Reference

Death, Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites and Mors Britannica: Lifestyle and Death-style in Britain Today. 

By Professor. Douglas Davies 

Introduction

As I continued to analyze the stories and emotions emerging from my fieldwork with families of war martyrs in Tehran, I found myself searching for a framework that could translate these lived experiences into theory. Recently, I turned to two works that unexpectedly opened that door: Death, Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites and Mors Britannica: Lifestyle and Death-style in Britain Today.

Although both were written from a Western perspective, their insights reached far beyond their original contexts — offering me new ways to understand how grief, sacrifice, and spirituality intertwine in the Iranian experience of loss.

Death as a Chosen Destiny

One of the key concepts that resonated deeply with my findings was the idea of sacrifice. In Death, Ritual and Belief, death is not simply the end of life but a culturally framed act of meaning — sometimes even a sacred calling. In my fieldwork, I often encountered this death-embracing worldview among Iranian soldiers of the Iran–Iraq war.

For many, the goal was not merely to survive the battlefield but to die upon it. Death was imagined as the ultimate proof of faith, a divine selection. Those who returned alive often carried a heavy sense of guilt, believing that survival meant not being chosen by God. Within this moral and spiritual framework, martyrdom became not tragedy but transcendence.

When Memorials Become Living Shrines

The second theoretical bridge emerged from Mors Britannica, where the author discusses the symbolic power of places of death. Over the last two decades in Iran, the state has built tombs for unknown soldiers in nearly every city. Though these monuments began as national memorials, they have gradually transformed into living shrines.

Visitors now speak of these sites as places where the souls of martyrs remain active and present — where prayers are heard and miracles are expected. This evolution mirrors the analytical insight that spaces of death can become sites of spiritual presence, where the living reconstruct meaning and continuity in the face of loss.

From Holy Violence to Holy Grief 

There is a clear connection between what has been described as "holy violence" in Death, Ritual and Belief and the Weber quotation mentioned in Mors Britannica: “War does something to the warrior which is unique: it makes him experience the consecrated meaning of death, which is characteristic only of death in war.” — Max Weber (Mors Britannica, p. 267).

 In my research, I have met women who have been grieving for more than forty years. They believe their long suffering gives them special powers — to sense souls, to communicate with their deceased loved ones, and to intercede with these martyrs to solve others’ problems. Many describe these souls as living through their bodies. One woman said, “I wasn’t the one who was hiking, he was,” attributing her physical energy to her brother’s spirit. In this way, martyrdom as defined by the state (holy war, holy death) has, in the lives of these women, evolved into what I call holy grief — a deeply spiritual and embodied relationship with the dead, built on the belief that martyrs are not dead, as the Qur’an states. 

I think the grieving women translate this quote from the Qur’an into a unique personal understanding. This is my own understanding of a “triumph over death”, which in this case belongs more to the realm of grief than to the moment of death itself.

Toward a Broader Dialogue

Reading Death, Ritual and Belief and Mors Britannica allowed me to locate my fieldwork within a wider anthropological conversation about death, ritual, and the persistence of spirit. The overlaps between theory and experience suggest that grief itself can be understood as a form of mediation — a sacred dialogue between worlds.

This dialogue continues to shape my research, guiding me toward new questions: How can grief become a source of power? How do ritual, memory, and belief transform pain into presence? And ultimately, how do people everywhere — in different faiths and cultures — find their own ways to triumph over death?

Key Phrases from the Book

1. Death-Embracing Cultures: The encouragement of people to sacrifice their lives for a greater cause — such as holy soil or national symbols like the flag.

2. Holy Violence: The sanctified or sacred nature of death in war, as described by Max Weber.

3. Triumph Over Death: The various practices people perform to preserve or honor the bodies of their deceased loved ones and prevent decay.

4. Ritual Symbolism: The symbolic nature of funerary acts — such as burying soil from war zones as a metaphorical funeral for all unknown soldiers — where the entire act functions as a ritual of collective meaning.

How a British theory on death illuminated, and yet deeply contrasted, my experience of grief and spiritual mediation in Iran

A Chance Encounter Across Worlds

It began with a paper, “The Pervasive Dead” by Dr. Tony Walter, published in Mortality in 2018.
When I found it, I was deep in the field, listening to the quiet, unwavering voices of Iranian women who had lost their loved ones in the Iran–Iraq war four decades ago. For months, I had been collecting their stories, mapping their dreams, watching how memory had turned into ritual.

Reading Dr. Walter’s article felt like encountering a mirror from another world. He wrote about how, in the West, the dead — once banished from daily life in the name of modern hygiene and rationality — were finding their way back through digital and emotional networks. Facebook memorials, online tributes, and digital afterlives were reshaping how the living stayed connected with the dead. He called them the pervasive dead — those whose presence spreads quietly but persistently across our mediated modern world.

And yet, as I turned the pages, something stirred in me. His theory resonated with my work, but it also clashed with it — like two musical notes that harmonize and dissonate at once.

The Women Who Never Let Go

For two years, I have sat in the homes of women who lost sons, husbands, or brothers during the war between Iran and Iraq. Most of these men died before reaching thirty. Many of these women have been grieving for forty years — and yet, grief for them is not a state to overcome; it is a world to inhabit.

In Western psychology, grief often implies a journey toward “letting go.” But in these homes, grief means staying connected. It is an ongoing relationship — intimate, spiritual, and embodied.

One woman told me, “I wasn’t the one who was hiking; he was.” She meant it literally. She believed her brother’s soul animated her body, lending her energy, will, and movement. For her, the boundary between the living and the dead was porous — life and afterlife breathing through the same lungs.

These women do not simply mourn; they mediate. They believe they can sense, communicate with, and even intercede through the dead. People in their communities come to them for blessings, advice, or healing. The dead speak — softly, indirectly — through dreams, signs, or the bodies of the grieving.

This phenomenon, I have come to call holy grief. It transforms mourning into a form of presence. Grief becomes a sacred bridge, a conversation that refuses to end.

Angels in a Theology of Silence

Islamic doctrine offers little detail about what happens to the soul between death and resurrection. Angels are mentioned repeatedly in the Qur’an, yet they seem to hold no visible place in Iranian Islamic religious practices or everyday rituals — a question that invites its own investigation. The Prophet and the twelve Imams are seen as the only true intercessors between humanity and the divine.

Yet these women, in their loneliness, have built their own spiritual architecture. They describe their dead as angels — companions who carry prayers, protect them, and sometimes even act through them.

It is a quiet rebellion, though they would never call it that. In the absence of clear theology, grief itself becomes creative. It generates belief. It interprets scripture. It imagines what tradition has left unsaid.

Dr. Walter’s concept of the pervasive dead suddenly gave me a framework for this — and yet, it also highlighted the deep cultural gulf between our worlds.

The Return of the Dead — Western Style and Otherwise

In Dr. Walter’s essay, the dead return through the digital: through screens, photos, comments, and data. Their presence is emotional, but also mediated by technology — a modern resurrection of memory in pixels.

In Iran, the return is not virtual but physical. Over the past two decades, the graves of unknown soldiers — martyrs — have been established within cities, universities, and public parks. They are no longer hidden in distant cemeteries. They sit in the heart of public life, framed by flowers, flags, and ritual.

Visitors come not only to remember but to communicate. They touch the gravestones, whisper prayers, leave letters and offerings. The state, through media and ceremony, has turned these martyrs into spiritual intermediaries — souls who can intercede between the living and God.

If in Britain the dead return through technology, in Iran they return through ideology — through an orchestrated resurrection that places them at the center of national and religious identity.

This is what I meant, in my field notes, when I wrote that Iran has witnessed a return to a deformed tradition. Modernity did not progress neatly into postmodernity; instead, the state’s ritualization of the dead folded the society back into an altered, politicized version of its past.

Body, Spirit, and Mourner: The Triangle of Death

In my fieldwork, I began to see grief as a triangular relationship — between body, spirit, and mourner.

• The body: how one dies defines how one is remembered. A martyr’s body is not simply a corpse; it is a symbol, a sign of divine choice.
  
  

• The spirit: believed to be alive and active, present in dreams, sensations, and sudden coincidences.
  
  

• The mourner: the one who sustains the relationship, who defines its meaning through ritual, memory, and emotional labour.
  Dr. Walter’s essay recognized this same structure — the intertwining of the physical, the spiritual, and the emotional. But in the West, the triangle often bends toward nostalgia and memorialization; in Iran, it becomes a form of continuing life.

A Shock of Difference

As I read Walter’s work, I was moved by the elegance of his theory — but also struck by the sheer difference in the worlds we were describing.

In his framework, the pervasive dead mark a postmodern re-entry of death into public consciousness — an afterlife of identity in an age of individualism and data.

In mine, they have been invited back in a new way, with new political and spiritual functions. The difference is not simply religious; it is civilizational.

His pervasive dead connect through Wi-Fi; mine through tears, dreams, and ritual touches on stone. His world reclaims death after centuries of denial; mine lives with death as an ever-present companion.

Reading his paper made me realize that similarity can reveal difference more sharply than opposition. We both study societies trying to reintegrate the dead — yet what that means, and what it does to the living, could not be more distinct.

The Question That Remains

When I finished Dr. Walter’s article, I was both exhilarated and unsettled. It felt as though someone on the other side of the world had given language to what I was seeing — and yet, that language also betrayed how far apart our cultural foundations truly are.

It made me question every analysis I had written...