Ancient Aliens – Aliens and Mysterious Rituals: Throughout the world, ancient rites and rituals are believed to connect humans to another dimension.
But just who–or what–are we communicating with? Could today’s rituals, such as festivals, coronations and funerals, be based on early man’s attempts to emulate ancient alien visitors? If so, what other ancient rituals might find their roots in a kingdom – not of this world?
Ancient Aliens – Aliens and Mysterious Rituals
Ritual
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place and according to set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, but not defined, by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.
They include not only the worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also rites of passage, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages, funerals and more. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying “hello” may be termed as rituals.
Maya death rituals
The Maya were ritualistic people, who paid great respect to the destructive nature of their gods. They had many traditions to commemorate the recently deceased and worship long-departed ancestors.
People who died by suicide, sacrifice, complications of childbirth, perish in the ball game, and in battle were thought to be transported directly into heaven. The reason a violent death led to one souls being able to immediately enter the Mayan heaven is because the gods are thankful for your sacrifice to them. People who were to eventually became sacrifices were paraded in litters by citizens before their death.
Before Spanish influence, there may not have been a common idea of the afterlife. The Yucatec Maya believed that there were different routes after death. A pot from a Pacal tomb depicts ancestors of Maya kings sprouting through the earth like fruit trees and together creating an orchard. The Maya had several forms of ancestor worship. They built idols containing ashes of the dead and brought them food on festival days. Alternatively, a temple could be built over an urn. In those that were sacrificed, the most common way was cutting the abdomen, and taking out the heart.
