, even if it doesn’t come up so obviously in some of the world’s traditions, you see it in popular culture manifestations, over expressions of the afterlife, you see it in film – I mean that’s one of the things I do with my students we look at, you know, we’ll spend weeks looking at concepts of reincarnation or will look at Christian or Jewish or Islamic ideas of heaven or hell etc. But we also look at popular culture and you think of a film “What Dreams May Come,” for example, you know the Vincent Ward film which has lots of Zoroastrian or Christian or, you know, it’s open to all sorts of readings but that is very big as was the Alan Rudolph, film “Made in Heaven” from 1987, with these ideas that because these worldly vicissitudes, these worldly hopes, dreams, traumas in some cases, are so strong that the next life needs in some way to be short-circuited or there needs to be some manipulation to ensure that a soul that is left on earth who needs to be with the soul mate who’s in the next world, needs to come together. And the thing that we find for looking at all of these films is this very odd sort of mishmash, this very eclectic coming together of beliefs, very syncretic beliefs from Hinduism, from Christianity etc. So you’ve got the sort of idea that in “What Dreams May Come,” as an example, a character dies followed by another character, they’re separated because one’s in Heaven one is in Hell. So in a sort of Odyssean sense, goes down to Hell to bring his wife back, his soul mate back to Heaven. But then rather than say now we’re in Heaven that’s it what bliss what amazing sort of culmination of this journey, what do they want to do, they want to start all over again. So that so it’s like heaven and hell a means to an end. So one of the things that we’ll look at with the students, with my students, is this idea that many afterlife readings are kind of very reductionistic and that it’s all about this worldly coming togetherness, starting again in the body the very corporeal idea of what matters to us on earth. That kind of seems more solid, more durable, more everlasting than the idea that you just have this static life in heaven where all your troubles have been washed away and I find that a really interesting insight that the afterlife depictions are really depictions about what matters on earth and they often, in the filmic depictions, of course, come down to love.

AP: Thank you, Chris. That’s actually really interesting, yeah. We also got another question about Egypt. So Abiku asks in Egyptian mythology they go through trials, as you mentioned. Is this seen as a continuation of the kind of growth we experience, when alive? Like the hero’s journey.

That sounds more Indian, more like karmic rather than Egyptian. Any of you has any thoughts to share about it?

JA: Well the hero’s journey is interesting that’s Campbell, Joseph Campbell’s meta myth.

AP: Yeah Joseph Campbell.

JA: Yes, it’s interesting because that’s a wonderful structure for journeying into the underworld and although that meta myth which “Star Wars” was structured on, which I’m sure everybody here knows about that. It has this whole idea of going down into the world and coming back but it’s not necessarily that you died. The hero returns, he has a death and a rebirth, I suppose, sort of cycle. So there’s that and I’m wondering how much that kind of idea of the meta myth, which a lot of people disagree with and there’s a feminine version of it too. I wonder how much that shapes our thinking about what happens in the afterlife and of course, we don’t know what happens in the afterlife and if a lot of films have been based on this. I love the idea of looking at films, Chris and doing that death psychology does that a lot, which is my area and you know it’s a window into what the culture is thinking. So it’s just I find that fascinating and then you have the whole trope of the horror film and what is going on in a horror film that is so gratifying to watch, if you like horror films, some people can’t abide them. So I guess my thing is that I see a lot of these as still as living processes. Not things that you do once you’re dead to get past a password or anything like that – it’s a lot of comfort. James Hillman often said that everything that we do is aimed towards that moment of death and being okay with it. Which is pretty trippy. So, I’m not sure that answered the question but I just thought that the Campbell thing was important, perhaps it adds to it.

CD: Yeah I think as you think of Dante as well and the sort of the journey that the Hell, it’s a journey point it’s not the final destination. You have to go through Hell to reach Paradise and you see that you mentioned Depth Psychology. You see it in Alcoholics Anonymous, you see it in, and Alice Turner wrote a really good book on the history of Hell some years ago in which she sort of plays on that idea that Hell is really, it’s the human construction of Hell, rather than Hell as an objective essence that matters and you see it in poetry, you see it in film, in literature. So Dante, in that sense, has more to say about the afterlife than anything you’ll get in many of the scriptural texts of, certainly, when I work more closely with Jewish and Christian scriptures and you find that ideas on the afterlife there are quite piecemeal. But you go to popular culture manifestations and they’re all over the place but they are very much of a hodgepodge of different traditions.

But you know Campbell, what you say is absolutely spot on, that notion of challenge and somehow there’s this thing about the, I mean I was looking at it just this last week with my students, why is Heaven often perceived or portrayed in quite metaphorical terms but hell is very bodily. And is that notion that when you mention horror Jeffrey, isn’t that the thing about horror that sometimes, you know, that the people on the screen are suffering so we don’t have to: it’s precarious suffering. You can bring it back to the day of atonement, you know, the idea that there has to be struggle, there has to be sacrifice and I think Heaven, although it’s sort of, I suppose, the analogy would be a perfect holiday when you’re working really hard and life is full of challenges you can’t think of anything better than going on some sort of eternal holiday. But when you’re actually on the holiday you kind of want something also to challenge you and you wouldn’t want to be on holiday forever. So it’s that sort of playing with that idea of what it is that makes us challenged and why do we enjoy horror, gangster, film noir? I find those really interesting analogies. Why are we not or, you know, do we want to live in a rom-com forever? Do we always want happy endings? I’m not sure we always do, we kind of do but we don’t deserve them per se. We have to go on a long journey to find them and Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is a perfect encapsulation of that hero’s journey.

AP: Yeah, definitely. I also wanted to ask you, if any of you wants to step in about this, about near-death experiences because I think it’s the kind of the last topic we have to touch before wrapping up because so far it hasn’t come up.

CD: Yeah, I mean near-death experience is wonderful in the sense that it gives us this empirical foundation to questions about the afterlife or does it? You know, I mean and that’s the question, it’s not just airy-fairy kind of speculation about what might happen after we die but it’s the “evidence” (inverted commas) of people who’ve told the story. And that’s often the underpinning for a lot of the films that we’ve already been looking at but it’s this sort of notion that what I’m interested in, a sort of very William James in a sense, is that people who claim to have had a near-death experience irrespective of the veracity or, whether we can prove it happened or not, it changes their lives. It’s the impact that it has often in some cases people who’ve had a near-death experience won’t fear death. It’s not the case that people who’ve, you know, agnostics or atheists become believers or whatever. It’s more the case that people become much more attuned, in the positive sense, to the way that the world is and they want to do positive things, they want to live life to the full, very sort of, Ecclesiastes based I suppose. So near-death experiences are fascinating for what they do to the people the experience that has had which is life-changing and that, actually, there’s something very positive about it. That lack of fear of death becomes an impetus to live life very fully.

AP: Yes, indeed. We also got a few other questions. So Gan [Ceann Dullahan] asks can you comment on the idea of residual hauntings and quantum ideas of matter and energy? Any of you wants to step in? Maybe David? Residual hauntings and quantum ideas of matter and energy.

DW: Yeah it’s an interesting one. Certainly in Spiritualism, you do get the idea that some, because everything has a kind of energetic vibration to it, is possible either for people in this world who are incarnate or perhaps in the people in spiritual presence to leave some kind of imprint on a place. And also there’s the idea that something very psychically very traumatic happens, something like a murder for example. There is a kind of psychic impression made on that location, that’s sometimes how hauntings and ghosts are understood.

AP: Thank you.

JU: Nipping in on that one very quickly as well. What I came across, one of the questions that was in my survey was about the sorts of experiences that people had had around ancient sites. So whether they had encountered anything that they saw as out of the ordinary when visiting ancient sites. Now, this raised a number of interesting questions because quite a few of my respondents were in America where it’s a whole different ball game of, you know, contested space. But from the ones in Britain, just to keep it simple, there were a lot of people that were encountering what you might call land spirits or Wights but there were also a lot of people encountering what they saw as the ancestral dead. So whether you would actually call this ghosts or whether you would call it something else I don’t know. But it was certainly quite common for people either to have an experience where they saw the site being built and felt that they were witnessing a different time or that they were actually in some way in communication with the ancestral dead who had a message.

So one really spectacular event that I was told about; the dead had a message and the message was that we, in the modern world, are out of connection with the dead and the way that the world is supposed to operate is that there is a reciprocal relationship between the living and the dead in which both support each other. And that this is cut, this is broken and that this is responsible for some of the issues that we’re facing in the world today. So from that point of view, you know, it goes beyond I suppose what you would think of as a normal haunting. But these sorts of experiences appear to be not at all uncommon with Pagans that are at stone circles or at ancient burial sites or something like that.

AP: Thank you, Jenny. Speaking of Paganism there is another question from Nick which is quite interesting. He says that he’s noticed in many African death traditions that the ceremony in part reaffirms social obligations of the living. Do other Pagan traditions use death to reaffirm obligations for the living? I guess it also depends on what do we mean by Pagan because I guess, yeah, that can be debatable but even certain shamanistic traditions or Hindu traditions may fall under the umbrella. Any of you wants to take this question?

JU: I think to some extent, what we have here is the disconnect that we’ve seen all the way through this conversation between traditional societies and post-industrial societies where the element of duty seems to be missing, very often in the West and the idea of obligation seems to be missing. I think what has possibly happened is that we have just had things too good for too long and we are not really keen on this idea of having to do things. The closest I can come is, not in terms of what happens when somebody dies, but rituals that take place around Samhain. Very often there is an attempt to re-establish familial or friendly connections with the dead. So offerings might be made on altars and it might be, you know, if you’re if you’re thinking about a particular recently deceased ancestor you might like their favourite cigar or you might leave some of their favourite food. So maintaining relationships and this is one of my things. In terms of grief theory I argue that in terms of Paganism continuing bonds specifically goes backwards as well as forwards but that is about as close as I can get I think you know something that Giorgio said earlier about Sicily and the day of the dead in Sicily, I think that happens far more obviously and far more it’s far more embedded in the wider culture than it is here but the short answer is no but there probably should be.

AP: Yeah, Giorgio do you want to add anything to that?

GS: Yes, I had two things. One is from an indigenous point of view, again the Wana that I work with there’s this thing that you can’t die without the community and the funeral is the most expensive ritual you can organize. So each member has to do something. The idea is that everybody brings something, so once you’re going to die the community is going to be there to help you and your family organize a funeral. But it’s always like I give you something so I’m going to have like something. Among living people and also with the dead. And then think about what Jenny was saying about Sicily because everybody talks about Mexico and the day of the dead in Mexico but also in Sicily and in other parts of Southern Italy, we have a similar tradition. We have Spain(?) in common and usually what we do in Sicily is that on the second November the dead give the large toys to the kids. So you have these children waking up on the second of November and finding different dead, like grandparents. And the thing is you keep continuing like this, you keep this connection with the community in the afterlife. Again people don’t actually die until you allow them to die, it is just a change in status and shape but you take care of them during the year. Like you go washing and cleaning the grave and all this kind of stuff, you pray – in exchange you get gifts, you get the numbers for the lottery. Like Angela knows this in Italy it is all this culture.

AP: Yes, especially in Naples. We do have.

GS: But it’s very strong. You have people coming to you in dreams and giving you the number of the lottery, in exchange you have to pray for them. The relationship never ends until you actually want to end it. Naples is incredible.

AP: Yeah, in Naples we have a huge tradition related to that and dreams and how to interpret dreams to all sorts of things.

So yeah we have one last question and then we’re going to end the live stream. But if there is any of your questions which we were not able to address and tackle here during the live stream, please leave them in the comment section and I will be replying to them all, I promise.

So the last question is from Andrew and it is how common are negative near-death experiences? For example, going to hell. Any of you…?

CD: Oh I think we’re talking about five per cent. So very small are negative and that’s really interesting because you know it’s the same kind of figure, as I understand it, irrespective of whether somebody is a theist or an atheist you know it doesn’t follow that people necessarily get a negative experience based on whether they don’t have a belief in an afterlife prior to the episode. So there are a few, there was a really useful book by, oh Dale? the name will come to me in the minute [Dr Liz Dale “’ Crossing Over & Coming Home”]. But it was something that the film “Flatliners” seem to be very much sort of predicated around where there are negative near-death experiences but generally they are positive. 95 per cent of them tend to be, on balance, far more positive than negative.

JU: Of the negative ones that I’ve come across or that I’ve read about I think they tend to be slightly more common where the near-death experience is the result of somebody that has attempted to take their own life. That’s just something that was sort of in passing in a book that I was reading about it. I wonder, there was some question about whether this, you know, how the psychology of the person feeds into this.

AP: That’s fascinating. But yeah I guess on this light note we can we can end our Live Stream Afterlife 10k Party – a very long title. I hope you all had fun and I really want to thank all the people who joined here for the panel, all my patrons and all the academics and Shanell and of course any of you who have been watching the live stream and all those who will be watching it later on. So yeah I’m gonna end, as usual, saying that if you like this video SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate the notification bell so that you will never miss a new video that I upload because obviously, you don’t want to, leave a comment because I really want to know what you think about it and as always stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.

Bye for now and bye from all of my guests.

SPEAKERS
Chris Deacy, Head of Religious Studies at the University of Kent. Currently leading a module/course focused on Death, Afterlife and Near-Death Experiences.

David Wilson, Religious Studies PhD at the University of Edinburgh and author of the book ‘Redefining Shamanisms’. David specialises in Spiritualism & Western mediumship as forms of Shamanism.

Giorgio Scalici, Post-doctoral Researcher at Nova universidade de Lisboa. He specialises in Death rituals in Indonesian shamanistic traditions.
email: scalicigiorgio@gmail.com and website www.giorgioscalici.eu

Jeffrey Albaugh, program manager for the Conference on Current Pagan Studies and the co-chair for the Pagan Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion, Western Regional.

Jennifer Uzzell, Doctoral Researcher at Durham University. She specialises in death rites in Druidry and owns a Progressive Funeral home!
email: j.s.uzzell@durham.ac.uk

Shanell Papp, Canadian video and textile artist. Her research and art are focused around death images, the grotesque and labour.
https://shanellpapp.com/art/textiles/

Veenat Arora, Lecturer at Chandigarh College, India. She is a Sociologist of religion, specialised in Death philosophy within Indian traditions.

First streamed 9 Nov 2020