by Terry McCombs

Terry McCombs maintained the "God/dess of the Month Club" on soc.religion.paganism for several years, producing monthly profiles of deities drawn from across the world's traditions. His October 2007 entry — posted on Halloween — surveyed the global landscape of death deities.

The scope is remarkable: Anubis and Osiris (Egyptian), Pluto and Hades (Greco-Roman), Hel (Norse), the Morrígan (Celtic), Yama and Yami (Hindu), Yan Luo (Chinese), Mictlantecuhtli and six Mayan death gods (Mesoamerican), Izanami (Shinto), Azrael (Abrahamic), Sidapa (Philippine), Giltinė (Lithuanian), Mot (Canaanite), Fe'e (Polynesian), and Othin himself as death god of the Norse. McCombs's central observation: unlike deities of sun, love, or sovereignty, death gods refuse to conform to any cross-cultural template. They range from the magnificent to the bureaucratic, from the beautiful to the rotting, from the terrifying to the merely inconvenient.

He closes with a coda on modern death — the Grim Reaper's Jamaican accent in a children's cartoon, Neil Gaiman's young attractive Death, and a string of quotes from Aeschylus to Borges to the Bhagavad Gita to Yoda. Posted on the last night of October, when the veil is thin.

Names: Anubis (Egyptian), Pluto (Roman), Hades (Greek), Hel (Norse), The Morrígan (Celtic), Yama & Yami (Hindu — god and goddess), Yan Luo (Chinese), Mictlantecuhtli (Aztec), Azrael (Christian and Islamic), Izanami (Shinto), Thanatos (Greek, minor), Sidapa (Philippines), Samuel or Shemal or Shem-El (Semitic), Othin (Norse), Tate (Sioux), Tellus (Roman), Fe'e (Polynesian), Giltinė (Lithuanian), Mot (Canaanite and Phoenician), N'djambi (Namibian), Chamer, Cizin, Cum Hau, Hunhau, Ikal Ahau, Yum Cimil (Mayan).

Symbols: Many, depending on the mythos; however, recurring themes are skulls, sharp-bladed objects (knives, swords, scythes), bells, hourglasses, gates, caves, towers, wings, ravens, vultures, owls.

Usual Image: Varies from mythos to mythos; however, even the friendly ones tend to be somewhat dark. Recurring themes are skull-like and skeletal forms, paleness, thinness. Greeks and early Christians attribute wings to the death deity — huge black wings. The Mayans said all their death gods and goddesses favored the colors black and yellow, usually with the yellow as spots on their black bony bodies. To many Pacific Islanders, their death god appeared as a giant cuttlefish. Death deities appear both male and female, beautiful and horrid. In the Vedic tradition there is both a god and a goddess of death.

Holy Books: The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Reu nu pert em hru, "The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day") and The Papyrus of Ani. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thödol — "The Great Liberation Upon Hearing in the Intermediate State"). The Book of Azrael by Leilah Wendell.

Holy Days: April 30, Festival of Hades (ancient Rome). Nine festivals dedicated to Anubis in ancient Egypt, including March 3, Festival of Clothing Anubis. El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), November 1 & 2 (Mexico).

Form of Worship:

"Alone of the Gods Death has no love for gifts, / Libation helps you not, nor sacrifice. / He has no altar, and hears no hymns; / From him alone Persuasion stands apart."
— Niobe by Aeschylus (525–465 BCE)

Synodeities: See Names above.

During our time on Earth, no one is guaranteed to know love, war, heroism, marriage, magic, or might — but everyone who has ever drawn a breath knows that someday they will draw their last. This knowledge is one of the major things that sets humans apart from animals.

This dire familiarity has led to our Gods and Goddesses of death to be, down through the years, some of the more problematic and eccentric deity forms.

With god/desses of the sky, war, love, sovereignty, wealth, weather, water, fire, youth, illness, the home, and even trickery, you can more often than not make a fairly good guess about what that being will be represented as, with just a little information about that society. Even if you know next to nothing about the rest of their mythology, the big ones — sun, sovereignty, and life — are, if not identical, at least close enough from mythos to mythos to be recognized as esoteric cousins. You can even guess, with a good chance of being right, whether they will be male or female.

This, however, does not seem to be the case with the different Gods and Goddesses of Death.

The Range

They range from the horrid — such as the Norse Hel, who ruled the unheroic dead in a world of freezing cold and darkness where the only sound is that of grinding glaciers, all beds are straw, the only dish is dust, and the goddess in charge is beautiful from the hips up and a rotting corpse from below (or half and half in some tellings) — to the Philippine God of Death Sidapa, a handsome and friendly god, willing to go out of his way to help those who do him right; while not what you would call sunny, he's not dark either — more a regular Joe, as gods go.

Among some Polynesian Islanders we have Fe'e, a giant cuttlefish living in but unrestrained by the waters of the ocean, a god whose black tentacles grasp everyone eventually. The Lithuanians of old present us with Giltinė, a beautiful white-haired goddess who appears, melting like smoke through doors and walls, wearing rich shining white finery, to strangle us to death.

Some Gods of Death are, if not minor, seemingly so little concerned with the other gods and goddesses — or even humans, other than what is needed — as to seem minor: Pluto, Thanatos, or N'djambi. Elsewhere you will find the head of the gods, such as Tate of the Sioux, or Wotan in his guise as Othin, as the God of Death.

Seems this most personal and most unavoidable of all the higher beings will not let himself or herself be pinned down — at times, Death makes Trickster look like an amateur.

The Grim Reaper

For the last few centuries, however, there has been, over a large part of the world, a Death God who has been given more iconography and thought than any other — he of course is Azrael, the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mythos. A name that does not even appear in the Bible.

Everybody knows him: skeleton outright, hooded robe, sometimes with huge black wings, sometimes on a pale horse, carrying a scythe and sometimes an hourglass. While some of the other god/desses of Death had their worshippers (though not many), it's doubtful that anyone ever directed a prayer at this one, other than "go away!"

Which, I think, says a lot about the current situation we find ourselves in. A society that can't, if not make friends, at least deal with the deity that will someday come for everyone in that society, more than likely has other things in their psyche they need to look at but are too afraid to face square in the eye. And that sort of thing never leads to anything good.

However, there does seem to be some loosening up — small, to be sure, but here and there you see things: how some have embraced Neil Gaiman's young, attractive Death; and while not widely accepted, there is the artist and poet Leilah Wendell, whose books on her long and personal relationship with Azrael make for fascinating reading.

Still, in all, better than a giant flying cuttlefish, I guess.

Then there are all those kids today who think Death has a Jamaican accent and gets pushed around by a seven-year-old girl. Hmm. I guess it's going to be a while before we wrap our heads around this in anything like large numbers.

Quotes

"You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you'll dance with the reaper."
— Grim Reaper's rap, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

"Death (or its allusion) makes men precious and pathetic. They are moving because of their phantom condition; every act they execute may be their last; there is not a face that is not on the verge of dissolving like a face in a dream."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with strange eons, even Death may die."
— H. P. Lovecraft

"For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the unavoidable thou shouldst not grieve."
— Bhagavad Gita

"Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is."
— Yoda

"Life is hard, and then you die."
— A Coffee Cup

— Terry McCombs

Colophon

Written and posted by Terry McCombs to soc.religion.paganism on October 31, 2007 (Halloween), as part of his monthly "God/dess of the Month Club" series, which profiled deities from across the world's traditions. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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