Green Life

Man has always loved to be entertained. Forms the very beginning of civilization there have been jugglers, acrobats, animal trainers and clowns to entertain people. In ancient Greece there were chariot races, in China there were contortionists, and in Egypt there were trainers of wild animals. But it was the Romans who first had the idea of combining such acts and other events into a circus. Actually, the word “circus” comes from the Latin pertaining to races rather than to a type of show. So the circus started with races, and the structures built by the Romans for these races were called circuses. The Circus Maximus was the first and largest of these. It was started in the third century B.C. and was enlarged until it could seat more than 150,000 people!

Perhaps our black mourning clothes go back to the idea of frightening away spirits or hiding from them! There are other mourning customs that are linked to this rear of spirits. For example, mourning is a period of retirement. We withdraw from normal activities and life. There are countless examples of primitive and ancient peoples who retired from social life when a relative died. In some cases, the widow spent the rest of her life in a kind of retirement. And it may all have started from the fear of “contaminating” other people with the spirit.

Do you enjoy Westerns on TV? They are certainly popular with millions of people. yet can you imagine anyone enjoying exactly the same western year for dozens of years? But there is a form of entertainment that people enjoy in just that way! They know the plot, they even have most of the lines memorized, yet they love to see it performed year after! That form of entertainment is the opera. Perhaps opera is so popular because it is interesting to both the ear and the eye. An opera is a play in which the parts are sung instead of spoken. In addition to the principal parts taken by soloists, there is usually a chorus. The orchestra plays at the beginning of the opera and before each act. It accompanies the singers and the action of the story.

When we put on mourning clothes, they are usually the reverse of the kind of clothes we wear every day. In other words, it’s a kind of disguise. Some people think that ancient peoples put on this disguise because they were afraid that the spirit which had brought death would return and find them! Now, this might seem pretty far-fetched, if there weren’t some peoples who do exactly this even today. Among many primitive tribes in various parts of the world, as soon as someone dies, the window and other relatives put on all sorts of disguises. Sometimes they cover the body with mud and put on a costume of grass. In other tribes, the women cover their bodies entirely with veils.

We think of our way of life as the only one, and when we learn about other civilizations, we are often shocked, or at least surprised. When we mourn somebody, we naturally wear black. What else could one wear? Well, in Japan and China, they wear pure white when mourning! And in some sections of Africa, the natives apply red paint to their bodies as a sign of mourning. The reason we wear black is simply that, according to our traditions, this is the best way to express grief. When we see people dressed in black mourning clothes they look somber and sad, so it seems natural to us that black is the color of mourning clothes. But have you ever wondered why we wear mourning clothes at all? Of course, we now do it as a mark of love or respect for someone who has died. But in trying to trace mourning clothes back to their beginnings, scholars have come up with interesting answers.

The forms in which reincarnation is supposed to take place vary in different parts of the world. There are even many ways of picturing the soul that leaves the human body. In some parts of India, it is pictured as an insect. In many parts of Europe, it was pictured as a bird, usually a dove. It is also commonly shown as a butterfly. Many people who believe in reincarnation hold that the soul enters the body of another human being. But there are those who think it enters the bodies of insects and animals, such as tigers, sharks, and alligators. And in some parts of the world, it is believed that the souls enter into flowers.