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Bread and light for the dead

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Posted on 2018-11-02 in
Grave beeswax candle

Grave beeswax candle. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

Field research shows relevant participants in old-time funeral processions, usually relatives or neighbours of the deceased, bore offerings of bread and light to be placed on the symbolic family grave in church. This tradition remained in many parishes until the 1960s. (more…)

Spirits and wandering souls

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Posted on 2016-11-04 in
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Cemetery of Lantabat (Lower Navarre).

One of the most frequently occurring universal issues in traditional storytelling concerns spirits and the afterlife. Spirits or ghosts are the souls of the dead that appear to the living and manifest their grief. The apparitions may either be seen as exact reproductions of the body of the deceased or take a different guise. The supernatural has been a recurrent, and at times even fashionable, theme in literature and film. (more…)

All Saints’ Day

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Posted on 2015-11-06 in
3.ObanosOfrendasSepulturas

Offerings on All Souls’ Day in Obanos (Nafarroa), 1972. José Ibáñez. Taken from Funeral Rites in the Basque Country.

There is a spiritual bond between the living and the dead in Christian tradition. Both belong to a single community: the former in the current world and the latter in the world to come. That is why our dead would be remembered at family mealtimes, such as Christmas Eve dinner, when saying grace and in diary prayers. A frequently used formula would be Por los que han salido de esta casa, which translates as ‘Let us remember the departed members of this household’. (more…)

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