Description
Book SynopsisIndo-European Fire Rituals is a comparative study of Indo-European fire rituals from modern folklore and ethnography in Scandinavia and archaeological material in Europe from the Bronze Age onwards to the Vedic origins of cosmos in India and today's cremations on open pyres in Hinduism.
Exploring Indo-European fire rituals and sacrifices throughout history and fire in its fundamental role in rites and religious practices, this book analyses fire rituals as the unifying structure in time and space in Indo-European cultures from the Bronze Age onwards. It asks the question how and why was fire the ultimate power in culture and cosmology? Fire as an agent and divinity was fundamental in all major sacrifices. In Europe, ritual fires in relation to agriculture and fertility may also explain the enigma of cremation. Cremated remains were ground and used in fertility rituals, and ancestral fires played an essential role in metallurgy and the creation of cosmos. Thus, the rol
Table of Contents
1: Fire rituals and the Indo-European Heritage; 2: Hearts in hearths – ancestors and deities; 3: Seasonality and fire festivals; 4. Cremation and cultivation in the North; 5. Fires from heaven – The links between East and West; 6. The Indo-Iranian culture and its rituals of fire; 7. Cremation, sacrifice and cosmogony in Hinduism
