The Ferryman of Death
O, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul,
Who pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night
Death is certain and death is everywhere. Therefore, mortality is never out of our consciousness. It has permeated the human mind since ancient times. Death is also one of the greatest themes of artistic expression. It has innundated literature, flooded paintings. It has devoured the souls of mortals, prompting the writing of endless poems in an attempt to understand the nature of this phenomenon and its relation to us. As we can't never find the right words to talk about anything the way we want to, we create allegorical language to express things we can't possibly understand. Thus, the symbolism for death is infinite. Winter is death. Snow is death. Sex is death. The top of the mountain is death. The valley is death. Which is why, to make it somehow maneagable, I want to write about a very specific image regarding the representation of death or, rather, the last journey of the soul, from the world of the living to the land of the dead.
It concerns a mythological figure that has been present across different cultures: the ferryman of death, the agent responsible to carry the soul of a recently deceased person into the underworld.
This figure appears prominently in the Greek mythological world, having an Egyptian precursor in Kherty.
The greatest god in Egyptian mythology was Ra, who people believed crossed the sky during the day by boat, and crossed the underworld at night also by boat (called Meseket). Later on, another deity, Aken, was considered to be the ferryman of Meseket. He fell into a profound sleep when his services were not needed, and had to be awakened by Mahan, another ferryman, when the dead required his services. In an article in Ancient Egypt Online, it is established the link between the Egyptian and the Greek mythological ferryman figures: "Aken is often associated with Kherty (or Cherti) a more ambiguous deity who was considered to be a god of the underworld and the ferryman of the dead. This god was worshipped in Esna (Latopolis) and may be the origin of the Greek ferryman Charon."
Concerning the Greek mythology, the ferryman of Hades was Charon (also Kharon). He was a deity, son of Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). Edith Hamilton, in her book Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, mentions Charon in the chapter titled 'The Underworld': "The path down to (the Underworld) leads to where Acheron*, the river of woe, pours into Cocytus, the river of lamentation. An aged boatman called Charon ferries the souls of the dead across the water to the farthest bank, where stands the Agamantine gate to Tartarus. Charon will receive in his boat only the souls of those upon whose lips the passage money was placed when they died and who were duly buried."
(*) Acheron also received the name Styx. Nonetheless, Acheron is sometimes refered as a river that flows from the river Styx.
If a dead soul couldn't either afford the price of the journey or hadn't been properly buried, they had to wander the shores of the river for a hundred years. After that journey to the Agamantine gate, there were other mythological figures that inhabited the land of the Underworld, including Cerberus, a three-headed dog, the furies, which tormented evildoers, and Tantalus, punished and kept in Tartarus, the darkest corner of the underworld reserved for the Titans.
His name seems to come from a noun which can be translated as "of keen gaze" or "fierce brightness", although its ethimology is not specially clear. When Charon appears in Inferno, the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, he is described as having "eyes of glede". In Virgil’s Aeneid he is also described as having "eyes fixed in a fiery stare". Apart from his distinct eyes, his appearance is often described as that of a sordid, rough old man with an unkempt white beard.
Although the souls of men who are ferried over by Charon to the land of the dead are never to return, the are a few heroes in Greek mythology who return from the Underworld, such as Orpheus, Heracles, Theseus or Odysseus. Orpheus used his lire to persuade Charon. Heracles, needing to travel to the underworld to complete his last of his twelve labors, overpowered Charon with his godly strength using Charon's own oar. Their return from the underworld is rare, but these heroes carry out an archaic and common story, which is the cheating of death or the return from death. It is one of the great representations of the heroes journey into chaos and unknown, one with very deep connotations of rebirth and profound change.
There are two distinct symbols at play (within the symbol of the Ferryman): that of the river, and that of the agent that offers the hero passage.
Rivers often represents the passage of time or the journey of life itself. In the book Signs and Symbols, Miranda Bruce-Mitford writes that "A river is both a symbol of fertility, since it irrigates land, and an image of the neverending flow of time. Its delta represents the merging of the soul with the Absolute". In this case, nonetheless, the river represents infertility, and its waters are represented unperturbed. It does not evoke movement, but rather stillness and calmness, which might help create a powerful contrast to the traditional symbolism attached to rivers. Bruce-Mitford also writes: "Meandenng slowly to the sea, the river can also symbolize a journey into death. Journeys to the Underworld often involve the crossing of a river, and the four rivers of Paradise are a source of power and spiritual nourishment." The connotation of loss and oblivion ties with the theme of death. The journey is a great element included in the river. It doesn't need to be a literal journey. It often serves as a narrative device to express succesfully the trip of the hero towards uncharted territory, towards a place where there's knowledge that can't be described with words. One cinematic example for this can be Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola (based on the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). The hero travels upriver to encounter the personification of the possible answers to all the doubts posed by the unexplicable erratic behaviour of mankind. In this case Captain Willard is able, like Morpheus and other ancient heroes, to return and tread the same path back to life, to order, but not remainding the same person that embarked on the original trip.
Rivers are also associated with death in Japanese mythology. In the blog Japanese Mythology, Aileen Kawagoe writes: "In folklore, there is a famous River of the Dead called Sai-no-kawara (...) And according to tradition, here it is Jizo is the most beloved and well-known of folk deities, who is the guide for the lost souls of children on the Sai-no-kawara riverbank, and who saves them from either the Oni (ogre demon) or Shozuka-no-baba (see photo of her enshrined) who is the hell’s hag receiving the souls of the dead, and wife of Ten Datsu-Ba (source: Mythology Dictionary). She demands money from all who arrive at her home on the bank of the River of Three Roads (River Sanzu) and, if it is not paid, takes their garments". Again, we see a connection between money and the transition to the afterlife.
Other rivers of death appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient epic poem from Mesopotamia. The hero fins a ferryman that helps him continue the journey in which he seeks immortality.
Other examples can be the river Vaitaran, which according to Hindu mythology separates the living and the dead. The river Mictlan, from the Atzec mythology, also represents the boundary between life and death, and has to be crossed to reach the underworld. The Sanzunokawa, according to the Buddhist traditions, is also the divider between the living and the dead.
An agent is often required to take you somewhere important for you personal transformation. There's a ferryman in Norse mythology, Hárbarðr, that, although does not guard the passage from the world of the living to the one of the dead, his services are required to return from the land of the Giants to the land of Asgard. In the case of Charon, he offers you a service necessary to access the world of the dead. In modern times, a macabre example might be the human traffickers that offer illegal passages for refugees that flee war. But an agent might be a teacher, in other contexts, an accompanier that helps the hero reach enlightment (or otherwise unreachable knowledge), which path to achieve is symbolically represented by the river. An example for this kind of character that helps the hero find hidden paths in dark places - places that serve as representation for death and evil - might be found in the figure of Sméagol, or Gollum, in the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien - later turned into a movie trilogy of the same name by Peter Jackson - who guides Frodo along obscure roads and secret tunnels into Mordor.
Death, in this context, could be viewed as a way to attain a cryptic knowledge that is barred to men in life.
Often a metaphor for journeys into the depths of something unknown, the river stands as a powerful symbol. And what can be more mystifying than the unattainable understanding of death?
Sources
· Charon, Tales Beyond Belief
· Rivers of death in Japanese myth and folklore and in other parts of the world, Japanese Mythology and Folklore Blog, Aileen Kawagoe
· Aken, Ancient Egypt Online
· The Underworld, Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, Edith Hamilton
· Earth & Sky, Signs and Symbols, Thousands of Signs and Symbols from Around the World, Miranda Bruce-Mitford · Flights of Fancy, How to Read Literature like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster
O, then began the tempest to my soul,
Who pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night
Words of Clarence in the play Richard III by William Shakespeare
Death is certain and death is everywhere. Therefore, mortality is never out of our consciousness. It has permeated the human mind since ancient times. Death is also one of the greatest themes of artistic expression. It has innundated literature, flooded paintings. It has devoured the souls of mortals, prompting the writing of endless poems in an attempt to understand the nature of this phenomenon and its relation to us. As we can't never find the right words to talk about anything the way we want to, we create allegorical language to express things we can't possibly understand. Thus, the symbolism for death is infinite. Winter is death. Snow is death. Sex is death. The top of the mountain is death. The valley is death. Which is why, to make it somehow maneagable, I want to write about a very specific image regarding the representation of death or, rather, the last journey of the soul, from the world of the living to the land of the dead.
It concerns a mythological figure that has been present across different cultures: the ferryman of death, the agent responsible to carry the soul of a recently deceased person into the underworld.
This figure appears prominently in the Greek mythological world, having an Egyptian precursor in Kherty.
The greatest god in Egyptian mythology was Ra, who people believed crossed the sky during the day by boat, and crossed the underworld at night also by boat (called Meseket). Later on, another deity, Aken, was considered to be the ferryman of Meseket. He fell into a profound sleep when his services were not needed, and had to be awakened by Mahan, another ferryman, when the dead required his services. In an article in Ancient Egypt Online, it is established the link between the Egyptian and the Greek mythological ferryman figures: "Aken is often associated with Kherty (or Cherti) a more ambiguous deity who was considered to be a god of the underworld and the ferryman of the dead. This god was worshipped in Esna (Latopolis) and may be the origin of the Greek ferryman Charon."
Concerning the Greek mythology, the ferryman of Hades was Charon (also Kharon). He was a deity, son of Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). Edith Hamilton, in her book Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, mentions Charon in the chapter titled 'The Underworld': "The path down to (the Underworld) leads to where Acheron*, the river of woe, pours into Cocytus, the river of lamentation. An aged boatman called Charon ferries the souls of the dead across the water to the farthest bank, where stands the Agamantine gate to Tartarus. Charon will receive in his boat only the souls of those upon whose lips the passage money was placed when they died and who were duly buried."
(*) Acheron also received the name Styx. Nonetheless, Acheron is sometimes refered as a river that flows from the river Styx.
If a dead soul couldn't either afford the price of the journey or hadn't been properly buried, they had to wander the shores of the river for a hundred years. After that journey to the Agamantine gate, there were other mythological figures that inhabited the land of the Underworld, including Cerberus, a three-headed dog, the furies, which tormented evildoers, and Tantalus, punished and kept in Tartarus, the darkest corner of the underworld reserved for the Titans.
 |
| The representation of Charon by Alexander Litovchenko |
His name seems to come from a noun which can be translated as "of keen gaze" or "fierce brightness", although its ethimology is not specially clear. When Charon appears in Inferno, the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, he is described as having "eyes of glede". In Virgil’s Aeneid he is also described as having "eyes fixed in a fiery stare". Apart from his distinct eyes, his appearance is often described as that of a sordid, rough old man with an unkempt white beard.
Although the souls of men who are ferried over by Charon to the land of the dead are never to return, the are a few heroes in Greek mythology who return from the Underworld, such as Orpheus, Heracles, Theseus or Odysseus. Orpheus used his lire to persuade Charon. Heracles, needing to travel to the underworld to complete his last of his twelve labors, overpowered Charon with his godly strength using Charon's own oar. Their return from the underworld is rare, but these heroes carry out an archaic and common story, which is the cheating of death or the return from death. It is one of the great representations of the heroes journey into chaos and unknown, one with very deep connotations of rebirth and profound change.
There are two distinct symbols at play (within the symbol of the Ferryman): that of the river, and that of the agent that offers the hero passage.
Rivers often represents the passage of time or the journey of life itself. In the book Signs and Symbols, Miranda Bruce-Mitford writes that "A river is both a symbol of fertility, since it irrigates land, and an image of the neverending flow of time. Its delta represents the merging of the soul with the Absolute". In this case, nonetheless, the river represents infertility, and its waters are represented unperturbed. It does not evoke movement, but rather stillness and calmness, which might help create a powerful contrast to the traditional symbolism attached to rivers. Bruce-Mitford also writes: "Meandenng slowly to the sea, the river can also symbolize a journey into death. Journeys to the Underworld often involve the crossing of a river, and the four rivers of Paradise are a source of power and spiritual nourishment." The connotation of loss and oblivion ties with the theme of death. The journey is a great element included in the river. It doesn't need to be a literal journey. It often serves as a narrative device to express succesfully the trip of the hero towards uncharted territory, towards a place where there's knowledge that can't be described with words. One cinematic example for this can be Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola (based on the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). The hero travels upriver to encounter the personification of the possible answers to all the doubts posed by the unexplicable erratic behaviour of mankind. In this case Captain Willard is able, like Morpheus and other ancient heroes, to return and tread the same path back to life, to order, but not remainding the same person that embarked on the original trip.
Rivers are also associated with death in Japanese mythology. In the blog Japanese Mythology, Aileen Kawagoe writes: "In folklore, there is a famous River of the Dead called Sai-no-kawara (...) And according to tradition, here it is Jizo is the most beloved and well-known of folk deities, who is the guide for the lost souls of children on the Sai-no-kawara riverbank, and who saves them from either the Oni (ogre demon) or Shozuka-no-baba (see photo of her enshrined) who is the hell’s hag receiving the souls of the dead, and wife of Ten Datsu-Ba (source: Mythology Dictionary). She demands money from all who arrive at her home on the bank of the River of Three Roads (River Sanzu) and, if it is not paid, takes their garments". Again, we see a connection between money and the transition to the afterlife.
Other rivers of death appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient epic poem from Mesopotamia. The hero fins a ferryman that helps him continue the journey in which he seeks immortality.
Other examples can be the river Vaitaran, which according to Hindu mythology separates the living and the dead. The river Mictlan, from the Atzec mythology, also represents the boundary between life and death, and has to be crossed to reach the underworld. The Sanzunokawa, according to the Buddhist traditions, is also the divider between the living and the dead.
An agent is often required to take you somewhere important for you personal transformation. There's a ferryman in Norse mythology, Hárbarðr, that, although does not guard the passage from the world of the living to the one of the dead, his services are required to return from the land of the Giants to the land of Asgard. In the case of Charon, he offers you a service necessary to access the world of the dead. In modern times, a macabre example might be the human traffickers that offer illegal passages for refugees that flee war. But an agent might be a teacher, in other contexts, an accompanier that helps the hero reach enlightment (or otherwise unreachable knowledge), which path to achieve is symbolically represented by the river. An example for this kind of character that helps the hero find hidden paths in dark places - places that serve as representation for death and evil - might be found in the figure of Sméagol, or Gollum, in the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien - later turned into a movie trilogy of the same name by Peter Jackson - who guides Frodo along obscure roads and secret tunnels into Mordor.
Death, in this context, could be viewed as a way to attain a cryptic knowledge that is barred to men in life.
Often a metaphor for journeys into the depths of something unknown, the river stands as a powerful symbol. And what can be more mystifying than the unattainable understanding of death?
Sources
· Charon, Tales Beyond Belief
· Rivers of death in Japanese myth and folklore and in other parts of the world, Japanese Mythology and Folklore Blog, Aileen Kawagoe
· Aken, Ancient Egypt Online
· The Underworld, Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, Edith Hamilton
· Earth & Sky, Signs and Symbols, Thousands of Signs and Symbols from Around the World, Miranda Bruce-Mitford · Flights of Fancy, How to Read Literature like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster
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