#<- tagging my oc x Belos au here cuz all my hcs are canon there

[herobrinna]

so i had some thoughts on witch culture, regarding what they do with their dead, or at least what they used to do pre-Belos:

so first off, witches/demons believe in their body connecting with the Titan after death, but, just as different part of the Titan provide witches with different things, so should the body of a witch/demon connect with different things.

first are the brain and the heart, which are both believed to be connected to the witch's soul, each keeping different parts of it that make the person whole (eg, the heart might hold all uncontrollable things about the person: their fears, their love, their compassion), and to join the Titan in soul a witch must loose all earthly (fleshly(?)) attachments, thus the brain and heart are usually extracted. whats done with them depends on the culture, but the most common course of action is cremation. another one of note is a form of cannibalism; where a tiny piece is cut from both organs and given to all family and friends of the person (pieces being so small you could swallow them without chewing, as its more about connecting with the person, and letting them move on, more than anything, with consuming each part meaning connecting with a different aspect of the person: eating the brain piece shows your love for how they thought, eating the heart for how they felt (like were emotionally), not eating a piece would be interpreted as the person disliking an aspect of the deceased person (eg, ok i know bigotry doesnt exist on the BI but lets pretend for the same of thing cause i cant think of anything else: so imagine a terf mother, her child recently gone, and at the funeral she doesnt eat their brain piece cuz she saw the child's transition as nothing more but a silly "opinion" that infiltrated their soul))

now, the flesh of the Titan itself is the life of the world, its what gives crops nutrients, its what then gives everything else whats needed to live, and as such the flesh of the person is important in continuing the cycles of life. as such the body's flesh and bone are separated (after the brain and heart are extracted of course).

whats done with the flesh then depends on the family, a farming family with turn it to compost, thanking their family member for providing them with a good harvest (and the Titan Themselves of course). whilst anyone living in a town/city would give the flesh to what im temporarily calling a necromancer even tho they aint one but im not creative with names. what these "necromancers" were, were people who used a mixture of plant and abomination magic, (although such distinctions didnt exist pre-Belos, but yknow) with them usually also being the ones to do all the funeral rituals, they would then use the flesh of the person to help any areas of the Titan that were struggling, like if a flashfire damaged a forest recently they would use it to introduce more nutrients to the ear- erm, flesh. otherwise, they would generally spread it around the chunks of wilderness they were protecting, helping keep up the health of the area.

as for the bones, the Titan's own's bones are believes to be the foundation of life, a literal backbone lol. and with that vague belief came a lot of interpretations, and a lot of differences in what was done with the bones, not just from culture to culture, but sometimes there were slight difference per family. some example: some witches had a sort of catacombs, where a limited amount of bones would be left before the place would be sealed off to be reclaimed by the Titan over millennia. others used bones in rituals, carving them glyphs (<- during very ancient times, before they fell out of fashion and Belos later erased all public knowledge on them (unrelated but i hc that Evelyn taught Caleb glyphs, as they were considered like a "nerdy" thing to study in that time, for being an outdated form of magic) or enchantments that would then help ward the household from dangers.

anyways yh, thats some rough ideas.

and oh, after Belos started gaining more popularity, cremating the whole body became the most common way to deal with a dead body. although even by the time canon takes place, some secluded towns might still hold a form of the old tradition.