You probably don’t much like thinking about death. It’s understandable: death is sad and scary, and few of us look forward to it coming for us or anybody we love. But believe it or not, reminders of death have not infrequently been baked in as a cultural practice — in a couple of cases I’m […]

We’ve touched on sacred objects before, as they’re often integrated with other aspects of religion, but we haven’t looked at them directly. We’re going to do that now not only because it’s a key element of practically every religion, but because these turn out to be the hook upon which cultures have hung some fascinating […]