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Ritualizing Death, Celebrating Life

Writer's picture: Rita LançaRita Lança

This article presents a brief summary of the video available here, referring to the Lecture “Ritualizing Death, Celebrating Life”, that I gave on June 26th of 2024, at the invitation of the Federal University of Tocantins, in Brazil.


I contextualize the type of support I provide as a Transition Doula. I mention the relationship with rituals in the light of my personal and professional trajectory and the inspiration to dedicate myself to investigating these topics.


I outline a theoretical contextualization, revealing questions for reflection on the ritualization of death and the celebration of life, drawing a parallel with the research I am developing in Ghana, as part of the exploratory study for my Doctoral Project.


Finally, I refer to the historical and specific role that the doula assumes in the rituals, with the culmination of the Lecture being the moment of discussion, in which we triangulated perspectives, guided by reference universes and fertile curiosities.


Curiosity about death


This Lecture was part of the “Seminar on Death Doulas: Reflecting the Meaning of Life” and in this vein, I shared the curiosity that death has awakened in me since I was a child, reinforcing the importance of families not banishing these manifestations.


I explained how much my perspective, and the proposal for accompaniment, as well as the research that I have been developing, are rooted in approximately two decades of proximity to the community, and the concrete diagnosis of needs that don’t find an institutional response and/or in the informal proximity network.


I have mirrored, throughout my life, the way I see and go through transitions, from the place of a “wounded healer” - someone who lives their own death processes, in which what one brings to the world is fermented internally and externally in the lived reality. 


Africa as inspiration


I gained inspiration from the way death in Africa is experienced through a celebration of it, and it is to this fertile land that I always return, as if I had never left.


I mention some of the immersions that shaped my spectrum and where I seek to recover the meaning of community traditions and rituals that still celebrate death as part of life, from Egypt, Angola, Cape Verde, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast and Ghana, as well as Muslim rituals, in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia.


I also share projects that inspire me, about funeral rituals around the world, attentive to the fusion of new practices in traditional imaginaries.


Rituals and their functions


Historically, rituals tend to mark life transitions that are recognized, assumed and traditionally lived in a community context. Currently, in an individualized and secular society, the tendency towards deritualization is accentuated, most evident in transition rituals surrounding death.


From this perspective, I delve deeper into the concept of rituals and some of their functions, discussing their complexity, as mutant phenomena, marked by ubiquity and diversity.

Reflecting on global changes in funeral rituals, I look at specific examples in our daily lives, in which we witness the sfumato of rituals.


Looking for a practical scope, I guided an evocative contemplation of Samhain, a Celtic cult historically spread in the Iberian Peninsula, and I propose for discussion to think about traditions and rites that come from our own life contexts.


Ghana, a myriad of rituals


As part of the exploratory study of my Doctoral Project, I address the Akan concept of the universe and the way it frames the relationship between categories of deaths, types and functions of funerals in Ghana.


I illustrate these dimensions with a case study - the case of Akweba - a 97-year-old woman, from a Fante community, a matrilineal society, in the locality of Winneba


Fante Funeral, in Winneba, Ghana
Fante Funeral, in Winneba, Ghana

The Role of the Doula in Rituals 


I start from a historical lineage to demonstrate how closely the figure of the doula is linked to the celebrations we invoke, as a bearer of ancestral knowledge and sacred rites, conveyed in the support developed within communities.


From this global historical lens, I explain how much we have transferred this accompaniment to the institutional sphere, with inherent simplification and/or loss of rituals, among other factors, due to the penetration of the market spectrum into community practices.


To conclude, I propose that we reflect on how to (re)introduce and (re)create rituals in everyday life, as I believe that “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire”, as expressed by Gustav Mahler, Bohemian-born composer and conductor.



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© 2024 Rita Lança - Demyurga - Transition Doula

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