Death (personification)

Personifications of death are found in many religions and mythologies. In more modern stories, a character known as the Grim Reaper (usually depicted as a berobed skeleton wielding a scythe) causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Other beliefs hold that the spectre of death is only a psychopomp, a benevolent figure who serves to gently sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. Death is most often personified in male form, although in certain cultures death is perceived as female (for instance, Marzanna in Slavic mythology, or Santa Muerte in Mexico). Death is also portrayed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Most claims of its appearance occur in states of near-death.

By region

Americas

Latin America

As is the case in many Romance languages (including French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian), the Spanish word for death, ''muerte,'' is (like Latin ''mors''/''mortis'' whence it derives) a feminine noun. As such, it is common in Spanish-speaking cultures to personify death as a female figure. A common term for the personification of death across Latin America is ''"la Parca"'' from one of the three Roman Parcae, a figure similar to the Anglophone Grim Reaper, though usually depicted as female and without a scythe.In Aztec mythology, Mictecacihuatl is the "Queen of Mictlan" (the Aztec underworld), ruling over the afterlife with her husband Mictlantecuhtli. Other epithets for her include "Lady of the Dead," as her role includes keeping watch over the bones of the dead. Mictecacihuatl was represented with a fleshless body and with jaw agape to swallow the stars during the day. She presided over the ancient festivals of the dead, which evolved from Aztec traditions into the modern Day of the Dead after synthesis with Spanish cultural traditions. Mictlāntēcutli, is the Aztec god of the dead and the king of Mictlan, depicted as a skeleton or a person wearing a toothy skull.Miller & Taube 1993, 2003, p.113. He is one of the principal gods of the Aztecs and is the most prominent of several gods and goddesses of death and the underworld. His headdress was shown decorated with owl feathers and paper banners and he wore a necklace of human eyeballs, while his earspools were made from human bones.Fernández 1992, 1996, p.142. He was not the only Aztec god to be depicted in this fashion, as numerous other deities had skulls for heads or else wore clothing or decorations that incorporated bones and skulls. In the Aztec world, skeletal imagery was a symbol of fertility, health and abundance, alluding to the close symbolic links between life and death.

There was also the goddess of suicide, Ixtab. She was a minor goddess in the scale of Maya mythology. She was also known as The Hangwoman as she came to help along those who had killed themselves.

Our Lady of the Holy Death (Santa Muerte) is a female deity or folk saint of Mexican folk religion, whose popularity has been growing in Mexico and the United States in recent years. Since the pre-Columbian era, Mexican culture has maintained a certain reverence towards death, as seen in the widespread commemoration of the Day of the Dead. La Calavera Catrina, a character symbolizing death, is also an icon of the Mexican Day of the Dead.

San La Muerte (Saint Death) is a skeletal folk saint venerated in Paraguay, northeast Argentina. As the result of internal migration in Argentina since the 1960s, the veneration of San La Muerte has been extended to Greater Buenos Aires and the national prison system as well. Saint Death is depicted as a male skeleton figure usually holding a scythe. Although the Catholic Church in Mexico has attacked the devotion of Saint Death as a tradition that mixes paganism with Christianity and is contrary to the Christian belief of Christ defeating death, many devotees consider the veneration of San La Muerte as being part of their Catholic faith. The rituals connected and powers ascribed to San La Muerte are very similar to those of Santa Muerte; the resemblance between their names, however, is coincidental.

In Guatemala, San Pascualito is a skeletal folk saint venerated as "King of the Graveyard." He is depicted as a skeletal figure with a scythe, sometimes wearing a cape and crown. He is associated with death and the curing of diseases.

In the African-Brazilian religion Umbanda, the orixá Omolu personifies sickness and death as well as healing. The image of the death is also associated with Exu, lord of the crossroads, who rules cemeteries and the hour of midnight.

In Haitian Vodou, the Gede are a family of spirits that embody death and fertility. The most well-known of these spirits is Baron Samedi.

Asia

East Asia

Yama was introduced to Chinese mythology through Buddhism. In China, he is known as Yanluo Wang (simplified Chinese: 阎罗王; traditional Chinese: 閻羅王; pinyin: ''Yánluó Wáng'') or Yan Wang (simplified Chinese: 阎王; traditional Chinese: 閻王; pinyin: ''Yán Wáng''), ruling the ten gods of the underworld Diyu. He is normally depicted wearing a Chinese judge's cap and traditional Chinese robes and appears on most forms of hell money offered in ancestor worship. From China, Yama spread to Japan as the Great King Enma (, ''Enma-Dai-Ō''), ruler of Jigoku (); Korea as the Great King Yeomra (), ruler of Jiok (); and Vietnam as ', ruler of ' or '.Separately, in Korean mythology, death's principal figure is the "Netherworld Emissary" Jeoseungsaja (, shortened to Saja (사자)). He is depicted as a stern and ruthless bureaucrat in Yeomna's service. A psychopomp, he escorts allgood or evilfrom the land of the living to the netherworld when the time comes. One of the representative names is Ganglim (강림), the Saja who guides the soul to the entrance of the underworld. According to legend, he always carries Jeokpaeji (적패지), the list with the names of the dead written on a red cloth. When he calls the name of Jeokpaeji three times, the soul leaves the body and follows him inevitably.

The ''Kojiki'' relates that the Japanese goddess Izanami was burnt to death giving birth to the fire god Hinokagutsuchi. She then entered a realm of perpetual night called Yomi-no-Kuni. Her husband Izanagi pursued her there but discovered his wife was no longer as beautiful as before. After an argument, she promised she would take a thousand lives every day, becoming a goddess of death, as well as giving birth to the gods, Raijin and Fūjin, while dead. There are also death gods called shinigami (死神), which are closer to the Western tradition of the Grim Reaper; while common in modern Japanese arts and fiction, they were essentially absent in traditional mythology.

India

The Sanskrit word for death is ''mrityu'' (cognate with Latin ''mors'' and Lithuanian ''mirtis''), which is often personified in Dharmic religions.

In Hindu scriptures, the lord of death is called King Yama (, ''Yama Rāja''). He is also known as the King of Karmic Justice (''Dharmaraja'') as one's karma at death was considered to lead to a just rebirth. Yama rides a black buffalo and carries a rope lasso to lead the soul back to his home, called Naraka, pathalloka, or Yamaloka. There are many forms of reapers, although some say there is only one who disguises himself as a small child. His agents, the Yamadutas, carry souls back to Yamalok. There, all the accounts of a person's good and bad deeds are stored and maintained by Chitragupta. The balance of these deeds allows Yama to decide where the soul should reside in its next life, following the theory of reincarnation. Yama is also mentioned in the Mahabharata as a great philosopher and devotee of the Supreme Brahman.

Western Asia

The Canaanites of the 12th- and 13th-century BC Levant personified death as the god Mot ( "Death"). He was considered a son of the king of the gods, El. His contest with the storm god Baʿal forms part of the Ba'al Cycle from the Ugaritic texts. The Phoenicians also worshipped death under the name Mot and a version of Mot later became Maweth, the devil or angel of death in Judaism.

Europe

Baltic

Latvians named Death Veļu māte, but for Lithuanians it was Giltinė, deriving from the word ''gelti'' ("to sting"). Giltinė was viewed as an old, ugly woman with a long blue nose and a deadly venomous tongue. The legend tells that Giltinė was young, pretty, and communicative until she was trapped in a coffin for seven years. Her sister was the goddess of life and destiny, Laima, symbolizing the relationship between beginning and end.

Like the Scandinavians, Lithuanians and Latvians later began using Grim Reaper imagery for death.

Celtic

In Breton folklore, a spectral figure called the Ankou (''or Angau'' in Welsh) portends death. Usually, the Ankou is the spirit of the last person that died within the community and appears as a tall, haggard figure with a wide hat and long white hair or a skeleton with a revolving head. The Ankou drives a deathly wagon or cart with a creaking axle. The cart or wagon is piled high with corpses and a stop at a cabin means instant death for those inside.

Irish mythology features a similar creature known as a dullahan, whose head would be tucked under their arm (dullahans were not one, but an entire species). The head was said to have large eyes and a smile that could reach the head's ears. The dullahan would ride a black horse or a carriage pulled by black horses, and stop at the house of someone about to die, and call their name, and immediately the person would die. The dullahan did not like being watched, and it was believed that if a dullahan knew someone was watching them, they would lash that person's eyes with their whip, which was made from a spine; or they would toss a basin of blood on the person, which was a sign that the person was next to die.

Gaelic lore also involves a female spirit known as Banshee (Modern Irish Gaelic: ''bean sí'' pron. banshee, literally ''fairy woman''), who heralds the death of a person by shrieking or keening. The banshee is often described as wearing red or green, usually with long, disheveled hair. She can appear in a variety of forms, typically that of an ugly, frightful hag, but in some stories she chooses to appear young and beautiful. Some tales recount that the creature was actually a ghost, often of a specific murdered woman or a mother who died in childbirth. When several banshees appeared at once, it was said to indicate the death of someone great or holy. In Ireland and parts of Scotland, a traditional part of mourning is the keening woman (bean chaointe), who wails a lament – in Irish: Caoineadh, caoin meaning "to weep, to wail."

In Scottish folklore there was a belief that a black, dark green or white dog known as a Cù Sìth took dying souls to the afterlife. Comparable figures exist in Irish and Welsh stories.

In Welsh Folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd is the escort of the grave, the personification of Death and Winter who leads the Wild Hunt to collect wayward souls and escort them to the Otherworld, sometimes it is Maleagant, Arawn or Afallach in a similar position.

Hellenic

In Greek mythology, Thanatos, the personification of death, is one of the offspring of Nyx (Night). Like her, he is seldom portrayed directly. He sometimes appears in art as a winged and bearded man, and occasionally as a winged and beardless youth. When he appears together with his twin brother, Hypnos, the god of sleep, Thanatos generally represents a gentle death. Thanatos, led by Hermes ''psychopompos'', takes the shade of the deceased to the near shore of the river Styx, whence the ferryman Charon, on payment of a small fee, conveys the shade to Hades, the realm of the dead. Homer's ''Iliad'' 16.681, and the Euphronios Krater's depiction of the same episode, have Apollo instruct the removal of the heroic, semi-divine Sarpedon's body from the battlefield by Hypnos and Thanatos, and conveyed thence to his homeland for proper funeral rites. Among the other children of Nyx are Thanatos' sisters, the Keres, blood-drinking, vengeful spirits of violent or untimely death, portrayed as fanged and taloned, with bloody garments.

Scandinavia

In Scandinavia, Norse mythology personified death in the shape of Hel, the goddess of death and ruler over the realm of the same name, where she received a portion of the dead. In the times of the Black Plague, Death would often be depicted as an old woman known by the name of Pesta, meaning "plague hag", wearing a black hood. She would go into a town carrying either a rake or a broom. If she brought the rake, some people would survive the plague; if she brought the broom, however, everyone would die.

Scandinavians later adopted the Grim Reaper with a scythe and black robe. Today, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film '' The Seventh Seal'' features one of the world's most famous representations of this personification of Death.

Slavic

In Poland, Death – ''Śmierć'' or ''kostucha'' – has an appearance similar to the Grim Reaper, although its robe was traditionally white instead of black. Because the word ''śmierć'' is feminine in gender, death is frequently portrayed as a skeletal old woman, as depicted in 15th-century dialogue ''"Rozmowa Mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią"'' (Latin: ''"Dialogus inter Mortem et Magistrum Polikarpum"'').

In Serbia and other South Slavic countries, the Grim Reaper is well known as ''Smrt'' ("Death") or ''Kosač'' ("Reaper"). Slavic people found this very similar to the Devil and other dark powers. One popular saying about death is: ''Smrt ne bira ni vreme, ni mesto, ni godinu'' ("Death does not choose a time, place or year" – which means death is destiny.)

Morana is a Slavic goddess of winter time, death and rebirth. A figurine of the same name is traditionally created at the end of winter/beginning of spring and symbolically taken away from villages to be set in fire and/or thrown into a river, that takes her away from the world of the living.

In the Czech Republic, the medieval Prague Astronomical Clock carries a depiction of Death striking the hour. A version first appeared in 1490.

The Low Countries

In the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent in Belgium, the personification of Death is known as ''Magere Hein'' ("Thin Hein") or Pietje de Dood ("Peter the Death"). Historically, he was sometimes simply referred to as ''Hein'' or variations thereof such as ''Heintje'', ''Heintjeman'' and ''Oom Hendrik'' ("Uncle Hendrik"). Related archaic terms are ''Beenderman'' ("Bone-man"), ''Scherminkel'' (very meager person, "skeleton") and ''Maaijeman'' (" mow-man", a reference to his scythe).

The concept of ''Magere Hein'' predates Christianity, but was Christianized and likely gained its modern name and features (scythe, skeleton, black robe etc.) during the Middle Ages. The designation "Meager" comes from its portrayal as a skeleton, which was largely influenced by the Christian " Dance of Death" ( Dutch: ''dodendans'') theme that was prominent in Europe during the late Middle Ages. "Hein" was a Middle Dutch name originating as a short form of ''Heinric'' (see Henry (given name)). Its use was possibly related to the comparable German concept of "Freund Hein." Notably, many of the names given to Death can also refer to the Devil; it is likely that fear of death led to Hein's character being merged with that of Satan.

In Belgium, this personification of Death is now commonly called ''Pietje de Dood'' "Little Pete, the Death." Like the other Dutch names, it can also refer to the Devil.

Western Europe

In Western Europe, Death has commonly been personified as an animated skeleton since the Middle Ages. This character, which is often depicted wielding a scythe, is said to collect the souls of the dying or recently dead. In English and German culture, Death is typically portrayed as male, but in French, Spanish, and Italian culture, it is not uncommon for Death to be female.

In England, the personified "Death" featured in medieval morality plays, later regularly appearing in traditional folk songs. The following is a verse of "Death and the Lady" (Roud 1031) as sung by Henry Burstow in the nineteenth century:

In the late 1800s, the character of Death became known as the Grim Reaper in English literature. The earliest appearance of the name "Grim Reaper" in English is in the 1847 book ''The Circle of Human Life'':

In Abrahamic religions

The " Angel of the Lord" smites 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp (II Kings 19:35). When the Angel of Death passes through to smite the Egyptian first-born, God prevents "the destroyer" (''shâchath'') from entering houses with blood on the lintel and side posts ( Exodus 12:23). The "destroying angel" (''mal'ak ha-mashḥit'') rages among the people in Jerusalem (II Sam. 24:16). In I Chronicles 21:15 the "angel of the Lord" is seen by King David standing "between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem." The biblical Book of Job (33:22) uses the general term "destroyers" (''memitim''), which tradition has identified with "destroying angels" (''mal'ake Khabbalah''), and Prov. 16:14 uses the term the "angels of death" (''mal'ake ha-mavet''). The angel Azra'il is sometimes referred as the Angel of Death as well.

Jewish tradition also refers to Death as the Angel of Dark and Light, a name which stems from Talmudic lore. There is also a reference to " Abaddon" (The Destroyer), an angel who is known as the "Angel of the Abyss". In Talmudic lore, he is characterized as archangel Michael.

In Judaism

In Hebrew scriptures, Death (''Maweth''/''Mavet(h)'') is sometimes personified as a devil or angel of death (e.g., ; ). In both the Book of Hosea and the Book of Jeremiah, Maweth/Mot is mentioned as a deity to whom God can turn over Judah as punishment for worshiping other gods. The memitim are a type of angel from biblical lore associated with the mediation over the lives of the dying. The name is derived from the Hebrew word מְמִיתִים (''mᵊmītīm'' – "executioners", "slayers", "destroyers") and refers to angels that brought about the destruction of those whom the guardian angels no longer protected. While there may be some debate among religious scholars regarding the exact nature of the memitim, it is generally accepted that, as described in the Book of Job 33:22, they are killers of some sort.

Form and functions

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