10 Things Everybody Should Know About African Death Rituals

There are many ideas among the death and what happens after we die. Every culture, every religion has it’s own ideas about how is life after death or what happens with our bodies after it. But in this special case, I want to present 10 ideas of the African culture about the death:

1. - In the religions of Africa, life does not end with death, but continues in another realm. The concepts of "life" and "death" are not mutually exclusive concepts, and there are no clear dividing lines between them. Human existence is a dynamic process involving the increase or decrease of "power" or "life force," of "living" and "dying," and there are different levels of life and death.
2. - Death does not alter or end the life or the personality of individual, but only causes a change in its conditions.
3. - Death, although a dreaded event, is perceived as the beginning of a person's deeper relationship with all of creation, the complementing of life and the beginning of the communication between the visible and the invisible worlds. The goal of life is to become an ancestor after death. This is why every person who dies must be given a "correct" funeral, supported by a number of religious ceremonies. If this is not done, the dead person may become a wandering ghost, unable to "live" properly after death and therefore a danger to those who remain alive.
4. - It might be argued that "proper" death rites are more a guarantee of protection for the living than to secure a safe passage for the dying.
5. - Many African peoples have a custom of removing a dead body through a hole in the wall of a house, and not through the door. The reason for this seems to be that this will make it difficult (or even impossible) for the dead person to remember the way back to the living, as the hole in the wall is immediately closed
6. - Many other peoples take special pains to ensure that the dead are easily able to return to their