do the different species have their own way of matchmaking, courting, marriage customs and death rites? i love reading about culture and world building, especially in worlds with different species.
for example, i just read a manga that featured aliens from different planets with one chapter where they talk about how their species consider marriage/love, some use divination to find a partner, some think of marriage as obsolete but have farewell ceremonies for break ups, and so on. it was quite interesting
logically, it feels like the very long lived species would probably have very different birth rates and concept of relationships perhaps? or would the elementals have a tradition of prefering to marry within same element?
I'm sorry I took an embarrassingly long time to answer this ask Anon, but I hope my answer is satisfactory. I had to answer it in small parts once species at a time over several days.
They do! I tried to cover as much as I could think of, but do let me know if you have any follow up questions. (I did stick to the other species, as you state in your ask, but other human kingdoms do have different customs than Nytheris. And I mostly stuck to the intelligent races, though I also added dragons just for fun!)
For the future, I can answer asks faster if they are most specific to a species or two instead a generic what do the different species think of x. I'm still happy to answer asks like this, they will just take me a lot more time to answer to answer.
Elves
Elves tend to be very sexually conservative, and place a higher value on marriage than any other culture. They place the most emphasis on keeping sex within the confines of marriage, but they also place the least emphasis on state recognized unions, instead believing marriage to be a sacred union blessed by the elven god.Â
An elven marriage only requires vows said between two people, though typically weddings are a large communal affair, and sometimes marriages are even agreed to be celibate. They actually have three different words for marriage. Thereâs elvania (traditional marriage), arenvania (usually translated secret marriage, and serahvania (celibate marriage). Legally, these all carry the same benefits, so sometimes they do make the distinction culturally.Â
Since marriage is such a large part of their culture, weddings are a big deal. They consist of a ceremony where the high priest(ess) will declare the marriage to the community, which is usually done with the couple and the aforementioned high priest(ess) standing in a local water source (lake preferred, rivers if not available). Then the couple will say vows and fully submerge in the water together, but when they break through the surface their clothes and hair will still be dry, which is the sign of their god blessing the marriage. This is usually done at sundown, so the community will have a party until sunrise, while the couple retires to their new home together. If a couple elects not to have a wedding, itâs usually because they canât (which happens often when one is not Elven) or there is a time constraint (such as a war). But all they have to do is say they make a marriage vow, and move in together, and everyone treats them with the same respect as a married couple.Â
The actual courtship part is largely conducted through acts of service rather than gifts or flirtations. Something like, I noticed your (insert object) was broken so I fixed it for you, or I saw that your mother is sick, so I cooked for your family. While these actions could also just be the actions of a concerned friend, the idea is that two people courting will be much more observant of each otherâs lives than friends or even might be. (In a way it's almost like a test, can you take care of your romantic partner better than their family and friends?)
As for death rites, elves always bless corpses before they bury them in the woods. Firstly the need to consecrate the body to The Creator, the elven god, so they can make it to Ailynevyss (their good version of the afterlife.) Second, they use a blessing to prevent the body from being raised as undead by a witch. (This is not a common fear outside of elven culture.) Third is a blessing to help transfer the remaining life in the body to the forest itâs buried in.Â
Leodra
So the Moonlit Island, where the Leodra live, is a particularly closed off culture. They donât allow any non-leodra on the island, except for a single port for trade purposes. On the other hand, once a leodra leaves or is banished, they are never allowed to return, so those who live off the island tend not to conform to leodridic culture. So not a lot is known about their culture.Â
Leodra donât really do courtship rituals, mostly because they donât do marriage or any equivalents. Most leodra donât tend to enter into long term relationships, and when they are in long term relationships they tend to be open instead of monogamous. In the few instances where leodra do want to commit to one person they have a ritual called Eildonâcallai of which nothing is really known. (I mean I know. So do the island residents.) Leodra that donât live on the Moonlit Island do occasionally marry, though almost exclusively if the partner in question is not another leodra.Â
Death rituals are also unknown about their culture. Leodra that live off the island tend to treat their dead in the manner of whatever country theyâre living in.Â
Changelings
(Brief note, most changelings tend to hide their race when they live outside of full changeling communities such as the city state of Ikarus. These traditions, specifically apply to changelings that live in fully changeling communities. Outside of those, they pretty much adopt the culture they live in to blend in better.)
So changelings, treat courtship like a series of games you can win and the prize for winning is true love. (More in a playful way than reducing each other to a prize kind of way). They tend to test each other by tracking how easy it is for their partner to identify them in other forms. So theyâll do things like arrange to meet someone, and show up in disguise and make the other person guess which one they are. They actually donât see revealing their true form as intimate because they believe if you truly know someone you should be able to recognize them no matter what face they are wearing that day.Â
As for actual marriage ceremonies, theyâre usually small, and very private. Usually they take place over a meal where each guest provides a dish to share. Thereâs not any ceremony or speeches, just a shared meal and a spoken agreement.They also donât care about gender as it applies to marriage as their conception of gender being much more fluid.Â
For death rites, changelings prefer to burn their dead. They believe that souls canât reincarnate until the body is completely gone, and they believe cremation is the quickest way to achieve that.Â
Halflings
Halflings use a caste system, so both their courtship and their death rituals are based on the specific castes with the casteless forbidden from marriage entirely. It would be too long to go into all the differences in this already incredibly long post. The only common trends are that halfling society values simplicity, so even the upper castes wonât have extravagant weddings, and the ceremonies always heavily incorporate wood, flowers, and other green plants.Â
Their courtship gestures revolve around gifts, but they are usually more pragmatic or homemade, like freshly grown vegetables or a new set of wooden spoons. They also use a lot of flowers or other plants as part of their courtship gestures.Â
For death rites, they bury their dead and plant over it, based partially on caste, partially on âcharacterâ where trees are the most honorable/desirable plant to have on oneâs grave. Part of it is to symbolize the life cycle, life leads to death, but from death comes life. The other part is that they believe whatever you plant over the body is what the person will be reincarnated as, and if you donât plant anything over it the person will reincarnate as whatever eats the body (likely a maggot). Actually a common punishment for murder being prevented from having anything planted with your body.Â
Dwarves
Dwarves place a lot of emphasis on honor which affects their courtship ideals. Itâs quite common for dwarves to fight duelâs over the right to court a specific woman where all parties respect the victorâs right to the woman. (Her opinion doesnât matter because itâs assumed sheâd prefer the stronger/more honorable of the two.) The only exceptions are if someone can prove the victor cheated because needing to cheat in a battle is considered the most dishonorable thing a man can do, or if the woman is pregnant because in that case the father of the child has the primary ârightâ to marry her.Â
Other aspects of courtship include displays of wealth, often demonstrated through gifts of rare stones or metals, and approval of the families involved. Honor is considered to be shared by a family, so more than just the couple have to agree to a marriage.Â
The weddings themselves are considered to be great parties. They take place at night and are lit completely by stones only found in the Qaegian Mountains, where most dwarves live, called starstones which glow with starlight. (While Dwarven society lives completely underground they usually use fire for light, the stones are only used for special occasions such as coronations or weddings.) Weddings almost always open with the groom fighting in a duel (sometimes elite warriors will opt for a two or even three on one, but thatâs less common) to prove to society that he is capable of protecting a family. Usually the competitor is a champion designated by the bride. (In some cases this can be a way for a woman to get out of an undesirable marriage if she designates a champion that can defeat the groom.) After there is a grand feast with basically the whole community in attendance. At the end of the feast the couple will exchange precious stones that usually have some connection to the family.Â
For death rites, since dwarves live completely underground, they donât like burying the dead. (Usually underground refers to inside a mountain, instead of just under dirt, so even without other concerns, itâs not particularly practical.) In their mountain, their cities are mostly connected by an underground river that exits the mountain in a waterfall. They tend to send their dead along this river and down the waterfall, usually filling the boats they send them in with gifts.Â
Official teaching says that the dead take the waterfall all the way into the dwarven realm of the dead, and this idea is supported by the fact that there is no pile of bodies at the bottom of the waterfall even during times of war of mass goblin attacks.
For the few cities not connected to the river network, or those where the river is too thin or too gentle to send a boat out, have cremation chambers, where theyâve mined a hole all the way out of the mountains that typically stay blocked by hatches, but are opened when a body is being cremated to give the smoke somewhere to go that isnât the rest of the city.Â
They see any damage to the body as damage that is shared by the spirit in the afterlife, so they prefer sending the entire body to the afterlife all at once, but when they canât fire is seen as a purifying element, so they see burning bodies as the only way of destroying the body without harming the spirit.Â
Elementals
So elementals do not necessarily prefer to marry within the same element, but they do tend to marry within similar elements. So frost and water would be common, but fire and water would not. Their rituals tend to change by element.
For example fire elementals create a shared flame in their wedding ceremonies that is meant to represent their love for each other, and they display it in their home. The brighter it burns the stronger the coupleâs bond is. If the flame ever extinguishes, then the expectation is the couple will get a divorce. Wind elementals incorporate the wind into the wedding ceremonies. Things like showing up in regular clothes then being surrounded by a cyclone which leaves them in the ceremony clothes when it leaves, or using wind for music. Storm elementals almost exclusively purpose during thunderstorms and use lightning to skywrite their proposals. Rock elementals usually go on a two day sabbatical before the wedding to be certain that they are making the right choice.Â
Dragons
Dragon courtship is one of my favorites because like eagles or penguins, they mate for life. Dragons do have a deity (which you can learn about later from Tempurion), and that god is believed to design each dragon personally, and said to design them in pairs, causing soul mates.
Every female dragon is born with a missing scale, and every male dragon is born with an extra one. Dragons find their mates by discovering which other dragon has the matching scale discrepancy. Their final mating ritual is for the male dragon to pull off his extra scale and place it into the hole where the female is missing a scale. From that point forward whenever they molt their scales, the female will always have that missing scale filled in, and the male will no longer grow the extra one.Â
When a dragon dies, which is rare, the ideal is for other dragonâs to carry the body as high as they can into the air, and drop it then it disappears before reaching the ground. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, as most dragons are killed, so usually the person that kills them tries to take their scales. Dragon scales make the finest armor in existence.
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I was reminded that ChacĂłnâs Obols exist. And thought about Danny Phantom.
I had a thought that what if Danny got like a tongue piercing, got a custom piece to look like an Obol. Or maybe he only has it when heâs in his ghost form.
I just love the idea that Danny has many little homages to being dead, or something similar.
If you donât know;
This is what they look like:
What are Obols?
Obols weâre left in the mouth of the recently deceased, so that you could pay/bribe Charon âthe Ferrymanâ who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead
Here is a rare look at the publicly viewable portion of desounay/desounen, which is the first rite after a houngan, manbo, or other vodouizan passes. Unfortunately, this was a rite done on behalf of the death of a very well known and well respected houngan in Jacmel, Haiti who died unexpectedly this morning. This is difficult to watch, with lots of crying and expressions of grief.
The video begins with the procession, which has likely started at the home of the houngan (Woodson Antoine, ki di Gwètòde Plenipontansyè), where he passed, and is leading into the temple where Houngan Sonson was initiated. The procession ends as the rest of the desounay is completed behind closed doors. After, folks who have arrived gather to hear Houngan Woodson's papa kanzo speak, and then the videographer shares the news that Houngan Woodson has passed and shares what details were available; that he has been in ceremony just hours earlier with many of the people present, had not been well and had many health issues, had been encouraged to go to the hospital, and then went home, where he passed due to breathing difficulties. By the time an ambulance was found, he had already gone. The videographer compares desounay to the Catholic rite of extreme unction, which is aimed at allowing someone sick to pass to eternity with the blessings of their God and forgiven of their sins. Desounay is a little different than that, as it is only completed after death.
The desounay is completed as soon as possible after death is realized; this is the first ceremony that begins to separate our various soul pieces to go where they must so that we, our lwa, and our descendants can have peace after we pass. It is preferable that this ceremony is done before the body is taken from the home to the morgue or funeral home. In this case, you can see how quickly it was put together; it is happening very early in the morning, pre-9AM, and folks have clearly come directly from ceremony or their homes in a rush, you can see that they have put their white clothes on over other clothes or black and purple clothes from the Gede ceremonies they were attending. This has happened so quickly that there has not been time to prepare the temple or really even the community; Houngan Woodson was extremely well known in Jacmel and in Haiti at large due to his position as gwètò and not everyone was able to come in the moment to share in the grief. His bowoum and traditional internment will undoubtedly be huge.
This is a huge loss. While Haitian Vodou professes no central authority figure(s), a gwètò is a sort of regional coordinator that takes on the responsibility of watching over the community/communities in his or her region. A gwètò might mediate disputes, help a new temple start up, and represent the region throughout the country. Houngan Woodson took his position seriously and attended just about every ceremony in the area, even if he could only go for awhile. I personally benefitted from his intercession when there were local issues my husband needed help with, and I knew Houngan Woodson to be a kind, thoughtful, and caring individual who was always pleased to see me and hear how I was.
This has been a very introspective Gede season for me; Gede has had me sitting and reflecting on things that I will write about soon. What I have thought about today in thinking about this particular death is that access to healthcare is a liberation issue. While only Bondye knows our time and we ask to only be taken at our right time, had Haiti had more equitable access to both emergency medical care in that someone could have called for help and Houngan Woodson could have gone to a hospital that was staffed and had medical equipment, and regular healthcare that could have provided ongoing support for his medical issues as we know in many other parts of the world, perhaps his death could have been avoided. If liberation was fully realized in Haiti, deaths from things we take for granted as minor annoyances, like asthma, strep throat, high blood sugar, and similar, would be a thing of the past.
Woukoukou, yon gwo pyebwa te tonbe. May Houngan Woodson awaken in the company of his ancestors and his lwa in Alada, and may his friends, family, and loved ones find comfort in his memory.
Artwork by @vancekovacs called âDeath Ritesâ? This illustration was created for Sony Santa Monica Studiosâs God of War - A Call From The Wilds.
* * * * *
âXI. MAKE YOUR CUTS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LIVING JOINTS OF THE FORM SAID SOCRATES TO PHAEDRUS WHEN THEY WERE DISSECTING A SPEECH ABOUT LOVE.
Why did nature give me to this creature-- don't call it my choice, I was ventured:
by some pure gravity of existence itself,
conspiracy of being!
We were fifteen.
It was Latin class, late spring, late afternoon, the passive periphrastic,
for some reason I turned my seat
and there he was.
You know how they say a Zen butcher makes one correct cut and the
whole ox
falls apart
like a puzzle. Yes a clichĂŠ.â
â Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos
We should talk more about how precious dead bodies are, and how the sanctity of life extends to the sanctity of death. The only time anyone brings this up in connection to body autonomy is when making a point about abortion. There needs to be more awareness of the violence and cruelty of grave robbing and desecration, corpse and organ stealing, and refusing opportunity for the correct death rites.
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Hey chicken! One of my birds just died, and as dumb as it sounds I feel a little devastated. I want to leave a little corner of my mind to mourn right now, but is there any spell to see off a recently deceased pet? It was a bit sudden and I feel like some closure would be nice right now, maybe in the form of a spell? Thanks!
I'm very sorry to hear that. We ourselves just lost our entire flock to avian flu. It's a tough time for bird lovers lately :(
In the way I use words, such an operation would be more of a ritual than a spell, but that's neither here nor there.
Some people believe that the smoke of ritual incense may be used by spirits and the departed to create things for themselves. So that if you burn incense for a bird, it may use that smoke to create a nest or perching tree in the Great Beyond.
Try dedicating incense and/or a candle to your bird. Speak to your bird and explain that the smoke, light, and warmth is theirs to take on their journey and do with as they please.
Also consider praying to, or reading a hymn or poem of, a psychopomp god. I believe Hermes fits the bill. Ask the psychopomp to escort your bird with love and care to its next destination.
Also, does anyone have any book or article recommendations on traditional Hellenic death rites? Ideally for the average person, rather than heroes. Your average farmer's funeral sure didn't look like Patroclus', I'm certain.
How do Elven Funerals look like? What is the symbolism behind it? Letâs assume that death is uncommon before the First Age but it happens in accidents, miscarriages and childbirth ... do they burn the bodies? I cannot see Elven putting their loved ones in a casket. With humans it comes from âeternal restâ but thatâs not what Elves belief.
Do they have coffins, especially in Valinor where they hope that they will return to them? Are they simply buried in the ground? Return to nature, etc.? The Sindar I can see planting a tree for every lost family member...
The Feanorians would burn their dead. Not just because of Feanor but of the imagery of the flame imperishable?
No idea what the Teleri would do. Ulmo, water and the connection to music is important but I havenât looked up death rites among sea folks. Spread their ashes on the open sea, maybe?
