Meaning of thanatolatry | Babel Free

Definitions

The worship of death.

uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“They confuse Christianity with a thanatolatry and a dolorolatry, a worship of death and suffering.”

“What is going on here? Has not thanatolatry won the day—and the life? We must make an implied distinction between death as extermination, the stinging death of sin claiming worship dominative, demonic death, and death as, in McGill's words, “communicating expediture.””

“This is thanatolatry, martyropathology or nihilism: when an entire society orients itself in this direction, that society is becoming suicidal.”

“There is the negative thanatolatry of resisting death at all cost and so bowing before death's domination, before death as extermination.”

“Following Leo Alexander, Ernest Becker recognized the importance of the Nazi “philosophy of blood and soil which contained the belief that death nourishes life”. In effect, this ancient pagan belief converts death-anxiety into “thanatolatry”, a belief in “death potlatch” by means of which death is thought to mystically replenish life.”

CEFR level