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What death means to different religions
Life after death religious beliefs
Life after death religious beliefs
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Mayan religion and Bahá 'í Faith are two religions that believe in very
different afterlives. Mayan religion believes that the soul travels through a dark
twisted and threatening underworld, which is populated by sinister gods. Many
Maya rulers and the majority of the people in this religion went to this terrifying
underworld. While heaven was meant for sacrificial victims and women who died
in childbirth. Bahá 'í Faith believes that the human soul will separate from their
own body and will begin a journey either towards or away from God. They
consider Heaven and Hell states of being.
Mayan religion was founded in 250 AD in Mesoamerica (Southern Mexico,
Guatemala, Belize). Mayan’s are polytheistic
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It was the job of the priests to decide what days were lucky and
unlucky, as well as advising the rulers on what days to plant, harvest, wage war,
etc. The Mayan calendar had an extensive knowledge of a solar year (365 days).
These 365 days were divided into 18 months of 20 days each, following five
days that were very unlucky. Human sacrifices were a key component in the
practice of Mayan Religion. Sacrifice was believed to encourage fertility,
demonstrate devotion and appease the gods. “The Mayan gods were thought to
be nourished by human blood, and ritual bloodletting was seen as the only
means of making contact with them.”1 Mayans believed that if they did not
follow these rituals then cosmic disorder and commission would be a result.
Bahá 'í Faith was founded by Bahá’u 'lláh, in 1863, in Tehran, Iran. Bahá 'í
Faith is Monotheistic believing in only one god, emphasizing the spiritual unity of
all humankind. There is three core principles that establish this religions teaching
and doctrines this includes the unity of God, the unity of religion, and the unity
of humanity. God is said to reveal himself through messengers,
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Anyone who died in childbirth or who
sacrificed themselves would not be sent to this horrifying underworld. “The
Maya understand supernatural levels not as heaven and hell, but as the upper
world, middle world, and underworld. The upper world consists of thirteen
levels, the middle world is one level, and the underworld is nine levels”2. The
Mayans believe in the Ceiba tree that grows through all realms, this tree grows
from the highest level of the upper world to the lowest level of the underworld.
This tree is very important to the Maya world because it shows the importance
of the cardinal directions. The Maya gods are linked to the cardinal directions,
they believed that their were five elements to the four cardinal directions. The
most meaningful direction to the mayans was the east, this was ultimately
because the sunrise was associated with birth since the mayans believed that
the sun is created daily from the east.
Human sacrifice was used when the Mayans fought in war. Often the
Maya war priests also known as nacom would help plan war strategies.
The Maya and Aztec civilizations were both indigenous people that flourished in Mesoamerica during different periods of time. Maya 's classic period is dated from 250 to 900 AD, which was considered to be the peak of their civilization. They covered much of the Yucatan Peninsula and were centered in what is now known as Guatemala. The Aztecs dominated from 1325 AD to 1521 AD, in what is now modern day Mexico. Although they shared cultural similarities such as their social structure, they also had their differences in military and religious rituals.
Imagine yourself as an Ixil Mayan at the local marketplace. You wander around the stalls, viewing the hand-crafted goods. As the midday sun beats down on you, the sound of footsteps coming towards you becomes audible among the chatter of your fellow Mayans. Suddenly, the voices stop, and a gunshot echoes in the air. For what seems like an eternity, the marketplace is drowned in the slight whimpers of children as their mothers’ skirts muffle their moaning. You are still frozen in your place in front a stall. Then, a quick moment of common sense drives you to hide behind a wall. Before you know what is happening, the space around the market is filled with screams. A man falls down beside you with his eyes rolled back and a gaping wound in his chest. Blood trickles through the wall. The pleading cries of the women have a chilling effect. As more bodies fall down beside you, you suddenly become aware of an officer standing above you. A gun is pointed at you. Up until now, you didn’t think of running, but once the trigger is pulled, you know you don’t have a chance. Moments later, you are gone. The genocide that occurred in Guatemala tragically cost thousands of Ixil Mayan lives and ruined many others.
The Maya were an advanced society, rich and full extraordinary architecture with great complexity of patterns and variety of expressions, that flourished in Mesoamerica long before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. They were skilled architects, building prodigious cities of primarily of limestone that remain a thousand years after their civilization fell into decline. Greatness and Grandeur was the signature of all Mayan cities, from the terminal pre-classic period and continued until the abandonment of all the city states by the beginning of the ninth century. The Maya built pyramids, temples, palaces, walls, residences and more. The limestone structures, faced with lime stucco, were the hallmark of ancient Maya architecture.
When Spaniards first set foot on Mesoamerican shores in the early sixteenth century, they encountered not the godless mass of natives they believed they found, but a people whose rich spiritual traditions shaped and sustained them for thousands of years. These diverse spiritual practices legitimized nearly every aspect of Mesoamerican daily life, from science and architecture to art and politics (Carmack 295), in many of the same ways Catholicism did in Spain. The collision of these cultures in the Great Encounter and the resulting Spanish colonial state mixed not solely two different peoples—Indian and Spanish—but thousands of variants: elites and slaves, peasant farmers and traders, priests and traders, organized and local spiritual customs, all with different degrees of diversity in their respective religious practices. This diversity set the stage for the syncretic religious traditions that emerged in Mayan society and remain a vital part of that culture today.
The Maya religion required a highly complicated method of worship that demanded bloodletting and sacrificial rituals that were often fulfilled by the kings and queens. These efforts were necessary because it was believed to "feed" the gods. It was the sacred duty and responsibility of the ruler to often feed the gods with their own blood. The believed their rulers had the power to pass in and out body to the spirit world and acted as messengers to the celestial world.[109]
The Early Preclassic Era is the time period when the beginnings of agriculture emerge in Maya culture. The earliest evidence of agricultural field burning and cultivation of maize along with other crops dates well before the beginning of the Early Preclassic period. Agriculture was already being practiced in some areas of Guatemala that were settled by distinctively Maya groups.
In the Central America, most notably the Yucatan Peninsula, are the Maya, a group of people whose polytheistic religion and advanced civilization once flourished (Houston, 43). The Maya reached their peak during the Classic Period from around CE 250 to the ninth century CE when the civilization fell and dispersed (Sharer, 1). Although much has been lost, the gods and goddesses and the religious practices of the Classic Maya give insight into their lives and reveal what was important to this society.
The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization inhabited an area that encompasses Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. "From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphics, and a complex social and political order" ("Collapse..." 1). Urban centers were important to the Maya during the Classic period; they offered the Mayans a central place to practice religion.
The Mayan civilization was located in southeastern Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. One of the first American civilizations, it lasted from about 1000 B.C.-1542 A.D. Their civilization flourished during the Sixth Century. They built many temples and over forty cities. The Mayan population consisted of almost fifteen million people who were all living in one of the many cities. The Mayan people were extremely religious and believed in multiple gods which meant they were polytheistic. Their most commonly worshiped god was the Maize God, or god of corn, as corn was the most grown and most relied on crop. The Mayans grew all of their own food so they needed to have useful farming methods. The one they used most often was the slash and burn method, which involved cutting down trees and burning them to make the soil fertil which was necessary to grow crops. This method worked for many years, but soon started to backfire. The Mayans were ahead of their time, but that did not prevent their mysterious decline which occurred between the years 800 A.D.-900 A.D. Although it is not known exactly why the powerful empire fell, but there are various probable theories. The mysterious decline of the Mayans may have been caused by
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This quote from Arthur C. Clarke nicely represents the admiration that studying the Mayan, Aztec and Incan civilizations can inspire. In the current age of technology it is very hard to imagine these ancient civilizations accomplishing their many deeds without any modern tools or computers. The Mayan, Aztec and Incan civilizations of Central and South America made major advancements in engineering, math, astronomy, writing agriculture, and trading.
The Dark Ages were a time of great loss in regards to the lack of any grand achievement being made in Europe. After the fall of Rome, it was as if European society paused, and resumed during the Renaissance. This was not true for the Mayans, however. While the Europeans were squandering trying to subsist through the fall of the Roman Empire, the Mayans were building great pyramids, making substantial discoveries in astronomy and mathematics, their culture was rich. The Maya stood out for its sophisticated culture and society, which is eventually overshadowed by Europe’s monumental resurgence during the Renaissance period. It’s salient that the Maya never had a time period in which their culture was lost, despite the mysterious abandonment of
Out of all the ancient civilization that inhabited central and south Mexico, the Aztec and Maya are always the first that come to mind for many people. Both of these civilizations started as a small group of farmers and peasants and yet somehow they managed to become a vast and powerful civilization with enormous cities filled with temples that honored the gods and bustling with life and wealth. They became arose and became the most feared tribe among the other tribes that existed, especially the Aztecs. They were perceived as an aggressive and blood-thirsty tribe that had to know defeat. Of course that time eventually came along for both of the tribes with the coming of the Spaniards, it was rather incredible how such a small groups overpowered these great civilizations of the Aztec and Maya. Although the Spaniards were astonished by their culture and wealth when it came to their religion, they could only feel disgust and sickened by their ways of practice. The tradition of human sacrifice along with other blood-letting procedures to please their blood thirsty gods made them seem savage and demonic in the eyes of the Spanish. However these practices came to an end as the cultures assimilated into the Spanish culture. Nevertheless the Mayas were able to survive along with some of the traditional religious practice. The question the remains is whether the Maya that reside in Mexico still carry on traditional religious ceremonies and custom.
The Mayans just have one religion called polytheism. They had multiple gods. The ultimate god that they believed in is the sun god/ corn god. They thought that the sun/corn god was the most powerful because they thought this god would be the reason why the sun came up everyday so that they could stay alive because they wouldn’t be able to grow their crops without the sun. In return they would sacrifice their own people and sometimes enemies instead of killing them. They also thought that the queen and king of the mayans would
The musical traditions of Mayan possess a characterized hybrid nature from the traditions of pre and post encounter instrumentation, performance, practice, and beliefs. In the present day, it is possible to evaluate the Mayan music from a contemporary point to determine the characteristics affiliated with both European and indigenous. This paper aims at explaining the musical selections of Mayan music using scholarly literature to assert premise regarding the hybridization. In the light of the social context, it is possible to say that the Mayan music of nowadays has some references from both pre and post Encounter perspectives. Maya music is regarded as a function of the system that involves Maya beliefs symbols and other practices
Maya civilization was based mainly on agriculture and religion. Maya every day life revolved around an innumerable number of earth Gods. The most important God was chief, ruler of all Gods. The Mayans prayed to these God’s particularly about their crops. For example, they prayed to the Rain God to nourish their crops. They practiced their religion during ceremonies conducted by priests. They also practiced confession and even fasted before important ceremonies (Gann and Thompson 1931 118-138). The Mayans also b...