Mourners and Pyres

It is customary in the Horizon to hire mourners for the funerals of loved ones. Preferably, one should endeavor to hire courtesan- trained mourners, with their beautiful white silk dresses, carrying palm leaves and flowers of the light. Mourners are a high status profession and they are believed by many to have a mystical contact with the Icons thanks to the nature of their craft. Iconoscopes written by a mourner always seem to come true. Funeral pyres or cremation is the main form of funeral rite in the Third Horizon. According to Foundation historians, this is probably related to the practical benefits of these methods to life on spaceships or space stations, but the Firstcome scoff at such heathen theories – fire is the only thing that can release the spirit from the body, hence the tradition. Only the most holy of bones are spared from the flames, as this will keep their saintly spirits in the Horizon where they can continue their righteous work. Myths about sarcofagoi who feasts on corpses – or even worse, about bokor or necrographers who reanimate the deceased as their slaves – is likely a part of the explanation as well. Only a few asteroid communities or very remote space stations keep from burning their dead, instead letting the station’s recycling systems take care of the corpses, but this is a custom of bad, almost unholy, repute.