Mirties ritualo transformacijos

ENDeath is one of the most important events of human life. The various rituals are expressions of the relation to death as well as of feelings resulting from it. They show the multiplicity and discrepancy of this relationship. People adored death, struggled with it or attempted to cognize it from time immemorial. Today people often ignore death or make it the main topic of comic-strip, cartoon-films or breaking news. The death rituals undergo transformations together with our relation to death. Some permanent elements of the contemporary transformations of the death rituals reveal universal features of the changing relationship with death. The conscious collective action often converts into subconscious personal process. This article has an interdisciplinary character and is aimed at investigation of the rituals of sacrifice-killing, deterrence of death, preparation for death, dying, helping to die, mourning and spiritual death, as well as contemporary transformations of these rituals with reference to the researches of philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists.