Re: Good books on funeral practices?

Cyronwode (cyronwode@aol.com)
31 Oct 1995 03:45:23 -0500

gazissax@.best.com (Joel and Lynn GAzis-SAx) Wrote:

> Can readers of this group please post their recommendations for good
books
> about funeral practices? Thanks!

In the sustag-principles Sacred Landscape Bibliography, there is a
key-word for "funerary-cemetery-burial sites."

The definition of the term is given as

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Funerary-cemetery-burial sites: Sites where dead human bodies are placed.
Includes cairns, barrows, passage graves, cyst graves, cemeteries,
ossuaries, catacombs, graveyards, and open-air sites where bodies are
cremated, air-dried, or left for carrion birds.
=====================================================

Searching the data base with the key-word "funerary" turns up many, many
titles (too many to post here). Among them are the following selected
titles:

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Bancroft, Anne
Origins of the Sacred: The Spiritual Journey in Western tradition
Arkana/Routledge and Kegan Paul/Methuen, 1967, 201 pp
Keywords: megaliths, mounds, petroglyphs, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, archaeoastronomical observatories,
labyrinths, symbolic landscaping, religion, myth, folklore, cosmology,
religious iconography, prehistoric, ancient, medieval, Europe, Greece,
Rome
Comment: Despite the new-agey-sounding title, this is a well-written (but,
sadly, unillustrated) survey of the religious practices of prehistoric and
early historic European cultures; Bancroft deftly integrates
archaeoastronomy, funerary architecture, shamanism, and myth into the
larger context of sacred endeavor; the book also contains an excellent
bibliography. CY

Brown, John Gary
Soul in the Stone: Cemetery Art From America's Heartland
University Press of Kansas, 1994, 246 pp, numerous b&w photos, ISBN
0-7006-0634-3
Keywords: funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular architecture,
symbolic landscaping, religion, myth, folklore, religious iconography,
freemasonic symbolism, sacred site tourism, modern, North America
Comment: A well-photographed survey of American vernacular, oddball,
figural, and symbolic grave markers of the 19th and 20th centuries;
includes memorials whose iconography relates to the Freemasons,
Oddfellows, Woodmen of the World, and other fraternal orders. CY

Brown, Peter Lancaster
Megaliths, Myths and Men: An Introduction to Astro-Archaeology
Blandford Press, 1976; Taplinger Publishing, 1976; Harper Colophon, 1978,
324 pp, 142 b&w illustrations, ISBN 0-06-090578-6 [Harper Colophon pbk]
Keywords: megaliths, mounds, petroglyphs, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, archaeoastronomical observatories,
labyrinths, symbolic landscaping, ley lines, religion, myth, folklore,
cosmology, metrology, religious iconography, prehistoric, ancient, world
survey
Comment: A technically dense history of archaeoastronomical theory, with
particular reference to Britain and Egypt; the author presents solid
evidence for ancient astronomical knowledge and supports the metrological
work of Alexander Thom while gently deriding John Michell for his
over-reliance on number symbolism. CY

Burckhardt, Titus
Sacred Art in East and West: Its Principles and Methods
originally published in French as
Princep et Methodes de L'Art Sacre
English translation by Lord Northbourne
Paul Derain, 1958; 1st U.K. ed. 1967; Perennial Books Ltd., 1977, 1986,
160 pp, b&w illustrations, ISBN 0-900588-11-X
Keywords: geometry in art-music-architecture, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, labyrinths, symbolic landscaping,
religion, myth, cosmology, religious iconography, freemasonic symbolism,
number symbolism, medieval, renaissance, Asia, Europe, Middle East
Comment: A valuable general introduction to the subject of sacred art
around the world. CY

Claudy, Carl H.
Introduction to Freemasonry
The Temple Publishers, 1931, 1947, 1958, [many other editions], 181 pp
Keywords: ratio, golden section, Pythagoras, geometry in
art-music-architecture, houses of worship, vernacular architecture,
funerary-cemetery-burial art, religion, myth, freemasonic symbolism,
number symbolism, modern, Europe, North America
Comment: Contains a useful primer on freemasonic symbolism for those
wishing to understand freemasonic architecture, cemeteries, and landscape
design. CY

Curl, James Stevens
The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry
The Overlook Press, 1993, 271 pp, b&w and colour illustrations, ISBN
0-87951-494-9
Keywords: geometry in art-music-architecture, houses of worship,
vernacular architecture, funerary-cemetery-burial art, astro-calendrical
devices, symbolic landscaping, freemasonic symbolism, modern, Asia,
Europe, North America
Comment: A beautifully illustrated book on the impact of freemasonic
symbolism on architecture, theatre sets, cemetaries, and landscape design.
CY

Dragoo, Donald
Mounds for the Dead
Keywords: mounds, funerary-cemetery-burial sites, prehistoric, North
America

Gimbutas, Marija
The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, 7000 - 3500 BC
University of California Press, 1974; Thames and Hudson, 1974
updated and revised editon published as
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images, 6500 - 3500
BC
University of California Press, 1982, 1990
ISBN 0=520-04655-2, LC 72-82323
Keywords: patterns, spirals, megaliths, mounds, petroglyphs, houses of
worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular architecture,
labyrinths, religion, myth, folklore, cosmology, religious iconography,
prehistoric, Crete, Europe, Greece
Comment: Well-illustrated survey of eastern European stone age sacred
statuary and architecture; contains illustrations of early labyrinths and
spirals. CY

King, Blanche Buse
Under Your Feet: The Story of the American Mound Builders
Dodd, Mead & Company, 1939
Keywords: mounds, houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites,
prehistoric, North America

Korp, Maureen
The Sacred Geography of the American Mound Builders
Series title: Native American Studies; v. 2
E. Mellen Press, 1990
Keywords: mounds, houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites,
prehistoric, North America

Lethaby, William
Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth
[ - ], 1891; facsimile reprint: Solos Press 1994, ISBN 1-873616-05-8
Keywords: houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular
architecture, archaeoastronomical observatories, astro-calendrical
devices, labyrinths, religion, myth, folklore, cosmology, religious
iconography, prehistoric, ancient, medieval, renaissance, Asia, Crete,
Egypt, Europe, Greece, Middle East, Rome
Comment: A great, classic overview of sacred architecture and the interior
decoration of shrines and churches. Essential reading. CY

Mann, A. T.
Sacred Architecture
Element Books, 1993
Keywords: natural proportion, patterns, ratio, golden section, spirals,
polygons, polyhedra, Pythagoras, Fibonacci, geometry in
art-music-architecture, natural sacred sites, megaliths, mounds,
petroglyphs, houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular
architecture, archaeoastronomical observatories, astro-calendrical
devices, labyrinths, symbolic landscaping, ley lines, feng shui, religion,
myth, folklore, cosmology, religious iconography, number symbolism,
astrology, occultism, prehistoric, ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern,
Africa, Asia, Australia, Crete, Egypt, Europe, Greece, Meso-America,
Middle East, North America, Rome, Pacific Islands, South America, world
survey
Comment: A very fine, colour-illustrated overview of the entire range of
sacred architecture, drawing heavily upon earlier works by Burkhardt,
Gettings, Lethaby, Critchlow, et al. Written by an architect who is also
an astrologer. Highly recommended. CY

McDonald, Jerry and Woodward, Susan L.
Indian Mounds of the Atlantic Coast: A Guide for Sites from Maine to
Florida
McDonald and Woodward Publishing, 1987, ISBN 0-939923-03-3
Keywords: mounds, houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites,
sacred site tourism, prehistoric, North America
Comment: This and the following entry are highly recommended for tourists.
CY

McDonald, Jerry and Woodward, Susan L.
Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley
McDonald and Woodward Publishing, 1986
Keywords: mounds, houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites,
sacred site tourism, prehistoric, North America
Comment: This and the above entry are highly recommended for tourists. CY

Meaden, George Terrence
The Stonehenge Solution: The Secret Revealed
Souvenir Press, 1992, 224 pp, b&w and colour illustrations, ISBN
0-285-63057-1
Keywords: natural sacred sites, megaliths, mounds, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, archaeoastronomical observatories,
labyrinths, symbolic landscaping, religion, myth, folklore, cosmology,
religious iconography, prehistoric, Europe
Comment: Meaden is a professional meteorologist who proposes a novel
theory to explain the 50 known neolithic British cursus monuments, low
double-banked earthworks up to several miles in length, most now only
visible through aerial photography. These, he says, memorialized the paths
of tornados, which were seen as matings of the sky god with the earth
goddess. He backs up the hypothesis with artifacts and with statistics on
the orientation of tornado-paths in present-day England. This is
sufficiently radical to recommend the book, but there is more: It is the
author's contention that the solar alignments of British megaliths were
used in "divine marriage" ceremonies whereby the shadow of an upright "god
stone" would touch upon a "goddess stone" or the sun's directed rays in a
passage grave would penetrate the recesses of a "womb shrine." Therefore,
he contends, archaeoastronomers have been looking at Stonehenge backwards,
trying to sight the rising sun over the heelstone when they should be
viewing the shadow of the heelstone as it falls onto the altar stone at
the summer solstice. Meaden also discusses holy springs, with particular
reference to the sacred source of the River Cunnt (now called the Kennet,
alas). Had he refrained from mentioning crop circles, his presentation
would have been more credible; even so, he has pried the lid off a very
full box of wonders. Ignore the crop circle crap and read this book in
conjuncton with Gimbutas' "The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe," Mohen's
"The World of Megaliths," and Ritchie's "Scotland B. C." See also Howard's
"Sex Worship" and Jennings' "Phallicism" for 19th century views on the
"divine union" as a theme in shrine and temple architecture. CY

Meehan, Aidan
Celtic Design: Maze Patterns
Thames and Hudson, 1993. ISBN 0-500-27747-8
Keywords: funerary-cemetery-burial sites, labyrinths, religion, myth,
prehistoric, ancient, medieval, Europe
Comment: Discusses some of the ancient Camonica Valley labyrinths;
otherwise just a how-to book. TL
Comment: In addtion to the how-to work on the construction of labyrinths
and Celtic key designs, this book also gives some good details about
goddess-form passage graves. CY

Michell, John
Megalithomania: Artists, Antiquarians, And Archaeologists at the Old Stone
Monuments
Thames and Hudson 1982, 166pp
Keywords: natural sacred sites, megaliths, mounds, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, archaeoastronomical observatories,
symbolic landscaping, ley lines, metrology, religion, religious
iconography, prehistoric, Europe
Comment: It tells the story of reactions ancient and modern to megaliths.
Surveys all the arguments and their protagonists about the megaliths'
origin, purpose and builders. Profuse illustrations, some in colour, of
artists' renditions of megaliths etc. Many interesting contemporary
paintings from past centuries. Not a huge amount of text. TS

Miller, Naomi
Heavenly Caves: Reflections on the Garden Grotto
George Braziller, 1982, 142 pp, b&w illustrations, LC 81-18159, ISBN
0-8076-0967-8
Keywrods: natural sacred sites, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular architecture, symbolic
landscaping, religion, myth, folklore, prehistoric, ancient, medieval,
renaissance, modern, Europe, Greece, Rome
Comment: The only book of its kind; traces the development of the
"grotesque" in landscape architecture from the genre's ancient roots in
the Mediterranean and Adriatic regions, where natural sea-grottos were
used as holy sites, through the cryptoporticus or architecturally-facaded
grotto of the Romans, to the late Renaissance and early modern period,
when the grotto spread northward into land-locked areas and became a
garden feature. The emphasis is on the grotto as Nymphaeum, especially
with reference to Greco-Roman classicism during the 16th through 18th
centuries. Numerous examples of garden grottoes no longer in existence are
depicted via period engravings and paintings. Only grottoes in which water
is a feature are considerd, and short shrift is intentionally given to
those with a chthonic or Hadean motif. Having deliberately shied away from
the Hadean grotto, the author draws no connection between humanist garden
grotto architecture and the contemporaneous religious tradition of
ossuaria. This is unfortunate because the similarities between
shell-encrusted French grottoes and bone-encrusted Austro-Hungarian
ossuaria is striking to those who have studied them both. The Hadean
garden grotto may supply a "missing link" between the two, but in the
absence of examples, one can only guess at the distribution and appearance
of the overlap in development of these seemingly divergent follies. Still,
the text is excellent and the work deserves to be reprinted in a revised,
colour-illustrated edition. CY

Mohen, Jean-Pierre
The World of Megaliths
Facts On File Inc., 1991, ISBN 0-8160-2251-8
Keywrods: natural sacred sites, megaliths, mounds, petroglyphs, houses of
worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular architecture,
archaeoastronomical observatories, astro-calendrical devices, labyrinths,
symbolic landscaping, religious iconography in architecture, prehistoric,
Europe
Comment: A fine overview of European megalith and passage grave sites,
particularly in Britain and France. Good illustrations and maps. CY

Ritchie, Anna,
Scotland B.C.
Crown Copyright [British Government], 1988, ISBN 0-11-493427-4, 80pp
colour illustrations
Keywords: megaliths, mounds, petroglyphs, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, archaeoastronomical observatories,
labyrinths, symbolic landscaping, religion, myth, folklore, cosmology,
religious iconography, sacred site tourism, prehistoric, Europe
Comment: Has good photograph of carving on Ballygowan rock at Argyll which
is a simple labyrinth among many cup and ring marks. TL
Comment: A concise, extremely well designed, beuatifully illustrated, full
colour guidebook to the megaliths, cairns, and petroglyphs of Scotland;
essential for tourists. Demonstrates a regional megalith style in which
recumbent stones flanked by pairs of uprights mark northerly and southerly
solar or lunar rising extremes. CY

Schama, Simon
Landscape and Memory
Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, ISBN 0-679-40255-1, 652 pp, profusely illustrated
in b&w and colour.
Keywords: natural sacred sites, megaliths, mounds, houses of worship,
funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular architecture, symbolic
landscaping, religion, myth, folklore, cosmology, religious iconography,
sacred site tourism, ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, Asia, Crete,
Egypt, Europe, Greece, Meso-America, Middle East, North America, Rome
Comment: Essayss on cultural perceptions of sacred landscape in various
eras and regions of the world. Marketed as a philosophical book about
ecology, it is rather an art history of landscape as cultural icon.
Contains good material on holy mountains, sacred growes, and sacred
waters, the symbolic relationship between gothic architecture and the
European forest, the Arcadian paintings of Poussin et al, and the
grotesque and funerary-memorial styles in garden design. CY

Wampler, Jan
All Their Own: People and the Places They Build
Schenkman Publishing Company, 1977; Oxford University Press, 1978
ISBN 0-19-520028-4
Keywords: houses of worship, funerary-cemetery-burial sites, vernacular
architecture, symbolic landscaping, religious iconography, freemasonic
symbolism, sacred site tourism, modern, North America
Comment: Primarily a survey of oddball or novelty domestic architecture of
the United States (e.g. bottle houses and castle-homes), this
well-illustrated book also contains valuable photo reference on symbolic
landscaping such as the underground Forestiere Gardens and vernacular
American religious and freeasonic sites such as the Dickeyville Grotto and
the Garden of Eden. CY

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