The Relevance Of Honoring Ancestors

 

Since prehistory, the relevance of honoring ancestors can be observed in various societies with different degrees of complexity, which has remained an essential component of various religious practices in current times.

Human beings, regardless of the culture to which we belong, in one way or another, honor our ancestors, whether when we perform ceremonies for heroes, on the altars of masses, on altars built on crypts, seeking spiritual strength from the dead, in the offerings, dances, and dances dedicated to the deceased, among others.

The act of dealing with the ancestors is a primitive custom, which has even been considered the origin of religions since it allows the fact of death to be confirmed and also to exalt the memory of the deceased since there was a belief that the end was the prolongation of life.

In sacred books, it is common to find a paragraph that says: "Honor your Father and your Mother." Honor is an act of valuing, respecting, and extolling our parents. The front of honoring parents is the essential exercise of Ancestry since if we honor the seed, the fruit is also honored.

Ancestor worship is a religious practice based on the belief that family members who have died have access to a new existence, from where they take an interest in the affairs of their progeny. For this reason, from the primitive soul, the importance of honoring the ancestors lies in the fact that this rite ensured the excellent disposition of the dead towards the living and, therefore, the well-being of the new generations. For example, in the Taíno tribes of present-day Costa Rica, ancestors were worshiped since they believed that they had become protective spirits with supernatural powers when they died.

Something similar happened with African tribes, where they thought that since the gods were in a distant place, from where they could not hear their prayers, the ancestors became intermediaries between the gods and them. Another closer example occurs in the Mapuche culture, where it is believed that upon dying and reaching the space above, the ancestor goes with the gods but remains united to men. In this way, the ancestor becomes a mediator between the sacred and the human condition.

More profoundly, there is no separation between the ancestors and the people. They remain in this physical plane since there is a factor known as genetics, and that is where the memory of each of our ancestors is kept when this practice is done. Recognizing them in our bodies helps to heal past and future generations.