The church is opposed to cremation Cemeteries belong to the Christian, Jewish, or Abrahamic faith…
“Why is the church so opposed to cremation? Our ancestors didn’t have any burial grounds, the bodies used to get burned, whereas now there are huge areas covered with cemeteries which is not pleasing at all. Also is it true that a part of a person’s soul is tied to the burial site until the remains are decomposed?”
Yes, it’s true. Everything depends on the ritual. Cemeteries, in particular, belong to the Christian, Jewish, or Abrahamic faith. This is the space specifically allocated for preservation. The preservation of what? Each faith has its own task, but basically, this preservation is related to the prophecies of the Last Judgment and the resurrection after this judgment. It is believed that people should incarnate from their own bones, in the body they were buried with. I can imagine this horde of zombies, well, the thought alone is frightening. But, nevertheless, they don’t believe in reincarnation but instead believe that this very flesh buried by such rite must be resurrected. For the same reason a lot of rich people spend huge amounts of money on buying their own cemetery sites closer to the temple because according to the legend, the Jews will be the first ones to get resurrected.
In our practice, the practice of cremation, it was believed that the process of purification from one’s flesh occurs through fire and that the spirit transitions directly into the consciousness of a God where it reincarnates from once again, much faster and without all this carnal burden. We have a different informational paradigm and it works if you are a pagan, it works if your ashes, through the fire, return into this world without undergoing the rituals of attachment to the flesh, attachment to the earth. But I should mention that not all pagan traditions work through cremation. There were many traditions that buried their ancestors in the ground. For example, the Etruscans. Their burial ritual was meant specifically for the ground, in a specific embryo position. Later they switched to using the sarcophagus.
In paganism it was believed that the flesh buried into the ground does not retain any memory and all of someone’s memory goes straight into the earth, meaning that it becomes a sort of common heritage, and Gaia-Earth will manage it in her own way. But such burial was believed to be more used among the commoners as if implying that there is no need for the commoners to preserve their ancestral memory, that there is no memory there and there’s nothing to remember. That is why, in Ancient Rome, for instance, the simple folk were buried in the ground, while the patricians underwent the burning by the fire. Those were the rules.
Other nations also have their own burial rules and it all depends on the cult, the cult that contains the understanding of how a person should leave, how he will be weighed, and what he will return here with.
Additional Information:
Literary Sources:
Burial In Paganism
How The Manner Of Burial Affects Subsequent Reincarnation
Videos:
How To Properly Prepare Yourself To Leave This World
What Is The Right Way To Go Through Death? Helping Yourself And Your Departing Relatives
Educational Materials: