Death

• Death is associated with Underworld.

  Many traditions give the dead a place. The places disagree; this edge only says that death and a below are often paired, not that they are one map.

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• Death is associated with Rite.

  Funerary rites treat death as an ending that still requires work. The work is local: weighing, wake, or cremation.

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• Death is associated with Transformation.

  Some stories treat dying as a change of state rather than a stop. Osiris, grain, and later alchemical “death of matter” are different claims.

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• Salt is associated with Death.

  Salt holds flesh from rot. The material fact has been used as a picture of holding off decay; that picture is not a doctrine.

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• Soul is associated with Death.

  Soul-talk is often talk about what death does not finish. The claim is local even when the word is reused.

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• Fire is associated with Death.

  Fire consumes. Cremation, war, and ordinary accident are different meetings with that fact; none of them cancel fire’s use as a purifying gift.

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• Bone is associated with Death.

  Bone remains when soft stuff is gone. Relics and later memento images use that remainder; they are not one doctrine of the person.

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• Iron is associated with Death.

  Iron takes an edge. Weapons are one job of that fact; they are not Saturn’s lead and not a luck-charm.

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• Myrrh is associated with Death.

  Burial uses of myrrh are attested in some Mediterranean and Near Eastern practices. They are local, not a universal “death resin.”

  from Pliny the Elder · Natural History, c. 77 CE

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Egyptian religion

• Death is associated with Rebirth.

  Egyptian funerary spells work for a justified dead who may go forth by day. That hope is Egyptian, not a generic cycle.

  from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

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• Serpent is associated with Death.

  Egyptian tradition treats Apep as a serpent of chaos opposed to the sun’s order. Danger here is cosmic opposition, not Asklepian healing and not a feathered serpent of wind.

  from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

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• Eye is opposed to Death.

  The wedjat is among the marks meant to keep a dead person whole. Protection against damage in the tomb is not the folk blighting glance.

  from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

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• Anubis is associated with Death.

  Anubis is a god of the body’s care after death. The job is embalming and guiding in an Egyptian tomb, not a generic reaper.

  from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

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• Osiris is associated with Death.

  Osiris is a dead god who remains a king of the dead. Death and kingship meet in that Egyptian office.

  from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

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• Duat is associated with Death.

  The Egyptian below is a geography for a dead person who must still act. Death here is a passage with gates, not a stop.

  from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

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Maya tradition

• Death is associated with Xibalba.

  The Popol Vuh sends the Hero Twins into Xibalba, a court of the dead with trials. It is a Kʼicheʼ below, not Duat.

  from Dennis Tedlock (translation) · Popol Vuh, Kʼicheʼ text written down c. 1550s; Tedlock trans. 1985/1996

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• Maya tradition is associated with Death.

  The Popol Vuh’s Xibalba is a Kʼicheʼ court of the dead. The tradition’s death-geography is that court, not Hades.

  from Dennis Tedlock (translation) · Popol Vuh, Kʼicheʼ text written down c. 1550s; Tedlock trans. 1985/1996

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• Jade is used in Death.

  Taube describes Classic Maya jadeite in funerary rites and in conjuring gods and ancestors, as a material of the breath-spirit. A Maya tomb and earspool grammar, not Chinese orifice-plugs and not a pan-Mesoamerican “jade of immortality.”

  from Karl A. Taube · The Symbolism of Jade in Classic Maya Religion, 2005

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Nahua tradition

• Death is associated with Obsidian.

  Nahua ritual used obsidian blades. Blood and cutting belong to that material history, not to a mood of “darkness.”

  from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

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• Death is associated with Offerings.

  Sahagún records offerings, including costly ones, in Mexica religion. The gift economy of the gods is Nahua as his collaborators told it.

  from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

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• Obsidian is associated with Death.

  Obsidian blades in Nahua offering are instruments that open bodies. Death here is a ritual fact of cutting, not a mood.

  from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

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European folklore

• Raven is associated with Death.

  The same European folk reading that treats the raven as an omen often takes the omen to be of a death. The pairing is local custom, not a zoological fact.

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• Crow is associated with Death.

  European folk speech can treat a crow as a death-bird. The omen is local custom, not Tlingit Raven the creator.

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• Black is associated with Death.

  European mourning has used black cloth. The custom is local; it is not Egyptian green Osiris and not a proof that night is death.

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• Owl is associated with Death.

  The same folk reading often takes the omen to be of a death. Local custom, not a zoological fact and not Egyptian night-theology.

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Norse tradition

• Odin is associated with Death.

  Snorri’s Odin receives the slain and is concerned with the dead of battle. That is a war-god’s economy of death, not a generic grim reaper.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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• Tree is associated with Death.

  The world-tree stands over wells and the dead as Snorri arranges them. The tree is not itself a tomb.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

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Mesopotamian tradition

• Mesopotamian tradition is connected to Death.

  Gilgamesh’s poem is preoccupied with death after Enkidu. Mesopotamian tradition here meets death as an epic problem, not an Egyptian weighing.

  from Epic of Gilgamesh, c. 1200 BCE (this recension)

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Hellenic religion

• Hades is associated with Death.

  The Greek below is a geography of the dead. Descent stories go there for a local reason.

  from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

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Chinese tradition

• Jade is used in Death.

  Chinese burial practice, as Laufer treats it, places jade on and in the corpse (mouth pieces, plugs, tomb jades). A Chinese mortuary craft, not Classic Maya funerary jadeite and not “jade energy.”

  from Berthold Laufer · Jade, 1912

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