Thursday, October 16, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

The ancient text read to the dead in Tibetan culture aims to help people deal with their inevitable fate in the best possible way.

Published 19 March 2023
– By Editorial Staff
Left: Ancient mandala pattern from the Bardo Thodol collection. Tibetan monks at Drepung Temple in Lhasa on the right.
6 minute read

The original texts were probably written sometime in the 7th century, discovered in the 14th century, and translated into English in the 20th century by the American scholar and anthropologist Walter Evans-Wentz (1878-1965). The translation became the standard English version that most people today know as The Tibetan Book of the Dead and is the one that other authors tend to refer to.

Evans-Wentz’s popularization of the work, including by relating it to the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), has established the book as a kind of guide to understanding and altering consciousness. Many people find that the texts can help them free themselves from misconceptions that keep them bound to repeated cycles of self-destructive or self-limiting behavior. However, this was not the original purpose of Bardo Thodol.

Bardo Thodol roughly means “liberation by hearing in the intermediate state” and was written to be read to the spirit of the deceased in the intermediate state (“bardo”) at the stage when the soul leaves the body and faces the process of either being reborn in another form or being liberated from the cycle of rebirth and death (“samsara”). According to the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of life, the consciousness of the dead person is confronted, among other things, with the deeds done in life, which are personified in the form of either angry or peaceful spirits. These spirits are considered to be frightening to the soul, and so a lama (Tibetan Buddhist monk) reads the scripture aloud next to the body of the dead person, partly to help the soul understand what it is encountering, and partly because this understanding enables a more harmonious transition from the intermediate state to a new form of life.

At the same time, the mythical writings have had other applications in the encounter with other cultures and beliefs. The texts, however they are interpreted, are based on the existence of an afterlife, providing comfort to those facing death. The scriptures are even used today in some places as a healthcare tool for patients who do not have long to live, to help them face the fears of death.

History of the scriptures

According to legend, the Bardo Thodol arose in the 7th century when the Lotus Guru Padmasambhava was invited to Tibet by the Emperor Trisong Detsen (755 – 797) who requested his help in ridding the country of the dark spirits that were believed to be preventing the acceptance of Buddhist teachings. Padmasambhava thus transformed these spirits from selfish and fearful obstacles into guardians of the cosmic law, “dharma”.

Among the first to embrace the Buddhist philosophy of life was Yeshe Tsogyal in the mid-8th century, who was either the wife or consort of Trisong Detsen. She may have been an early follower of the goddess Tara, one of the principal figures in the esoteric Buddhism of Padmasambhava. Tsogyal, often called the mother of Tibetan Buddhism, dutifully studied with Padmasambhava and helped the guru write the texts, which they then hid in various places to be found later by those who would reveal them when needed.

In the 14th century, the texts were discovered by Karma Lingpa, who is traditionally considered a reincarnation of one of Padmasambhava’s disciples. Lingpa discovered several texts, not just the Bardo Thodol, as noted by scholar Bryan J. Cuevas, among others.

These texts were taught orally by masters to students in the 15th century and then passed between students in the same way. Cuevas notes how “the transmission of religious knowledge, whether in the form of texts or direct oral instruction, was actually a rather fluid process in Tibet” at this time, and earlier. The texts were only printed in the 18th century when they began to circulate more widely and made their way to Western societies around the world.

In 1919, British officer Major W. L. Campbell, stationed in Sikkim, India, travelled around Tibet and bought a number of these printed texts. Campbell had an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and on his return to Sikkim, he shared them with Dr Walter Evans-Wentz, an anthropologist in the region who was studying the religious and spiritual aspects of the culture in Tibet. Evans-Wentz had a very poor command of the language and therefore enlisted the help of Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup (1868 – 1922) who was the headmaster and teacher at a local school.

Dawa Samdup already had an impressive reputation as a translator, having worked with the famous travel writer and spiritualist Alexandra David-Neel to translate Tibetan into English. He agreed to help Evans-Wentz with the writings, and they met to translate and interpret the texts until Dawa Samdup’s death in 1922. At this point, only Bardo Thodol’s funeral text was mostly translated. Evans-Wentz filled in the missing parts with his own interpretation and published the writings in 1927 under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead to resonate with the title The Egyptian Book of the Dead, published in English in 1867 by the British Museum.

Life as a shaper of the death experience

At the center of Bardo Thodol is the Buddhist philosophy that all living things are interconnected as a constant cycle of change; that all things come and go according to their nature, and that human suffering arises from trying to maintain permanent states in a world where death is inevitable. Researcher Fung Kei Cheng elaborates:

“For Buddhists, life is considered not only a process but, more importantly, a “great process of becoming” with an unceasing cycle of living and dying, which suggests that individuals experience death countless times…. Depending on the individual response to reality, transcending suffering and alleviating death anxiety becomes possible when a person successfully searches for meaning in life and then prepares to die well by letting go of death.”

According to the Buddhist philosophy of life, it is a person’s response to reality in life that shapes their experience after death. In the afterlife, both the positive and negative energies in one’s life manifest as spirits that try to block or open one’s path in the intermediate state after the body dies. The Bardo Thodol is therefore read to the soul to help it understand what it is facing and what to expect next.

Once the ritual of the reading of the Bardo Thodol is complete, the family of the deceased is considered to have done their duty in respecting the dead and can then move on with their lives. Although it seems that some rituals only last for a week or sometimes a few days, the act itself is believed to have helped the deceased and prevent their spirit from returning to haunt the living with bad luck, illness or retribution.

Guidance in life and in death

The ritual of reading aloud to help the soul of the dead is the sole purpose of the original Tibetan text, but once translated by Dawa Samdup and published by Evans-Wentz, its texts were promoted as a source of guidance for the living as well. Evans-Wentz was inspired by the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky (1831 – 1891), which was based on the idea that the divine and immortal absolute resides within each soul, and drew much of its philosophy from Buddhism, particularly esoteric Buddhism. Tibet, as Blavatsky claimed, was “a seat of ancient wisdom”.

Evans-Wentz’s interpretation of the Bardo Thodol was therefore influenced by his theosophical beliefs – not just as a funeral rite but with content that could also help one live a better life on this plane of reality. In his introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Evans-Wentz writes:

“It is very sensible of Bardo Thodol to clarify the primacy of the dead soul, because that is the one thing that life does not clarify for us. We are so hemmed in by things that crowd and oppress that we never get a chance, in the midst of all these ‘given’ things, to wonder by whom they are ‘given’. It is from this world of ‘given’ things that the dead man liberates himself; and the purpose of instruction is to help him towards this liberation. We, if we put ourselves in his place, will get no less reward from it, because we learn from the very first paragraphs that the ‘giver’ of all ‘given’ things lives within us.”

Evans-Wentz’s approach has highlighted the perspective that The Tibetan Book of the Dead can thus be as valuable to the living as to the dead, something also emphasised by the Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche. It is clear that Bardo Thodol’s texts were written to provide comfort and guidance to the dead in the afterlife, encouraging them to “do something about” death by engaging with the dying process. Today, it may meet the psychological need mentioned by Jung for a belief in the survival of bodily death, helping people in the process to let go and move on – regardless of what personal beliefs or philosophies one relates to.

TNT is truly independent!

We don’t have a billionaire owner, and our unique reader-funded model keeps us free from political or corporate influence. This means we can fearlessly report the facts and shine a light on the misdeeds of those in power.

Consider a donation to keep our independent journalism running…

Unjabbed: For singles who didn’t take the COVID vaccine

The criticized covid vaccinations

Published 12 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
"Don't give up. Anything worth achieving needs work", is the message from Unjabbed's founder Antonetta.
4 minute read

After conventional dating apps didn’t meet her needs, Antonetta decided for various reasons to start a dating site for people who didn’t take the COVID vaccine. On Unjabbed.net, people can meet others seeking love or friendship.

In 2023, Antonetta chose to use a popular dating app in an attempt to find love. Since she wanted to find like-minded people, she was also open about not having taken the COVID vaccine. This resulted in Antonetta’s account being repeatedly deleted. She doesn’t know why her account was removed, but she suspected it was related to her honesty about the COVID vaccine. Instead, she tried another app and chose not to explicitly state that she hadn’t taken the COVID vaccine, but used various hints such as “believe in natural health”, “avoid synthetic chemicals”, and “seeking people who took the red pill”. There she got a bunch of matches, but no one understood her hints and most of those she talked to had taken the COVID vaccine.

In the wake of this, Unjabbed.net was born, a dating and friendship site for those who didn’t take the COVID vaccine. Since 2023, it has attracted thousands of members from several countries, but users are primarily from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. In Sweden, there are a few hundred members at the time of writing. Worth noting is that the site only exists as a website, not an app. The app that exists with the same name is from a different creator, according to Antonetta.

Several dating sites also participated in marketing COVID vaccine campaigns during 2021, according to Antonetta. For example, Tinder created labels where people could fill in whether they had taken the COVID vaccine or not. After the site launched, she received responses from members that they had also had bad experiences on conventional dating sites.

After starting unjabbed.net, several members told me they couldn’t find anyone on conventional dating apps and as soon as they said they were unvaccinated they were either insulted or had their accounts deleted or felt their accounts were being hidden in search results or restricted in some way“, Antonetta tells The Nordic Times.

Financially challenging

Starting a new dating site is not always an easy path. To be visible, you need marketing and advertising – something that costs a lot of money. The site was free until last year when they chose to introduce a membership fee to afford reaching out to other singles who didn’t take the COVID vaccine. However, Antonetta wanted the amount to be affordable compared to many other dating sites and apps, which can cost up to 60 dollars for three months, and also charge for sending messages.

Our website just charges $16 USD for a whole year and we don’t charge for individual messages”.

The advantage of charging is also that many people think twice before creating an account, and it also prevents spam, says Antonetta. However, it’s possible to create a free account as well, but you don’t have all the features on the site.

Several have found love

Despite unjabbed.net being relatively newly started, Antonetta says she has received messages from people who found each other on her site.

One couple donated 50 dollars to us and told us they had met on our website and are now married. A woman contacted us and said she’s getting married to the man she met on our website. So it works!

Tips for finding the right match

If you’re planning to create an account, Antonetta recommends both writing something about yourself and having photos. If you want to be more anonymous, you can, for example, upload a picture in sunglasses or similar. She also suggests writing something that can create a conversation.

People can write anything. What are their thoughts on the future of the world? What line of work are they in? What are their hobbies? Favorite places in the world to visit? Funny stories”, she suggests.

She also advises that it’s more advantageous to write to people in your own country than outside the border. It partly signals that you’ve given up hope in your country, but it’s also very difficult to make long-distance relationships work. Furthermore, she also suggests spreading information about the site in your own city; there may be singles who didn’t take the COVID vaccine but missed that there’s a dating site for this purpose.

There is hope

Finding like-minded people can be difficult, and even though more and more people show understanding for those who chose not to take the COVID vaccine, there are still many who believe it was wrong not to take it. At the same time, Antonetta encourages unvaccinated singles to dare to go out and talk to people they meet in stores, in town, or on the bus. You never know who you might meet there. Finally, she also wants to say that you shouldn’t give up hope on love.

Don’t give up. Anything worth achieving needs work“.

Number of members at the time of writing on Unjabbed.net by country

  • USA: 1349
  • United Kingdom: 872
  • Canada: 984
  • Australia: 249
  • New Zealand: 68
  • France: 501
  • Germany: 705
  • Italy: 234
  • Belgium: 142
  • Switzerland: 70
  • Spain: 76
  • Portugal: 42
  • Denmark: 129
  • Norway: 204
  • Sweden: 479
  • Netherlands: 1019
  • Japan: 25
  • Ireland: 63

Moomin becomes new feature film

Published 10 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Moomin and his friends have spread warmth, security and adventure to generations of children and adults around the world.
1 minute read

Moomin is set to be produced as a new American animated feature film. This will be the first Hollywood adaptation of Finnish-Swedish author Tove Jansson’s beloved stories.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the magical Moomin troll, something that has been celebrated in both Finland and Sweden, where the troll is a cherished cultural figure.

Moomin, created by Finnish-Swedish author Tove Jansson, was previously produced as an animated feature film in Japan in 1992. There was also a Japanese-Finnish animated series that first aired in 1990 and became very popular internationally.

Now Hollywood will interpret the idyllic magic of Moominvalley, where Moomin and his friends embark on adventures, writes Moomin Characters, which manages the Moomin rights.

“We are honored”

The film will be produced by media company Annapurna’s animation division, which was founded in 2022 by former Disney animation executives Robert Baird and Andrew Millstein and is known for the Oscar-nominated film Nimona.

We’re honored to bring Tove Jansson’s timeless vision to the big screen, say Baird and Millstein.

It will be written and directed by Rebecca Sugar, known for the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe. Additionally, it will be produced by Julia Pistor, who is behind animated films such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Rugrats.

Earlier this year, Norwegian game developer Hyper Games also announced that they will release a new Moomin game. The game will be called Winter’s Warmth and is based on the book Moominland Midwinter.

YouTubers invest in their own businesses – ad revenues are unpredictable

Updated today 12:24 Published 6 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, has the world's largest YouTube channel with 442 million subscribers.
2 minute read

More and more YouTube personalities are reducing their dependence on ad revenue and brand partnerships and instead building their own business empires. The reason is that advertising income is unpredictable and can disappear overnight when the platform changes its policies.

YouTube has evolved into a gigantic platform that has contributed over $55 billion to the US GDP and created more than 490,000 full-time jobs. But despite the platform’s success, many of the most successful content creators have realized that it’s risky to rely solely on ad revenue, writes TechCrunch.

Many of the biggest channels have now transformed into vertically integrated media companies with product lines, physical stores and consumer brands that can survive algorithm changes. In several cases, these side businesses are growing faster than the YouTube channels themselves.

MrBeast leads the development

Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast with 442 million subscribers, is the platform’s most aggressive entrepreneur. His chocolate brand Feastables generated around $250 million in revenue in 2024 with over $20 million in profit – significantly more profitable than his YouTube content which lost approximately $80 million the same year. The first product sold over one million units and generated more than $10 million within 72 hours.

Donaldson also runs the food brand Lunchly, the toy series MrBeast Lab, the burger concept MrBeast Burger and the analytics platform Viewstats. Now he plans to establish his own mobile network.

Coffee and energy drinks as goldmine

Emma Chamberlain, with over 12 million subscribers, launched her coffee brand Chamberlain Coffee in 2019. In 2023, the brand reached approximately $20 million in revenue and in January opened its first physical store. Revenue is expected to grow by over 50 percent in 2025 and reach more than $33 million.

Logan Paul created the energy drink Prime together with KSI, which surpassed $1.2 billion in sales in 2023. However, sales have declined sharply, particularly in the United Kingdom where revenue fell by approximately 70 percent between 2023 and 2024.

Children’s audience and beauty products

Ryan’s World, hosted by 13-year-old Ryan Kaji, has expanded its brand through toys and clothing that reportedly generated over $250 million in revenue in 2020.

Within the beauty industry, Michelle Phan has founded the subscription service Ipsy and the makeup brand EM Cosmetics, while Huda Kattan built Huda Beauty which generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Other well-known makeup brands from YouTube influencers include Jeffree Star Cosmetics and Tati Beauty, showing that the beauty industry continues to be an attractive area for content creators who want to build their own business empires.

Six kilos of medieval silver treasure found in Stockholm

Published 19 September 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The silver coins have been dated to the 12th century and were likely minted when Knut Eriksson was king of Sweden.
2 minute read

A private individual has discovered a significant silver treasure from medieval times. The treasure, which could likely be one of the largest ever found, contains among other things up to 20,000 coins from the 12th century.

The silver treasure was discovered by a person digging for worms just outside Stockholm, Sweden, who contacted the County Administrative Board (Länsstyrelsen). It was found in a copper cauldron and contained approximately six kilos of silver coins, pendants, pearls and silver rings.

This is probably one of the largest silver treasures from the early medieval period that has been found in Sweden. We don’t yet know exactly how many coins there are, but I believe it could be up to 20,000. Most of the objects are well preserved, but unfortunately the copper cauldron they were stored in is not as well preserved, says Sofia Andersson, who is an antiquarian at the Stockholm County Administrative Board, in a press release.

The silver coins have been dated to the 12th century and some of the coins bear the text “KANUTUS”, which means Knut in Latin – indicating they are from the time of Knut Eriksson’s reign as king of Sweden.

Three types of coins found in the treasure: KANUTUS coins, Gotland coins and bishop coins. Photo: Stockholm County Administrative Board

The treasure also contains some rare bishop coins, which were coins manufactured in Europe by bishops. These coins feature a bishop holding a crosier in his right hand. Lin Annerbäck, head of the Medieval Museum in Stockholm, describes the treasure as unique and believes it can tell us much about Sweden’s history.

It is completely unique, we have no other medieval treasures from Stockholm. And then it also appears to be extremely large. So it’s very exciting. she tells the Swedish newspaper DN.

The location where the treasure was found is currently being kept secret due to the risk of illegal treasure hunters. Archaeologists will further examine the site and the treasure as well as evaluate it.

Our independent journalism needs your support!
We appreciate all of your donations to keep us alive and running.

Our independent journalism needs your support!
Consider a donation.

You can donate any amount of your choosing, one-time payment or even monthly.
We appreciate all of your donations to keep us alive and running.

Dont miss another article!

Sign up for our newsletter today!

Take part of uncensored news – free from industry interests and political correctness from the Polaris of Enlightenment – every week.