Visual Arts

Death has always been a patron of the arts. How else would humankind know about the superb arts of King Tutankhamen's ancient Egyptian era if it were not for the exquisite glittering painted and sculpted masterpieces found in his tomb?

Voodoo

Voodoo is an animist religion that consecrates a cult to Loas (gods) and to the ancestors—the cult of ancestors constitutes a system of religious beliefs and rites which are used principally to reinforce the social system as well as the dependence of the family—and at the same time, voodoo spirits, guardians, deities, or forces of nature. Voodoo originated in Africa, specifically with the Fon, Yoruba, and Ewe tribes.

Waco

Public interest in the Branch Davidian movement reached unprecedented heights during the prolonged and ultimately violent standoff between federal authorities and the cult's members in the late winter and early spring of 1993. The Branch Davidian movement dates back to 1929, when Victor Houteff and his followers split off from the Seventh-Day Adventists.

Wake

The need to mark someone's death as an event affecting a whole group of people who knew, or knew of, him or her is as fundamental to human life as the necessity to provide opportunities for private grief. This kind of social gathering is usually referred to as a wake.

War

Most murders within the human species have been committed by soldiers in war. Though it remains a matter of debate whether the potential for warfare is lodged in genes, culture, or both, humans are the only creature that intentionally kills its own kind for reasons of religious, economic, or political ideology.

Washington, George

George Washington died in his bed at Mount Vernon, Virginia, on December 14, 1799. As a Revolutionary War hero and the new nation's first president, Washington's life and death led to his glorification as a key iconic, mythological figure in United States history.

Weber, Max

Max Weber (1864–1920) is one of the most influential and prolific writers of sociological theory. In conceptualizing modernity, Weber focused on the rationalization of the world where a society becomes dominated by cultural norms of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control resulting in dehumanizing rationalization where the average man is less important than the clock and the calculator.

Widow-Burning

The burning of wives on the funeral pyres of their husbands, widow-burning, commonly known as sati ("suttee" in English), has been practiced in India since at least the fourth century B.C.E., when it was first recorded in Greek accounts. It was banned by British colonial law in 1829–1830 and survived in the native Indian states until the late 1880s, when it was effectively eradicated, although extremely rare cases persisted into the early twentieth century.

Widowers

Although the death of a spouse is more common for women than for men, a man's chance of becoming a widower increases as he ages. According to the U.S.

Widows

The features shared by all widows are that they are women who have been married and whose husbands have died. Beyond that, there is such a great heterogeneity among widows that there is no way of predicting the lifestyle, support systems, and identity of any one woman.

Widows in Third World Nations

In many traditional communities of developing countries (especially on the Indian subcontinent and in Africa), widowhood represents a "social death" for women. It is not merely that they have lost their husbands, the main breadwinner and supporter of their children, but widowhood robs them of their status and consigns them to the very margins of society where they suffer the most extreme forms of discrimination and stigma.

Wills and Inheritance

Wills are an important means of assuring that a deceased person's property, or estate, will pass to his or her intended recipients. In addition to distributing property, a will is also useful for leaving a public record of ownership of real estate, for appointing guardians of the deceased's minor children, and for designating a personal representative, or executor, to administer the management of the estate until the deceased's debts, taxes, and administrative expenses have been paid and the remaining property has been distributed to the appropriate parties.

Zombies

The phenomenon of zombies, the living dead, is one of the most popular aspects of Haitian voodoo that has created a morbid interest and has inspired myriads of movies. Voodoo is more than the sorcery or magic that is portrayed in movies or literature; voodoo is a religion, cult, healing process, and body of magical practice.

Zoroastrianism

The phenomenon of death, or nonlife as it is called in the Zoroastrian holy scripture the Gathas, is a concept accompanying the advent of creation. At the dawn of creation, twin primal spirits manifested themselves.