Funeral of Emperor Sk'ên' of Themiclesia

The funeral of Emperor Sk′ên′ of Themiclesia (Shinasthana: 顯皇帝喪; sk′ên′-gwang-têgh-smang) was conducted under ritualistic requirements of the State Cult and encompassed a four-year period following his death on Dec. 3, 2016 and ending at the dêm ceremony conducted on March 18, 2021.

Death

Emperor Sk′ên′ was born in 1916, celebrating his centenery in May 2016, and had spent a record 94 regnal years on the throne. A committee anticipating his death had been set up as early as 1980, while his future tumulus was already completed in the 1930s, so there was comparatively little chaos when he eventually died of pulmonary failure in late 2016. According to statements by close attendants, the Emperor had finished his meal and stayed in his private drawing room when he collapsed. Though medical attention was immediately summoned, he could not be resuscitated successfully and was declared dead at 8:30 PM.

While resuscitation was being attempted, his heir, Prince La, was immediately notified and retrieved from a social occasion at the Sapphire Dining Club. The committee anticipating for the Emperor's death had directed that a secret codeword be used to communicate the Emperor's passing to close members of the Royal Family without inviting public suspicion. The Prince, his brothers, and several other members of the Royal Family arrived at the ward after the Emperor was declared dead. In short order, senior members of the Government and the speakers of the Houses of Parliament appeared. A group of six physicians officially informed these individuals of the monarch's passing. The late Emperor's funeral committee was called into session to oversee the smooth conduct of the initial rites.

Funeral

Funerary rites, as prescribed by the State Cult, was particularly complex and protracted. While many of these ceremonies would have been common to funerals of all high-ranking individuals in Antiquity, they have for the most part been extensively rationalized or simplified, remaining most intact in royal funerals where the requirements of mystique and solemnity overrode considerations of economy and modernization.

Early ceremonies

The first funerary rites began immediately after the funerary committee was called into session. The Prime Minister nominally chaired the committee, but this duty devolved upon the First Deputy Cabinet Secretary while he was expected to attend to affairs of state. The late Emperor's body was removed from the medical ward into the Front Hall and laid upon the throne displayed there. The Front Hall was, during the season, open to tourists, but the Palace Department cancelled all tours forthwith.

In the early morning of Dec. 4, a larger group of royals, government ministers, and representatives from government departments met in the court of the Front Hall for the pjuk ceremony. The late Emperor's coat was removed from his body by the Crown Prince, with his brother assisting. Several silver bells were attached to the coat by thread. It was handed to the High Priest (大祝), who mounted it on a cinnebar pole and carried it out of the hall and into the courtyard, moving the pole so as to wave the coat, and its bells, in the air. The High Priest shouted 12 times, "O Snur, return!" After this, the coat was retrieved and placed upon his body. Cinnebar, lapis lazuli, and wormwood bark was laid out before his body. Snur was the Emperor's personal name, and while it would have been culturally offensive to his spirit to utter it, this very spiritual connection permitted its use to summon his spirit in a ritualistic effort to resurrect him.  From Dec. 4 to 9, this ceremony was repeated twice a day, though usually only to members of the Royal Family.

A bonfire was ignited in the courtyard, and a constant supply of meats was fed into the flames over the next six days. These meats came from the Emperor's private flocks.

On Dec. 9, the ceremony of the Sixth Night occurred. After dusk, the High Priest led twelve men, masked and holding axes and shields, to commence the Dance of Mjanh. A chorus of 40 accompanied the dancers and sang the Song of Mjanh. At the same time, the Bell of the Elephant and Chime of the Rhinoceros were continually sounded. The High Priest then ground ambergris, musk, and frankincense, sprinkling half of the portion over the late Emperor's body and tossing the other half into a bonfire lit in the courtyard. As the dance, song, and music progressed, the High Priest cast several spells over the body, to ward off corporeal decay. The precise verbal formulation of the spells are not publicly known, considered a secret to every family that practices more elaborate funerary rites. The casting of the spells occurred over several hours, while the High Priest regularly emerged from the hall to suspend the late Emperor's coat over the bonfire, catching the censed smoke.

The Ten Schools of Buddhism followed the High Priest and sat in a circle around the throne, each reading incantations in Old Maverican to ward off corporeal decay. The Metropolitan Bishop of Themiclesia next followed and used holy water to draw a circle around the throne. He and several other assistant bishops then read prayers for exorcism, charging whatever spirit or demon to have occupied the late Emperor's body to depart, such that his spirit may return before the body begins to decay visibly. They then knelt and said a brief prayer for the Emperor's body. The High Priest then read spells onto three pottery jars held over the late Emperor's head, chest, and abdomen. The jars were then smashed before the courtyard.

The ceremony of the Sixth Night lasted until the early morning of Dec. 10, the seventh day following the Emperor's biological death. At daybreak, the axes, shields, and masks worn by the dancers were tossed into the bonfire, while each attending guest lit a torch and threw it into the bonfire as well. The High Priest hoists the late Emperor's coat for the final time over the bonfire and returns the coat over the body. He and Assistant Priests knelt over the body and begins wailing in a rhythmic pattern. The Crown Prince followed him and was joined by his siblings, his uncles and aunts, great uncles and aunts, and other members of the Royal Family. The dancers, singers, and musicians genuflected to the body in turn. After three turns of wailing, the High Priest emerges at the hall and declares, "The Emperor is lost" (皇帝亡). The assembly of government ministers, members of parliament, judges, distant royal relatives and other dignitaries bowed to the hall as they heard this message.

Crown Prince La was greeted by the Prime Minister, the Lord Speaker, and the Speaker of the House of Commons at the foot of the throne. He was instructed to sit upon the throne that still contained his great-grandfather's body and to place his hand upon it. The assembly of courtiers each took their turn to bow or genuflect to the new occupant of the throne. The throne was then moved from the western end of the hall to its centre, "the place between two eaves". The High Priest, the Lord Speaker, and the Speaker of the House of Commons proceeded to the Tor Gate and repeated the same proclamation, "The Emperor has been lost; Crown Prince La has succeeded in position" (皇帝既亡帝子涂即立).

The body was then transferred into five successively larger coffins and enclosed in a shrine, prepared in the 1980s. The inner coffin was embedded with cinnabar to postpone the deterioration of the body, while more lumps of cinnabar were covered in fabrics and placed over his orifices. The Emperor's coffins were laquered wood and decorated in relief, while the outer shrine was covered in gold foil and studded with lapis lazuli, so chiseled to give the appearance of a stone sarcophagus.

Later ceremonies

After the shrine had been set up "between the two eaves" on Dec. 10, the royal court entered a period of mourning. This signals the commencement of the first prjin ceremony (先賓). Male members of the court were to wear plain black frock coats and black ties, while women were to wear black dresses during daytime; entertainment was suspended or curtailed to acknowledge the sovereign's loss. On the night of Dec. 10, the first funerary feast was held in honour of the sovereign in the courtyard, with members of the royal family and senior officials attending.  

The High Priest opened each feast by ritualistic wailing, joined by other participants. The wailers commence by ringing bells and chimes around the shrine and sprinkling herbs around the body, while incantations were delivered by the High Priest and his assistants. These incantations were part of the skrungh (降) ceremony that invited the spirit of the deceased, so that a feast may be held in his honour and presence. One of the Emperor's descendants sat at the head of the table as l′ji (屍), or a corporeal apparition. Prior to commencing the role as apparition, each descendant consumed a wine to facilitation transition into the Emperor's apparition. The apparition then consumed food at the table but could not be touched or spoken to. While there was no spiritual rule that other participants could not speak amongst themselves, the feast was consumed in silence to distinguish it from feasts enjoyed at other times. On days without feasts, food was laid before the Emperor's shrines.

On Dec. 11, Cabinet ministers and other senior officials delivered their funerary gifts to the Royal Family before the Front Hall. Most of the gifts are small, meaningful objects limited in monetary value. The Prime Minister presented an inkwell, the first object he received when he entered public service. The presentation of funerary gifts was opened to progressively broader groups as the early mourning period progressed, and about 8,000 private citizens eventually made contributions to the Emperor's funeral, gifts piled around the shroud. The Royal Family did not accept funerary gifts of gold, silver, or gemstones, or other objects worth more than $100 on the market. On the night of Dec. 11, the second funerary feast was held in honour of the sovereign, and eight more feasts were held at every night in like fashion.

After the tenth night, the funeral was opened to the public. Accordingly, the shrine was moved from "between the two eaves" to the Tor Gate, the southern gatehouse of the Front Hall where the body had been laid. The funerary feasts receded in frequency to once every ten days. These are collectively referred to as the second prjin ceremony (亞賓), which lasted from Dec. 10 to Jun. 28, 2017. During the second prjin ceremony, several heads of state, heads of government, ministers, and their representatives visited the late Emperor's shrine to convey their condolences to the Royal Family. During the funerary feasts held in the second prjin, there was no longer any l′ji because it was held that only family members were capable of seeing the deceased Emperor's apparition.

On Jun. 28, 2017, the Emperor's shrine was moved from the Tor Gate to a temporary building erected near his final resting place. The building, in the traditional style, was erected only after the Emperor had physically passed away. This removal starts the third prjin ceremony (三賓), which lasted from Jun. 29, 2017 to Dec. 12, 2020. During this lengthy period, the High Priest or his representative made tenth-daily visits, counting from the seventh day of his death, to the shrine, delivering incantations, food offerings, and libations to the shrine. The food offerings prepared was no longer human cuisine, but boiled joints of meat, broth, and animal blood, and the vessels on which they are presented no longer plates and bowls, but bronze cauldrons. Like during the second prjin, there is no l′ji to consume the offerings, and after being left overnight they are burned.

The third prjin ceremony continued until Dec. 12, 2020, when it was determined that the late Emperor's flesh had decomposed completely. Formerly, the royal shrine would have been opened from time to time to ascertain the state of decomposition, but modern scanning technology has replaced this rather unpleasant task. On Dec. 12, 2020, the current emperor led the Royal Family to visit the shrine, which was opened before the family. The High Priest retrieved the late Emperor's skeleton, removing any soft tissue still remaining, and coated each bone with more cinnabar dust and carved a number of patterns upon it. This process was strictly closed to cameras, and participants have not revealed many of its details.

After this, each bone was placed in a flexed position in a new set of coffins. According to anonymous statements from the Royal household staff, the innermost coffin was filled with the Emperor's personal effects, while the space between the second, third, fourth, and fifth coffins were filled with cinders and cinnabar. All five coffins were reliefed, laquered in red, and painted by the royal crafting house. Over the five coffins went four new shrines, each shrine being constructed out of wood and decorated with relief and gold leaf. Each shrine was wrapped with a brocade shroud before being enclosed into the next larger one. Finally, the shrines were placed on a hearse and allowed to rolled into the burial chamber via a ramp. The burial chamber possessed four ramps, the highest dignity under a traditional configuration.

The burial chamber itself was defined by stacked square timbers, again treated with cinnabar. The funerary gifts the Emperor received were loaded into the space between the burial chamber and shrine. The burial chamber could not accommodate every object, so additional pits had been excavated around the chamber for them. It is not clearly disclosed how large the burial chamber was, but it appears large enough that several wooden supports were required to prevent its roof from collapsing. On Dec. 15, the roof of the burial chamber was closed, and soil refilled to ground level. In the infill soil, priests buried porcelain figurines representing herd animals. The original coffins and shrines were burned.

On Dec. 17, the steng ceremony was held above the late Emperor's burial chamber. A number of food offerings, libations, and incantations were provided before Prince Pja, the current monarch's uncle standing as the late Emperor's apparition. Pja sat above the burial chamber while the High Priest conducted the first oracle for the late Emperor, determining he had been appeased; Pja was then transported by motor vehicle to a commemorative mausoleum erected for the late Emperor, where he sat down upon an altar. Sheep and ox blood were poured down from the ridge of the mausoleum until it dripped onto the ground. The final roof tile was installed as the ceremony proceeded. A group of customary oracles were further conducted before Prince Pja, who could not speak or be touched.  These oracles asked if the late Emperor had been received by his royal predecessors.

End of funeral

On Dec. 17, 2021, the stone pillar representing Emperor Sk′ên′ was erected in his mausoleum and consecrated by priests, with ox blood brushed onto its surface and sacrifices being laid before the pillar. Dancing and music occurred in the courtyard of the mausoleum. This ceremony was called the sg′jang (祥), or the ceremony of grace. It represents the first time that Emperor Sk′ên′ has been treated in supplication as an spirit, to whom sacrifices are due, as opposed to a human being, who received food offerings. The divination tablets made earlier in the month are formally presented at the mausoleum. The High Priest declared that Emperor Sk′ên′ has been received by his ancestors and, being satiated, granted his blessing to the land (皇帝降祥). This ceremony confirmed that the former emperor's spirit was kind and tended towards assisting the current monarch.

On Jan. 5, the dêm (覃) ceremony took place, spelling the formal end of funerary proceedings.  The current monarch and members of the Royal Family who have participated in the funeral each throw away a piece of clothing that they had worn during the funerary rites and burn them at a bonfire ignited at the Front Hall. Libations that had been poured during the sg′jang ceremony are poured into the bonfire, and priests holding torches lit by the fire ritualistically cleanse the Front Hall of any remaining miasma.

List of guests

• Abricomônt
• Agaulon
• Camia
• Cenochthon
• Eukras
• Hallia
• Verpletterant

See also

• Themiclesia