X-Message-Number: 1713.1
For Personal Use Only

Looking Good - Forever
Copyright 1993, Hippocrates
pp. 33 - 34, Jan. 1993


ROOSTER, POOR SOUL, has been since last spring, but you'd never
know it from the chipper look on her face.  Near the edge of Salt
Lake City's industrial district, a team of workers is hoisting the
135-pound dog - a much-loved pet before she died - out of a
stainless steel vat where she's been soaking, for nine months, in a
patented marinade of preservative chemicals.

It is a bizarre scene.  Lashed to an up-right wooden frame, Rooster
drips dry while the gaggle of workers, their rubber gloves
twitching like spiders' spinnerets, gradually enshroud her in a
cocoon of ivory gauze.  Oddly, the mastiff's head tilts a bit to
the side in what appears to be a cocky attitude of pride.

But why not feel proud.  It's not every dog that gets to be
mummified after it dies.  Not yet, anyway.

New Age entrepreneur Corky Ra hopes to change all that.  If Ra has
his way, mummification will soon be commonplace - not only for
loyal pets but for their owners and other humans as well.  In fact,
all of the people helping with today's mummification have signed up
with Ra to be made into mummies after they die, as have about one
hundred others (none of them dead yet) in the United States and
other countries around the world.

Ra knows it won't be easy to gain a major foothold in the funeral
industry.  For one thing, mummification is expensive - costing up
to $40,000 per person, not counting the added expense of a
personalized mausoleum and Plexiglas display case.  And in this
recycling-conscious age, many may bristle at the idea of hanging
around in the environment indefinitely like some glorified lump of
Styrofoam.  "To be diplomatic, I'd have to say this is not an
especially popular option," says Howard Raether, former executive
director of the National Funeral Directors Association.  "What I've
seen so far is that it is on the extreme end as far as
ostentatiousness and cost are concerned."

But Ra reckons the nineties may be ripe for his particular brand of
corporeal conservation, offering body-conscious boomers a shot at
eternal hunkiness.

Unlike the mummification techniques used by ancient Egyptians,
which left the dead shriveled, discolored, and ugly, Ra's method is
designed to keep you looking healthy and robust for millenia.  The
appeal is obvious to anyone who has labored to stay in shape.  Why
spend thousands of dollars in health club fees while you're alive,
then let everything go to pot just because you've died?

Self-preservation is clearly a priority for the 48-year-old Ra, who
hikes, bikes, swims, skis, and teaches aerobics.  The other future
mummies at Rooster's wrapping, many clad in short shorts and tank
tops are also unusually fit.  "I work out and eat right and take
care of myself, and to just discard the body seems silly," says
Janet Greco, chief flight nurse for the University of Utah
Hospital, who has taken out a life insurance policy to cover the
cost of her mummification.

But mummification is about more than the body, Ra maintains.  In
his view - an eclectic mix of ancient Egyptian philosophy and New
Age thinking, heavily influenced by the extraterrestrials Ra says
have spoken to him in visions - a mummified body can serve as a
familiar Earthly reference point for the disembodied spirit after
death.  It can prevent postmortem panic, Ra says, and so enhance
the odds of an auspicious reincarnation.

To revive the dead art, Ra (nee Claude Nowell) founded a
nondenominational society called Summum (the "supreme" society) in
1975.  He adopted the name of the Egyptian sun god and collaborated
with chemists to create the next best thing to a fountain of youth:
An organic elixir that stops biological deterioration dead - but
beautifully - in its tracks.

It is this fluid that now puddles around Rooster's paws.  And for a
dog dearly departed for the better part of a year, Rooster does
look remarkably good.  Her golden fur gleams as though freshly
shampooed and conditioned.  To a rubber-gloved hand her leg muscles
feel plump and juicy, like a fresh breast of chicken.

The secret is in the sauce, Ra explains.  His preservative solution
contains none of the mineral desiccants or tars that wreaked havoc
on Egyptian complexions.  It contains only a splash of
formaldehyde, the main ingredient in conventional embalming fluid,
which gradually sucks all the water from a corpse, shrinking and
hardening tissues.  Instead, Ra uses phenol (a preservative acid),
DMSO (a solvent and penetrating agent), and various salts - in
combination with a melange of secret ingredients.  These chemicals,
along with the airtight mummy casing, Ra says, keep the body soft
and supple.

Nobody knows for sure how long Ra's mummies will last.  But Ron
Temu, a licensed embalmer and a future mummy himself, is convinced
they'll be good for thousands of years.  He points to recent x rays
of Ra's cat, Oscar, who was mummified nine years ago after a
natural death, showing an animal in a virtual state of suspended
animation, with his cartilage and even the lenses of his eyes still
intact.  "The only way to stick around even half as long is to get
frozen," Temu says.  "Of course, the problem with cryopreservation
is you have to worry about thawing out."

Happily, a Summum mummy nuns no risk of waking up as a giant
Slurpee.  Each is professionally pickled for several months,
swaddled in gauze, sealed in latex rubber, wrapped in layers of
fiberglass, and covered with a tough, epoxy-like resin.

For economy mummies ($7,000 to $10,000 for humans, $1,000 to $4,000
for pets) all this can be topped off with a simple gold-leaf
veneer.  But for most people on the mummy track, the real fun
starts when you spend the extra $25,000 or so for your
custom-crafted "mummiform" - a quarter-inch-thick cast bronze shell
molded in your likeness, welded shut around you, and elaborately
decorated to your specifications.  Here is your chance to express
yourself long after you die.

Kay Henry, a radio tall show host in Salt Lake City wants her
mummiform embossed with a radio microphone.  Al Greco, husband of
flight nurse Janet and a jack-of-all-trades has considered
engraving his mummiform with images of some of his favorite tools
or etching it with a list of his toughest repair jobs.

The funeral industry can't afford to ignore such wishes, says Ra,
noting frankly that "the potential for income is tremendous."
Indeed, John Chew, director of the Institute for Funeral Service
Education and Anatomy at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida
(and a friend of Ra's), says his mortuary science students - aware
of the growing popularity of low-cost, low-profit cremations - have
expressed an overwhelming interest in learning the art of
mummification.

One nagging question remains.  What if Ra's extraterrestrials are
wrong, and spiritual fulfillment can occur only if the body is
allowed to disintegrate?  In that case, mummification could be the
ultimate roadblock on the path to enlightenment.  Ra is prepared.
"What we'd probably have to do is get some kind of message back
after we die," he says.  Anyway, not even a mummy will last
forever.  "At some point the sun will go nova and the planet will
be destroyed," Ra says reassuringly.  "You may be hung up for a
while, but you'll get off eventually." 


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