For all its obvious cultural and historical importance, the cult of the dead, as depicted in the Greek customs and myths discussed in the previous chapter, was not in any way an organized, self-conscious doctrine of life after death, and to it cannot therefore be traced the origins of later religious conceptions of immortality. Greek religious culture was, moreover, much more centred on ritual practices (some arising from casual superstitions) than it was on elaborating, judging or policing people's beliefs, this reflecting in part the Greeks’ view that what is transcendental is also mysterious and so ‘human knowledge about the divine and about the right way of behaving towards it is limited and circumscribed’ (Sourvinou-Inwood 1997: 162). It is therefore unsurprising that the Greeks had no equivalent word for ‘religion’, coming closest only with ‘piety’ and ‘holiness’ (Feibleman 2013: 71– 2), both of which described this-worldly qualities of action and character rather than devotion to specific theological doctrines. It is perhaps consistent with this that the cult of souls was focused more on the deceased's relation to, and approval of, the living, and on the precautionary duty of families to care for the spirits of their dead, than it was on the existential experience of the individual in the face of death. Though the soul's independence from the body undoubtedly played a role in the Greeks’ acceptance of cremation, the survival of the psychē after death was not guaranteed for eternity, since the piety of descendants might falter and their venerating thoughtfulness cease, thus depriving the departing spirit of its necessary sustenance.