Why You Can't Close The Gate In The Cemetery

2024 Author: Bailey Albertson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 12:53

Why you can't close the gate in the cemetery

Funeral culture is one of the most mysterious and unreported topics in society. Therefore, many signs and superstitions appeared around him. Some of them have a rational or historical basis, while others are only the fiction of a people who believe in primitive supernatural forces. To what category does the custom of leaving the gate in the cemetery open? Let's figure it out now.

Why is it customary to leave the cemetery gate open

Fences and gates in beliefs have a certain magical power - they hold various kinds of energy inside and do not allow it to go outside. Therefore, it is considered a bad omen to close the gate of the grave fence while inside. A person who has thus locked himself in a cemetery may allegedly be attacked by the negative energy of death, and therefore this omen predicts the imminent death of an unhappy person.

But if there is no one living inside the fence? Superstitious people advise to cover, but not to lock the gate. Some explain this by the fact that the dead man needs to communicate with other deceased, and the locked gate will prevent him from getting out. Others argue that the open gate invites everyone passing by to come in and remember the deceased - especially if you leave some tasty offerings at the grave.

In most other countries, graves are not separated by fences at all - it is simply not accepted there.

Church opinion

There are no such prohibitions in the Bible. The ROC recognizes this custom as superstition, and therefore calls for abandoning it and closing (or not closing) the gate in accordance with the arguments of reason.

In general, church representatives have repeatedly emphasized that such physical attributes as clothing, food and “home” (that is, the grave and a place in the cemetery) are important not for the deceased, but for the living. The main purpose of funeral rituals is not to imitate the afterlife in accordance with the primitive concept of it, but to stimulate living relatives, acquaintances and just passers-by to pray for the peace of the soul.

There are no particular rational reasons not to lock the gate in the cemetery. Therefore, you have the right to independently decide whether to open it or not - no evil spirits will punish you for this.