Death is one of the usual protagonists of myths. Non-existence, or rather the cessation of it, has intrigued, fascinated and horrified humanity in equal measure since the world began. As a result, many are myths that talk about death or that they have it as a context for the adventures of their heroes and divinities.
On many occasions, the pattern of the hero or heroine who goes down to hell with some objective is repeated, and who must go through a series of tests or challenge certain dangers to finally emerge victorious. It is a clear symbol of death as an initiation, of change as a starting point for a deeper knowledge of oneself and existence.
On the other hand, the theme of the destiny of souls is also a common theme in this type of stories. It is common to find a weighing of the souls (the psychostasis Greek), which aims to determine whether or not the dead person is worthy of entering eternal life. This is not an exclusive issue of Christianity, since in ancient Egypt, for example, Anubis also weighed the hearts of the deceased. In today’s article we bring you 5 myths related to death, extracted from various mythologies. We hope you enjoy them.
Heroes who descend to the underworld for love, gods who come to challenge their lords, souls who wander tirelessly for all eternity… Mythology is full of legends that have death or the world of the dead as a backdrop Here are some.
1. To Hades for love
Orpheus, who is traditionally considered the son of Apollo and one of the muses, is the only mortal, along with Theseus and Heracles, who managed to descend alive into Hades, according to Greek mythology. The Greek underworld was guarded by Cerberus, the terrible three-headed dog, whose mission was to prevent any living person from entering the kingdom of shadows. However, Orpheus managed to lull him to sleep with the evocative music of his lyre, since for some reason he was the best musician among mortals. Why had Orpheus descended into hell? According to the myth, for love. His wife was the beautiful nymph Eurydice, who had died very young as a result of a snake bite. Heartbroken, Orpheus decides to find the entrance to Hades and take his beloved back to earth.
Persephone, the queen of the underworld, remains at first undaunted by his pleas. No dead person can leave Hades, no dead person can return to the land of the living However, Orfeo’s music is too tempting. The beautiful melody touches the hardened heartstrings of the goddess, who before her famous abduction had also been a carefree and cheerful young woman. Persephone consents to Orpheus taking Eurydice, but imposes one of her conditions: during her ascension, he will not be able to look at her again under any circumstances. If he does so, the girl will return to Hades never to leave again.
The couple begins the climb. Orpheus is restless. Is Eurydice really following him, or is this just Persephone’s joke? He feels like turning around, but he knows he can’t. If he turns his head, he will lose her forever…
Finally, they emerge into the light. Excited by emotion, Orpheus turns to pick up Eurydice in his arms. However, the young woman had been left a little behind on the climb and she was still in the shadows when he turned. She slowly fades away… Orpheus will never see her again.
2. The Descent of Inanna
In mythologies, myths that speak of a hero or a divinity who descend to the world of the dead with some objective are common. Deep down, all these legends talk about an initiatory journey of the soul, which must immerse itself in the depths of its own abyss to know itself and emerge completely renewed
In Sumerian mythology, Inanna is the goddess of love and fertility. The Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians would later know her as Ishtar, and they would add warrior attributes to her. But in ancient Sumer Inanna was famous for her descent into hell, the Land of no returnas the Sumerians knew it, where the terrifying Ereshkigal, Inanna’s older sister, reigned.
It is difficult to reconstruct the myth completely, since the written testimonies are fragmentary. It is known that legend has it that Inanna went down to Irkalla (the other Sumerian name for the underworld) to attend the funeral of the “Bull of Heaven”, the husband of her sister Ereshkigal. But the queen of hell is not happy with the arrival of her rival, so she makes her go through several doors and leave a piece of clothing in each of them. In the end, when Inanna arrives before her sister’s throne, she finds herself completely naked and stripped of any divine attributes. Willing to exact her revenge, Ereshkigal takes advantage of her defenselessness and transforms Inanna into a corpse, hangs her on a hook and forces her to stay in hell.
Enki, Inanna’s father (although according to other versions, her father is Nannar, the moon), comes to her aid, but Ereshkigal refuses to return Inanna to the heaven of the gods if they do not find someone to replace her. Apparently, Dumuzi, Inanna’s husband, had not mourned the loss of his wife, so Inanna, enraged, sent him to hell to replace her Apparently, the goddess of love had the same volcanic nature as her infernal sister.
The end of the myth is an explanation of the changing of the seasons, in a way similar to the Greek myth of Persephone: Dumuzi’s sister, Geshtinanna, offers to change for him, but it is finally agreed that each brother will descend to the underworld at a certain time. time of the year. Thus, every spring, when Dumuzi emerges from Irkalla, he unites carnally with his wife to guarantee the fertility of creation.
3. The weigher of souls
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Anubis, the jackal-god, was in charge of weighing the hearts of the deceased. Egyptian iconography represents him before Osiris, the lord of the underworld, performing the weighing. For it, Anubis uses the feather of Maat, Justice and Order, which he places on one of the scales, while in the other there is the heart of the deceased, the only organ that was not removed from the embalmed body. If Maat’s feather weighed the same as the heart, this meant that the deceased’s actions were good and just, so he could go on to enjoy eternal life. If, on the other hand, the heart was heavier, Ammyt, the monster, devoured the soul of the deceased and, with this, he disappeared forever.
The theme of weighing the soul or psychostasis is common in mythology. postmortem from many cultures. Possibly early Christianity took from the Egyptian myth, which drank largely from its culture through the Copts or Egyptian Christians. Thus, in the Christian religion, the person in charge of weighing souls is the Archangel Saint Michael, who exercises, in this sense, the same role as judge that Anubis exercised in ancient Egypt. However, unlike the jackal-god, Saint Michael does not place the heart of the deceased on the scales, but rather his soul, usually represented in medieval paintings as a naked person. Finally, and in a similar way to what happened with the Egyptians who had been evil (devoured by Ammyt), the Leviathan took care of the bad Christians.
Charon was the ferryman who transported the dead from the world of the living to the chilling Hades, across the river Acheron. Once the river was crossed, the shadow could not return to earth; Cerberus, the three-headed dog, was in charge of guarding the gates of hell, not only so that no mortal would enter while alive, but also so that no dead person would leave it
But Charon did not do his work for free. The dead had to pay him an obolus for each trip; Otherwise, the boatman refused to cross them, and they were forced to wander for all eternity in no man’s land, located on the borders of the earth and the underworld.
To ensure that their deceased could enter Hades happily, the relatives placed two coins on the closed eyelids of the deceased (or one in the mouth), with the intention that the deceased could pay for his transfer through Acheron. The tradition was maintained in Roman times, which collected many of the myths of ancient Greece.
5. Drink… and you will forget your past life
In ancient Chinese mythology (although we also find this myth in Buddhist mythology) Meng Po is the Lady of Oblivionthe kind and caring old woman who ensures that all souls who are ready to reincarnate in a higher life forget everything about their previous existence.
To do this, the old woman prepares a concoction whose ingredients only she knows, known as the Tea of the five flavors of oblivion. When the souls ingest this liquid, something similar happens to those who drink the waters of the River Lethe, in the Greek Hades: They forget absolutely everything about their past life, as well as about their stay in hell, which in ancient China was known as Di Yu
Sometimes it happens that a soul does not drink all the tea (either because a drop is lost or because it manages to fool Meng Po). The result is that, in his later life, he can remember fragments of his past life, although he is unable to reconstruct the entire sequence.
