walking on red-hot coals.
Voodoo priests casting a spell.
-[thunder crashing] -And ancient ceremonies used to ward off...
-the Devil himself. -[screaming]
Can ancient rituals really unleash incredible powers?
Physical powers? Psychic powers?
There are many who believe in the power of prayer.
So what about spells used to conjure the dead?
Could they really work?
And if they do...
what does that say about the physical laws
of the world we live in?
[chuckles]: Well...
that is what we'll try and find out.
♪
SHATNER: San Pedro Manrique, Spain.
June 23, 2018.
Here, as they have for centuries,
villagers gather for an evening festival
to celebrate the summer solstice.
They engage in singing, dancing,
wearing elaborate costumes.
But for a select group of villagers,
the festivities aren't so... conventional.
Because their evening also includes something
out of the ordinary:
a dangerous walk...
-over fire. -[flames crackling]
Now, I've seen many fire walking rituals
in many different contexts in a variety of countries.
They have this amphitheater around the, the place where
the actual fire is,
and these men walk on the embers.
It's five or six steps from one side to the other.
And they do it barefoot
and usually carrying someone on their shoulders.
[applause and cheering]
People often wonder, is the fire walk really hot?
And the answer is yes.
Once the wood is first laid out, the overall temperature
is between a thousand and 1,200 degrees.
That's really hot.
More than enough to burn flesh, certainly.
MICHAEL DENNIN: If you look at the temperatures involved,
you're typically talking temperatures
over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and skin burns
at a hundred, 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
XIMENEZ: Walking on fire is very, very dangerous.
I mean, you're barefoot.
Just one wrong move
and you can be severely burned.
[crowd cheering]
SHATNER: Walking on fire.
And at temperatures hot enough to turn metal into liquid.
No one in their right mind would do this
and expect to emerge unharmed, right?
And yet, the people of San Pedro Manrique
manage to do just that, and on a yearly basis.
But how?
Walking across hot embers
is one of my favorite physics problems.
The trick is making sure the embers are hot enough
of water vapor between your skin a very and the hot coals. layer
Some of these same firewalkers,
one day, they walk across unscathed;
another time they try it, they do burn their feet.
My experience tells me the difference is in their mindset.
So at my fire walks, once we've taken the group out to the fire,
and we're getting ready to walk,
first, I like to remind them again about their intention.
And this helps motivate them and get them across.
And then, we raise people's energy
before a fire walk.
Firewalkers around the world, regardless of tradition,
religion, they raise the group's energy
before they walk.
So, this can be done with meditation, chanting,
singing, dancing...
Whatever the case, you want to get your group
into an excited, pumped-up state
before the fire walk.
There is absolutely something about
being in an excited, uplifted state
that helps you get across safely.
[crowd chanting]
So what actually happens there psychologically
is there is this emotional buildup.
There is this highly intense arousal that's happening,
and so you have cortisol and other sort of endocrine hormones
flooding the system, which will help to block
some of the pain receptors.
SHATNER: Water vapor?
Mind control?
But can fire walking without pain or injury
really be just a simple matter of will power?
Or does it require something even more?
We know we have the capability to redirect pain
or even to numb pain just by putting ourselves
in the right mindset.
But many of these firewalkers don't even have blisters
or burns on their feet.
So, when you look at physics,
that's impossible.
If you touch something that's hot,
you're gonna get burned.
So the question is, are we dealing with
the magical force that we have yet to fully understand?
HOBSON: So in one study with the San Pedro
Spanish fire walking ritual,
a team of anthropologists were curious what happens to
a person's heart rate for the individual
who's actually walking,
and for any individual who is close to them?
Like a relative or a family member.
[applause and cheering]
HOBSON: The surprising part is that
you will still have a state of physiology
that's similar to the individual, as if...
youare walking over the coals,
when in fact, of course, you're not.
AXTELL: It is so much more than just an individual ritual.
It is a community experience.
Yes, it is technically possible to cross a coal bed unharmed
all by yourself.
But it is much easier to experience a fire walk
surrounded by people who are there to support you:
your family, your community.
Crossing barefoot over thousand-degree coals
doesn't make any practical sense.
And even though I've personally crossed
hundreds and hundreds of coal beds,
I still don't perfectly understand
how and why it works like it does.
So what about you?
Are you willing to take your chances,
slip off your shoes and walk barefoot over fire?
Well, if you are, then perhaps you're also ready
to confront the unknown, and see what happens
when you come face-to-face with the power of voodoo.
JULIA BUCKLEY: I was really pretty disabled by the pain,
May 2012.
32-year-old author Julia Buckley
is writing in her office when she experiences a pain
unlike any she has ever felt before.
I was just at my desk one day at work, typing away,
um, reached out for a cup of coffee,
and suddenly, it was as if my right arm was on fire,
as if someone had laid out fireworks all the way
from my fingers up to my armpit, and across to my neck.
I was really pretty disabled by the pain,
'cause it was getting worse
day by day, week by week.
I couldn't do anything with this right arm at all.
I saw three general doctors, I saw eight specialists;
I was doing everything that I was told to do.
So after two years, I was...
completely at my wit's end.
So I was pretty desperate, and in quite a dark place.
SHATNER: With her life virtually in shambles,
Julia was willing to try anything.
Turning away from conventional medicine,
she began to investigate alternatives,
and this led her down a, shall we say, unusual path.
Voodoo healing.
I was reading a book about voodoo.
And reading it, I hadn't seen anything like it
in any of the other research that I'd done.
I just got this impression that the voodoo priests
were probably the people who had the most, kind of, grasp of the,
the mind-body relationship.
And I just thought if anyone's gonna be able to help me,
it's gonna be someone in Haiti.
SHATNER: Still fighting debilitating pain,
Julia Buckley flew to Haiti,
and once there, arranged to meet
with Richard Morse, a voodoo practitioner.
BUCKLEY: I had actually read interviews and knew
that he was a voodoo priest as well as a hotel owner,
and so I'd already thought, "Oh, I need to try and ask him
whether he can, he can do anything for me."
So, I checked into the hotel, met him
and then we started talking about voodoo
and its capacity for healing.
And so, I told him exactly why I was there,
and I just said, "Can you help me?"
I think he said, "Are you, are you sure you want this?"
And I was like, "Absolutely."
MORSE: No one taught me how to do this.
I didn't go to school to do this,
but I have a certain capacity for something of this sort.
My mom was a voodoo priestess,
and my father's family goes back to the Puritans.
I like to call my thing Puritan-voodoo,
because I'm a mix.
SHATNER: After learning about her symptoms,
Morse led her into a dark room,
one meant to summon spirits
and extract whatever was harming her.
BUCKLEY: There were candles and bottles all around the room.
There were strips of cloth, different colored cloths
that now I know represent the different Loa, the spirits,
all around the room.
There were these terra-cotta pots
that he said were filled with the souls of the dead.
And there were these little bottles of
what I found out afterwards were holy water
brought from shrines all over the rest of the world.
He went around me a couple of times.
Then he stopped at the back of my neck and started feeling
from the bottom of my skull down to my neck.
Kind of pressing on it, almost like
what a chiropractor might do
before they really start going for it.
I was scared, because that's where all my problems were,
and I didn't want him to hurt me, and I didn't want
my neck to be cracked or anything like that.
I was terrified.
He told me that he had found
a demon in a shape of a black cat on my neck.
So when he had been dragging his fingers down my neck,
he was literally picking up and detaching this black cat.
He said he didn't know how I'd got it,
when I got it or how long it had been there,
but he said it was nasty and that he'd got rid of it.
It was only when I got to the airport,
decided I needed a cup of coffee,
and jumped up the stairs to the coffee bar
carrying my little carry-on suitcase.
I was standing with the coffee and I kind of looked down
and thought, "Hang on, I can't normally do that."
And I checked in with my body, and I realized, actually,
nowhere is hurting right now.
This is really strange.
It was the first time in nearly three years
that I hadn't been in pain.
SHATNER: As far as Julia Buckley was concerned,
voodoo had worked, after everything else had failed.
But how?
TOK THOMPSON: Voodoo is a fabulously interesting tradition.
We see it in the Caribbean,
primarily perhaps in Haiti, although certainly
in other places around the Caribbean as well.
It's a part of a much larger assemblage of religions
with a shared sort of worldview.
This traces back to West Africa, and to several groups
and several different religions there.
The West African religious tradition was brought over
via the slave trade to the Caribbean,
to the Southern United States, where it flourished
and took on different forms,
and blended somewhat easily with the Catholic faith.
You can call it God or you can call it, um,
how you, how you want...
[singing, chanting]
[laughs]
DAVID WHITEHEAD: So it could be
that when it comes to these rituals,
that there's something about the nature of the ritual
that actually activates
something within the participant.
But the ritual needs to be believed.
It needs to be true to the participant
in order for it to work.
So the pageantry and the theatricality that's associated
with these rituals, that's where their power lies.
SHATNER: Perhaps one of the reasons voodoo's followers
believe in its incredible power is because they know
it not only can be used to heal, but also to harm.
We hear this phrase, "voodoo death," you know,
that people may have cast a spell or done
some kind of ritual that causes the death of another person.
And if we're scientific, "Well, that's ridiculous.
That has no causal relationship here."
But if we dig a little deeper,
there have been cases of voodoo deaths where someone has said
something or done something
that literally affects another person.
HOBSON: Most scientists, doctors or researchers
would just call it an anomaly.
A physical or psychological anomaly
that we can't quite explain with the data
or the information that are presented before us.
BUCKLEY: I think there's a lot of value in things being unexplained.
Something like voodoo,
you're never gonna be able to have the proof of what happened.
I don't know what happened in that room and I was there.
SHATNER: Ancient rituals that can not only cure disease,
but cause it?
It seems hard to fathom.
But then, why did Julia Buckley's pain disappear?
Was it all in her head?
Or can the answer be found by examining another ritual,
one that is a ritual form of brutality?
WHITEHEAD: There's something about watching
SHATNER: What is it about the ritual
of watching violent, sometimes bloody sports combat
that fascinates us?
Is it merely because it fulfills a human desire
to witness organized competition?
Or, does it satisfy
a much darker, more primal need in us
than we like to admit?
HOBSON: There's much less killing now in modern humans
than there were in the past,
but there still is that little bit left within us,
that when you go to a sporting event and all of the rituals
and all that mob mentality is pushing
an individual to act out violently,
well, it turns on that little spark of violence
that still exists within us.
L.A. JENNINGS: You may not realize it,
but an MMA fight is very ritualistic.
The participation in the event and the spectacle of it
is part of a long history of rituals.
FRANK TRIGG: When people get to the arena for a fight,
there is a specific procedure that happens every single time.
This procedure is set specifically to get
not only the fighters ready, but to get the fans amped up
so they can be the most hyped that they can possibly be
for this particular fight when that fight starts.
The song comes on, that starts at about a level three.
"Oh, fight's about to happen."
Then both guys walk in, the announcements are being made.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a nice round...
TRIGG: Now you're coming up to a nine, a ten.
"Oh, it's about to happen." The ring card girl comes in.
The first round is gonna get started for this fight.
The referee asks if both fighters are ready.
I want you guys to have a clean fight.
Follow my orders at all times.
TRIGG: Now you are amped up. This is about to happen.
The fight is getting ready to go.
You're so invested in this guy that when he's fighting,
you feel like it's actually happening to you.
This is an assault on you and your person
when this is happening, so this is why the crowd
gets so into it, because they follow the hype.
And the ritual portion of that happens every single time.
[horn honks]
SHATNER: Las Vegas, Nevada.
October 6, 2018.
Mixed martial arts fighters Khabib Nurmagomedov
and Conor McGregor face off in what is touted
as the bout of the year.
20,000 fans watch as Khabib locks Conor
in a brutal chokehold and emerges victorious,
retaining the title of lightweight champ.
But before the closing ceremony, Khabib gets enraged
by the endless barrage of trash talk
from his opponent's entourage.
That's when the real fight begins.
WHITEHEAD: Khabib Nurmagomedov jumps up on the cage,
jumps into the crowd
and starts fighting with Conor McGregor's corner.
TRIGG: Most fights have a closure.
You have a winner, you have a closing ceremony.
None of that happened.
It all got stopped because the fight broke out.
There's no closure. The fight's not over, like,
now they get to go out in the streets,
and everyone's been drinking all night, and so you add alcohol,
you add testosterone, you add a blood sport...
So people started fighting out in the streets.
And in that kind of situation,
those kind of things are gonna happen.
[birds chirping]
WHITEHEAD: If you go to an ice-skating competition or a tennis match,
you rarely hear about people breaking out
into fistfights in the crowd.
So when we look at what happened in Las Vegas,
could it be that there's something about the act
of watching violent blood sports
that brings us into some kind of ritual in a way?
TRIGG: Everybody wants to see
the most violent thing that can happen to somebody.
Everybody cheers for the knockout.
They don't even realize that they're there for the violence.
The don't understand why they're actually there
to watch this fight until the knockout happens.
We love watching violence when it's happening to somebody else.
And we've been doing it since the gladiator times.
JENNINGS: Ancient Romans also loved
fighting sports, and gladiator events
were unique in that it wasn't trained,
skilled athletes fighting against each other,
but it was often people who had
committed a crime that made them eligible for the death penalty.
And the death penalty in this case
was fighting against a gladiator in the Colosseum.
The Colosseum could fit up to 50,000 people, and they went
for the pleasure, the cathartic experience
of watching humans being killed.
WHITEHEAD: We think of this life-or-death
type of sport as being something that's only in the ancient past,
but there is still a sport
where life and death is involved,
and this would be the sport of bullfighting.
[Spanish music playing]
XIMENEZ: Bullfighting in Spain is not only a tradition
or a show,
it's, uh, actually part of the culture,
and it's the last part in which
a very, very strict, uh, dance happens around the bull,
and this man, this matador,
actually is risking his life in front of you.
THOMPSON: The danger and the bloodiness is a part of it.
If the matador wins, the bull bleeds to death
in front of the spectators.
Now, of course if the bull wins, uh, the-the matador gets gored.
XIMENEZ: In 2016, everybody was reminded
about how dangerous bullfighting is
when Víctor Barrio got gored to death by a bull
in the middle of a bullfighting season.
This was just another bullfighting festival.
Uh, one of the hundreds that are in Spain in the summer.
And Víctor Barrio was a experienced matador,
and he was gored to death right there.
It was a shocking event for the nation.
It was a-a reminder of how dangerous this practice is.
The possibility
of a man dying before your eyes,
it adds a layer of thrill to it.
It's undeniable
that it's just part of the attraction.
Think of it as rodeos. Think of it as
NASCAR races. They have a layer of danger,
of live danger.
WHITEHEAD: It's not just
witnessing winning and losing and some friendly competition.
This takes it to the next level.
And the question is, what is it about human nature
that would have thousands of people wanting to gather
in some Colosseum or some modern stadium
to watch this ritualistic form of combat,
and why they would actually want to be involved
in witnessing a ritualized form of death?
TRIGG: It's really interesting to watch the fans.
People actually get to a space where
they lose social graces.
They kind of lose themselves in the event,
which is why going to a live event is so important
for somebody that loves MMA.
You'll see normal guys, and it could be
even someone that you know personally.
"Oh, he's a great guy. He's a Christian.
He's a super family man, doesn't swear, hardly ever drinks,"
but he gets to the fight and he is cursing and swearing
and throwing stuff down at everybody.
You're like, "What? What happened?
Oh, he's... That's his guy. That's his fighter."
SHATNER: When we watch two men fight each other
for sport, or watch a matador
stare down a raging bull,
is there a "spark of violence"
that gets unleashed within all of us?
A streak of barbarism that becomes somehow satisfied
by what is, in effect, a ritual form of brutality?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining
another ancient ritual,
one designed to cure, not just a diseased body...
-[thunder crashing] -...but a diseased soul
-by casting out... -[screaming]
...the Devil himself.
Gary, Indiana.THOMPSON: In 2018,R:
April 2012.
Father Michael Maginot,
the pastor of Saint Stephen, Martyr Catholic Church,
meets with Latoya Ammons in her home.
But this is not a common pastoral house call
because Father Mike, as he is known by his parishioners,
is also an exorcist,
and he has been asked
to rid this home of a demon.
Latoya moved into this particular house
in Gary in November of 2011.
She was the mother of three children.
And once the family moved in,
they were noticing all kinds of phenomena
happening in the house.
Flies were swarming
in the middle of winter.
[pounding]
They would hear noises through the house.
-[creaking] -Footsteps coming up the stairs
from the basement.
They would see shadow figures pacing back and forth
in the living room and turn on the light
and see muddy footprints
left on the floor.
Her children, uh, were also exhibiting
some really odd behavior.
[indistinct whispering]
One of the boys was seen talking to an imaginary friend
that resided somewhere within the house.
And reports also suggest that the daughter was seen levitating
several feet above her bed at night.
MAGINOT: And so, Latoya was convinced
something beyond explanation was happening to her family,
but no one would really believe her.
During that time, the children, they were getting sick.
And then Child Protective Services
were getting reports that they were missing a lot of school,
so they actually were investigating, um, Latoya.
She was saying that it was demonic possession,
and so they were giving her psychiatric examinations,
but they couldn't find any psychological illness with her.
SHATNER: Not only did the authorities fail to find
any trace of mental illness in Latoya's behavior,
or any inconsistencies in her story,
they also witnessed an event involving her son
that made them realize that something
really was happening to this family,
something unexplained.
During the family's psychiatric evaluations,
the youngest child began rolling eyes in the back of his head,
growling.
And then the case worker, as well as several members
of hospital staff, witnessed the boy walk backwards up a wall.
MAGINOT: When they witnessed the boy walk up the wall backwards,
yeah, they were believers.
They knew there was no explanation for that.
And so, I got called to investigate this case
by the hospital chaplain,
and I went to visit Latoya.
It was a four-hour interview,
and it was in the midst of that
that I placed the crucifix
on her forehead and she began to convulse.
Then I took it off and she stopped convulsing.
And that's one of the main things that fits
the signs of demonic possession.
After considering the evidence,
I was convinced that the only way to get rid of it
was a church-sanctioned exorcism.
And so I reported that, uh, to the bishop
and he gave permission.
An exorcism is a ritual, a spiritual battle,
and so you need to somehow upset the demon.
One of the instruments that I would use
would be a blessed crucifix
to put on the person's forehead.
A second thing is sprinkling holy water.
There are three sections of the rite
where you're addressing the demon
and a second place where you're addressing God,
and you could do it in English,
or else, you could also do it in Latin.
-[speaking Latin] -In Latoya's case,
when we were addressing the demon in Latin,
Latoya would be convulsing,
but when we were addressing God, she would stop convulsing.
I'm the only one there that knew the Latin,
and-and I found that kind of amazing.
A demonic entity will fight for the territory
that they have gained,
but then, eventually, it starts to lessen.
With Latoya, finally she fell asleep,
and that was kind of an indication that it left.
Once she got cleared, um,
then the children were also fine after that as well.
SHATNER: What saved Latoya Ammons and her children
from their deep physical and emotional torment?
Was it really the spiritual power of the ritual
that Father Michael performed?
Or was it the psychological or psychosomatic effect
that simply performing a ritual had on Latoya and her family?
Latoya's case is really interesting
because it's a case that actually made national news.
Herself and her children were exhibiting symptoms
that could not be explained rationally
by modern medical science, but in the end,
after all of their attempts,
it was the exorcism itself
that actually produced the positive effect.
We have evidence of exorcism rituals
dating back 3,000 years ago in ancient Babylon.
[shouting incoherently]
CHAVEZ: To those that say that exorcism
shouldn't exist in modern society,
they really need to appreciate just how successful
exorcism can be as a ritual, how it's able to help people.
TZADOK: Exorcisms are not just performed by one religion
or another, they're performed by all the different religions.
It happens everywhere because we're dealing with
the commonality of human souls.
We recognize that the nature of a possession
is an earthbound soul which is unable to
or afraid to move forward in its spiritual progression.
And we perform rituals because the nature of ritual
is being an expression of inner psychological
ideas and beliefs.
And therefore, as such, exorcisms become
a required practice.
[growling]
Can ritual really be used to fight off evil spirits?
You may say that notion sounds too outlandish to even consider,
until you realize that, at one time or another,
even you...
have probably used a ritual to connect with a higher power.
It's called prayer.
And there are billions of people all over the world
who believe that prayer
is the most powerful ritual of all.
SHATNER: Israel.TZADOK: You can have a gathering of literally
January 2018.
Here, in what is known as the Holy Land,
the average temperature is almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit,
and water is a precious commodity.
But this is no average year.
It's been almost five years
since more than a few drops of rain
fell upon Israel's thirsty sands,
and the people are beginning to panic.
TZADOK: The spring season in the Middle East
is the time for the rains to come.
As such, if the rains are not there,
you don't have your agriculture,
which is a life-and-death type of experience.
Even in modern times,
with all of our modern technology,
rain makes the crops grow.
No crops, no food; no food, no life.
So when we have a drought,
this creates crisis.
SHATNER: Israel is one of the wealthiest
and most technologically advanced countries in the world.
It is also one of the most religious.
So when facing its worst drought in close to 100 years,
with the fate of the entire country hanging in the balance,
what is their solution?
-[praying in foreign language] -Prayer.
TZADOK: In our Judaic tradition,
we have had a long-standing history
that when there is drought,
the chief rabbi of the country
can call the entire nation to prayer.
And you can have a gathering in Jerusalem
of literally thousands or tens of thousands of minds,
souls, that will come together
and pour out their collective energy,
calling upon God in heaven to literally manipulate
the forces of nature and bring rain.
THOMPSON: In 2018, Israel was in a major drought,
and this was really beginning to cause problems.
At this point, uh, Chief Rabbi David Lau
organized a massive ritual,
put out a call for believers to ce
to one of the most sacred sites in Judaism,
-the Wailing Wall. -[praying in foreign language]
They went to the Wailing Wall,
and you had thousands of Jews praying for rain to come.
[praying continues]
TZADOK: When the individual Torah-observant
Jewish man wraps himself in his tallit prayer shawl
and puts on the boxes of the tefillin,
he creates for himself a psychic bubble of energy,
which unites the individual mind and heart
with the collective power of the word of God,
literally materialized before him in the form
of the fringes of the prayer shawl,
and literally in the form of the scrolls
that are upon his arm next to his heart
and on his head, close to his mind.
SHATNER: It is one thing for us to believe the ritual of prayer
has the ability to affect our world.
But can the act of praying actually
connect us to a higher power?
A ritual is a very predictable sequence of, of events.
But the interesting thing is, if you have two things,
you have a boundary between them.
And prayer and prayer rituals might be a way
of influencing that boundary between the physical
and the nonphysical in a way that the nonphysical
then interacts again with the physical world.
SHATNER: To those more secular and cynical-minded,
praying is a rather quaint, if not irrelevant pastime.
There's no reason it should work, right?
-[praying in foreign language] -Except that in the case
of ending Israel's drought in 2018,
many believe it did.
-[praying continues] -[thunder rumbling]
[thunder crashing]
AMIR HUSSAIN: You can say that it's just simply correlation--
yes, you prayed and yes, three days later there was rain,
but the one thing didn't cause the other.
I mean, that's the scientific approach.
The religious approach is a little bit different
to say, well, maybe we did, maybe we did influence this,
maybe God listened to these prayers.
[men singing, clapping]
TZADOK: In Judaism, there are rituals that augment the power
of the individual--
the passion, the desire, the thought, the idea,
creating, if you will, a psychic field,
which combines to give great psychic spiritual energy
for the fulfillment of that which the individuals seek.
But when we come together as a collective,
we find that it does have the power to influence change.
They prayed for rain. And the prayers were answered.
[praying in foreign language]
SHATNER: Of course, there's always the chance that it wasn't prayer,
but coincidence that saved the Israeli people.
The drought would have ended at some point.
But then, why take chances?
Perhaps the faithful know something
that nonbelievers don't.
And this could also help to explain the rituals
associated with the event that, for all of us,
really is the final frontier...
...death.
SHATNER: Indonesia.
High in the mountains of the island of Sulawesi,
the residents of a small Torajan village gather for a funeral.
But are funeral rites a sign
that mankind has difficulty in accepting the finality of death?
Or is it because our subconscious minds
know that death is not really an end, but a beginning?
THOMPSON: Every culture in the world
has some sort of death ritual, and studying those will tell you
a lot about what those people think
of the afterlife, about the soul, about society.
So, in the Toraja communities, when somebody dies,
they preserve the corpse so it doesn't rot, and then
they treat it as if it were alive.
Even the term they use for a recently deceased person
in this state is, actually, means sick,
so they don't acknowledge that the person has really died yet.
They will talk to them, they will fill them in,
in what's happening in the world...
WHITEHEAD: They do mock dancing sessions
with them, they parade them around.
It's as if they're trying to stay in touch with the dead
or, or somehow relate to the dead.
THOMPSON: What is the relationship
between your body and your soul and what happens at death?
These are the elemental questions
that studying different funerary traditions can tell us.
So, all these different traditions seem
very, very focused
on maintaining strong links with the dead.
Some cultures, like, for example, Indonesia,
you may do things with the body
that to us may seem very strange.
But it's no different than a funeral, where the person
has been dead for ten days, and the mortician
makes them look like they're alive and they're just sleeping.
There's this amazing connection that we have for the deceased.
I can never call up my best friend again who passed away,
but I'm still in connection with that person.
I still think about that person.
Sometimes I still talk to them.
And I think these rituals help us to understand
that we're still informed by these people.
We're still in relationship with those who have passed.
It's just a different kind of relationship.
So, do rituals really work?
Well, many of us certainly believe they do,
even if we don't know how.
Whether it's to acquire superhuman abilities
or to ward off evil, rituals help to connect us
to a world very different from our own.
It's a world of the spiritual.
It's a world of the supernatural.
It's a world of The UnXplained.
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