by Bob Curran
In some parts of Mexico, the Festival is split into two broad sections. The first, on the November 1st, is known as El Día de los Angelitos (The Day of the Little Angels), and on this day only the cadavers of small children return from the tomb. At this time, they interact with parents, relatives, and former friends, and are given sweetmeats, usually in the form of sugar skulls. The second part of the Festival (usually held on November 2nd) is known as El Día de Los Defundos (the actual Day of the Dead) when all others who have died return—some reputedly as skeletons—in order to acknowledge Our Lady of the Bones.
Even though this is a grim time when graves open, the dead are treated like honored guests, and there is much gaiety at their return. With the accent on merriment, tequila, mescal, and pulque are consumed in large quantities to add to the festivities, and calavaras de azucar (sugar skulls) are handed out to young children. Indeed the whole day takes on a carnival atmosphere with people dressed in bizarre clothing and calavaras (skull masks). Many pretend to be the returning dead, and many woman are adorned in skull masks moving grandly about in the style of a catrina. This is the female equivalent of the Spanish catrin or dandy, which is based on a painting entitled La Calavera de la Catrina drawn in 1913 by artist Jose Guadalupe Pasada. This painting depicts a more humorous side to Death and the walking dead. Many carry an orange marigold, which is traditionally believed to be a flower that can summon the dead.
In order to amuse the dead when they return, specially composed poems—also referred to as calavaros—are composed. Most of these are about death, but with a humorous slant, and their main function is to “put the dead in a good mood,” so that they will not commit any form of violence against the living. The dead are also shown specially drawn pictures, usually of skeletons dressed very grandly or in humorous poses, in order to lighten their mood. The whole festival is one of frivolity and, with its roots firmly in antiquity, is seen as a mechanism for dealing with the belief in the returning revenants. Throughout the world, the Mexican Day of the Dead is well known, and is seen as a great fiesta of celebration and fun.
Northern Traditions
However, in the Baltic States far to the North, where the belief in the returning dead is also very strong, the situation is a little different than the gay festivities of the Mexican tradition. As in Mexico, the dead are thought to return from their graves at a specific time of year. In Estonia, for example, there are four designated periods during which they may return: Michaelmas (September 29th); Martinmas (November 10th); St. Catherine’s Day (November 25th); and Christmas Day (December 25th). In some cases, the dead frequently wander the roads in the period between Martinmas (traditionally a significant time within the Celtic calendar as well) and St. Catherine’s Day, and are known as kodukaija (wanderers). These are not ghosts, but corporeal beings (as opposed to vele meaning spirit or shadow) that can sometimes do harm to those who they meet.
In Lithuania, these wandering dead are particularly aggressive and can spread disease among communities. Some blame the dead for the great epidemic in the country during the years 1710–1711, which decimated a third of the Lithuanian population. In ancient Lithuania and in the Estonian southeast, which is a stronghold of the Setus peoples, the “patron” of these revenants is the goddess Giltine, who is generally regarded as the Goddess of Death. She roughly corresponds to the Mexican Santa Muerto, Our Lady of the Bones, in appearance. She carries a scythe and is dressed in black. However, in other part of Lithuania, she is dressed completely in white, sometimes with the face of a skull. In some depictions she has a lolling spiked tongue, in some ways similar to the Indian goddess Kali, which contains poisons and diseases of various sorts. In some parts of southern Lithuania, she takes the form of an owl. She has the power of life and death, and it is she who grants the cadavers permission to return to the world of the living.
Again, as in Mexico, when the dead return from their graves, they are to be welcomed and placated by the living. If this is not done then misfortune and disease will surely follow. It was an old Setus belief that, for six weeks after death, the cadaver of the dead person lingers close to his or her former house during which time it had to be cared for, fed, entertained, and so on, by members of its own family. There is an old Baltic proverb that may have originated from the Tarvashu region of southeastern Estonia: “Whose souls are hungry, their fields are empty,” meaning that, if they are not placated, the walking dead will inevitably bring disease and famine in their wake. In Lithuania, belief in the walking dead seems to have been at its strongest in the late 14th century. This was probably because in 1387, after marrying a Polish princess, the Grand Duke Jogaila issued a decree that all religions and beliefs were to be tolerated, including many Pagan ideas.
Later, the Lutheran Church clamped down strongly on such traditions and forbade them. However, the belief in the walking dead still flourished in the more rural areas of the countryside. In some areas, however, the beliefs were incorporated into the standard Christian ideas surrounding All Saints/All Soul’s Day and Halloween. On November 1st, it was said that the dead returned to their former homes to ask their relatives to pray for them and to pay the local minister for offering up formal prayers on their behalf. This, of course, kept local clergymen supplied with money at a time that was probably pretty meager.
In some respects, the kodukaija resembled the Scandinavian draugr. Both would not rest in their graves—although the former only appeared at certain times of the year—and both could turn violent, particularly toward their own families, if provoked. Indeed, on certain nights of the year both Estonians and Lithuanians stayed within their houses after dark and would not venture out, for fear of meeting the walking dead on the roads and inadvertently offending them.
China’s Beliefs
In China, ghosts and revenants were feared and placated in similar ways, and there were similar attempts at avoiding them when they returned from the grave. In fact the great Chinese philosopher Confucius stressed the importance of “respecting gods and ghosts, but staying away from them.” Many Chinese “ghosts” were considered to be corporeal and seemed vastly hostile toward the living. As in many other cultures, the dead needed to be placated. Consequently there were numerous ghost festivals reflecting various strands of Chinese belief.
The two most famous of these were the Chinese Ghost Festival, which traced its roots back into ancestral Taoist antiquity, and the Ullambana or Deliverance Festival, which was more influenced by the Buddhist tradition and belief. These occurred during the 15th day of the seventh lunar month (known as the Ghost Month)—roughly about halfway through the year—in what was known in Western terms as Half July. During this time, it was believed that the Good Brethren—those who had been buried in accordance with proper rites and had therefore not consorted with demons—returned from the Lower Realms to spend some time with their families. Some of these were not even in human shape, but might take a variety of guises such as birds, cats, or creeping things, whereas some took bizarre and fantastic forms.
Even some of the human-looking dead had, similar to Japanese ghosts, no feet and sometimes no legs. At this time, Taoist and Buddhist priests could absolve the dead of their sufferings and inconveniences in the Afterlife through various prayers and rituals. Sometimes, it was believed, the guilty dead, or those who had committed crimes or social offenses, or who had not been buried properly, might return to be forgiven and absolved. A similar festival in Vietnam was known as the Tet Trung Nguyen, which was the Vietnamese equivalent of the Ullambana. This also involved honoring the dead and sweeping out their tombs in order to placate them, so that they would not return to the world among great havoc. Sometimes there were also processions—a kind of ghost cavalcade—that often had overtones of the Mexican El Día de los Muertos. This version of the feast was also celebrated in the Chinese New Territories (Hong Kong) and took the form of a public holiday.
Sometimes more vengeful cadavers might emerge from their tombs during the Ghost Month. Thes
e hostile ancestors took physical shape and could be incredibly violent. Therefore, they needed to be distracted and placated. Their festival was known as Yue Laan (the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts). This was usually held in August or September and was once again held in the New Territories. It was a time when the restless and angry dead paraded along the streets of the remote villages, seeking out living humans to torment as they went. The local populace often tried to distract them by keeping to their houses, but leaving offerings of food on the steps to feed the passing ghosts and cadavers. Along the roadsides people could (and still can) be seen leaving offerings of fruit and flowers or burning counterfeit money as further offerings to the walking dead, in the hope that the revenants would pass them by and leave them alone. In Hong Kong itself, the festival would grow to a fairly major event, which could then be used as a tourist attraction for the city.
Preta
Since these hungry ghosts (the corporeal walking dead) feature in a number of Eastern cultures, a further word needs to be said about them and the origins of their festival. Taoists believe that certain people—for one reason or another—cannot find that which they desire in the Afterlife. They cannot, for example, fulfill their basic needs of shelter, food, or comfort, and so they return to the world of the living in order to enjoy them. However, their sustenance is slightly different from the food that mortals enjoy—it is said to be based on the emotions that the returning dead find around them.
Consequently, they attempted to scare those who they meet, or violate the houses that they passed in order to live off the fear or anxiety of mortals similar to vampires. In Tibet such creatures are known as preta (a Sanskrit word), and are counted as corporeal in order to distinguish them from the tulpa (often violent but unseen spirits—a bit like poltergeists) in Tibetan ghostlore. The word preta is derived from two Sanskrit words pra and ita, which literally means “one who departs” or “the deceased,” and referred to all dead. However, it has come to mean violent and corporeal revenants that have become this way, according to Buddhist teaching, because of bad karma. Both Tibetans and Taoist Chinese believe that it is the shape or configuration of the house that attracts the walking dead to it and to the family within. The walking dead can, however, be driven away by a series of rituals performed by a Taoist or Buddhist priest. Indeed, part of this early philosophy has been incorporated into Buddhist thinking and, for Buddhists, the Hungry Ghost is sometimes counted as one of the stages of reincarnation.
In Buddhist tradition, the notion of the returning dead comes in part from the legend of Mahamudgalyayana, the great arhat (spiritual practitioner) who was a close follower of Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Guatama—the Buddha). Of all the Buddha’s disciples, Mahamudgalyayana was the most accomplished in miracles and wonder-working. However, as a result of this, his mother was reborn into a lower realm after she had died, and was subject to great inconveniences and torments. She had been born into the realm of Hungry Ghosts because, while offering solace and advice to young monks, she had deliberately withheld money and alms from them; thus, she was condemned to the darkness with a throat so thin that she could not eat food.
Despite all his powers and his relations with ghosts and demons, the son was unable to free her from such a place, possibly because of her former behavior. The disciple approached the great Buddha about how he might free her, and the teacher advised him that she could still be brought back to the realm of the living, but that the process would be an arduous one. He was to take some food and tear it to shreds in order to draw the hungry ghost of his mother from the tomb. However, he was also to perform a ritual over each piece of food before throwing it upon clean ground for the Hungry Ghost to eat. If he would also give alms to five hundred bhikku (fully ordained Buddhist monks), then his mother would return to the world of the living. Mahamudgalyayana did all that the Buddha had instructed and his mother returned to the world of the living, although whether she was reborn or actually returned from the grave is unclear.
However, there was much celebration, and the time of her return became known as the Day of Deliverance, which forms the basis for the Buddhist Ghost Festival or Ullambana. In celebration of Mahamudgalyayana’s mother’s return, many other dead were supposed to return to seek absolution from the priests for their bad karma when alive. Gradually the two festivals—the Buddhist and ancient Taoist drifted closer together and finally merged into one. Some Chinese argue that there is still a difference between the two celebrations, pointing to the burning of joss sticks by the Taoists—and other minor ritualistic niceties, but in most respects there is little to distinguish one from the other.
Japan
A variation of the festival may even be found in Japan, where it is known as Chugen, and is held on the July 15th. This festival is associated with Daosim (a Japanese variant of Chinese Taosim) and is primarily concerned with honoring ancestors in case they return and do some form of harm to the living. In fact, many of the rituals performed by the Japanese at this time parallel those that are carried out in China. Counterfeit money specially prepared for the purpose, for example, is burned at roadside shrines, and gifts of flowers and fruit are left at the doors of houses. This may be in case the walking dead should pass by.
There are even more curiosities connected with death and dying in Japan. These are the mysterious “living mummies” of the Mount Gassan region in Northern Japan, and particularly a famous one centred on Mount Yudono. As had already been noted, for some peoples the boundary between life and death is a very tenuous one, and the “living mummies,” particularly those of the Churenji monastery on the slopes of Yudono, are ample proof of such uncertainty.
For some Buddhist ascetics, the privations of the monastic lifestyle were not nearly rigorous enough. Similar to many Christian mystics of old, they strove to demonstrate their holiness in rather severe and spectacular ways. Thus many sat, lost in religious contemplation, in the middle of deep mountain snows or in freezing torrents, or sought inaccessible and often dangerous places in order to perform their meditations. And of course, abstinence regarding food and sustenance—even abstinence to death—was often part of their regime. However, for the true ascetic, simply to starve oneself to death would imply too much of an interest in the physical world, and would be a positive action (that is, the taking of life) within the physical sphere. Another, more spiritual way had to be found, and the gradual creation of the “living mummy” (which took approximately more than 3,000 days to complete) fulfilled that premise. The idea of the “mummy” sprang from the teachings of the monk Kuukai, who was a prominent abbot at the temple complex on Mount Koya in northern Japan (he had studied in China for a good number of years beforehand) and was the founder of the Shingon form of Japanese Buddhism, which flourished during the Heian Period (794–1185) of Japanese history.
Living Mummies
The “living mummies” created in the remote Japanese monasteries were nothing like those that had come out of ancient Egypt, nor were they created by the same process. The Japanese “mummification” was much slower, was much more controlled, and began when the subject was alive. Generally speaking, it involved three stages.
The first stage involved a change in diet. The ascetic was to refrain from all wheat, flour, or milk products, and was only to subsist on seeds and nuts that grew within the immediate vicinity of his temple or hermitage. Further, his water intake was to decrease and he was to limit himself to a cupful every two or three days. The effect of this was to reduce his bodyweight and to draw off all the moisture that could cause fat. In this way all the extraneous tissue that would be subject to decay after death fell away. The diet also had the effect of dehydrating the ascetic’s body, making it less likely to corrupt after death. This phase was to last a little more than 1,000 days (slightly more than three years).
With the second stage, the diet became much more restrictive. The ascetic was to stop taking in water completely, and was only permitted to eat the needles and seeds of the mokijuki, or pine
trees. However, once every four or five days, he was permitted to drink a special tea made from the bark of the urushi tree. This tree bark is used in the preparation of ornamental lacquers and in the treatment of furniture, and is considered to be extremely poisonous to humans if ingested in large quantities. However, the ascetics only took small cups of it, throughout a matter of days, so that the toxins entering the body were miniscule. Even so, the poisons produced vomiting, intense sweating, and involuntary urination, thus dehydrating the body even further. As the toxins built up in the body, they began to kill off the parasites, maggots, and insects, which contributed to the overall decay of the bodily tissues. This process lasted for another thousand days.
By now the ascetic was little more than a skeleton, and looked like one of the walking dead himself. He was, in all probability, unable to move very far, and so it was now time for the third part of the process to begin. The monk found himself a spot where he could be walled up and more or less buried alive. The place was to be no wider than the ascetic himself, in which he could comfortably sit in the Lotus position. A gap was to be left in the stonework of the cell to enable him to breathe, and a bell was attached to the front of it. This bell was rung once each day by the ascetic to reassure his followers or bother monks that he was still alive. When the bell stopped tolling the monk was formally dead, and this was counted to be at the end of another thousand days, although the length of this stage often varied. When the holy man had died, his body was removed from the cell—usually it was little more than simply a bag of bones—and was treated with special lacquers, clothed in ceremonial robes, and placed in a shrine to be revered in the years to come. The desiccated “mummy” was from time to time placed on display, and was supposed to have great and miraculous powers.
