The Mourning Bells of Scythe
I released my first ever novelette, The Mourning Bells of Scythe, this week! It’s a gothic/ dark fantasy piece which plays with the concept of vampires and the Grim Reaper. In honour of that, our first trip down the occult rabbit hole on this blog will look into the Death personified, specifically the Grim Reaper.
Memento Mori
Death is a tale as old as time itself, and mortal’s attempts to explain, and subsequently accept, death is prevalent throughout history. From religion, mythology, and folklore, entities have been woven from threads of the imagination to make sense of transcience. There are many fascinating tales from across the historical world which personified Death in his/her varying forms, but today we are only looking at Death from Medieval Europe.
One particular figure which has prevailed through western culture is the Grim Reaper in all of 'his' deathly gory.
It all began in fourteenth-century Europe when a pandemic took the world by fatal storm: the Black Death. Estimations suggest that one-third of the European population was wiped out by the Black Death, crowning it the monarch in a reign of terror.
From the horror and fear spreading throughout the lands was born a figure—one which prowled the streets with a scythe in hand, his skeletal silhouette cloaked by a dark robe. This figure became known as Death, later to become the Grim Reaper. Before then—but still in Medieval Europe—Death had often come to being represented as the angelic Michael, who was the Angel of Death. He was said to come down at the time of demise and offer mortals a chance to be saved from the ‘Devil’ before escorting their souls up to Heaven. However, with the Black Death’s dawning, fear rewrote death from something freeing to a ghastly notion.
In some imagery, Death is depicted side-by-side with a woman, who represented the relationship between life and death. Some even believed that the Grim Reaper could communicate with the living, seducing them to an early grave. Danse Macabre, Dance of Death, is a famous artistic allegory which depicts skeletons dancing with mortals—often with a pope, king, emperor, child, and labourer. It acted a reminder that no one cheats Death, that we are all united by his presence no matter from which walk of life we are birthed.
"But, what ends when the symbols shatter?"
Some of you might know this about me, some of you might not, but I am an absolute sucker for symbolism—particularly religious symbolism. And the concept of the Grim Reaper is shrouded in symbolism. His carefully crafted figure is built upon significant symbols and ideas of life, death, and the afterlife.
The Grim Reaper’s skeletal figure represents the human body post-demise, once we are nothing more than bones in the ground. In a way, I think skeletons are one of the ultimate depictions of death, as it shows the body in its final form. Once decomposition, bloating, decay, all of it has ended, all we are is bone.
Whereas the skeleton is deathly, the robes have a religious overtone. Thought to represent the robes worn by religious figures, these are a reflection specifically of what would be adorned when delivering an obsequy. For a long time, black has been a colour to represent ‘evil’, mystery, and darkness—as a Witch who works with colour magick, I don’t entirely agree with this association, but I also cannot deny the place it has held in history, and even now to some extent. The Grim Reaper’s donning of dark robes only heightens the eldritch mystery of his being, enabling him to bestow fear from the confines of the shadows.
The Grim Reaper didn’t always wield a scythe. In early imagines of him, he was shown holding a crossbow or other weapon. Eventually, these tools would be replaced with the iconic image of the scythe, a tool used by farmers to mow the crops. Many paintings depicted the Grim Reaper scything fields of humans to reap their souls as if he were the farmer and mortals the grain.
In the Bible's Book of Revelation, Revelation 6:1-8, Death rides a pale horse shadowed by three other horsemen (Pestilence, War, Famine). Following him, is Hades, the resting place of the dead. Whilst in the New Testament, Death is never written as holding a weapon (in fact, he is the only of the four of them not carrying a weapon, as he has Hades instead), a lot of illustrations depict this version of Death brandishing a scythe.
In many ways, the Grim Reaper resembles Ankou, the servant of Death in Breton, Cornish, Welsh and Norman-French folklore who also flourished a scythe.
Lastly, we have the hourglass. Of all the Grim Reaper’s imagery, the hourglass seems to be the one element that varies most. You rarely see him without his curved blade, but not always with an hourglass. The Grim Reaper holds this as a reminder of the brevity of human life. Whilst he will outlive us all, mortals work against the sands of time. One day, when the sand runs out, he will be there to take us all away.
Afterword
This is somewhat shorter than I thought it would be; next occult blog, I promise to deliver a longer piece! I think it might be interesting to explore some other concepts of Death, as, when I was researching the Grim Reaper, I also read up a lot on different cultures and the history of Death personified. Next blog (January 30th) will be extra special as I have a good friend and fellow author co-writing it with me. Who, you might be asking? Well, none other than the wonderful Dewi Hargreaves (@Dewiwrites on Twitter).
In the meantime, if you want more of a Grim Reaper fill, why not check out The Mourning Bells of Scythe. It is free on Wattpad or you can buy a paperback copy on Amazon.
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