What does the Senetha do when it’s time to pass on? In more ancient times, they buried figures that resembled the deceased person. They would pass the bodies to the ocean, and at other times they covered the bodies in a body mask; there were methods that were used to shrink down the body for easy burial. They would keep the soul in a chamber, believing it would go to the right place. There are parallels to this in other cultures in our world; the ancient Chinese buried figurines in tombs until it became unfashionable to bury the actual servants of an important person of the nobility. Many other cultures did something similar. Long ago near the Western seas of the mythical world, the Senetha had built what looked like a long lines of walls that were actually containers or more formally called chambers that extended out to sea. These sea chambers held the ashes of the dead and they extended for thousands of leagues out to sea. These chambers were only three to four stories high and gleamed in the sunlight of gold. In this fantasy culture, the people didn’t value gold much. They only used it because they thought it was beautiful. In Tenashar’s time, they were already in ruins. The practice had ceased centuries before. Another way of keeping ashes was containing them in the center of a sphere that was connected to the surface with a network of tubes that radiated from the center to the surface of the sphere. In the center, there was a pulsating energy jumping around that appeared to be spherical colored shapes going in all directions inside the sphere; this was where it was said the soul was contained. It was mentioned before that the burial towers were places to send the spirits to the sky, where the Senetha believed that the souls would rest. The sky refers to a place beyond space and time, but it has to be remembered that each tower wasn’t constructed in the same style, some thought cylindrical. The basic shapes of the towers were more complex than this. Some had a lattice construction of irregular shapes that resembled biological structures of nature; for example, the inner structure appeared as if they were constructed of the inner structures of bones. On the eastern side of the tower, it was constructed with a smooth reflecting surface that was shaped like an irregular tall shape that was broad at the base, gradually tapering as it got higher, becoming round or blunt at the top. Others were whimsical; they were twisted as they turned upward toward the sky. No two towers were the same because they represented clans, families, and individuals. Very ancient towers were in ruins, some had extended into space so parts of the towers were floating around in the solar systems.

The Senetha believe in a soul that is eternal, but it goes through a process of riding the celestial wave or horse, that brings change to a soul; once its journey ceases it will reside in its own imagination to form its own personal world. Of course, this was only a metaphor that Senetha philosophers had debated for years, there were other arguments; some believed that the soul never existed, and others argued that the soul rested until it was time to come back to the earth. Other philosophers believed the soul existed outside the universe; there was one thought that the soul was free to roam around in all forms everywhere in the universe. Sometimes it was said that a spirit or soul never lived on this planet, believing this was an illusion and the actual reality that life after death was the truth and people woke up from a dream after living on earth and that each reincarnation was a dream to wake in the morning of the celestial realm. Whatever happened to the soul was a state of mind, and if it realized it wasn’t suffering, it could live in perpetual bliss. To most Senetha this was endless garbage of debate that had nothing to do with reality, people mistrusted the philosophers, and living every day was more important than volumes of books and educational materials.

There was a ceremony that the Senetha were fond of. It was called the ceremony of the lights. Each season during the summer, thousands of spheres of energy would be released, they sort of resembled fireworks, the only difference is they lasted longer and faded the next day. These energy forms would form their pleasing and musical sounds to the ear. These spheres represented a metaphor for the releasing of spirits or souls. It had to be said that each Senetha had their own very individual belief of where the soul goes after death, they rarely listened to the learned ones or philosophers, because every Senetha themselves were highly educated and had always thought for themselves. The learned ones were a remnant of the past.

There were so many practices of bringing the deceased to their resting place that there was no such thing as a typical Senetha or mythical world burial system.

Robert J. Matsunaga