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An awesomely macabre Halloween decoration for your garden
3.5" WHITE PLASTER SKULL W/ SOLAR LIGHT EYES
DETAILS:
Solar-powered eyes!
This diabolically detailed skull, forged from durable plaster, exudes an aura of malevolence that'll send shivers down your spine. Every sinister detail has been meticulously crafted to captivate both the curious and the creeped-out. What sets this ghastly garden ornament apart though is its spine-tingling secret weapon - a mini solar cell recessed into the backside of the skull. By day, it's a stoic sentinel, silently harnessing the power of the sun, but by night, it unleashes a haunting transformation. As darkness cloaks your garden, prepare for a bright sight. The skull's eyes, infused with LED solar lights, blaze to life with a strong eerie glow. Activated by low light, the radiant LEDs pierce the night with a mesmerizing, ethereal brilliance.
Whether it graces your garden, guards your porch, or bewitches your indoor spaces, this skull is adaptable to your haunting needs. Its plain white plaster is a blank canvas, waiting for your spooky creativity to take hold. Let your inner artist emerge. The plain white plaster invites you to customize your skull as you see fit. From bone-chilling details to vibrant, ghoulish colors, transform this skull into a masterpiece that is uniquely yours.
The solar-powered garden skull has some heft (approx. 9 oz) so you can place it with pride in your garden, knowing it will stand unyielding to the elements.
Dimensions:
Approximately 3.5" (H) x 2.75" (L) x 2.5" (W) (inches).
A must-have for fans of the macabre!
Makes a great gift for the Halloween enthusiast, especially those who love skulls and crafting.
Seasonal, hard to find, and possibly retired!
The
Greenbrier International, Inc. plaster Halloween skull garden decoration was made available
for purchase in 2023, only during the Halloween season, at select retail
stores around the United States. Manufacturing has already come to a close and once the 2023 Halloween season is over this fun yard decoration will no longer be sold in stores - making it a hard-to-find Halloween item.
CONDITION:
New with sticker tag. Due to the manufacturing process variations in finish may be present.
To ensure safe delivery all items are carefully packaged before shipping out.
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"Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween,[5] All Hallows' Eve,[6] or All Saints' Eve)[7] is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide,[8] the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed.[9][10][11][12]
One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots.[13][14][15][16] Some go further and suggest that Samhain may have been Christianized as All Hallow's Day, along with its eve, by the early Church.[17] Other academics believe Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, being the vigil of All Hallow's Day.[18][19][20][21] Celebrated in Ireland and Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants took many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century,[22][23] and then through American influence Halloween had spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century.[24][25]
Popular Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related guising and souling), attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films.[26] Some people practice the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead,[27][28][29] although it is a secular celebration for others.[30][31][32] Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.[33][34][35][36]
Etymology
"Halloween" (1785) by Scottish poet Robert Burns, recounts various legends of the holiday.
The word Halloween or Hallowe'en ("Saints' evening"[37]) is of Christian origin;[38][39] a term equivalent to "All Hallows Eve" is attested in Old English.[40] The word hallowe[']en comes from the Scottish form of All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day):[41] even is the Scots term for "eve" or "evening",[42] and is contracted to e'en or een;[43] (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en became Hallowe'en.
History
Christian origins and historic customs
Halloween is thought to have influences from Christian beliefs and practices.[44][45] The English word 'Halloween' comes from "All Hallows' Eve", being the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day (All Saints' Day) on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November.[46] Since the time of the early Church,[47] major feasts in Christianity (such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) had vigils that began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows'.[48][44] These three days are collectively called Allhallowtide and are a time when Western Christians honour all saints and pray for recently departed souls who have yet to reach Heaven. Commemorations of all saints and martyrs were held by several churches on various dates, mostly in springtime.[49] In 4th-century Roman Edessa it was held on 13 May, and on 13 May 609, Pope Boniface IV re-dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to "St Mary and all martyrs".[50] This was the date of Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead.[51]
In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III (731–741) founded an oratory in St Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors".[44][52] Some sources say it was dedicated on 1 November,[53] while others say it was on Palm Sunday in April 732.[54][55] By 800, there is evidence that churches in Ireland[56] and Northumbria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on 1 November.[57] Alcuin of Northumbria, a member of Charlemagne's court, may then have introduced this 1 November date in the Frankish Empire.[58] In 835, it became the official date in the Frankish Empire.[57] Some suggest this was due to Celtic influence, while others suggest it was a Germanic idea,[57] although it is claimed that both Germanic and Celtic-speaking peoples commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter.[59] They may have seen it as the most fitting time to do so, as it is a time of 'dying' in nature.[57][59] It is also suggested the change was made on the "practical grounds that Rome in summer could not accommodate the great number of pilgrims who flocked to it", and perhaps because of public health concerns over Roman Fever, which claimed a number of lives during Rome's sultry summers.[60][44]
On All Hallows' Eve, Christians in some parts of the world visit cemeteries to pray and place flowers and candles on the graves of their loved ones.[61] Top: Christians in Bangladesh lighting candles on the headstone of a relative. Bottom: Lutheran Christians praying and lighting candles in front of the central crucifix of a graveyard.
By the end of the 12th century, the celebration had become known as the holy days of obligation in Western Christianity and involved such traditions as ringing church bells for souls in purgatory. It was also "customary for criers dressed in black to parade the streets, ringing a bell of mournful sound and calling on all good Christians to remember the poor souls".[62] The Allhallowtide custom of baking and sharing soul cakes for all christened souls,[63] has been suggested as the origin of trick-or-treating.[64] The custom dates back at least as far as the 15th century[65] and was found in parts of England, Wales, Flanders, Bavaria and Austria.[66] Groups of poor people, often children, would go door-to-door during Allhallowtide, collecting soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the dead, especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called "souling".[65][67][68] Soul cakes were also offered for the souls themselves to eat,[66] or the 'soulers' would act as their representatives.[69] As with the Lenten tradition of hot cross buns, soul cakes were often marked with a cross, indicating they were baked as alms.[70] Shakespeare mentions souling in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593).[71] While souling, Christians would carry "lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips", which could have originally represented souls of the dead;[72][73] jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits.[74][75] On All Saints' and All Souls' Day during the 19th century, candles were lit in homes in Ireland,[76] Flanders, Bavaria, and in Tyrol, where they were called "soul lights",[77] that served "to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes".[78] In many of these places, candles were also lit at graves on All Souls' Day.[77] In Brittany, libations of milk were poured on the graves of kinfolk,[66] or food would be left overnight on the dinner table for the returning souls;[77] a custom also found in Tyrol and parts of Italy.[79][77]
Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh linked the wearing of costumes to the belief in vengeful ghosts: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes".[80] In the Middle Ages, churches in Europe that were too poor to display relics of martyred saints at Allhallowtide let parishioners dress up as saints instead.[81][82] Some Christians observe this custom at Halloween today.[83] Lesley Bannatyne believes this could have been a Christianization of an earlier pagan custom.[84] Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed "that once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival" known as the danse macabre, which was often depicted in church decoration.[85] Christopher Allmand and Rosamond McKitterick write in The New Cambridge Medieval History that the danse macabre urged Christians "not to forget the end of all earthly things".[86] The danse macabre was sometimes enacted in European village pageants and court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and this may be the origin of Halloween costume parties.[87][88][89][72]
In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation, as Protestants berated purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. State-sanctioned ceremonies associated with the intercession of saints and prayer for souls in purgatory were abolished during the Elizabethan reform, though All Hallow's Day remained in the English liturgical calendar to "commemorate saints as godly human beings".[90] For some Nonconformist Protestants, the theology of All Hallows' Eve was redefined; "souls cannot be journeying from Purgatory on their way to Heaven, as Catholics frequently believe and assert. Instead, the so-called ghosts are thought to be in actuality evil spirits".[91] Other Protestants believed in an intermediate state known as Hades (Bosom of Abraham).[92] In some localities, Catholics and Protestants continued souling, candlelit processions, or ringing church bells for the dead;[46][93] the Anglican church eventually suppressed this bell-ringing.[94] Mark Donnelly, a professor of medieval archaeology, and historian Daniel Diehl write that "barns and homes were blessed to protect people and livestock from the effect of witches, who were believed to accompany the malignant spirits as they traveled the earth".[95] After 1605, Hallowtide was eclipsed in England by Guy Fawkes Night (5 November), which appropriated some of its customs.[96] In England, the ending of official ceremonies related to the intercession of saints led to the development of new, unofficial Hallowtide customs. In 18th–19th century rural Lancashire, Catholic families gathered on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve. One held a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while the rest knelt around him, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay.[97] There was a similar custom in Hertfordshire, and the lighting of 'tindle' fires in Derbyshire.[98] Some suggested these 'tindles' were originally lit to "guide the poor souls back to earth".[99] In Scotland and Ireland, old Allhallowtide customs that were at odds with Reformed teaching were not suppressed as they "were important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities" and curbing them would have been difficult.[22]
In parts of Italy until the 15th century, families left a meal out for the ghosts of relatives, before leaving for church services.[79] In 19th-century Italy, churches staged "theatrical re-enactments of scenes from the lives of the saints" on All Hallow's Day, with "participants represented by realistic wax figures".[79] In 1823, the graveyard of Holy Spirit Hospital in Rome presented a scene in which bodies of those who recently died were arrayed around a wax statue of an angel who pointed upward towards heaven.[79] In the same country, "parish priests went house-to-house, asking for small gifts of food which they shared among themselves throughout that night".[79] In Spain, they continue to bake special pastries called "bones of the holy" (Spanish: Huesos de Santo) and set them on graves.[100] At cemeteries in Spain and France, as well as in Latin America, priests lead Christian processions and services during Allhallowtide, after which people keep an all night vigil.[101] In 19th-century San Sebastián, there was a procession to the city cemetery at Allhallowtide, an event that drew beggars who "appeal[ed] to the tender recollectons of one's deceased relations and friends" for sympathy.[102]
Gaelic folk influence
An early 20th-century Irish Halloween mask displayed at the Museum of Country Life
Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots.[103] Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that "there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived".[104] The origins of Halloween customs are typically linked to the Gaelic festival Samhain.[105]
Samhain is one of the quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and has been celebrated on 31 October – 1 November[106] in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.[107][108] A kindred festival has been held by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany; a name meaning "first day of winter". For the Celts, the day ended and began at sunset; thus the festival begins the evening before 1 November by modern reckoning.[109] Samhain is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature. The names have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century,[110] and are still the Gaelic and Welsh names for Halloween.
Snap-Apple Night, painted by Daniel Maclise in 1833, shows people feasting and playing divination games on Halloween in Ireland.[111]
Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the 'darker half' of the year.[112][113] It was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into this world and were particularly active.[114][115] Most scholars see them as "degraded versions of ancient gods [...] whose power remained active in the people's minds even after they had been officially replaced by later religious beliefs".[116] They were both respected and feared, with individuals often invoking the protection of God when approaching their dwellings.[117][118] At Samhain, the Aos Sí were appeased to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left outside for them.[119][120][121] The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality.[122] Places were set at the dinner table and by the fire to welcome them.[123] The belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures.[66] In 19th century Ireland, "candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating, drinking, and games would begin".[124]
Throughout Ireland and Britain, especially in the Celtic-speaking regions, the household festivities included divination rituals and games intended to foretell one's future, especially regarding death and marriage.[125] Apples and nuts were often used, and customs included apple bobbing, nut roasting, scrying or mirror-gazing, pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, dream interpretation, and others.[126] Special bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Their flames, smoke, and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers.[112] In some places, torches lit from the bonfire were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them.[110] It is suggested the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun and held back the decay and darkness of winter.[123][127][128] They were also used for divination and to ward off evil spirits.[74] In Scotland, these bonfires and divination games were banned by the church elders in some parishes.[129] In Wales, bonfires were also lit to "prevent the souls of the dead from falling to earth".[130] Later, these bonfires "kept away the devil".[131]
photograph
A plaster cast of a traditional Irish Halloween turnip (rutabaga) lantern on display in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland[132]
From at least the 16th century,[133] the festival included mumming and guising in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales.[134] This involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. It may have originally been a tradition whereby people impersonated the Aos Sí, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf, similar to 'souling'. Impersonating these beings, or wearing a disguise, was also believed to protect oneself from them.[135] In parts of southern Ireland, the guisers included a hobby horse. A man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses – some of which had pagan overtones – in exchange for food. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune.[136] In Scotland, youths went house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed.[134] F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient festival included people in costume representing the spirits, and that faces were marked or blackened with ashes from the sacred bonfire.[133] In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod.[134] In the late 19th and early 20th century, young people in Glamorgan and Orkney cross-dressed.[134]
Elsewhere in Europe, mumming was part of other festivals, but in the Celtic-speaking regions, it was "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers".[134] From at least the 18th century, "imitating malignant spirits" led to playing pranks in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Wearing costumes and playing pranks at Halloween did not spread to England until the 20th century.[134] Pranksters used hollowed-out turnips or mangel wurzels as lanterns, often carved with grotesque faces.[134] By those who made them, the lanterns were variously said to represent the spirits,[134] or used to ward off evil spirits.[137][138] They were common in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century,[134] as well as in Somerset (see Punkie Night). In the 20th century they spread to other parts of Britain and became generally known as jack-o'-lanterns.[134]
Spread to North America
The annual New York Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, is the world's largest Halloween parade, with millions of spectators annually, and has its roots in New York's queer community.[139]
Lesley Bannatyne and Cindy Ott write that Anglican colonists in the southern United States and Catholic colonists in Maryland "recognized All Hallow's Eve in their church calendars",[140][141] although the Puritans of New England strongly opposed the holiday, along with other traditional celebrations of the established Church, including Christmas.[142] Almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th century give no indication that Halloween was widely celebrated in North America.[22]
It was not until after mass Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century that Halloween became a major holiday in America.[22] Most American Halloween traditions were inherited from the Irish and Scots,[23][143] though "In Cajun areas, a nocturnal Mass was said in cemeteries on Halloween night. Candles that had been blessed were placed on graves, and families sometimes spent the entire night at the graveside".[144] Originally confined to these immigrant communities, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and was celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial, and religious backgrounds by the early 20th century.[145] Then, through American influence, these Halloween traditions spread to many other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century, including to mainland Europe and some parts of the Far East.[24][25][146]
Symbols
At Halloween, yards, public spaces, and some houses may be decorated with traditionally macabre symbols including skeletons, ghosts, cobwebs, headstones, and scary looking witches.
Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. Jack-o'-lanterns are traditionally carried by guisers on All Hallows' Eve in order to frighten evil spirits.[73][147] There is a popular Irish Christian folktale associated with the jack-o'-lantern,[148] which in folklore is said to represent a "soul who has been denied entry into both heaven and hell":[149]
On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters the Devil and tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest.[150]
In Ireland and Scotland, the turnip has traditionally been carved during Halloween,[151][152] but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is both much softer and much larger, making it easier to carve than a turnip.[151] The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837[153] and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.[154]
Decorated house in Weatherly, Pennsylvania
The modern imagery of Halloween comes from many sources, including Christian eschatology, national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and Dracula) and classic horror films such as Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932).[155][156] Imagery of the skull, a reference to Golgotha in the Christian tradition, serves as "a reminder of death and the transitory quality of human life" and is consequently found in memento mori and vanitas compositions;[157] skulls have therefore been commonplace in Halloween, which touches on this theme.[158] Traditionally, the back walls of churches are "decorated with a depiction of the Last Judgment, complete with graves opening and the dead rising, with a heaven filled with angels and a hell filled with devils", a motif that has permeated the observance of this triduum.[159] One of the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne, who, in 1780, made note of pranks at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, "bogles" (ghosts),[160] influencing Robert Burns' "Halloween" (1785).[161] Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks, and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween. Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, and mythical monsters.[162] Black cats, which have been long associated with witches, are also a common symbol of Halloween. Black, orange, and sometimes purple are Halloween's traditional colors.[163]
Trick-or-treating and guising
Main article: Trick-or-treating
Trick-or-treaters in Sweden
Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" implies a "threat" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given.[64] The practice is said to have roots in the medieval practice of mumming, which is closely related to souling.[164] John Pymm wrote that "many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church."[165] These feast days included All Hallows' Eve, Christmas, Twelfth Night and Shrove Tuesday.[166][167] Mumming practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe,[168] involved masked persons in fancy dress who "paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence".[169]
Girl in a Halloween costume in 1928, Ontario, Canada, the same province where the Scottish Halloween custom of guising was first recorded in North America
In England, from the medieval period,[170] up until the 1930s,[171] people practiced the Christian custom of souling on Halloween, which involved groups of soulers, both Protestant and Catholic,[93] going from parish to parish, begging the rich for soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the souls of the givers and their friends.[67] In the Philippines, the practice of souling is called Pangangaluluwa and is practiced on All Hallow's Eve among children in rural areas.[26] People drape themselves in white cloths to represent souls and then visit houses, where they sing in return for prayers and sweets.[26]
In Scotland and Ireland, guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a traditional Halloween custom.[172] It is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money.[152][173] In Ireland, the most popular phrase for kids to shout (until the 2000s) was "Help the Halloween Party".[172] The practice of guising at Halloween in North America was first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.[174]
American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America".[175] In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries".[176]
While the first reference to "guising" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.[177] The earliest known use in print of the term "trick or treat" appears in 1927, in the Blackie Herald, of Alberta, Canada.[178]
An automobile trunk at a trunk-or-treat event at St. John Lutheran Church and Early Learning Center in Darien, Illinois
The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but not trick-or-treating.[179] Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice in North America until the 1930s, with the first US appearances of the term in 1934,[180] and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.[181]
A popular variant of trick-or-treating, known as trunk-or-treating (or Halloween tailgating), occurs when "children are offered treats from the trunks of cars parked in a church parking lot", or sometimes, a school parking lot.[100][182] In a trunk-or-treat event, the trunk (boot) of each automobile is decorated with a certain theme,[183] such as those of children's literature, movies, scripture, and job roles.[184] Trunk-or-treating has grown in popularity due to its perception as being more safe than going door to door, a point that resonates well with parents, as well as the fact that it "solves the rural conundrum in which homes [are] built a half-mile apart".[185][186]
Costumes
Main article: Halloween costume
Halloween costumes were traditionally modeled after figures such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, scary looking witches, and devils.[64] Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.
Halloween shop in Derry, Northern Ireland, selling masks
Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Scotland and Ireland at Halloween by the late 19th century.[152] A Scottish term, the tradition is called "guising" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children.[173] In Ireland and Scotland, the masks are known as 'false faces',[38][187] a term recorded in Ayr, Scotland in 1890 by a Scot describing guisers: "I had mind it was Halloween . . . the wee callans (boys) were at it already, rinning aboot wi’ their fause-faces (false faces) on and their bits o’ turnip lanthrons (lanterns) in their haun (hand)".[38] Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children, and when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in Canada and the US in the 1920s and 1930s.[178][188]
Eddie J. Smith, in his book Halloween, Hallowed is Thy Name, offers a religious perspective to the wearing of costumes on All Hallows' Eve, suggesting that by dressing up as creatures "who at one time caused us to fear and tremble", people are able to poke fun at Satan "whose kingdom has been plundered by our Saviour". Images of skeletons and the dead are traditional decorations used as memento mori.[189][190]
"Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" is a fundraising program to support UNICEF,[64] a United Nations Programme that provides humanitarian aid to children in developing countries. Started as a local event in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood in 1950 and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools (or in modern times, corporate sponsors like Hallmark, at their licensed stores) to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small-change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $118 million for UNICEF since its inception. In Canada, in 2006, UNICEF decided to discontinue their Halloween collection boxes, citing safety and administrative concerns; after consultation with schools, they instead redesigned the program.[191][192]
The yearly New York's Village Halloween Parade was begun in 1974; it is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, two million spectators, and a worldwide television audience.[193]
Since the late 2010s, ethnic stereotypes as costumes have increasingly come under scrutiny in the United States.[194] Such and other potentially offensive costumes have been met with increasing public disapproval.[195][196]
Pet costumes
According to a 2018 report from the National Retail Federation, 30 million Americans will spend an estimated $480 million on Halloween costumes for their pets in 2018. This is up from an estimated $200 million in 2010. The most popular costumes for pets are the pumpkin, followed by the hot dog, and the bumblebee in third place.[197]
Games and other activities
In this 1904 Halloween greeting card, divination is depicted: the young woman looking into a mirror in a darkened room hopes to catch a glimpse of her future husband.
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween. Some of these games originated as divination rituals or ways of foretelling one's future, especially regarding death, marriage and children. During the Middle Ages, these rituals were done by a "rare few" in rural communities as they were considered to be "deadly serious" practices.[198] In recent centuries, these divination games have been "a common feature of the household festivities" in Ireland and Britain.[125] They often involve apples and hazelnuts. In Celtic mythology, apples were strongly associated with the Otherworld and immortality, while hazelnuts were associated with divine wisdom.[199] Some also suggest that they derive from Roman practices in celebration of Pomona.[64]
Children bobbing for apples at Hallowe'en
The following activities were a common feature of Halloween in Ireland and Britain during the 17th–20th centuries. Some have become more widespread and continue to be popular today. One common game is apple bobbing or dunking (which may be called "dooking" in Scotland)[200] in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use only their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drive the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably leads to a sticky face. Another once-popular game involves hanging a small wooden rod from the ceiling at head height, with a lit candle on one end and an apple hanging from the other. The rod is spun round and everyone takes turns to try to catch the apple with their teeth.[201]
Image from the Book of Hallowe'en (1919) showing several Halloween activities, such as nut roasting
Several of the traditional activities from Ireland and Britain involve foretelling one's future partner or spouse. An apple would be peeled in one long strip, then the peel tossed over the shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name.[202][203] Two hazelnuts would be roasted near a fire; one named for the person roasting them and the other for the person they desire. If the nuts jump away from the heat, it is a bad sign, but if the nuts roast quietly it foretells a good match.[204][205] A salty oatmeal bannock would be baked; the person would eat it in three bites and then go to bed in silence without anything to drink. This is said to result in a dream in which their future spouse offers them a drink to quench their thirst.[206] Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror.[207] The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards[208] from the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Another popular Irish game was known as púicíní ("blindfolds"); a person would be blindfolded and then would choose between several saucers. The item in the saucer would provide a hint as to their future: a ring would mean that they would marry soon; clay, that they would die soon, perhaps within the year; water, that they would emigrate; rosary beads, that they would take Holy Orders (become a nun, priest, monk, etc.); a coin, that they would become rich; a bean, that they would be poor.[209][210][211][212] The game features prominently in the James Joyce short story "Clay" (1914).[213][214][215]
In Ireland and Scotland, items would be hidden in food – usually a cake, barmbrack, cranachan, champ or colcannon – and portions of it served out at random. A person's future would be foretold by the item they happened to find; for example, a ring meant marriage and a coin meant wealth.[216]
Up until the 19th century, the Halloween bonfires were also used for divination in parts of Scotland, Wales and Brittany. When the fire died down, a ring of stones would be laid in the ashes, one for each person. In the morning, if any stone was mislaid it was said that the person it represented would not live out the year.[110]
Telling ghost stories, listening to Halloween-themed songs and watching horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of television series and Halloween-themed specials (with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before Halloween, while new horror films are often released before Halloween to take advantage of the holiday.
Haunted attractions
Main article: Haunted attraction (simulated)
Humorous tombstones in front of a house in California
Humorous display window in Historic 25th Street, Ogden, Utah
Haunted attractions are entertainment venues designed to thrill and scare patrons. Most attractions are seasonal Halloween businesses that may include haunted houses, corn mazes, and hayrides,[217] and the level of sophistication of the effects has risen as the industry has grown.
The first recorded purpose-built haunted attraction was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in 1915 in Liphook, England. This attraction actually most closely resembles a carnival fun house, powered by steam.[218][219] The House still exists, in the Hollycombe Steam Collection.
It was during the 1930s, about the same time as trick-or-treating, that Halloween-themed haunted houses first began to appear in America. It was in the late 1950s that haunted houses as a major attraction began to appear, focusing first on California. Sponsored by the Children's Health Home Junior Auxiliary, the San Mateo Haunted House opened in 1957. The San Bernardino Assistance League Haunted House opened in 1958. Home haunts began appearing across the country during 1962 and 1963. In 1964, the San Manteo Haunted House opened, as well as the Children's Museum Haunted House in Indianapolis.[220]
The haunted house as an American cultural icon can be attributed to the opening of The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland on 12 August 1969.[221] Knott's Berry Farm began hosting its own Halloween night attraction, Knott's Scary Farm, which opened in 1973.[222] Evangelical Christians adopted a form of these attractions by opening one of the first "hell houses" in 1972.[223]
The first Halloween haunted house run by a nonprofit organization was produced in 1970 by the Sycamore-Deer Park Jaycees in Clifton, Ohio. It was cosponsored by WSAI, an AM radio station broadcasting out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was last produced in 1982.[224] Other Jaycees followed suit with their own versions after the success of the Ohio house. The March of Dimes copyrighted a "Mini haunted house for the March of Dimes" in 1976 and began fundraising through their local chapters by conducting haunted houses soon after. Although they apparently quit supporting this type of event nationally sometime in the 1980s, some March of Dimes haunted houses have persisted until today.[225]
On the evening of 11 May 1984, in Jackson Township, New Jersey, the Haunted Castle (Six Flags Great Adventure) caught fire. As a result of the fire, eight teenagers perished.[226] The backlash to the tragedy was a tightening of regulations relating to safety, building codes and the frequency of inspections of attractions nationwide. The smaller venues, especially the nonprofit attractions, were unable to compete financially, and the better funded commercial enterprises filled the vacuum.[227][228] Facilities that were once able to avoid regulation because they were considered to be temporary installations now had to adhere to the stricter codes required of permanent attractions.[229][230][231]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, theme parks entered the business seriously. Six Flags Fright Fest began in 1986 and Universal Studios Florida began Halloween Horror Nights in 1991. Knott's Scary Farm experienced a surge in attendance in the 1990s as a result of America's obsession with Halloween as a cultural event. Theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday. Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Studios Japan both participate, while Disney now mounts Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as in the United States.[232] The theme park haunts are by far the largest, both in scale and attendance.[233]
Food
Pumpkins for sale during Halloween
On All Hallows' Eve, many Western Christian denominations encourage abstinence from meat, giving rise to a variety of vegetarian foods associated with this day.[234]
A candy apple
Because in the Northern Hemisphere Halloween comes in the wake of the yearly apple harvest, candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America), caramel apples or taffy apples are common Halloween treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.
At one time, candy apples were commonly given to trick-or-treating children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples in the United States.[235] While there is evidence of such incidents,[236] relative to the degree of reporting of such cases, actual cases involving malicious acts are extremely rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.[237]
One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays, the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish: báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a plain ring, a coin, and other charms are placed before baking.[238] It is considered fortunate to be the lucky one who finds it.[238] It has also been said that those who get a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of king cake at the festival of Epiphany. Halloween-themed foods are also produced by companies in the lead up to the night, for example Cadbury releasing Goo Heads (similar to Creme Eggs) in spooky wrapping.[239]
A jack-o'-lantern Halloween cake with a witches hat
List of foods associated with Halloween:
Barmbrack (Ireland)
Bonfire toffee (Great Britain)
Candy apples/toffee apples (Great Britain and Ireland)
Candy apples, candy corn, candy pumpkins (North America)
Chocolate
Monkey nuts (peanuts in their shells) (Ireland and Scotland)
Caramel apples
Caramel corn
Colcannon (Ireland; see below)
Halloween cake
Sweets/candy
Novelty candy shaped like skulls, pumpkins, bats, worms, etc.
Roasted pumpkin seeds
Roasted sweet corn
Soul cakes
Pumpkin Pie
Christian religious observances
The Vigil of All Hallows' is being celebrated at an Episcopal Christian church on Hallowe'en
On Hallowe'en (All Hallows' Eve), in Poland, believers were once taught to pray out loud as they walk through the forests in order that the souls of the dead might find comfort; in Spain, Christian priests in tiny villages toll their church bells in order to remind their congregants to remember the dead on All Hallows' Eve.[240] In Ireland, and among immigrants in Canada, a custom includes the Christian practice of abstinence, keeping All Hallows' Eve as a meat-free day and serving pancakes or colcannon instead.[241] In Mexico children make an altar to invite the return of the spirits of dead children (angelitos).[242]
The Christian Church traditionally observed Hallowe'en through a vigil. Worshippers prepared themselves for feasting on the following All Saints' Day with prayers and fasting.[243] This church service is known as the Vigil of All Hallows or the Vigil of All Saints;[244][245] an initiative known as Night of Light seeks to further spread the Vigil of All Hallows throughout Christendom.[246][247] After the service, "suitable festivities and entertainments" often follow, as well as a visit to the graveyard or cemetery, where flowers and candles are often placed in preparation for All Hallows' Day.[248][249] In Finland, because so many people visit the cemeteries on All Hallows' Eve to light votive candles there, they "are known as valomeri, or seas of light".[250]
Halloween Scripture Candy with gospel tract
Today, Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the Anglican Church, some dioceses have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions associated with All Hallow's Eve.[251][252] Some of these practices include praying, fasting and attending worship services.[1][2][3]
O LORD our God, increase, we pray thee, and multiply upon us the gifts of thy grace: that we, who do prevent the glorious festival of all thy Saints, may of thee be enabled joyfully to follow them in all virtuous and godly living. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. —Collect of the Vigil of All Saints, The Anglican Breviary[253]
Votive candles in the Halloween section of Walmart
Other Protestant Christians also celebrate All Hallows' Eve as Reformation Day, a day to remember the Protestant Reformation, alongside All Hallow's Eve or independently from it.[254] This is because Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-five Theses to All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on All Hallows' Eve.[255] Often, "Harvest Festivals" or "Reformation Festivals" are held on All Hallows' Eve, in which children dress up as Bible characters or Reformers.[256] In addition to distributing candy to children who are trick-or-treating on Hallowe'en, many Christians also provide gospel tracts to them. One organization, the American Tract Society, stated that around 3 million gospel tracts are ordered from them alone for Hallowe'en celebrations.[257] Others order Halloween-themed Scripture Candy to pass out to children on this day.[258][259]
Belizean children dressed up as Biblical figures and Christian saints
Some Christians feel concerned about the modern celebration of Halloween because they feel it trivializes – or celebrates – paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs.[260] Father Gabriele Amorth, an exorcist in Rome, has said, "if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that."[261] In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a "Saint Fest" on Halloween.[262] Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage.[263] Christian minister Sam Portaro wrote that Halloween is about using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death".[264]
In the Roman Catholic Church, Halloween's Christian connection is acknowledged, and Halloween celebrations are common in many Catholic parochial schools, such as in the United States,[265][266] while schools throughout Ireland also close for the Halloween break.[267][268] Many fundamentalist and evangelical churches use "Hell houses" and comic-style tracts in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for evangelism.[269] Others consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith due to its putative origins in the Festival of the Dead celebration.[270] Indeed, even though Eastern Orthodox Christians observe All Hallows' Day on the First Sunday after Pentecost, The Eastern Orthodox Church recommends the observance of Vespers or a Paraklesis on the Western observance of All Hallows' Eve, out of the pastoral need to provide an alternative to popular celebrations.[271]
Analogous celebrations and perspectives
Judaism
According to Alfred J. Kolatch in the Second Jewish Book of Why, in Judaism, Halloween is not permitted by Jewish Halakha because it violates Leviticus 18:3, which forbids Jews from partaking in gentile customs. Many Jews observe Yizkor communally four times a year, which is vaguely similar to the observance of Allhallowtide in Christianity, in the sense that prayers are said for both "martyrs and for one's own family".[272] Nevertheless, many American Jews celebrate Halloween, disconnected from its Christian origins.[273] Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser has said that "There is no religious reason why contemporary Jews should not celebrate Halloween" while Orthodox Rabbi Michael Broyde has argued against Jews' observing the holiday.[274] Purim has sometimes been compared to Halloween, in part due to some observants wearing costumes, especially of Biblical figures described in the Purim narrative.[275]
Islam
Sheikh Idris Palmer, author of A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam, has ruled that Muslims should not participate in Halloween, stating that "participation in Halloween is worse than participation in Christmas, Easter, ... it is more sinful than congratulating the Christians for their prostration to the crucifix".[276] It has also been ruled to be haram by the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia because of its alleged pagan roots stating "Halloween is celebrated using a humorous theme mixed with horror to entertain and resist the spirit of death that influence humans".[277][278] Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah disagrees provided the celebration is not referred to as an 'eid' and that behaviour remains in line with Islamic principles.[279]
Hinduism
Hindus remember the dead during the festival of Pitru Paksha, during which Hindus pay homage to and perform a ceremony "to keep the souls of their ancestors at rest". It is celebrated in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada, usually in mid-September.[280] The celebration of the Hindu festival Diwali sometimes conflicts with the date of Halloween; but some Hindus choose to participate in the popular customs of Halloween.[281] Other Hindus, such as Soumya Dasgupta, have opposed the celebration on the grounds that Western holidays like Halloween have "begun to adversely affect our indigenous festivals".[282]
Neopaganism
There is no consistent rule or view on Halloween amongst those who describe themselves as Neopagans or Wiccans. Some Neopagans do not observe Halloween, but instead observe Samhain on 1 November,[283] some neopagans do enjoy Halloween festivities, stating that one can observe both "the solemnity of Samhain in addition to the fun of Halloween". Some neopagans are opposed to the celebration of Hallowe'en, stating that it "trivializes Samhain",[284] and "avoid Halloween, because of the interruptions from trick or treaters".[285] The Manitoban writes that "Wiccans don't officially celebrate Halloween, despite the fact that 31 Oct. will still have a star beside it in any good Wiccan's day planner. Starting at sundown, Wiccans celebrate a holiday known as Samhain. Samhain actually comes from old Celtic traditions and is not exclusive to Neopagan religions like Wicca. While the traditions of this holiday originate in Celtic countries, modern day Wiccans don't try to historically replicate Samhain celebrations. Some traditional Samhain rituals are still practised, but at its core, the period is treated as a time to celebrate darkness and the dead – a possible reason why Samhain can be confused with Halloween celebrations."[283]
Geography
Main article: Geography of Halloween
Halloween display in Kobe, Japan
The traditions and importance of Halloween vary greatly among countries that observe it. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include children dressing up in costume going "guising", holding parties, while other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays.[172][286][287] In Brittany children would play practical jokes by setting candles inside skulls in graveyards to frighten visitors.[288] Mass transatlantic immigration in the 19th century popularized Halloween in North America, and celebration in the United States and Canada has had a significant impact on how the event is observed in other nations.[172] This larger North American influence, particularly in iconic and commercial elements, has extended to places such as Brazil, Ecuador, Chile,[289] Australia,[290] New Zealand,[291] (most) continental Europe, Finland,[292] Japan, and other parts of East Asia." (wikipedia.org)
"The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain.[1] The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium (PL: craniums or crania) and the mandible.[2] In humans, these two parts are the neurocranium and the viscerocranium (facial skeleton) that includes the mandible as its largest bone. The skull forms the anterior-most portion of the skeleton and is a product of cephalisation—housing the brain, and several sensory structures such as the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.[3] In humans these sensory structures are part of the facial skeleton.
Functions of the skull include protection of the brain, fixing the distance between the eyes to allow stereoscopic vision, and fixing the position of the ears to enable sound localisation of the direction and distance of sounds. In some animals, such as horned ungulates (mammals with hooves), the skull also has a defensive function by providing the mount (on the frontal bone) for the horns.
The English word skull is probably derived from Old Norse skulle,[4] while the Latin word cranium comes from the Greek root κρανίον (kranion). The human skull fully develops two years after birth.The junctions of the skull bones are joined by structures called sutures.
The skull is made up of a number of fused flat bones, and contains many foramina, fossae, processes, and several cavities or sinuses. In zoology there are openings in the skull called fenestrae.
Structure
Humans
For details and the constituent bones, see Neurocranium and Facial skeleton.
Skull in situ
Anatomy of a flat bone – the periosteum of the neurocranium is known as the pericranium
Human skull from the front
Side bones of skull
The human skull is the bone structure that forms the head in the human skeleton. It supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain. Like the skulls of other vertebrates, it protects the brain from injury.[5]
The skull consists of three parts, of different embryological origin—the neurocranium, the sutures, and the facial skeleton (also called the membraneous viscerocranium). The neurocranium (or braincase) forms the protective cranial cavity that surrounds and houses the brain and brainstem.[6] The upper areas of the cranial bones form the calvaria (skullcap). The membranous viscerocranium includes the mandible.
The sutures are fairly rigid joints between bones of the neurocranium.
The facial skeleton is formed by the bones supporting the face.
Bones
Except for the mandible, all of the bones of the skull are joined by sutures—synarthrodial (immovable) joints formed by bony ossification, with Sharpey's fibres permitting some flexibility. Sometimes there can be extra bone pieces within the suture known as wormian bones or sutural bones. Most commonly these are found in the course of the lambdoid suture.
The human skull is generally considered to consist of twenty-two bones—eight cranial bones and fourteen facial skeleton bones. In the neurocranium these are the occipital bone, two temporal bones, two parietal bones, the sphenoid, ethmoid and frontal bones.
The bones of the facial skeleton (14) are the vomer, two inferior nasal conchae, two nasal bones, two maxilla, the mandible, two palatine bones, two zygomatic bones, and two lacrimal bones. Some sources count a paired bone as one, or the maxilla as having two bones (as its parts); some sources include the hyoid bone or the three ossicles of the middle ear but the overall general consensus of the number of bones in the human skull is the stated twenty-two.
Some of these bones—the occipital, parietal, frontal, in the neurocranium, and the nasal, lacrimal, and vomer, in the facial skeleton are flat bones.
Cavities and foramina
CT scan of a human skull in 3D
The skull also contains sinuses, air-filled cavities known as paranasal sinuses, and numerous foramina. The sinuses are lined with respiratory epithelium. Their known functions are the lessening of the weight of the skull, the aiding of resonance to the voice and the warming and moistening of the air drawn into the nasal cavity.
The foramina are openings in the skull. The largest of these is the foramen magnum that allows the passage of the spinal cord as well as nerves and blood vessels.
Processes
The many processes of the skull include the mastoid process and the zygomatic processes....The skull is a complex structure; its bones are formed both by intramembranous and endochondral ossification. The skull roof bones, comprising the bones of the facial skeleton and the sides and roof of the neurocranium, are dermal bones formed by intramembranous ossification, though the temporal bones are formed by endochondral ossification. The endocranium, the bones supporting the brain (the occipital, sphenoid, and ethmoid) are largely formed by endochondral ossification. Thus frontal and parietal bones are purely membranous.[11] The geometry of the skull base and its fossae, the anterior, middle and posterior cranial fossae changes rapidly. The anterior cranial fossa changes especially during the first trimester of pregnancy and skull defects can often develop during this time.[12]
At birth, the human skull is made up of 44 separate bony elements. During development, many of these bony elements gradually fuse together into solid bone (for example, the frontal bone). The bones of the roof of the skull are initially separated by regions of dense connective tissue called fontanelles. There are six fontanelles: one anterior (or frontal), one posterior (or occipital), two sphenoid (or anterolateral), and two mastoid (or posterolateral). At birth, these regions are fibrous and moveable, necessary for birth and later growth. This growth can put a large amount of tension on the "obstetrical hinge", which is where the squamous and lateral parts of the occipital bone meet. A possible complication of this tension is rupture of the great cerebral vein. As growth and ossification progress, the connective tissue of the fontanelles is invaded and replaced by bone creating sutures. The five sutures are the two squamous sutures, one coronal, one lambdoid, and one sagittal suture. The posterior fontanelle usually closes by eight weeks, but the anterior fontanel can remain open up to eighteen months. The anterior fontanelle is located at the junction of the frontal and parietal bones; it is a "soft spot" on a baby's forehead. Careful observation will show that you can count a baby's heart rate by observing the pulse pulsing softly through the anterior fontanelle.
The skull in the neonate is large in proportion to other parts of the body. The facial skeleton is one seventh of the size of the calvaria. (In the adult it is half the size). The base of the skull is short and narrow, though the inner ear is almost adult size....Society and culture
Adam was believed to have been buried on Mount Calvary. Silk embroidery (17th century).
Artificial cranial deformation is a largely historical practice of some cultures. Cords and wooden boards would be used to apply pressure to an infant's skull and alter its shape, sometimes quite significantly. This procedure would begin just after birth and would be carried on for several years.[citation needed]
Osteology
Like the face, the skull and teeth can also indicate a person's life history and origin. Forensic scientists and archaeologists use quantitative and qualitative traits to estimate what the bearer of the skull looked like. When a significant amount of bones are found, such as at Spitalfields in the UK and Jōmon shell mounds in Japan, osteologists can use traits, such as the proportions of length, height and width, to know the relationships of the population of the study with other living or extinct populations.[citation needed]
The German physician Franz Joseph Gall in around 1800 formulated the theory of phrenology, which attempted to show that specific features of the skull are associated with certain personality traits or intellectual capabilities of its owner. His theory is now considered to be pseudoscientific....History
Trepanning, a practice in which a hole is created in the skull, has been described as the oldest surgical procedure for which there is archaeological evidence,[40] found in the forms of cave paintings and human remains. At one burial site in France dated to 6500 BCE, 40 out of 120 prehistoric skulls found had trepanation holes.[" (wikipedia.org)
"Memento mori (Latin for 'remember that you [have to] die'[2]) is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death.[2] The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards.
The most common motif is a skull, often accompanied by one or more bones. Often this alone is enough to evoke the trope, but other motifs such as a coffin, hourglass and wilting flowers signify the impermanence of human mundane life. Often these function within a work whose main subject is something else, such as a portrait, but the vanitas is an artistic genre where the theme of death is the main subject. The Danse Macabre and Death personified with a scythe as the Grim Reaper are even more direct evocations of the trope.
Pronunciation and translation
In English, the phrase is typically pronounced /məˈmɛntoʊ ˈmɔːri/, mə-MEN-toh MOR-ee. It is reconstructed as ideally pronounced as something like [mɛˈmɛntoː ˈmɔriː] if spoken by an ancient Roman around the beginning of the AD era.[citation needed]
Memento is the 2nd person singular active future imperative of meminī, 'to remember, to bear in mind', usually serving as a warning: "remember!" Morī is the present infinitive of the deponent verb morior 'to die'.[3]
Thus, the phrase literally translates as “thou shalt remember to die” but may be loosely rendered as "remember death" or "remember that you die".[4]
History of the concept
In classical antiquity
The philosopher Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting tombs.[5] Plato's Phaedo, where the death of Socrates is recounted, introduces the idea that the proper practice of philosophy is "about nothing else but dying and being dead".[6]
The Stoics of classical antiquity were particularly prominent in their use of this discipline, and Seneca's letters are full of injunctions to meditate on death.[7] The Stoic Epictetus told his students that when kissing their child, brother, or friend, they should remind themselves that they are mortal, curbing their pleasure, as do "those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal".[8] The Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader (himself) to "consider how ephemeral and mean all mortal things are" in his Meditations.[9][10]
In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to "look behind".[11] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal", for example in Fahrenheit 451.
In Judaism
Several passages in the Old Testament urge a remembrance of death. In Psalm 90, Moses prays that God would teach his people "to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher insists that "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart" (Eccl. 7:2). In Isaiah, the lifespan of human beings is compared to the short lifespan of grass: "The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass" (Is. 40:7).
In early Christianity
The expression memento mori developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, Hades and salvation of the soul in the afterlife.[12] The 2nd-century Christian writer Tertullian claimed in his Apologeticus, that during a triumphal procession, a victorious general had someone standing behind him, holding a crown over his head and whispering: "Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori." ("Look after yourself. Remember you're a man. Remember you will die."). Though in modern times this has become a standard trope, in fact no other ancient authors confirm this, and it may have been Christian moralizing on Tertullians part rather than an accurate historical report.[13]
In Europe from the medieval era to the Victorian era
Dance of Death (replica of 15th-century fresco; National Gallery of Slovenia); No matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all.
Christian Theology
The thought was then utilized in Christianity, whose strong emphasis on divine judgment, heaven, hell, and the salvation of the soul brought death to the forefront of consciousness.[14] In the Christian context, the memento mori acquires a moralizing purpose quite opposed to the nunc est bibendum (now is the time to drink) theme of classical antiquity. To the Christian, the prospect of death serves to emphasize the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly pleasures, luxuries, and achievements, and thus also as an invitation to focus one's thoughts on the prospect of the afterlife. A Biblical injunction often associated with the memento mori in this context is In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis (the Vulgate's Latin rendering of Ecclesiasticus 7:40, "in all thy works be mindful of thy last end and thou wilt never sin.") This finds ritual expression in the rites of Ash Wednesday, when ashes are placed upon the worshipers' heads with the words, "Remember Man that you are dust and unto dust, you shall return."
Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.[15]
Architecture
Unshrouded skeleton on Diana Warburton's tomb (dated 1693) in St John the Baptist Church, Chester
The most obvious places to look for memento mori meditations are in funeral art and architecture. Perhaps the most striking to contemporary minds is the transi or cadaver tomb, a tomb that depicts the decayed corpse of the deceased. This became a fashion in the tombs of the wealthy in the fifteenth century, and surviving examples still offer a stark reminder of the vanity of earthly riches. Later, Puritan tomb stones in the colonial United States frequently depicted winged skulls, skeletons, or angels snuffing out candles. These are among the numerous themes associated with skull imagery.
Another example of memento mori is provided by the chapels of bones, such as the Capela dos Ossos in Évora or the Capuchin Crypt in Rome. These are chapels where the walls are totally or partially covered by human remains, mostly bones. The entrance to the Capela dos Ossos has the following sentence: "We bones, lying here bare, await yours."
Visual art
Philippe de Champaigne's Vanitas (c. 1671) is reduced to three essentials: Life, Death, and Time
Timepieces have been used to illustrate that the time of the living on Earth grows shorter with each passing minute. Public clocks would be decorated with mottos such as ultima forsan ("perhaps the last" [hour]) or vulnerant omnes, ultima necat ("they all wound, and the last kills"). Clocks have carried the motto tempus fugit, "time flees". Old striking clocks often sported automata who would appear and strike the hour; some of the celebrated automaton clocks from Augsburg, Germany, had Death striking the hour. Private people carried smaller reminders of their own mortality. Mary, Queen of Scots owned a large watch carved in the form of a silver skull, embellished with the lines of Horace, "Pale death knocks with the same tempo upon the huts of the poor and the towers of Kings."
In the late 16th and through the 17th century, memento mori jewelry was popular. Items included mourning rings,[16] pendants, lockets, and brooches.[17] These pieces depicted tiny motifs of skulls, bones, and coffins, in addition to messages and names of the departed, picked out in precious metals and enamel.[17][18]
During the same period there emerged the artistic genre known as vanitas, Latin for "emptiness" or "vanity". Especially popular in Holland and then spreading to other European nations, vanitas paintings typically represented assemblages of numerous symbolic objects such as human skulls, guttering candles, wilting flowers, soap bubbles, butterflies, and hourglasses. In combination, vanitas assemblies conveyed the impermanence of human endeavours and of the decay that is inevitable with the passage of time. See also the themes associated with the image of the skull. The 2007 screenprint by the street-artist Banksy "Grin Reaper" features the Grim Reaper with acid-house smiley face sitting on a clock desmonstrating death awaiting us all.[19]
Literature
Memento mori is also an important literary theme. Well-known literary meditations on death in English prose include Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial and Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying. These works were part of a Jacobean cult of melancholia that marked the end of the Elizabethan era. In the late eighteenth century, literary elegies were a common genre; Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Edward Young's Night Thoughts are typical members of the genre.
In the European devotional literature of the Renaissance, the Ars Moriendi, memento mori had moral value by reminding individuals of their mortality.[20]
Music
Apart from the genre of requiem and funeral music, there is also a rich tradition of memento mori in the Early Music of Europe. Especially those facing the ever-present death during the recurring bubonic plague pandemics from the 1340s onward tried to toughen themselves by anticipating the inevitable in chants, from the simple Geisslerlieder of the Flagellant movement to the more refined cloistral or courtly songs. The lyrics often looked at life as a necessary and god-given vale of tears with death as a ransom, and they reminded people to lead sinless lives to stand a chance at Judgment Day. The following two Latin stanzas (with their English translations) are typical of memento mori in medieval music; they are from the virelai Ad Mortem Festinamus of the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat from 1399:
Vita brevis breviter in brevi finietur,
Mors venit velociter quae neminem veretur,
Omnia mors perimit et nulli miseretur.
Ad mortem festinamus peccare desistamus.
Ni conversus fueris et sicut puer factus
Et vitam mutaveris in meliores actus,
Intrare non poteris regnum Dei beatus.
Ad mortem festinamus peccare desistamus.
Life is short, and shortly it will end;
Death comes quickly and respects no one,
Death destroys everything and takes pity on no one.
To death we are hastening, let us refrain from sinning.
If you do not turn back and become like a child,
And change your life for the better,
You will not be able to enter, blessed, the Kingdom of God.
To death we are hastening, let us refrain from sinning.
Danse macabre
The danse macabre is another well-known example of the memento mori theme, with its dancing depiction of the Grim Reaper carrying off rich and poor alike. This and similar depictions of Death decorated many European churches. ...The salutation of the Hermits of St. Paul of France
Memento mori was the salutation used by the Hermits of St. Paul of France (1620–1633), also known as the Brothers of Death.[21] It is sometimes claimed that the Trappists use this salutation, but this is not true.[22]
In Puritan America
Thomas Smith's Self-Portrait
Colonial American art saw a large number of memento mori images due to Puritan influence. The Puritan community in 17th-century North America looked down upon art because they believed that it drew the faithful away from God and, if away from God, then it could only lead to the devil. However, portraits were considered historical records and, as such, they were allowed. Thomas Smith, a 17th-century Puritan, fought in many naval battles and also painted. In his self-portrait, we see these pursuits represented alongside a typical Puritan memento mori with a skull, suggesting his awareness of imminent death.
The poem underneath the skull emphasizes Thomas Smith's acceptance of death and of turning away from the world of the living:
Why why should I the World be minding, Therein a World of Evils Finding. Then Farwell World: Farwell thy jarres, thy Joies thy Toies thy Wiles thy Warrs. Truth Sounds Retreat: I am not sorye. The Eternall Drawes to him my heart, By Faith (which can thy Force Subvert) To Crowne me (after Grace) with Glory.
Mexico's Day of the Dead
Posada's 1910 La Calavera Catrina
Main article: Day of the Dead
Much memento mori art is associated with the Mexican festival Day of the Dead, including skull-shaped candies and bread loaves adorned with bread "bones".
This theme was also famously expressed in the works of the Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada, in which people from various walks of life are depicted as skeletons.
Another manifestation of memento mori is found in the Mexican "Calavera", a literary composition in verse form normally written in honour of a person who is still alive, but written as if that person were dead. These compositions have a comedic tone and are often offered from one friend to another during Day of the Dead.[23]
Contemporary culture
Roman Krznaric suggests Memento Mori is an important topic to bring back into our thoughts and belief system; "Philosophers have come up with lots of what I call 'death tasters' – thought experiments for seizing the day."
These thought experiments are powerful to get us re-oriented back to death into current awareness and living with spontaneity. Albert Camus stated "Come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible." Jean-Paul Sartre expressed that life is given to us early, and is shortened at the end, all the while taken away at every step of the way, emphasizing that the end is only the beginning every day.[24]
Similar concepts across cultures
In Buddhism
The Buddhist practice maraṇasati meditates on death. The word is a Pāli compound of maraṇa 'death' (an Indo-European cognate of Latin mori) and sati 'awareness', so very close to memento mori. It is first used in early Buddhist texts, the suttapiṭaka of the Pāli Canon, with parallels in the āgamas of the "Northern" Schools.
In Japanese Zen and samurai culture
In Japan, the influence of Zen Buddhist contemplation of death on indigenous culture can be gauged by the following quotation from the classic treatise on samurai ethics, Hagakure:[25]
The Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or be there, imagining the most sightly way of dying, and putting one's mind firmly in death. Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done. There is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done.[26]
In the annual appreciation of cherry blossom and fall colors, hanami and momijigari, it was philosophized that things are most splendid at the moment before their fall, and to aim to live and die in a similar fashion.[citation needed]
In Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Citipati mask depicting Mahākāla. The skull mask of Citipati is a reminder of the impermanence of life and the eternal cycle of life and death.
In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a mind training practice known as Lojong. The initial stages of the classic Lojong begin with 'The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind', or, more literally, 'Four Contemplations to Cause a Revolution in the Mind'.[citation needed] The second of these four is the contemplation on impermanence and death. In particular, one contemplates that;
All compounded things are impermanent.
The human body is a compounded thing.
Therefore, death of the body is certain.
The time of death is uncertain and beyond our control.
There are a number of classic verse formulations of these contemplations meant for daily reflection to overcome our strong habitual tendency to live as though we will certainly not die today.
Lalitavistara Sutra
The following is from the Lalitavistara Sūtra, a major work in the classical Sanskrit canon:
ज्वलितं त्रिभवं जरव्याधिदुखैः मरणाग्निप्रदीप्तमनाथमिदम्।
भवनि शरणे सद मूढ जगत् भ्रमती भ्रमरो यथ कुम्भगतो॥
अध्रुवं त्रिभवं शरदभ्रनिभं नटरङ्गसमा जगिर् ऊर्मिच्युती।
गिरिनद्यसमं लघुशीघ्रजवं व्रजतायु जगे यथ विद्यु नभे॥
Beings are ablaze with the sufferings of sickness and old age,
And with no defence against the conflagration of Death
The bewildered, seeking refuge in worldly existence
Spin round and round, like bees trapped in a jar.
The three worlds are fleeting like autumn clouds.
Like a staged performance, beings come and go.
In tumultuous waves, rushing by, like rapids over a cliff.
Like lightning, wanderers in samsara burst into existence, and are gone in a flash.[27]
The Udānavarga
A very well known verse in the Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan canons states [this is from the Sanskrit version, the Udānavarga:
सर्वे क्षयान्ता निचयाः पतनान्ताः समुच्छ्रयाः |
सम्योगा विप्रयोगान्ता मरणान्तं हि जीवितम् |1,22|
All that is acquired will be lost
What rises will fall
Where there is meeting there will be separation
What is born will surely die.[28]
Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara
Shantideva, in the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra 'Bodhisattva's Way of Life' reflects at length:
कृताकृतापरीक्षोऽयं मृत्युर्विश्रम्भघातकः।
स्वस्थास्वस्थैरविश्वास्य आकमिस्मकमहाशनि:॥
२/३४॥
अप्रिया न भविष्यन्ति प्रियो मे न भविष्यति।
अहं च न भविष्यामि सर्वं च न भविष्यति॥
२/३७॥
तत्तत्स्मरणताम याति यद्यद्वस्त्वनुभयते।
स्वप्नानुभूतवत्सर्वं गतं न पूनरीक्ष्यते॥
२/३६॥
रात्रिन्दिवमविश्राममायुषो वर्धते व्ययः।
आयस्य चागमो नास्ति न मरिष्यामि किं न्वहम्॥
२/४०
यमदूतैर्गृहीतस्य कुतो बन्धुः कुतः सुह्रत्। पुण्यमेकं तदा त्राणं मया तच्च न सेवितम्॥
२/४१॥
Death does not differentiate between tasks done and undone.
This traitor is not to be trusted by the healthy or the ill,
for it is like an unexpected, great thunderbolt.
BCA 2.33
My enemies will not remain, nor will my friends remain.
I shall not remain. Nothing will remain.
BCA 2:35
Whatever is experienced will fade to a memory.
Like an experience in a dream,
everything that has passed will not be seen again.
BCA 2:36
Day and night, a life span unceasingly diminishes,
and there is no adding onto it. Shall I not die then?
BCA 2:39
For a person seized by the messengers of Death,
what good is a relative and what good is a friend?
At that time, merit alone is a protection,
and I have not applied myself to it.
BCA 2:41
In more modern Tibetan Buddhist works
In a practice text written by the 19th century Tibetan master Dudjom Lingpa for serious meditators, he formulates the second contemplation in this way:[29][30]
On this occasion when you have such a bounty of opportunities in terms of your body, environment, friends, spiritual mentors, time, and practical instructions, without procrastinating until tomorrow and the next day, arouse a sense of urgency, as if a spark landed on your body or a grain of sand fell in your eye. If you have not swiftly applied yourself to practice, examine the births and deaths of other beings and reflect again and again on the unpredictability of your lifespan and the time of your death, and on the uncertainty of your own situation. Meditate on this until you have definitively integrated it with your mind... The appearances of this life, including your surroundings and friends, are like last night's dream, and this life passes more swiftly than a flash of lightning in the sky. There is no end to this meaningless work. What a joke to prepare to live forever! Wherever you are born in the heights or depths of saṃsāra, the great noose of suffering will hold you tight. Acquiring freedom for yourself is as rare as a star in the daytime, so how is it possible to practice and achieve liberation? The root of all mind training and practical instructions is planted by knowing the nature of existence. There is no other way. I, an old vagabond, have shaken my beggar's satchel, and this is what came out.
The contemporary Tibetan master, Yangthang Rinpoche, in his short text 'Summary of the View, Meditation, and Conduct':[31]
།ཁྱེད་རྙེད་དཀའ་བ་མི་ཡི་ལུས་རྟེན་རྙེད། །སྐྱེ་དཀའ་བའི་ངེས་འབྱུང་གི་བསམ་པ་སྐྱེས། །མཇལ་དཀའ་བའི་མཚན་ལྡན་གྱི་བླ་མ་མཇལ། །འཕྲད་དཀའ་བ་དམ་པའི་ཆོས་དང་འཕྲད།
འདི་འདྲ་བའི་ལུས་རྟེན་བཟང་པོ་འདི། །ཐོབ་དཀའ་བའི་ཚུལ་ལ་ཡང་ཡང་སོམ། རྙེད་པ་འདི་དོན་ཡོད་མ་བྱས་ན། །འདི་མི་རྟག་རླུང་གསེབ་མར་མེ་འདྲ།
ཡུན་རིང་པོའི་བློ་གཏད་འདི་ལ་མེད། །ཤི་བར་དོར་གྲོལ་བའི་གདེངས་མེད་ན། །ཚེ་ཕྱི་མའི་སྡུག་བསྔལ་ཨ་རེ་འཇིགས། །མཐའ་མེད་པའི་འཁོར་བར་འཁྱམས་དགོས་ཚེ།
།འདིའི་རང་བཞིན་བསམ་ན་སེམས་རེ་སྐྱོ། །ཚེ་འདི་ལ་བློ་གདེངས་ཐོབ་པ་ཞིག །ཅི་ནས་ཀྱང་མཛད་རྒྱུ་བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ། །འདི་བདག་གིས་ཁྱོད་ལ་རེ་བ་ཡིན།
You have obtained a human life, which is difficult to find,
Have aroused an intention of a spirit of emergence, which is difficult to arouse,
Have met a qualified guru, who is difficult to meet,
And you have encountered the sublime Dharma, which is difficult to encounter.
Reflect again and again on the difficulty Of obtaining such a fine human life.
If you do not make this meaningful,
It will be like a butter lamp in the wind of impermanence.
Do not count on this lasting a long time.
The Tibetan Canon also includes copious materials on the meditative preparation for the death process and intermediate period bardo between death and rebirth. Amongst them are the famous "Tibetan Book of the Dead", in Tibetan Bardo Thodol, the "Natural Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo".
In Islam
The "remembrance of death" (Arabic: تذكرة الموت, Tadhkirat al-Mawt; deriving from تذكرة, tadhkirah, Arabic for memorandum or admonition), has been a major topic of Islamic spirituality since the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in Medina. It is grounded in the Qur'an, where there are recurring injunctions to pay heed to the fate of previous generations.[32] The hadith literature, which preserves the teachings of Muhammad, records advice for believers to "remember often death, the destroyer of pleasures."[33] Some Sufis have been called "ahl al-qubur," the "people of the graves," because of their practice of frequenting graveyards to ponder on mortality and the vanity of life, based on the teaching of Muhammad to visit graves.[34] Al-Ghazali devotes to this topic the last book of his "The Revival of the Religious Sciences".[35]
Iceland
The Hávamál ("Sayings of the High One"), a 13th-century Icelandic compilation poetically attributed to the god Odin, includes two sections – the Gestaþáttr and the Loddfáfnismál – offering many gnomic proverbs expressing the memento mori philosophy, most famously Gestaþáttr number 77:
Deyr fé,
deyja frændur,
deyr sjálfur ið sama;
ek veit einn at aldri deyr,
dómr um dauðan hvern.
Animals die,
friends die,
and thyself, too, shall die;
but one thing I know that never dies
the tales of the one who died." (wikipedia.org)
"Vanitas (Latin for 'vanity') is a genre of art which uses symbolism to show the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory items. The genre began in the 16th century and continued into the 17th century. Vanitas art is a type of allegorical art representing a higher ideal.
Etymology
The word vanitas comes from Latin and means vanity. Vanity is referenced in the Bible's Old Testament in Ecclesiastes 12:8, "Vanity of Vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity". The message is that human action is temporary and faith is forever.[1]
Vanitas is a sub-genre of still life painting which Dutch painters during the Baroque period (c.1585–1730) employed.[2] The Spanish painters also created vanitas paintings which coincided with the end of the Spanish Golden Age. Memento mori is a similar theme which when translated from Latin means, "remember that you will die."[3]
History
A group of painters in Leiden began to produce vanitas paintings beginning in the 16th century and they continued into the 17th century. Vanitas art is a type of allegorical art representing a higher ideal or containing hidden meanings.[4] Vanitas are very formulaic and they use literary and traditional symbols to convey mortality. Vanitas often have a message that is rooted in religion or the Christian Bible.[5]
In the 17th century the vanitas genre was popular among Dutch painters. The paintings often have symbolic imagery which attempts to convey the message that we will die, and we should think about futility of our earthly pursuits.[2] The well known Spanish vanitas refer to Spain's rulers and the politics of Spain.[3] It was popular to include skulls in vanitas paintings. In the 17th century, a skull symbolized the ephemeral nature of life.[4]
Outside visual art
The first movement in composer Robert Schumann's 5 Pieces in a Folk Style, for Cello and Piano, Op. 102 is entitled Vanitas vanitatum: Mit Humor.[6]
Vanitas vanitatum is the title of an oratorio written by an Italian Baroque composer Giacomo Carissimi (1604/05–1674).[7]
Vanitas is the seventh album by British Extreme Metal band Anaal Nathrakh.[8]
Vanitas is the name of a character from the Kingdom Hearts franchise.[9]
Vanitas is the name of one of the two main characters from Vanitas no Carte[10]
Vanitas is the motto of The Harvard Lampoon[11]
Vanitas (Platinum) | “Vanitas”]] is the second album by New Jersey Power Metal band Platinum.<rev
In modern times
Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, artwork, 1987.[12]
Alexander de Cadenet, Skull Portraits, various subjects, 1996 – present.[13]
Philippe Pasqua, series of skulls, sculpture, 1990s – present.[14]
Anne de Carbuccia, One Planet One Future, various subjects, 2013 – present." (wikipedia.org)
"Skull symbolism is the attachment of symbolic meaning to the human skull. The most common symbolic use of the skull is as a representation of death.
Humans can often recognize the buried fragments of an only partially revealed cranium even when other bones may look like shards of stone. The human brain has a specific region for recognizing faces,[1] and is so attuned to finding them that it can see faces in a few dots and lines or punctuation marks; the human brain cannot separate the image of the human skull from the familiar human face. Because of this, both the death and the now-past life of the skull are symbolized.
Hindu temples and depiction of some Hindu deities have displayed association with skulls.
Moreover, a human skull with its large eye sockets displays a degree of neoteny, which humans often find visually appealing—yet a skull is also obviously dead, and to some can even seem to look sad due to the downward facing slope on the ends of the eye sockets. A skull with the lower jaw intact may also appear to be grinning or laughing due to the exposed teeth. As such, human skulls often have a greater visual appeal than the other bones of the human skeleton, and can fascinate even as they repel. Societies predominantly associate skulls with death and evil.
Unicode reserves character U+1F480 (💀) for a human skull pictogram.
Examples
Throughout the centuries skulls symbolized either warnings of various threats or as reminder of the vanity of earthly pleasures in contrast with our own mortality. Nevertheless, the skull seems to be omnipresent in the first decade of the twenty-first century, appearing on jeweler, bags, clothing and in the shape of various decorative items. However, the increasing use of the skull as a visual symbol in popular culture reduces its original meaning as well as its traditional connotation.[2][3]
Literature
One of the best-known examples of skull symbolism occurs in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the title character recognizes the skull of an old friend: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest..." Hamlet is inspired to utter a bitter soliloquy of despair and rough ironic humor.
Compare Hamlet's words "Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft" to Talmudic sources: "...Rabi Ishmael [the High Priest]... put [the severed head of a martyr] in his lap... and cried: oh sacred mouth!...who buried you in ashes...!". The skull was a symbol of melancholy for Shakespeare's contemporaries.[4]
An old Yoruba folktale[5] tells of a man who encountered a skull mounted on a post by the wayside. To his astonishment, the skull spoke. The man asked the skull why it was mounted there. The skull said that it was mounted there for talking. The man then went to the king, and told the king of the marvel he had found, a talking skull. The king and the man returned to the place where the skull was mounted; the skull remained silent. The king then commanded that the man be beheaded, and ordered that his head be mounted in place of the skull.
The skull speaks in the catacombs of the Capuchin brothers beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome,[6] where disassembled bones and teeth and skulls of the departed Capuchins have been rearranged to form a rich Baroque architecture of the human condition, in a series of anterooms and subterranean chapels with the inscription, set in bones:
Noi eravamo quello che voi siete, e quello che noi siamo voi sarete.
"We were what you are; and what we are, you will be."
Art
The skull of Adam at the foot of the Cross: detail from a Crucifixion by Fra Angelico, 1435
The Serpent crawling through the eyes of a skull is a familiar image that survives in contemporary Goth subculture. The serpent is a chthonic god of knowledge and of immortality, because he sloughs off his skin. The serpent guards the Tree in the Greek Garden of the Hesperides and, later, a Tree in the Garden of Eden. The serpent in the skull is always making its way through the socket that was the eye: knowledge persists beyond death, the emblem says, and the serpent has the secret.
The late medieval and Early Renaissance Northern and Italian painters place the skull where it lies at the foot of the Cross at Golgotha (Aramaic for the place of the skull). But for them it has become quite specifically the skull of Adam.
Skull on table Vanitas, by Pieter Claesz, painted in 1630
In Elizabethan England, the Death's-Head Skull, usually a depiction without the lower jawbone, was emblematic of bawds, rakes, sexual adventurers and prostitutes; the term Death's-Head was actually parlance for these rakes, and most of them wore half-skull rings to advertise their station, either professionally or otherwise. The original Rings were wide silver objects, with a half-skull decoration not much wider than the rest of the band; This allowed it to be rotated around the finger to hide the skull in polite company, and to reposition it in the presence of likely conquests.[citation needed]
Venetian painters of the 16th century elaborated moral allegories for their patrons, and memento mori was a common theme. The theme carried by an inscription on a rustic tomb, "Et in Arcadia ego"—"I too [am] in Arcadia", if it is Death that is speaking—is made famous by two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, but the motto made its pictorial debut in Guercino's version, 1618–22 (in the Galleria Barberini, Rome): in it, two awestruck young shepherds come upon an inscribed plinth, in which the inscription ET IN ARCADIA EGO gains force from the prominent presence of a wormy skull in the foreground.
lady at round mirror and dressing table resembling a skull "All is Vanity" by C. Allan Gilbert
All is Vanity by C. Allan Gilbert, 1873–1929
In C. Allan Gilbert's much-reproduced lithograph of a lovely Gibson Girl seated at her fashionable vanity table, an observer can witness its transformation into an alternate image. A ghostly echo of the worldly Magdalene's repentance motif lurks behind this turn-of-the-20th century icon. The skull becomes an icon itself when its painted representation becomes a substitute for the real thing. Simon Schama chronicled the ambivalence of the Dutch to their own worldly success during the Dutch Golden Age of the first half of the 17th century in The Embarrassment of Riches.
The possibly frivolous and merely decorative nature of the still life genre was avoided by Pieter Claesz in his Vanitas: Skull, opened case-watch, overturned emptied wineglasses, snuffed candle, book: "Lo, the wine of life runs out, the spirit is snuffed, oh Man, for all your learning, time yet runs on: Vanity!" The visual cues of the hurry and violence of life are contrasted with eternity in this somber, still and utterly silent painting.
Symbolism of Fortuna's wheel divine justice and Skull mortality in a Pompeiian mosaic
Symbolism of chance (Fortuna's wheel) divine justice (right angle and plumb-bob) and mortality in a Pompeiian mosaic
The skull speaks. It says "Et in Arcadia ego" or simply "Vanitas." In a first-century mosaic tabletop from a Pompeiian triclinium (now in Naples), the skull is crowned with a carpenter's square and plumb-bob, which dangles before its empty eyesockets (Death as the great leveler), while below is an image of the ephemeral and changeable nature of life: a butterfly atop a wheel—a table for a philosopher's symposium.
Similarly, a skull might be seen crowned by a chaplet of dried roses, a carpe diem, though rarely as bedecked as Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina.
In Mesoamerican architecture, stacks of skulls (real or sculpted) represented the result of human sacrifices.
Pirates
The pirate death's-head epitomizes the pirates' ruthlessness and despair; their usage of death imagery might be paralleled with their occupation challenging the natural order of things.[7] "Pirates also affirmed their unity symbolically", Marcus Rediker asserts, remarking the skeleton or skull symbol with bleeding heart and hourglass on the black pirate ensign, and asserting "it triad of interlocking symbols—death, violence, limited time—simultaneously pointed to meaningful parts of the seaman's experience, and eloquently bespoke the pirates' own consciousness of themselves as preyed upon in turn. Pirates seized the symbol of mortality from ship captains who used the skull 'as a marginal sign in their logs to indicate the record of a death'"[8]
Religion
The Mexican death goddess or folk saint known as Santa Muerte is portrayed with a skull instead of a normal head.[9]
Skull art is found in depictions of some Hindu Gods. Shiva has been depicted as carrying skull.[10] Goddess Chamunda is described as wearing a garland of severed heads or skulls (Mundamala). Kedareshwara Temple, Hoysaleswara Temple, Chennakeshava Temple, Lakshminarayana Temple are some of the Hindu temples that include sculptures of skulls and Goddess Chamunda.[11] The temple of Kali is veneered with skulls, but the goddess Kali offers life through the welter of blood.
In Vajrayana Buddhist iconography, skull symbolism is often used in depictions of wrathful deities and of dakinis.
In some Korean life replacement narratives, a person discovers an abandoned skull and worships it. The skull later gives advice on how to cheat the gods of death and prevent an early death.
An example of the OSS "Black Propaganda" Humor: at left an Adolf Hitler profile on a "German Reich" stamp; at right the OSS-forged Hitler face version, turned into a death's head on a "Fallen Reich" stamp
Political symbol
A skull was worn as a trophy on the belt of the Lombard king Alboin, it was a constant grim triumph over his old enemy, and he drank from it. In the same way a skull is a warning when it decorates the palisade of a city, or deteriorates on a pike at a Traitor's Gate. The Skull Tower, with the embedded skulls of Serbian rebels, was built in 1809 on the highway near Niš, Serbia, as a stark political warning from the Ottoman government. In this case the skulls are the statement: that the current owner had the power to kill the former. "Drinking out of a skull the blood of slain (sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammianus and Livy,[12] and Solinus describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood of the slain and drinking it."[13] The rafters of a traditional Jívaro medicine house in Peru, or in New Guinea.[14]
When the skull appears in Nazi SS insignia, the death's-head (Totenkopf) represents loyalty unto death.
Humans typically note the skull and crossbones sign as the almost universal symbol for toxicity.
Holidays
Skulls and skeletons are the main symbol of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday. Skull-shaped decorations called calaveras are a common sight during the festivities.
Skull on a gravestone edge, at Durisdeer
Skull on a gravestone edge, Durisdeer
Other uses
When tattooed on the forearm its apotropaic power is thought to help an outlaw biker cheat death.[15]
The skull and crossbones signify "Poison" when they appear on a glass bottle containing a white powder, or any container in general.
The skull that is often engraved or carved on the head of early New England tombstones might be merely a symbol of mortality, but the skull is also often backed by an angelic pair of wings, lofting mortality beyond its own death....Skulls and memento mori, as for example the diamond-studded skull For the Love of God by Damien Hirst,[16] have become a popular trend in pop culture...Skulls have been also found on clothing items for men, women and children.[2] Some sources credited Alexander McQueen for introducing skulls as a fashion trend with stylized skulls, starting with skull-decorated bags and scarves. The trend is extant by the early 2010s." (wikipedia.org)
"Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements.[1] In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "render" commonly refers to external applications.[2] The term stucco refers to plasterwork that is worked in some way to produce relief decoration, rather than flat surfaces.
The most common types of plaster mainly contain either gypsum, lime, or cement,[3] but all work in a similar way. The plaster is manufactured as a dry powder and is mixed with water to form a stiff but workable paste immediately before it is applied to the surface. The reaction with water liberates heat through crystallization and the hydrated plaster then hardens.
Plaster can be relatively easily worked with metal tools and sandpaper and can be moulded, either on site or in advance, and worked pieces can be put in place with adhesive. Plaster is suitable for finishing rather than load-bearing, and when thickly applied for decoration may require a hidden supporting framework.
Forms of plaster have several other uses. In medicine, plaster orthopedic casts are still often used for supporting set broken bones. In dentistry, plaster is used to make dental models by pouring the material into dental impressions. Various types of models and moulds are made with plaster. In art, lime plaster is the traditional matrix for fresco painting; the pigments are applied to a thin wet top layer of plaster and fuse with it so that the painting is actually in coloured plaster. In the ancient world, as well as the sort of ornamental designs in plaster relief that are still used, plaster was also widely used to create large figurative reliefs for walls, though few of these have survived." (wikipedia.org)
"Skull art is found in various cultures of the world.
Indigenous Mexican art celebrates the skeleton and uses it as a regular motif. The use of skulls and skeletons in art originated before the Conquest: The Aztecs excelled in stone sculptures and created striking carvings of their Gods.[1] Coatlicue, the Goddess of earth and death, was portrayed with a necklace of human hearts, hands and a skull pendant. She was imbued with the drama and grandeur necessary to dazzle the subject people and to convey the image of an implacable state. The worship of death involved worship of life, while the skull – symbol of death – was a promise to resurrection. The Aztecs carved skulls in monoliths of lava, and made masks of obsidian and jade. Furthermore, the skull motif was used in decoration. They were molded on pots, traced on scrolls, woven into garments, and formalized into hieroglyphs. Hindu temples and depiction of some Hindu deities have displayed skull art.
Spanish invasion
When the Spanish invaded and conquered Tenochtitlan in the sixteenth century, they imposed the Catholic religion and Spanish folk-practices of the era. This included the pagan tradition of celebrating the dead with food-offerings and feasts. However, the Spanish priests were eager to discontinue these ancient traditions that found fertile ground in Mexico. The Spanish suppressed the Mexican skull art tradition because it was too Indito or pagan for their European tastes. Not until Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, did skull art begin to re-emerge as a symbol of Mexicanidad.[citation needed]
Hindu art
Skull art is found in depictions of some Hindu Gods. Lord Shiva has been depicted as carrying skull.[2] Goddess Chamunda is described as wearing a garland of severed heads or skulls (Mundamala). Kedareshwara Temple, Hoysaleswara Temple, Chennakeshava Temple, Lakshminarayana Temple are some of the Hindu temples that include sculptures of skulls and Goddess Chamunda.[3] The temple of Kali is veneered with skulls.[4]
Regime of Porfirio Díaz
When Porfirio Díaz became president, Mexico was burdened with a bankrupt economy. To help the economic situation, Díaz encouraged foreign investments, and investors found a cheap labor force. The Mexican–Indian laborer worked under cruel conditions. Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada with his drawing criticized the conditions in Mexico. Posada is probably the most important Mexican artist of our times. During his lifetime, he was a witness to the crucial social and political changes which shaped Mexico into a modern nation, such as the downfall of a dictator, widespread social revolution, and the struggle for power combined with the birth of a democratic process, all of which deeply influenced him. Through his work, he documented these occurrences and became a pictorial historian.
José Guadalupe Posada
Posada's Skull art was a chilling message
Posada's drawings brought an awakening to the common man. He made those who could not read to understand what was happening in their country. Although the use of skulls and skeletons in art had been suppressed by foreign influences, it was still recognized among the poor in their celebrations of the Day of the Dead. Using skull art was Posada's way to make a connection with the popular audience. Reproduced on box lids is his most famous engraving – la Calavera Catrina – which shows a fashionable lady in the guise of a skeleton. Diego Rivera called José Guadalupe Posada the greatest Mexican people's artist. From this influence, Rivera painted common people living and working in their environment. His work also carried a social message.
Posada and Rivera deeply influenced the Jaliscano Jorge González Camarena, who disregarded the traditional methods and embraced the popular art of Posada and Rivera. Recurring battle scenes appear in González Camarena's work where Revolutionary soldiers become part of the ancient Mexican history as their lifeless bodies change into skeletons.
José Guadalupe Posada's version of Skull art used as a political message to those who did not know how to read.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was also the product of a bold and brilliant generation that looked back with devotion to its Mexican roots and valued the reality it found there, uncontaminated by foreign influence. She admitted having a great deal of admiration for her husband's work, as well as that of Jose Guadalupe Posada and she found great beauty in the highly developed pre-Conquest indigenous art.
Surrealists
Frida was claimed early on by André Breton and the Surrealists as one of their own, and for a time she did not mind to be caught up and identified with the chic vanguard movement. But, later she declared herself not one of them because she said "I painted dreams, I painted my own reality." In the 1940s she painted "The Dream," where a conscious skeleton floats above the sleeping Frida. The Mexican brujos say "to live is to sleep and to die is to awaken." For Frida, perhaps, death like dreams exists in parallel.
Diego Rivera's Skull art expression
Chucho Reyes
While Frida's work focused on Mexicanidad, Chucho Reyes integrated European fine art styles with the essence of the popular Mexican skull art. Perhaps his art was politically unpopular for those who chose to disregard foreign influences. However, Reyes's unconventional combination was most likely influenced by his eccentric father who, although devoutly Catholic, practiced brujeria. He slept in a bed where roosters were tied to each bedpost and a large eye was painted above his bed on the ceiling.[citation needed][original research?]
Superstitions and saints
Although modernly the ancient Aztec religious traditions that have remained are called brujeria by those who practice European religions, in Oaxaca – superstitions and saints are spoken in the same breath.
Rufino Tamayo and the Oaxacan School
Rufino Tamayo founded the Oaxacan school of painting on the principle that although painting must take place on the plastic level, it does not exclude the possibility that the work contain a profound consequence not altogether expressed. Tamayo seemed to strip away man's external self, found for instance in religion, in order to examine man's fundamental fears. His fear of nature, of the cosmos, and above everything else, man's fear of himself. The subtle and rich art of pre-Columbian times greatly inspired Tamayo. From this influence he painted man as a transparent flesh existing on a living skeleton.
Francisco Toledo
On the other hand, Francisco Toledo painted his subjects as if they were x-rays. Salacious curiosity with the inner being becomes almost pornographic as his erotic and irreverent resurgence of Skull Art comes forward.
Rodolfo Nieto
While Rufino Tamayo founded the Oaxacan School, it was Rodolfo Nieto who defined it. Rodolfo added a dramatic tone to skull art. Using light colors fixed against dark hues, he showed the continual battle of life and death. With gaiety, humor, whimsies, and boyhood stories of Tarzan the Ape Man fighting the perils of the jungle, Rodolfo laughed at death while living in the shadows of his own deepening depression.[5] Flashes of light confused by color, juxtaposed against the stark black canvasses, he did not attempt to define human existence, but just to live it, knowing that the skull was always within him.[6] His painter wife Nancy Nieto removed the fleshy mask of life in order to examine the basis of life, the skull and skeleton.....
Chicano / Mexican – American
Often Chicano or Mexican American artists turn to their history, recently and notably Nancy Nieto brings a bold resurgence to the ancient tradition of Mexican skull art. Woven into a veil of rich colors and unconventional forms, adopted from the Oaxacan School, her work removes the veil of the mystery of life only to reveal the mystery of death. She shows depths of mystery yet has a harmonious eurhythmic note of the epic origins of the chromatic Oaxaca. She struggles to re-address Francisco Toledo's erotic themes, and to step away from Rodolfo Nieto's dramatic tomes. Her work renews the Aztec view of death as a transitional cycle between the individual life and the ubiquitous "to be"." (wikipedia.org)
"The Danse Macabre (/dɑːns məˈkɑːb(rə)/; French pronunciation: [dɑ̃s ma.kabʁ]) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.
The Danse Macabre consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer. The effect is both frivolous and terrifying, beseeching its audience to react emotionally. It was produced as memento mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain are the glories of earthly life.[1] Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme was a now-lost mural at Holy Innocents' Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424 to 1425.
Background
Historian Francis Rapp (1926–2020) writes that "Christians were moved by the sight of the Infant Jesus playing on his mother's knee; their hearts were touched by the Pietà; and patron saints reassured them by their presence. But, all the while, the danse macabre urged them not to forget the end of all earthly things."[2] This Danse Macabre was enacted at village pageants and at court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and may have been the origin of costumes worn during Allhallowtide.[3][4][5][6]
In her thesis, The Black Death and its Effect on 14th and 15th Century Art, Anna Louise Des Ormeaux describes the effect of the Black Death on art, mentioning the Danse Macabre as she does so:
Some plague art contains gruesome imagery that was directly influenced by the mortality of the plague or by the medieval fascination with the macabre and awareness of death that were augmented by the plague. Some plague art documents psychosocial responses to the fear that plague aroused in its victims. Other plague art is of a subject that directly responds to people's reliance on religion to give them hope.[7]
The cultural impact of mass outbreaks of disease are not fleeting or temporary. The effect can endure past the initial stages of outbreak, in its deep etching upon the culture and society. This can be seen in the artworks and motifs of Danse Macabre as people attempted to cope with the death surrounding them.
Paintings
Charnel house at Holy Innocents' Cemetery, Paris, with mural of a Danse Macabre (1424–25)
What is often considered to be the earliest recorded visual example is the lost mural on the South wall of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris. It was painted in 1424–25 during the regency of John, Duke of Bedford (1389–1435). It features an emphatic inclusion of a dead crowned king at a time when France did not have a crowned king. The mural may well have had a political subtext.[8] However, some have argued that 14th century Triumph of Death paintings such as the fresco by Francesco Traini are also examples of danse macabre.[9]
There were also painted schemes in Basel (the earliest dating from c. 1440); a series of paintings on canvas by Bernt Notke (1440–1509) in Lübeck (1463); the initial fragment of the original Bernt Notke painting Danse Macabre (accomplished at the end of the 15th century) in the St Nicholas' Church, Tallinn, Estonia; the painting at the back wall of the chapel of Sv. Marija na Škrilinama in the Istrian town of Beram (1474), painted by Vincent of Kastav; the painting in the Holy Trinity Church of Hrastovlje, Istria by John of Kastav (1490). ...A notable example was painted on the cemetery walls of the Dominican Abbey, in Bern, by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch (1484–1530) in 1516/7. This work of art was destroyed when the wall was torn down in 1660, but a 1649 copy by Albrecht Kauw (1621–1681) is extant. There was also a Dance of Death painted around 1430 and displayed on the walls of Pardon Churchyard at Old St Paul's Cathedral, London, with texts by John Lydgate (1370–1451) known as the 'Dance of (St) Poulys', which was destroyed in 1549.
The deathly horrors of the 14th century such as recurring famines, the Hundred Years' War in France, and, most of all, the Black Death, were culturally assimilated throughout Europe. The omnipresent possibility of sudden and painful death increased the religious desire for penance, but it also evoked a hysterical desire for amusement while still possible; a last dance as cold comfort. The Danse Macabre combines both desires: in many ways similar to the medieval mystery plays, the dance-with-death allegory was originally a didactic dialogue poem to remind people of the inevitability of death and to advise them strongly to be prepared at all times for death (see memento mori and Ars moriendi).
Short verse dialogues between Death and each of its victims, which could have been performed as plays, can be found in the direct aftermath of the Black Death in Germany and in Spain (where it was known as the Totentanz and la Danza de la Muerte, respectively).
The French term Danse Macabre may derive from the Latin Chorea Machabæorum, literally "dance of the Maccabees."[10][11] In 2 Maccabees, a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, the grim martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons is described and was a well-known medieval subject. It is possible that the Maccabean Martyrs were commemorated in some early French plays, or that people just associated the book's vivid descriptions of the martyrdom with the interaction between Death and its prey.
An alternative explanation is that the term entered France via Spain, the Arabic: مقابر, maqabir (pl., "cemeteries") being the root of the word. Both the dialogues and the evolving paintings were ostensive penitential lessons that even illiterate people (who were the overwhelming majority) could understand.
Mural paintings
Frescoes and murals dealing with death had a long tradition, and were widespread. For example, the legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead. On a ride or hunt, three young gentlemen meet three cadavers (sometimes described as their ancestors) who warn them, Quod fuimus, estis; quod sumus, vos eritis ("What we were, you are; what we are, you will be"). Numerous mural versions of that legend from the 13th century onwards have survived (for instance, in the Hospital Church of Wismar or the residential Longthorpe Tower outside Peterborough). Since they showed pictorial sequences of men and corpses covered with shrouds, those paintings are sometimes regarded as cultural precursors of the new genre.
A Danse Macabre painting may show a round dance headed by Death or, more usually, a chain of alternating dead and live dancers. From the highest ranks of the mediaeval hierarchy (usually pope and emperor) descending to its lowest (beggar, peasant, and child), each mortal's hand is taken by an animated skeleton or cadaver. The famous Totentanz by Bernt Notke in St. Mary's Church, Lübeck (destroyed during the Allied bombing of Lübeck in World War II), presented the dead dancers as very lively and agile, making the impression that they were actually dancing, whereas their living dancing partners looked clumsy and passive. The apparent class distinction in almost all of these paintings is completely neutralized by Death as the ultimate equalizer, so that a sociocritical element is subtly inherent to the whole genre. The Totentanz of Metnitz, for example, shows how a pope crowned with his tiara is being led into Hell by Death. ..Textual examples of the Danse Macabre
The Danse Macabre was a frequent motif in poetry, drama and other written literature in the Middle Ages in several areas of western Europe. There is a Spanish Danza de la Muerte, a French Danse Macabre, and a German Totentanz with various Latin manuscripts written during the 14th century.[23] Printed editions of books began appearing in the 15th century, such as the ones produced by Guy Marchant of Paris. Similarly to the musical or artistic representations, the texts describe living and dead persons being called to dance or form a procession with Death.[24]
Danse Macabre texts were often, though not always, illustrated with illuminations and woodcuts.[25]
There is one danse macabre text devoted entirely to women: The Danse Macabre of Women. This work survives in five manuscripts, and two printed editions. In it, 36 women of various ages, in Paris, are called from their daily lives and occupations to join the Dance with Death. An English translation of the French manuscript was published by Ann Tukey Harrison in 1994.[26]
John Lydgate's Dance of Death is a Middle English poem written in the early 15th century. It is a translation of a French poem of the same name, and it is one of the most popular examples of the Danse Macabre genre.[27]
The poem is a moral allegory in which Death leads a procession of people from all walks of life to their graves. The poem includes a variety of characters, including the pope, the emperor, the pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the abbot, the prioress, the monk, the nun, the doctor, the lawyer, the merchant, the knight, the plowman, the beggar, and the child.
The poem is a reminder that death is inevitable for everyone, regardless of their social status or wealth. It is also a warning against the dangers of pride and greed.[28] The poem is written in rhyme royal, a seven-line stanzaic form that was popular in the Middle Ages [29].
Literary influence
The "Death and the Maiden motif", known from paintings since the early 16th century, is related to, and may have been derived from, the Danse Macabre. It has received numerous treatments in various media – most prominently Schubert's lied "Der Tod und das Mädchen" (1817) and the String Quartet No. 14 Death and the Maiden, partly derived from its musical material. Further developments of the Danse Macabre motif include:
Godfather Death, a fairy tale, collected by the Brothers Grimm (first published in 1812).
"After Holbein" (1928), short story by Edith Wharton, first published in the Saturday Evening Post in May 1928; republished in Certain People (1930) and in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, ed. Roxana Robinson (New York Review Books, 2007).
"Death and the Compass" (original title: "La muerte y la brújula", 1942), short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
A Danse Macabre scene is depicted near the end of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal.
"Death and the Senator", short story (1961) by Arthur C. Clarke.
"Dance Cadaverous" is a song written and performed by Wayne Shorter (released 1966).
Death and the King's Horseman, play by Wole Soyinka (premiered 1975).
Dance with Death, a jazz album released in 1980 by Andrew Hill.
Danse Macabre, a 1981 non-fiction work by Stephen King.
The Graveyard Book, a 2008 novel by Neil Gaiman. Chapter five, "Danse Macabre", depicts the ghosts of the Graveyard dancing with the inhabitants of the Old Town.
"Death Dance" (2016), a song written and performed by American rock band, Sevendust.
"Lincoln in the Bardo" a novel by George Saunders(published in 2017).
"Dance Macabre", a song written and performed by Swedish metal or hard rock band Ghost on their 2018 album Prequelle, concentrating on the Black Death plague of the 14th century.
Danse Macabre (Duran Duran album) (2023) is the sixteenth studio album by the British band Duran Duran. A Halloween-themed album, the record includes three new tracks, covers and reimagined versions of Duran Duran classics." (wikipedia.org)
"Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper (usually depicted as a berobed skeleton wielding a scythe) causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Other beliefs hold that the spectre of death is only a psychopomp, a benevolent figure who serves to gently sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. Death is most often personified in male form, although in certain cultures death is perceived as female (for instance, Marzanna in Slavic mythology, or Santa Muerte in Mexico). Death is also portrayed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
By region
Americas
Latin America
As is the case in many Romance languages (including French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian), the Spanish word for death, muerte, is a feminine noun. As such, it is common in Spanish-speaking cultures to personify death as a female figure. A common term for the personification of death across Latin America is "la Parca" ("The Robe"), a figure similar to the Anglophone Grim Reaper, though usually depicted as female and without wielding a scythe.
Mictlantecutli in the Codex Borgia
Mictlantecutli in the Codex Borgia
In Aztec mythology, Mictecacihuatl is the "Queen of Mictlan" (the Aztec underworld), ruling over the afterlife with her husband Mictlantecuhtli. Other epithets for her include "Lady of the Dead," as her role includes keeping watch over the bones of the dead. Mictecacihuatl was represented with a fleshless body and with jaw agape to swallow the stars during the day. She presided over the ancient festivals of the dead, which evolved from Aztec traditions into the modern Day of the Dead after synthesis with Spanish cultural traditions.[citation needed] Mictlāntēcutli, is the Aztec god of the dead and the king of Mictlan, depicted as a skeleton or a person wearing a toothy skull.[1] He is one of the principal gods of the Aztecs and is the most prominent of several gods and goddesses of death and the underworld. His headdress was shown decorated with owl feathers and paper banners and he wore a necklace of human eyeballs,[2] while his earspools were made from human bones.[3] He was not the only Aztec god to be depicted in this fashion, as numerous other deities had skulls for heads or else wore clothing or decorations that incorporated bones and skulls. In the Aztec world, skeletal imagery was a symbol of fertility, health and abundance, alluding to the close symbolic links between life and death.[4] There was also the goddess of suicide, Ixtab. She was a minor goddess in the scale of Maya mythology. She was also known as The Hangwoman as she came to help along those who had killed themselves.
La Calavera Catrina, one of José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina engravings (1910–1913)
Our Lady of the Holy Death (Santa Muerte) is a female deity or folk saint of Mexican folk religion, whose popularity has been growing in Mexico and the United States in recent years. Since the pre-Columbian era, Mexican culture has maintained a certain reverence towards death, as seen in the widespread commemoration of the Day of the Dead. La Calavera Catrina, a character symbolizing death, is also an icon of the Mexican Day of the Dead.
San La Muerte (Saint Death) is a skeletal folk saint venerated in Paraguay, northeast Argentina. As the result of internal migration in Argentina since the 1960s, the veneration of San La Muerte has been extended to Greater Buenos Aires and the national prison system as well. Saint Death is depicted as a male skeleton figure usually holding a scythe. Although the Catholic Church in Mexico has attacked the devotion of Saint Death as a tradition that mixes paganism with Christianity and is contrary to the Christian belief of Christ defeating death, many devotees consider the veneration of San La Muerte as being part of their Catholic faith. The rituals connected and powers ascribed to San La Muerte are very similar to those of Santa Muerte; the resemblance between their names, however, is coincidental.
In Guatemala, San Pascualito is a skeletal folk saint venerated as "King of the Graveyard." He is depicted as a skeletal figure with a scythe, sometimes wearing a cape and crown. He is associated with death and the curing of diseases.
In the African-Brazilian religion Umbanda, the orixá Omolu personifies sickness and death as well as healing. The image of the death is also associated with Exu, lord of the crossroads, who rules cemeteries and the hour of midnight.
In Haitian Vodou, the Gede are a family of spirits that embody death and fertility. The most well-known of these spirits is Baron Samedi.
Asia
East Asia
See also: Life replacement narratives
Yama was introduced to Chinese mythology through Buddhism. In Chinese, he is known as King Yan (t 閻王, s 阎王, p Yánwáng) or Yanluo (t 閻羅王, s 阎罗王, p Yánluówáng), ruling the ten gods of the underworld Diyu. He is normally depicted wearing a Chinese judge's cap and traditional Chinese robes and appears on most forms of hell money offered in ancestor worship. From China, Yama spread to Japan as the Great King Enma (閻魔大王, Enma-Dai-Ō), ruler of Jigoku (地獄); Korea as the Great King Yeomra (염라대왕), ruler of Jiok (지옥); and Vietnam as Diêm La Vương, ruler of Địa Ngục or Âm Phủ.
Separately, in Korean mythology, death's principal figure is the "Netherworld Emissary" Jeoseungsaja (저승사자, shortened to Saja (사자)). He is depicted as a stern and ruthless bureaucrat in Yeomna's service. A psychopomp, he escorts all – good or evil – from the land of the living to the netherworld when the time comes.[5] One of the representative names is Ganglim (강림), the Saja who guides the soul to the entrance of the underworld. According to legend, he always carries Jeokpaeji (적패지), the list with the names of the dead written on a red cloth. When he calls the name on Jeokpaeji three times, the soul leaves the body and follows him inevitably.
The Kojiki relates that the Japanese goddess Izanami was burnt to death giving birth to the fire god Hinokagutsuchi. She then entered a realm of perpetual night called Yomi-no-Kuni. Her husband Izanagi pursued her there but discovered his wife was no longer as beautiful as before. After an argument, she promised she would take a thousand lives every day, becoming a goddess of death, as well as giving birth to the gods, Raijin and Fūjin, while dead. There are also death gods called shinigami (死神), which are closer to the Western tradition of the Grim Reaper; while common in modern Japanese arts and fiction, they were essentially absent in traditional mythology.
India
Yama, the Hindu lord of death, presiding over his court in hell
The Sanskrit word for death is mrityu (cognate with Latin mors and Lithuanian mirtis), which is often personified in Dharmic religions.
In Hindu scriptures, the lord of death is called King Yama (यम राज, Yama Rāja). He is also known as the King of Karmic Justice (Dharmaraja) as one's karma at death was considered to lead to a just rebirth. Yama rides a black buffalo and carries a rope lasso to lead the soul back to his home, called Naraka, pathalloka, or Yamaloka. There are many forms of reapers, although some say there is only one who disguises himself as a small child. His agents, the Yamadutas, carry souls back to Yamalok. There, all the accounts of a person's good and bad deeds are stored and maintained by Chitragupta. The balance of these deeds allows Yama to decide where the soul should reside in its next life, following the theory of reincarnation. Yama is also mentioned in the Mahabharata as a great philosopher and devotee of the Supreme Brahman.
Western Asia
Main article: Mot (god)
The Canaanites of the 12th- and 13th-century BC Levant personified death as the god Mot (lit. "Death"). He was considered a son of the king of the gods, El. His contest with the storm god Baʿal forms part of the Ba'al Cycle from the Ugaritic texts. The Phoenicians also worshipped death under the name Mot and a version of Mot later became Maweth, the devil or angel of death in Judaism.[6][7]
Europe
Balti
A European depiction of Death as a skeleton wielding a scythe
"Death" (Nāve; 1897) by Janis Rozentāls
Latvians named Death Veļu māte, but for Lithuanians it was Giltinė, deriving from the word gelti ("to sting"). Giltinė was viewed as an old, ugly woman with a long blue nose and a deadly venomous tongue. The legend tells that Giltinė was young, pretty, and communicative until she was trapped in a coffin for seven years. Her sister was the goddess of life and destiny, Laima, symbolizing the relationship between beginning and end.
Like the Scandinavians, Lithuanians and Latvians later began using Grim Reaper imagery for death.
Celtic
Bunworth Banshee, "Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland", by Thomas Crofton Croker, 1825
In Breton folklore, a spectral figure called the Ankou (or Angau in Welsh) portends death. Usually, the Ankou is the spirit of the last person that died within the community and appears as a tall, haggard figure with a wide hat and long white hair or a skeleton with a revolving head. The Ankou drives a deathly wagon or cart with a creaking axle. The cart or wagon is piled high with corpses and a stop at a cabin means instant death for those inside.[8]
Irish mythology features a similar creature known as a dullahan, whose head would be tucked under their arm (dullahans were not one, but an entire species). The head was said to have large eyes and a smile that could reach the head's ears. The dullahan would ride a black horse or a carriage pulled by black horses, and stop at the house of someone about to die, and call their name, and immediately the person would die. The dullahan did not like being watched, and it was believed that if a dullahan knew someone was watching them, they would lash that person's eyes with their whip, which was made from a spine; or they would toss a basin of blood on the person, which was a sign that the person was next to die.
Gaelic lore also involves a female spirit known as Banshee (Modern Irish Gaelic: bean sí pron. banshee, literally fairy woman), who heralds the death of a person by shrieking or keening. The banshee is often described as wearing red or green, usually with long, disheveled hair. She can appear in a variety of forms, typically that of an ugly, frightful hag, but in some stories she chooses to appear young and beautiful. Some tales recount that the creature was actually a ghost, often of a specific murdered woman or a mother who died in childbirth. When several banshees appeared at once, it was said to indicate the death of someone great or holy. In Ireland and parts of Scotland, a traditional part of mourning is the keening woman (bean chaointe), who wails a lament – in Irish: Caoineadh, caoin meaning "to weep, to wail."
In Scottish folklore there was a belief that a black, dark green or white dog known as a Cù Sìth took dying souls to the afterlife. Comparable figures exist in Irish and Welsh stories.
In Welsh Folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd is the escort of the grave, the personification of Death and Winter who leads the Wild Hunt to collect wayward souls and escort them to the Otherworld, sometimes it is Maleagant, Arawn or Afallach in a similar position.
Hellenic
Main article: Thanatos
In Greek mythology, Thanatos, the personification of death, is one of the offspring of Nyx (Night). Like her, he is seldom portrayed directly. He sometimes appears in art as a winged and bearded man, and occasionally as a winged and beardless youth. When he appears together with his twin brother, Hypnos, the god of sleep, Thanatos generally represents a gentle death. Thanatos, led by Hermes psychopompos, takes the shade of the deceased to the near shore of the river Styx, whence the ferryman Charon, on payment of a small fee, conveys the shade to Hades, the realm of the dead. Homer's Iliad 16.681, and the Euphronios Krater's depiction of the same episode, have Apollo instruct the removal of the heroic, semi-divine Sarpedon's body from the battlefield by Hypnos and Thanatos, and conveyed thence to his homeland for proper funeral rites.[citation needed] Among the other children of Nyx are Thanatos' sisters, the Keres, blood-drinking, vengeant spirits of violent or untimely death, portrayed as fanged and taloned, with bloody garments.
Scandinavia
Hel (1889) by Johannes Gehrts, pictured here with her hound Garmr
In Scandinavia, Norse mythology personified death in the shape of Hel, the goddess of death and ruler over the realm of the same name, where she received a portion of the dead.[9] In the times of the Black Plague, Death would often be depicted as an old woman known by the name of Pesta, meaning "plague hag", wearing a black hood. She would go into a town carrying either a rake or a broom. If she brought the rake, some people would survive the plague; if she brought the broom, however, everyone would die.[10]
Scandinavians later adopted the Grim Reaper with a scythe and black robe. Today, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal features one of the world's most famous representations of this personification of Death.[citation needed]
Slavic
"Fairy tale", drawing by Taras Shevchenko. Death is depicted as a female skeleton with a scythe.
In Poland, Death – Śmierć or kostuch – has an appearance similar to the Grim Reaper, although its robe was traditionally white instead of black. Because the word śmierć is feminine in gender, death is frequently portrayed as a skeletal old woman, as depicted in 15th-century dialogue "Rozmowa Mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią" (Latin: "Dialogus inter Mortem et Magistrum Polikarpum").
In Serbia and other South Slavic countries, the Grim Reaper is well known as Smrt ("Death") or Kosač ("Reaper"). Slavic people found this very similar to the Devil and other dark powers. One popular saying about death is: Smrt ne bira ni vreme, ni mesto, ni godinu ("Death does not choose a time, place or year" – which means death is destiny.)[original research?]
Morana is a Slavic goddess of winter time, death and rebirth. A figurine of the same name is traditionally created at the end of winter/beginning of spring and symbolically taken away from villages to be set in fire and/or thrown into a river, that takes her away from the world of the living.
In the Czech Republic, the medieval Prague Astronomical Clock carries a depiction of Death striking the hour. A version first appeared in 1490.[11][12]
The Low Countries
In the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent in Belgium, the personification of Death is known as Magere Hein ("Thin Hein") or Pietje de Dood ("Peter the Death").[13] Historically, he was sometimes simply referred to as Hein or variations thereof such as Heintje, Heintjeman and Oom Hendrik ("Uncle Hendrik"). Related archaic terms are Beenderman ("Bone-man"), Scherminkel (very meager person, "skeleton") and Maaijeman ("mow-man", a reference to his scythe).[14]
The concept of Magere Hein predates Christianity, but was Christianized and likely gained its modern name and features (scythe, skeleton, black robe etc.) during the Middle Ages. The designation "Meager" comes from its portrayal as a skeleton, which was largely influenced by the Christian "Dance of Death" (Dutch: dodendans) theme that was prominent in Europe during the late Middle Ages. "Hein" was a Middle Dutch name originating as a short form of Heinric (see Henry (given name)). Its use was possibly related to the comparable German concept of "Freund Hein."[citation needed] Notably, many of the names given to Death can also refer to the Devil; it is likely that fear of death led to Hein's character being merged with that of Satan.[14][15]
In Belgium, this personification of Death is now commonly called Pietje de Dood "Little Pete, the Death."[16] Like the other Dutch names, it can also refer to the Devil.[17]
Western Europe
Death from the Cary-Yale Tarot Deck (15th century)
In Western Europe, Death has commonly been personified as an animated skeleton since the Middle Ages.[18] This character, which is often depicted wielding a scythe, is said to collect the souls of the dying or recently dead. In English and German culture, Death is typically portrayed as male, but in French, Spanish, and Italian culture, it is not uncommon for Death to be female.[19]
In England, the personified "Death" featured in medieval morality plays, later regularly appearing in traditional folk songs.[20] The following is a verse of "Death and the Lady" (Roud 1031) as sung by Henry Burstow in the nineteenth century:
Fair lady, throw those costly robes aside,
No longer may you glory in your pride.
Take leave of all sour carnal vain delight
I'm come to summon you away this night.[20]
In the late 1800s, the character of Death became known as the Grim Reaper in English literature. The earliest appearance of the name "Grim Reaper" in English is in the 1847 book The Circle of Human Life:[21][22][23]
All know full well that life cannot last above seventy, or at the most eighty years. If we reach that term without meeting the grim reaper with his scythe, there or there about, meet him we surely shall.
In Abrahamic religions
See also: Destroying angel (Bible)
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The "Angel of the Lord" smites 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp (II Kings 19:35). When the Angel of Death passes through to smite the Egyptian first-born, God prevents "the destroyer" (shâchath) from entering houses with blood on the lintel and side posts (Exodus 12:23). The "destroying angel" (mal'ak ha-mashḥit) rages among the people in Jerusalem (II Sam. 24:16). In I Chronicles 21:15 the "angel of the Lord" is seen by King David standing "between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem." The biblical Book of Job (33:22) uses the general term "destroyers" (memitim), which tradition has identified with "destroying angels" (mal'ake Khabbalah), and Prov. 16:14 uses the term the "angels of death" (mal'ake ha-mavet). The angel Azra'il is sometimes referred as the Angel of Death as well.[24]
Jewish tradition also refers to Death as the Angel of Dark and Light, a name which stems from Talmudic lore. There is also a reference to "Abaddon" (The Destroyer), an angel who is known as the "Angel of the Abyss". In Talmudic lore, he is characterized as archangel Michael.[25]
In Judaism
La mort du fossoyeur (Death of the gravedigger) by Carlos Schwabe
In Hebrew scriptures, Death (Maweth/Mavet(h)) is sometimes personified as a devil or angel of death (e.g., Habakkuk 2:5; Job 18:13).[6] In both the Book of Hosea and the Book of Jeremiah, Maweth/Mot is mentioned as a deity to whom God can turn over Judah as punishment for worshiping other gods.[26] The memitim are a type of angel from biblical lore associated with the mediation over the lives of the dying. The name is derived from the Hebrew word mĕmītǐm (מְמִיתִים – "executioners", "slayers", "destroyers") and refers to angels that brought about the destruction of those whom the guardian angels no longer protected.[27] While there may be some debate among religious scholars regarding the exact nature of the memitim, it is generally accepted that, as described in the Book of Job 33:22, they are killers of some sort.[28]
Form and functions
According to the Midrash, the Angel of Death was created by God on the first day.[29] His dwelling is in heaven, whence he reaches earth in eight flights, whereas Pestilence reaches it in one.[30] He has twelve wings.[31] "Over all people have I surrendered thee the power," said God to the Angel of Death, "only not over this one [i.e. Moses] which has received freedom from death through the Law."[32] It is said of the Angel of Death that he is full of eyes. In the hour of death, he stands at the head of the departing one with a drawn sword, to which clings a drop of gall. As soon as the dying man sees Death, he is seized with a convulsion and opens his mouth, whereupon Death throws the drop into it. This drop causes his death; he turns putrid, and his face becomes yellow.[33] The expression "the taste of death" originated in the idea that death was caused by a drop of gall.[34]
The soul escapes through the mouth, or, as is stated in another place, through the throat; therefore, the Angel of Death stands at the head of the patient (Adolf Jellinek, l.c. ii. 94, Midr. Teh. to Ps. xi.). When the soul forsakes the body, its voice goes from one end of the world to the other, but is not heard (Gen. R. vi. 7; Ex. R. v. 9; Pirḳe R. El. xxxiv.). The drawn sword of the Angel of Death, mentioned by the Chronicler (I. Chron. 21:15; comp. Job 15:22; Enoch 62:11), indicates that the Angel of Death was figured as a warrior who kills off the children of men. "Man, on the day of his death, falls down before the Angel of Death like a beast before the slaughterer" (Grünhut, "Liḳḳuṭim", v. 102a). R. Samuel's father (c. 200) said: "The Angel of Death said to me, 'Only for the sake of the honor of mankind do I not tear off their necks as is done to slaughtered beasts'" ('Ab. Zarah 20b). In later representations, the knife sometimes replaces the sword, and reference is also made to the cord of the Angel of Death, which indicates death by throttling. Moses says to God: "I fear the cord of the Angel of Death" (Grünhut, l.c. v. 103a et seq.). Of the four Jewish methods of execution, three are named in connection with the Angel of Death: Burning (by pouring hot lead down the victim's throat), slaughtering (by beheading), and throttling. The Angel of Death administers the particular punishment that God has ordained for the commission of sin.
A peculiar mantle ("idra" – according to Levy, "Neuhebr. Wörterb." i. 32, a sword) belongs to the equipment of the Angel of Death (Eccl. R. iv. 7). The Angel of Death takes on the particular form which will best serve his purpose; e.g., he appears to a scholar in the form of a beggar imploring pity (the beggar should receive Tzedakah)(M. Ḳ. 28a). "When pestilence rages in the town, walk not in the middle of the street, because the Angel of Death [i.e., pestilence] strides there; if peace reigns in the town, walk not on the edges of the road. When pestilence rages in the town, go not alone to the synagogue, because there the Angel of Death stores his tools. If the dogs howl, the Angel of Death has entered the city; if they make sport, the prophet Elijah has come" (B. Ḳ. 60b). The "destroyer" (saṭan ha-mashḥit) in the daily prayer is the Angel of Death (Ber. 16b). Midr. Ma'ase Torah (compare Jellinek, "B. H." ii. 98) says: "There are six Angels of Death: Gabriel over kings; Ḳapẓiel over youths; Mashbir over animals; Mashḥit over children; Af and Ḥemah over man and beast."
Samael is considered in Talmudic texts to be a member of the heavenly host with often grim and destructive duties. One of Samael's greatest roles in Jewish lore is that of the main angel of death and the head of satans.[35]
Scholars and the Angel of Death
The Angel of Death, sculpture of a funeral gondola, Venice. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1951.
Talmud teachers of the 4th century associate quite familiarly with him. When he appeared to one on the street, the teacher reproached him with rushing upon him as upon a beast, whereupon the angel called upon him at his house. To another, he granted a respite of thirty days, that he might put his knowledge in order before entering the next world. To a third, he had no access, because he could not interrupt the study of the Talmud. To a fourth, he showed a rod of fire, whereby he is recognized as the Angel of Death (M. K. 28a). He often entered the house of Bibi and conversed with him (Ḥag. 4b). Often, he resorts to strategy in order to interrupt and seize his victim (B. M. 86a; Mak. 10a).
The death of Joshua ben Levi in particular is surrounded with a web of fable. When the time came for him to die and the Angel of Death appeared to him, he demanded to be shown his place in paradise. When the angel had consented to this, he demanded the angel's knife, that the angel might not frighten him by the way. This request also was granted him, and Joshua sprang with the knife over the wall of paradise; the angel, who is not allowed to enter paradise, caught hold of the end of his garment. Joshua swore that he would not come out, and God declared that he should not leave paradise unless he had ever absolved himself of an oath; he had never absolved himself of an oath so he was allowed to remain. The Angel of Death then demanded back his knife, but Joshua refused. At this point, a heavenly voice (bat ḳol) rang out: "Give him back the knife, because the children of men have need of it will bring death." Hesitant, Joshua Ben Levi gives back the knife in exchange for the Angel of Death's name. To never forget the name, he carved Troke into his arm, the Angel of Death's chosen name. When the knife was returned to the Angel, Joshua's carving of the name faded, and he forgot. (Ket. 77b; Jellinek, l.c. ii. 48–51; Bacher, l.c. i. 192 et seq.).
Rabbinic views
The Rabbis found the Angel of Death mentioned in Psalm 89:48, where the Targum translates: "There is no man who lives and, seeing the Angel of Death, can deliver his soul from his hand." Eccl. 8:4 is thus explained in Midrash Rabbah to the passage: "One may not escape the Angel of Death, nor say to him, 'Wait until I put my affairs in order,' or 'There is my son, my slave: take him in my stead.'" Where the Angel of Death appears, there is no remedy, but his name (Talmud, Ned. 49a; Hul. 7b). If one who has sinned has confessed his fault, the Angel of Death may not touch him (Midrash Tanhuma, ed. Buber, 139). God protects from the Angel of Death (Midrash Genesis Rabbah lxviii.).
By acts of benevolence, the anger of the Angel of Death is overcome; when one fails to perform such acts the Angel of Death will make his appearance (Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa, viii.). The Angel of Death receives his orders from God (Ber. 62b). As soon as he has received permission to destroy, however, he makes no distinction between good and bad (B. Ḳ. 60a). In the city of Luz, the Angel of Death has no power, and, when the aged inhabitants are ready to die, they go outside the city (Soṭah 46b; compare Sanh. 97a). A legend to the same effect existed in Ireland in the Middle Ages (Jew. Quart. Rev. vi. 336).
In Christianity
Gustave Doré Death on the Pale Horse (1865) – The fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse
Death is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse portrayed in the Book of Revelation, in Revelation 6:7–8.[36]
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
— Revelation 6:8, King James Version
He is also known as the Pale Horseman whose name is Thanatos, the same as that of the ancient Greek personification of death, and the only one of the horsemen to be named.[citation needed]
Paul addresses a personified death in 1 Corinthians 15:55.
"O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?"
— 1 Corinthians 15:55, New King James Version
In some versions, both arms of this verse are addressed to death.[37]
The Christian scriptures contain the first known depiction of Abaddon as an individual entity instead of a place.
A king, the angel of the bottomless pit; whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon; in Latin Exterminans.
— Revelation 9:11, Douay–Rheims Bible
In Hebrews 2:14 the devil "holds the power of death."[38]
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
— Hebrews 2:14–15, English Standard Version
Conversely, the early Christian writer Origen believed the destroying angel of Exodus 12:23 to be Satan.[39] The Grim Reaper, is stated to be destroyed by the Lake of Fire that burns with sulfur.
Death and Hell were thrown into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death.
— Revelation 20:14, King James Version
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
— 1 Corinthians 15:26, New International Version
In Islam
In Islam, Archangel Azrael is the Malak al-Maut (angel of death). He and his many subordinates pull the souls out of the bodies, and guide them through the journey of the afterlife. Their appearance depends on the person's deed and actions, with those that did good seeing a beautiful being, and those that did wrong seeing a horrific monster.
Islamic tradition discusses elaborately as to what exactly happens before, during, and after the death. The angel of death appears to the dying to take out their souls. The sinners' souls are extracted in a most painful way while the righteous are treated easily.[40] After the burial, two angels – Munkar and Nakir – come to question the dead in order to test their faith. The righteous believers answer correctly and live in peace and comfort while the sinners and disbelievers fail and punishments ensue.[40][41] The time period or stage between death and resurrection is called barzakh (the interregnum).[40]
Death is a significant event in Islamic life and theology. It is seen not as the termination of life, rather the continuation of life in another form. In Islamic belief, God has made this worldly life as a test and a preparation ground for the afterlife; and with death, this worldly life comes to an end.[42] Thus, every person has only one chance to prepare themselves for the life to come where God will resurrect and judge every individual and will entitle them to rewards or punishment, based on their good or bad deeds.[42][43] And death is seen as the gateway to and beginning of the afterlife. In Islamic belief, death is predetermined by God, and the exact time of a person's death is known only to God.
Media
Songs
"Death Don't Have No Mercy"
Main article: Death Don't Have No Mercy
The 1960 gospel blues song "Death Don't Have No Mercy", composed and first recorded by Blind Gary Davis, portrays death as an inevitable and periodic visitor.[44] According to the musicologist David Malvinni, it "presents a terrifying personification of the instant, sudden possibility [of] death at any moment that could have come from the medieval era's confrontation with the plague".[45]
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper"
Main article: (Don't Fear) The Reaper
The 1976 Blue Öyster Cult song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", recorded for their album Agents of Fortune, alludes to the Grim Reaper in the title and lyrics. The song encourages the audience not to fear death, but rather to think of it as something that immortalizes love.[46]
"Creeping Death"
Main article: Creeping Death
The 1984 thrash metal song "Creeping Death", recorded by Metallica, references the angel of death, among other religious symbols. Written from the perspective of the Angel of Death, "Creeping Death" describes the tenth plague of Egypt. It is often thought of as one of the band’s most popular songs and is currently the second-most-played song live by them. It is described by the writer Tom King as "a tale of righteous Biblical rage and devastation straight out of the Book of Revelations".[47]
Books
Death (Death with Interruptions or Death at Intervals)
Main article: Death with Interruptions
Nobel laureate José Saramago's novel features an anthropomorphised death as its main character, who insists that her name be written lowercase. She is depicted as a skeleton who can shapeshift and be omnipresent and has a scythe, though she doesn't always carry it. Her jurisdiction is limited to the imaginary country where the story happens and to the human species. It is implied that other deaths with jurisdiction over different life forms and territories exist, as well as an overarching death and/or god. The book deals with how society relates to death, both as a phenomenon and a character, and likewise how death relates to the people she is meant to kill and with loneliness and love.
Death (Discworld)
Main article: Death (Discworld)
Death is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and depicted as one of many Deaths. His jurisdiction is specifically the Discworld itself; he is only a part, or minion, of Azrael, the universal Death. Death has appeared in every Discworld novel, with the exception of The Wee Free Men and Snuff. Novel Mort, published in 1987, is the first time Death appears as a leading character.[48]
Death (The Book Thief)
Main article: The Book Thief
Death is the narrator of Markus Zusak's 2005 novel The Book Thief. He is a collector of deceased souls in the story. He tells the coming of age story about a girl he witnessed living in Nazi Germany and surviving World War II.[49]
Death (Harry Potter)
Main article: The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Death appears in "The Tale of Three Brothers" in J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of fairytales featured in her Harry Potter series. Three brothers avoid Death and Death, furious at being avoided, offers the brothers gifts. Two of these gifts, the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone, lead to the first two brothers' deaths. The third brother, gifted with the Invisibility Cloak avoids Death until old age, where he then goes with Death like an old friend. These gifts became the Deathly Hallows.[50]
Death (Incarnations of Immortality)
Main article: On a Pale Horse
Death is a held office in Piers Anthony's 1983 novel On a Pale Horse.[51] The character Zane becomes Death after a suicide attempt that ends up killing the previous Death. He is taught by his fellow Incarnations Time and Fate and must defeat the Incarnation of Evil, Satan. He is given several items to aid him on his job, including a watch to stop local time, jewels to measure how much good and evil is in a person for judgment, and his pale horse Mortis, who often takes the form of a pale car. Zane as Death appears in Anthony's following novels, notably Bearing an Hourglass.
Charlie Asher (A Dirty Job)
Main article: A Dirty Job
Death is a career in Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job.[52] Charlie Asher is chosen to be a "Death Merchant" for retrieving souls and protect them from dark forces while managing his story and raising his newborn daughter.
Comics
Death (DC Comics)
Main article: Death (DC Comics)
Death first appeared in The Sandman vol. 2, #8 (August 1989), and was created by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg.[53] She is both an embodiment of death and a psychopomp in The Sandman Universe, and depicted as a down to earth, perky, and nurturing figure. Death is the second born of The Endless and she states "When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."[54]
Death also appears briefly in Fables #11 (May 2003) titled "Bag O' Bones", where Jack Horner traps Death in a magical bag that never gets full.[55] There has been no indication as to whether Fables has any connection to the Sandman universe.
Death (Marvel Comics)
Main article: Death (Marvel Comics)
The character first appeared in Captain Marvel #26 (Jun. 1973) and was created by Mike Friedrich and Jim Starlin. Death is an abstract entity, the embodiment of the end of life in the Marvel Universe, and resides inside a pocket dimension known as the Realm of Death.[56] The character can change appearance at will shown in a storyline of Captain Marvel where Thanos' scheme to conquer the universe, as the character becomes determined to prove his love for Death by destroying all life. However, she is commonly seen in a relationship with Deadpool.
Lady MacDeath (Bug-a-Boo)
Main article: Bug-a-Booo
Lady MacDeath is a Grim Reaper, the personification of Death who is responsible of going after all people whose time to die has come, although unlike a typical Grim Reaper, her body is not pictured as made of bones. She uses her sickle to kill people, by hitting them in the head, and then she takes their souls to the purgatory, for them to be judged and sent whether to hell or heaven (sometimes after much bureaucracy). She always carries a list with the name of the people she must kill on the day. Most of her stories feature a pursuit, sometimes punctuated with struggles faced every day by normal people. Maurício de Souza says that the purpose of creating her is "taking death less seriously, while it doesn't come to us".
Anime/Manga
Death Note
Main article: Death Note
Bleach
Main article: Bleach
Soul Eater
Main article: Soul Eater (manga)
Naruto
Main article: Naruto
Film
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Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
Main article: Death Takes a Holiday
After years of questioning why people fear him, Death takes on human form for three days so that he can mingle among mortals and find an answer. He finds a host in Duke Lambert after revealing himself and his intentions to the Duke, and takes up temporary residence in the Duke's villa. However, events soon spiral out of control as Death falls in love with the beautiful young Grazia. As he does so, Duke Lambert, the father of Grazia's mortal lover Corrado, begs him to give Grazia up and leave her among the living. Death must decide whether to seek his own happiness, or sacrifice it so that Grazia may live.
The 1998 American film Meet Joe Black is loosely based on the 1934 film. While on Earth, Death, living under the name Joe Black, enlists the wealthy Bill Parrish to be his guide to mortal life, and in exchange guarantees that Bill will not die as long as he serves as "Joe's" guide. Joe falls in love with Bill's youngest daughter, Susan, a resident in internal medicine, and learns the meaning of both friendship and love.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Main article: The Seventh Seal
Death is one of the main characters in 1957 Swedish historical fantasy film The Seventh Seal. The film tells the story of a knight encountering Death, whom he challenges to a chess match, believing he can survive as long as the game continues.[57]
These scenes are parodied in the 1991 comedy film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, in which the title characters repeatedly beat Death playing a variety of family board games such as Battleship and Twister. Death goes on to accompany Bill and Ted for the remainder of the film as a major supporting character.[58] The scene from "The Seventh Seal" is also parodied in a one-act play by Woody Allen called "Death," in which the personification of death agrees to play gin rummy and loses badly, altering his plans to "take" his opponent.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Main article: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Throughout the film, Munchausen is pursued by Death, a skeletal angel with raven's wings, carrying a scythe in one hand and an hourglass in the other. At the end, Death, in the form of a grim physician, extracts Munchausen's glowing life force, and Munchausen is given a lavish funeral before boldly claiming it was "one of the many times I faced Death."
Final Destination film series (2000–2011)
Main article: Final Destination
In each of the Final Destination films, one of the protagonists experiences a premonition of an impending disaster. When these visions come true, the protagonists manage to avoid harm, though many innocent people are killed. Their escapes alter the design intended by Death, which – while never portrayed as a physical entity – is described as an omniscient supernatural force. In each film, the characters learn that they can never truly escape from death, and that they are each doomed to be killed one by one.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
Main article: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
In this film, Death (voiced by Tilda Swinton) resides in the afterlife. She is the sister of the Wood Sprite and is depicted as a Chimera.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Main article: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Throughout the events of the film, the titular Puss in Boots is pursued by the terrifying black-cloaked Wolf (voiced by Wagner Moura), who wields twin sickles and announces his foreboding presence with haunting whistling. His sighting consistently evokes terror in the cat, following their first meeting in which Puss lost his sword to him and was wounded by a blade for the first time. Eventually, Wolf confronts Puss once again and reveals himself as the personification of Death. He states his disgust and anger at Puss's lack of respect for the concept of death and lack of value placed on his previous eight lives, as well as his intent to kill Puss once and for all. However, though he manages to partially disarm Death during their final duel, Puss acknowledges that he knows that he can never truly defeat him. Though Death is initially frustrated, he appreciates Puss's growth in character and tells him to live his last life well and departs as a new respect forged between them.
Television
In 1987, the Australian government produced a controversial commercial featuring the Grim Reaper in order to raise public awareness about the danger of HIV/AIDS.[59]
The Grim Reaper is one of the main characters of the 2000s Cartoon Network series The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, where he is usually referred to as Grim and is voiced by Greg Eagles with a pronounced Jamaican accent.
The Grim Reaper ("Death") appears in some early episodes of Family Guy as a character voiced by Norm Macdonald in the first appearance and by Adam Carolla in later appearances.
The Showtime television series Dead Like Me features a small team of characters taking the role of the "grim reaper", removing the souls of people just prior to their imminent death. Unlike most depictions of Death, the show depicted "grim reaper" as a job title, held by multiple people at once.
In the British children's sketch television show Horrible Histories, Death (portrayed by Simon Farnaby) is a reoccurring character who appears the segment "Stupid Deaths" and later in its sixth series "Chatty Deaths".
In the TV show, Supernatural, Death was played by Julian Richings and appeared in five episodes. His first appearance was in season 5 episode 21 "Two minutes to midnight" (2010) and last appeared in season 10 episode 23 "Brother's Keeper" (2015). Death appear as one of the four horsemen and the leader of the Grim Reapers. The brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) try to defeat the four horsemen when their seal was broken and they started to ravage the world to prevent the apocalypse. Although they managed to stop the other three, they were powerless in front of Death and made a bargain with him instead. It is shown that Death's main role is to kill those who's time is up and afterwards a grim reaper will lead them to their afterlife. Dean learned it the hard way the consequences of not killing people when their time is up when Death challenged him to do his job for 24h in exchange of retrieving Sam's soul stuck in Lucifer's seal in Hell. Death is depicted as one of the most powerful entity in the show, along with The Endless and God.
In American Horror Story: Asylum Death is depicted by Frances Conroy. She is depicted as an old woman in funeral cloths who kisses people when their time comes and sprouts wings. She frequently visits the characters, but particularly torments Sister Jude throughout her time at the asylum.
In the Disney Channel series, Pretty Freekin Scary, the Grim Reaper was a recurring character portrayed by Siobhan Murphy. She accidentally sent Frankie Ripp to The Underworld, but meant to send an old man named Theodore Snickering there. The Grim Reaper allowed Frankie to come back to life, as long as she did tasks for her. She is often nicknamed "G.R." by Frankie. Her mission was to fix her first mishap of accidentally letting Theodore cheat death and escape The Underworld. All the tasks she was assigning Frankie were meant to help her get Theodore back into The Underworld.
Theatre
Elisabeth Viennese musical (1992)
Main article: Elisabeth (musical)
The personification of Death or the Grim Reaper is the leading male role in the 1992 Viennese musical, depicting the titular Empress of Austria-Hungary's fictionalised life and her entanglements and obsession with Death.[60] Portrayals of Death varies between productions from androgynous to masculine, dressed at various times in all black or all white.[61]
Video games
The personification of Death appears many times in many different games, especially Castlevania and The Sims. Nearly all iterations of a "Death" or "Grim Reaper" character feature most of the same characteristics seen in other media and pop culture: a skeleton wearing a cloak and wielding a scythe. Darksiders II has Death as the player character.
In League of Legends, death is personified in the form of Kindred, a duo of lamb and wolf." (wikipedia.org)
"A skeleton is a type of physically manifested undead often found in fantasy, gothic, and horror fiction, as well as mythology, folklore, and various kinds of art. Most are human skeletons, but they can also be from any creature or race found on Earth or in the fantasy world.
Myth and folklore
Animated human skeletons have been used as a personification of death in Western culture since the Middle Ages, a personification perhaps influenced by the valley of the dry bones in the Book of Ezekiel.[1] The Grim Reaper is often depicted as a hooded skeleton holding a scythe (and occasionally an hourglass), which has been attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger (1538).[2] Death as one of the biblical horsemen of the Apocalypse has been depicted as a skeleton riding a horse. The Triumph of Death is a 1562 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicting an army of skeletons raiding a town and slaughtering its occupants.[3]
"The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale in which a boy named Hans joins a circle of dancing skeletons.[4]
In Japanese folklore, Mekurabe are rolling skulls with eyeballs who menace Taira no Kiyomori.[5]
José Guadalupe Posada's 1913 La Calavera Catrina zinc etching
Mexico
Figurines and images of skeletons doing routine things are common in Mexico's Day of the Dead celebration, where skulls symbolize life and their familiar circumstances invite levity. Highly-decorated sugar-skull candy has become one of the most recognizable elements of the celebrations.[6][7] They are known in Mexico as calacas, a Mexican Spanish term simply meaning "skeleton". The modern association between skeleton iconography and the Day of the Dead was inspired by La Calavera Catrina, a zinc etching created by Mexican cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada in the 1910s and published posthumously in 1930.[8] Initially a satire of Mexican women who were ashamed of their indigenous origins and dressed imitating the French style, wearing heavy makeup to make their skin look whiter, it later became a more general symbol of vanity.[9] During the 20th Century, the Catrina entrenched itself in the Mexican consciousness and became a national icon, often depicted in folk art.
Modern fiction
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Literature
The animated skeleton features in some Gothic fiction. One early example is in the short story "Thurnley Abbey" (1908) by Perceval Landon, originally published in his collection Raw Edges.[10] It is reprinted in many modern anthologies, such as The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and The Penguin Book of Horror Stories.
An anthropomorphic depiction of Death which looks like a skeleton in a black robe appears in almost all volumes of Terry Pratchett's fantasy series Discworld, including five novels where he is the lead character.[11]
In the manga/anime One Piece, Brook, who is one of the main characters, is an animated skeleton after consuming the Revive-Revive Fruit.
Film and TV
Undead skeletons have been portrayed in fantasy films such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Black Cauldron (1985), Army of Darkness (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and Corpse Bride (2005).
An extended battle scene against an army of skeletal warriors was produced by animator Ray Harryhausen for Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and is remembered as one of the most sophisticated and influential visual effects sequences of its day.[12]
Undead skeletons always appear as funny characters in Thai fantasy folk television dramas. They are often referred to as "Na Phi" ("uncle ghost").[13]
A CG art skeleton, as commonly found in modern fantasy-theme games.
Games
Animated skeletons have been used and portrayed extensively in fantasy role-playing games. In a tradition that goes back to the pen-and-paper game Dungeons & Dragons, the basic animated skeleton is commonly employed as a low-level undead enemy, typically easy for a player to defeat in combat. Thus, in games which make use of them, such enemies often appear relatively early in the gameplay and are considered a suitable opponent for novice players.[14] In these contexts, they are commonly armed with medieval weapons and sometimes wear armor.
In the PlayStation action-adventure series MediEvil, the protagonist is an animated skeleton knight named Sir Daniel Fortesque.[15]
In the 1999 cult classic Planescape: Torment, Morte is a character who joins the protagonist on his quest and is essentially a sentient, levitating human skull with intact eyeballs who cracks wise and fights by biting.[16]
In the 2009 Minecraft video game, skeletons appear as bow-wielding monsters that shoot players with their bows and burn under the sunlight unless they wear helmets. Sometimes the skeletons spawn with enchanted bows or a random piece of armor, or random full armor, or without a bow, and they can choose melee weapons. On Halloween, they can spawn wearing carved pumpkins or Jack O' Lanterns on their heads. Variants include the wither skeleton, which causes the player to wither away due to the Wither effect, and the stray, which is a frozen variant found in snowy biomes.
In the video game Fable III, there exist a race of antagonal characters called "hollow men" which are featured throughout the game.
A duo of animated skeleton brothers plays an important role in the role-playing game Undertale. Named Sans and Papyrus, the brothers' dialogue text is printed in Comic Sans and Papyrus fonts, respectively.[17]
Following a poll taken during their Kickstarter campaign, Larian Studios added a playable skeleton race in their 2017 RPG Divinity: Original Sin II, as well as an ancient skeletal character named Fane.[18]
Following the first game, the skeletons were re-added in Minecraft Dungeons, a 2020 dungeon crawler game released by Mojang Studios as the guards of The Nameless One, the king of the undead. In this form, they are equipped with glaives, shields, and iron helmets and chestplates, and are referred to as Skeleton Vanguards. They also spawn as their original bow-wielding form, sometimes wearing iron helmet. Other DLCs include exclusive variants of skeletons.
The Mario series has some Koopa Troopa-skeleton themed enemies known as Dry Bones, where after they get hit, they return to their from. Bowser also has a skeleton form known as Dry Bowser, first debuted in New Super Mario Bros., and feautured in other games such as Mario Party and Mario Kart.
The Legend of Zelda series features an enemy called Stalfos, armed skeletons who serve as regular enemies and occasionally as minibosses. Variations such as Stalkids and Stalblins also appear in various games in the series.
In the Elder Scrolls series, skeletons are featured as one of the undead creatures and they are armed.
In Heroes of Might and Magic 3, skeletons are recruitable troops from the Town, Necropolis." (wikipedia.org)
"Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating), and solar architecture.[1][2] It is an essential source of renewable energy, and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power, and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.
In 2011, the International Energy Agency said that "the development of affordable, inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries' energy security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible, and mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability, reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating global warming .... these advantages are global".[1]
Potential
Further information: Solar radiation
About half the incoming solar energy reaches the Earth's surface.
Average insolation. The theoretical area of the small black dots is sufficient to supply the world's total energy needs of 18 TW with solar power.
Global map of horizontal irradiation[3]
The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere.[4] Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest, 122 PW, is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. The spectrum of solar light at the Earth's surface is mostly spread across the visible and near-infrared ranges with a small part in the near-ultraviolet.[5] Most of the world's population live in areas with insolation levels of 150–300 watts/m2, or 3.5–7.0 kWh/m2 per day.[6]
Solar radiation is absorbed by the Earth's land surface, oceans – which cover about 71% of the globe – and atmosphere. Warm air containing evaporated water from the oceans rises, causing atmospheric circulation or convection. When the air reaches a high altitude, where the temperature is low, water vapor condenses into clouds, which rain onto the Earth's surface, completing the water cycle. The latent heat of water condensation amplifies convection, producing atmospheric phenomena such as wind, cyclones and anticyclones.[7] Sunlight absorbed by the oceans and land masses keeps the surface at an average temperature of 14 °C.[8] By photosynthesis, green plants convert solar energy into chemically stored energy, which produces food, wood and the biomass from which fossil fuels are derived.[9]
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 122 PW·year = 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.[10] In 2002 (2019), this was more energy in one hour (one hour and 25 minutes) than the world used in one year.[11][12] Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass....Electricity production
These paragraphs are an excerpt from Solar power.[edit]
Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic effect.[61] Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and solar tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight to a hot spot, often to drive a steam turbine.
Photovoltaics were initially solely used as a source of electricity for small and medium-sized applications, from the calculator powered by a single solar cell to remote homes powered by an off-grid rooftop PV system. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. Since then, as the cost of solar electricity has fallen, grid-connected solar PV systems' capacity and production have grown more or less exponentially, doubling about every three years. Millions of installations and gigawatt-scale photovoltaic power stations continue to be built, with half of new generation capacity being solar in 2021.[62]
In 2022 solar generated 4.5% of the world's electricity,[63] compared to 1% in 2015 when the Paris Agreement to limit climate change was signed.[64] Along with onshore wind, in most countries the cheapest levelised cost of electricity for new installations is utility-scale solar.[65][66]
Almost half the solar power installed in 2022 was rooftop.[63] Low-carbon power has been recommended as part of a plan to limit climate change. The International Energy Agency said in 2022 that more effort was needed for grid integration and the mitigation of policy, regulation and financing challenges." (wikipedia.org)
"A solar lamp, also known as a solar light or solar lantern, is a lighting system composed of an LED lamp, solar panels, battery, charge controller and there may also be an inverter. The lamp operates on electricity from batteries, charged through the use of solar panel (solar photovoltaic panel)
Solar-powered household lighting can replace other light sources like candles or kerosene lamps. Solar lamps have a lower operating cost than kerosene lamps because renewable energy from the sun is free, unlike fuel. In addition, solar lamps produce no indoor air pollution unlike kerosene lamps. However, solar lamps generally have a higher initial cost, and are weather dependent.
Solar lamps for use in rural situations often have the capability of providing a supply of electricity for other devices, such as for charging cell phones. The costs of solar lamps have continued to fall in recent years as the components and lamps have been mass-produced in ever greater numbers.
History
Global market-share in terms of annual production by PV technology since 1990
Some solar photovoltaics use Monocrystalline silicon or poly-crystalline silicon panels, while newer technologies have used thin-film solar cells.[1] Since modern solar cells were introduced in 1954 at Bell labs,[2] advances in solar cell efficiency at converting light into electric power, and modern manufacturing techniques combined with efficiencies of scale have led to an international growth of photovoltaics.
The first solar light patent was filed by Maurice E Paradise in 1955[3]
As of 2016, LED lamps use only about 10% of the energy an incandescent lamp requires.[4] Efficiency in production of LED lamps has led to increased adoption as an alternative to older electric lightings
Components
The complete structure of a solar lamp is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Solar panels
Most solar panels are made out of single crystalline silicon, a semiconductor material.[5]
When light strikes a solar cell, an electric current is produced in the connected electric circuit. This is called the photoelectric effect.[5] Photovoltaic systems directly convert the energy of sunlight into electricity.
Solar panels are made out of layers of different materials (Figure 2), in order of glass, encapsulate, crystalline cells, back sheet, junction box and lastly frame. The encapsulate keeps out moisture and contaminants which could cause problems.[6]
Figure 2
Battery
A battery is usually housed within a metal or plastic case. Inside the case are electrodes including cathodes and anodes where chemical reactions occur. A separator also exists between cathode and anode which stops the electrodes reacting together at the same time as allowing electrical charge to flow freely between the two. Lastly, the collector conducts a charge from the battery to outside.[7]
Batteries inside solar lamps usually use gel electrolyte technology with high performance in deep discharging, in order to enable use in extreme ranges of temperature.[citation needed] It may also use lead-acid, nickel metal hydride, nickel cadmium, or lithium.
This part of the lamp saves up energy from the solar panel and provides power when needed at night when there is no light energy available.
In general, the efficiency of photovoltaic energy conversion is limited for physical reasons. Around 24% of solar radiation of a long wavelength is not absorbed. 33% is heat lost to surroundings, and further losses are of approximately 15-20%. Only 23% is absorbed, which means a battery is a crucial part of solar lamp.[8]
Charge controller
This section controls the entire working systems to protect battery charge. It ensures, under any circumstances including extreme weather conditions with large temperature difference, the battery does not overcharge or over discharge and damage the battery even further.[citation needed]
This section also includes additional parts such as light controller, time controller, sound, temperature compensation, lighting protection, reverse polarity protection and AC transfer switches which ensure sensitive back-up loads work normally when outage occurs.[citation needed]
Working principles
Figure 3
LED lights are used due to their high luminous efficiency and long life. Under the control of a DC charge controller, non-contact control automatically turns on the light at dark and switches off at daytime. It sometimes also combines with time controllers to set certain time for it to automatically switch light on and off.[citation needed]
As shown in Figure 3, the chip includes microchip(R), B-, B+, S- and S+. S+ and S- are both connected to solar panels with wire, one of which has plus charge and the other minus charge. B- and B+ are attached to two batteries in this case. The light will be shown through the LED light when all of these are connected.
Benefits
Solar lamps are easier for customers to install and maintain as they do not require an electricity cable. Solar lamps can benefit owners with reduced maintenance cost and costs of electricity bills. Solar lamps can also be used in areas where there is no electrical grid or remote areas that lack a reliable electricity supply.[citation needed] There are many stories of people with lung disease, eye deterioration, burns and sometimes even death simply because they do not have a healthy alternative to light at night. Women have felt unsafe walking to the toilet outside after dark. Babies are being delivered by midwives using only a candle, and students cannot study when the sun goes down for lack of light, leading to increased illiteracy and perpetual poverty. These are the realities for over 1 billion people around the globe. Lack of lighting equates to continued poverty felt around the world.[citation needed] In solar energy lamp it converts light energy into electrical energy, i.e. It is convenient to our daily life.
Solar energy output is limited by weather and can be less effective if it is cloudy, wet, or winter.[citation needed]
Households switching to solar lamps from kerosene lamps also gain from health risk associated with kerosene emissions. Kerosene often has negative impacts on human lungs.[9]
The use of solar energy minimises the creation of pollution indoors, where kerosene has been linked to cases of health issues. However, photovoltaic panels are made out of silicon and other toxic metals, including lead that can be difficult to dispose of.[citation needed]
The use of solar lights improves education for students who live in households without electricity. When the nonprofit Unite to Light donated solar-lamps to schools in a remote region of Kwa Zulu Natal in South Africa, test scores and pass rates improved by over 30%.[10] The light gives students added time to study after dark.[citation needed]
A 2017 experimental study in un-electrified areas of northern Bangladesh found that the use of solar lanterns decreased total household expenditure, increased children's home-study hours and increased school attendance. It did not however improve the children's educational achievement to any large extent.[11]
Uses
Solar street light
Main article: Solar street light
These lights provide a convenient and cost-effective way to light streets at night without the need of AC electrical grids for pedestrians and drivers. They may have individual panels for each lamp of a system, or may have a large central solar panel and battery bank to power multiple lamps.
Solar LED lantern
Garden solar lamps
Small solar lamps can be used by homeowners to add ambient lighting to their gardens. These lights can be found in many form factors, commonly pathway lights and spotlights.[12]
Rural
In rural India, solar lamps, commonly called solar lanterns, using either LEDs or CFLs, are being used to replace kerosene lamps, and other cheap alternatives of lighting. Especially in areas where electricity is otherwise difficult to access, solar lamps are very useful, and it also improves the quality of life.[13]
Africa, which has the lowest electricity access rate globally at 40%[14] has benefited greatly through access to solar lamps and complete home lighting solutions. In many regions in Africa inadequate lighting after dusk poses safety risks. Solar lights illuminate dark streets and pathways, enhancing public safety and reducing accidents.[15]
Marine
Marine settings are increasingly using LED solar lights as alternatives to conventional lighting. The remote nature of boating and sailing makes power hard to come by and thus lends itself to self-sufficient technologies like solar boat lighting" (wikipedia.org)
"Halloween is a celebration observed on October 31, the day before the feast of All Hallows, also known as Hallowmas or All Saint's Day. The celebrations and observances of this day occur primarily in regions of the Western world, albeit with some traditions varying significantly between geographical areas.
Origins
Halloween is the eve of vigil before the Western Christian feast of All Hallows (or All Saints) which is observed on November 1. This day begins the triduum of Hallowtide, which culminates with All Souls' Day. In the Middle Ages, many Christians held a folk belief that All Hallows' Eve was the "night where the veil between the material world and the afterlife was at its most transparent".[2]
Americas
Canada
Scottish emigration, primarily to Canada before 1870 and to the United States thereafter, brought the Scottish version of the holiday to each country. The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911 when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street "guising" on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops, and neighbours to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs.[3] Canadians spend more on candy at Halloween than at any time apart from Christmas. Halloween is also a time for charitable contributions. Until 2006 when UNICEF moved to an online donation system, collecting small change was very much a part of Canadian trick-or-treating.[4] Quebec offers themed tours of parts of the old city and historic cemeteries in the area.[5] In 2014 the hamlet of Arviat, Nunavut moved their Halloween festivities to the community hall, cancelling the practice of door-to-door "trick or treating", due to the risk of roaming polar bears.[6][7] In British Columbia it is a tradition to set off fireworks at Halloween.[8]
United States
Children in Halloween costumes at High Point, Seattle, 1943
In the United States, Halloween did not become a holiday until the 19th century. The transatlantic migration of nearly two million Irish following the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849) brought the holiday to the United States.
American librarian and author Ruth Edna Kelley wrote the first book length history of the holiday in the U.S., The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America": "All Hallowe'en customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries. The taste in Hallowe'en festivities now is to study old traditions, and hold a Scotch party, using Robert Burns's poem Halloween as a guide; or to go a-souling as the English used. In short, no custom that was once honored at Hallowe'en is out of fashion now."[9] The main event for children of modern Halloween in the United States and Canada is trick-or-treating, in which children, teenagers, (sometimes) young adults, and parents (accompanying their children) disguise themselves in costumes and go door-to-door in their neighborhoods, ringing each doorbell and yelling "Trick or treat!" to solicit a gift of candy or similar items.[10] Teenagers and adults will more frequently attend Halloween-themed costume parties typically hosted by friends or themed events at nightclubs either on Halloween itself or a weekend close to the holiday.
At the turn of the 20th century, Halloween had turned into a night of vandalism, with destruction of property and cruelty to animals and people.[11] Around 1912, the Boy Scouts, Boys Clubs, and other neighborhood organizations came together to encourage a safe celebration that would end the destruction that had become so common on this night.
The commercialization of Halloween in the United States did not start until the 20th century, beginning perhaps with Halloween postcards (featuring hundreds of designs), which were most popular between 1905 and 1915.[12] Dennison Manufacturing Company (which published its first Halloween catalog in 1909) and the Beistle Company were pioneers in commercially made Halloween decorations, particularly die-cut paper items.[13][14] German manufacturers specialised in Halloween figurines that were exported to the United States in the period between the two World Wars.
Halloween is now the United States' second most popular holiday (after Christmas) for decorating; the sale of candy and costumes is also extremely common during the holiday, which is marketed to children and adults alike. The National Confectioners Association (NCA) reported in 2005 that 80% of American adults planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters.[15] The NCA reported in 2005 that 93% of children planned to go trick-or-treating.[16] According to the National Retail Federation, the most popular Halloween costume themes for adults are, in order: witch, pirate, vampire, cat, and clown.[17][when?] Each year, popular costumes are dictated by various current events and pop culture icons. On many college campuses, Halloween is a major celebration, with the Friday and Saturday nearest 31 October hosting many costume parties. Other popular activities are watching horror movies and visiting haunted houses. Total spending on Halloween is estimated to be $8.4 billion.[18]
Events
Four contestants in the Halloween Slick Chick beauty contest in Anaheim, California, 1947
Many theme parks stage Halloween events annually, such as Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando, Mickey's Halloween Party and Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Disneyland Resort and Magic Kingdom respectively, and Knott's Scary Farm at Knott's Berry Farm. One of the more notable parades is New York's Village Halloween Parade. Each year approximately 50,000 costumed marchers parade up Sixth Avenue.[19] Salem, Massachusetts, site of the Salem witch trials, celebrates Halloween throughout the month of October with tours, plays, concerts, and other activities.[20] A number of venues in New York's lower Hudson Valley host various events to showcase a connection with Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Van Cortlandt Manor stages the "Great Jack o' Lantern Blaze" featuring thousands of lighted carved pumpkins.[21]
Some locales have had to modify their celebrations due to disruptive behavior on the part of young adults. Madison, Wisconsin hosts an annual Halloween celebration. In 2002, due to the large crowds in the State Street area, a riot broke out, necessitating the use of mounted police and tear gas to disperse the crowds.[22] Likewise, Chapel Hill, site of the University of North Carolina, has a downtown street party which in 2007 drew a crowd estimated at 80,000 on downtown Franklin Street, in a town with a population of just 54,000. In 2008, in an effort to curb the influx of out-of-towners, mayor Kevin Foy put measures in place to make commuting downtown more difficult on Halloween.[23] In 2014, large crowds of college students rioted at the Keene, New Hampshire Pumpkin Fest, whereupon the City Council voted not to grant a permit for the following year's festival,[24] and organizers moved the event to Laconia for 2015.[25]
Brazil
Main article: Saci Day
The Brazilian non-governmental organization named Amigos do Saci created Saci Day as a Brazilian parallel in opposition to the "American-influenced" holiday of Halloween that saw minor celebration in Brazil. The Saci is a mischievous evil character in Brazilian folklore. Saci Day is commemorated on October 31, the same day as Halloween, and is an official holiday in the state of São Paulo. Despite official recognition in São Paulo and several other municipalities throughout the country, few Brazilians celebrate it.[26][27]
Dominican Republic
In the Dominican Republic it has been gaining popularity, largely due to many Dominicans living in the United States and then bringing the custom to the island. In the larger cities of Santiago or Santo Domingo it has become more common to see children trick-or-treating, but in smaller towns and villages it is almost entirely absent, partly due to religious opposition. Tourist areas such as Sosua and Punta Cana feature many venues with Halloween celebrations, predominantly geared towards adults.[28]
Mexico (Día de Muertos)
Mexican tomb on the Day of the Dead, adorned with the cempasúchil, the holiday's traditional flower, and a Halloween ghost balloon, at the historic cemetery of San Luis Potosí City
Observed in Mexico and Mexican communities abroad, Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de Muertos) celebrations arose from the syncretism of indigenous Aztec traditions with the Christian Hallowtide of the Spanish colonizers. Flower decorations, altars and candies are part of this holiday season. The holiday is distinct from Halloween in its origins and observances, but the two have become associated because of cross-border connections between Mexico and the United States through popular culture and migration, as the two celebrations occur at the same time of year and may involve similar imagery, such as skeletons. Halloween and Día de Muertos have influenced each other in some areas of the United States and Mexico, with Halloween traditions such as costumes and face-painting becoming increasingly common features of the Mexican festival.[29][30]
Asia
China
The Chinese celebrate the "Hungry Ghost Festival" in mid-July, when it is customary to float river lanterns to remember those who have died. By contrast, Halloween is often called "All Saints' Festival" (Wànshèngjié, 萬聖節), or (less commonly) "All Saints' Eve" (Wànshèngyè, 萬聖夜) or "Eve of All Saints' Day" (Wànshèngjié Qiányè, 萬聖節前夕), stemming from the term "All Hallows Eve" (hallow referring to the souls of holy saints). Chinese Christian churches hold religious celebrations. Non-religious celebrations are dominated by expatriate Americans or Canadians, but costume parties are also popular for Chinese young adults, especially in large cities. Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park (Halloween Bash) host annual Halloween shows.
Mainland China has been less influenced by Anglo traditions than Hong Kong and Halloween is generally considered "foreign". As Halloween has become more popular globally it has also become more popular in China, however, particularly amongst children attending private or international schools with many foreign teachers from North America.[31]
Hong Kong
Traditional "door-to-door" trick or treating is not commonly practiced in Hong Kong due to the vast majority of Hong Kong residents living in high-rise apartment blocks. However, in many buildings catering to expatriates, Halloween parties and limited trick or treating is arranged by the management. Instances of street-level trick or treating in Hong Kong occur in ultra-exclusive gated housing communities such as The Beverly Hills populated by Hong Kong's super-rich and in expatriate areas like Discovery Bay and the Red Hill Peninsula. For the general public, there are events at Tsim Sha Tsui's Avenue of the Stars that try to mimic the celebration.[32] In the Lan Kwai Fong area of Hong Kong, known as a major entertainment district for the international community, a Halloween celebration and parade has taken place for over 20 years, with many people dressing in costume and making their way around the streets to various drinking establishments.[33] Many international schools also celebrate Halloween with costumes, and some put an academic twist on the celebrations such as the "Book-o-ween" celebrations at Hong Kong International School where students dress as favorite literary characters.
Japan
A Halloween display in a local bank window, in Saitama, Japan
Halloween arrived in Japan mainly as a result of American pop culture. In 2009 it was celebrated only by expats.[34] The wearing of elaborate costumes by young adults at night has since become popular in areas such as Amerikamura in Osaka and Shibuya in Tokyo, where, in October 2012, about 1700 people dressed in costumes to take part in the Halloween Festival.[35] Celebrations have become popular with young adults as a costume party and club event.[36] Trick-or-treating for Japanese children has taken hold in some areas. By the mid-2010s, Yakuza were giving snacks and sweets to children.[37]
Philippines
The period from 31 October through 2 November is a time for remembering dead family members and friends. Many Filipinos travel back to their hometowns for family gatherings of festive remembrance.[38]
Trick-or-treating is gradually replacing the dying tradition of Pangangaluluwâ, a local analogue of the old English custom of souling. People in the provinces still observe Pangangaluluwâ by going in groups to every house and offering a song in exchange for money or food. The participants, usually children, would sing carols about the souls in Purgatory, with the abúloy (alms for the dead) used to pay for Masses for these souls. Along with the requested alms, householders sometimes gave the children suman (rice cakes). During the night, various small items, such as clothing, plants, etc., would "mysteriously" disappear, only to be discovered the next morning in the yard or in the middle of the street. In older times, it was believed that the spirits of ancestors and loved ones visited the living on this night, manifesting their presence by taking an item.[39]
As the observation of Christmas traditions in the Philippines begins as early as September, it is a common sight to see Halloween decorations next to Christmas decorations in urban settings.[citation needed]
Saudi Arabia
Starting 2022, Saudi Arabia began to celebrate Halloween in the public in Riyadh under its Saudi Vision 2030.[40]
Singapore
Around mid-July Singapore Chinese celebrate "Zhong Yuan Jie / Yu Lan Jie" (Hungry Ghosts Festival), a time when it is believed that the spirits of the dead come back to visit their families.[41] In recent years, Halloween celebrations are becoming more popular, with influence from the west.[42] In 2012, there were over 19 major Halloween celebration events around Singapore.[43] SCAPE's Museum of Horrors held its fourth scare fest in 2014.[44] Universal Studios Singapore hosts "Halloween Horror Nights".[45]
South Korea
The popularity of the holiday among young people in South Korea comes from English academies and corporate marketing strategies, and was influenced by Halloween celebrations in Japan and America.[46] Despite not being a public holiday, it is celebrated in different areas around Seoul, especially Itaewon and Hondae.[47]
Taiwan
Children dressed up in Halloween costume in Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan
Traditionally, Taiwanese people celebrate "Zhong Yuan Pudu Festival", where spirits that do not have any surviving family members to pay respects to them, are able to roam the Earth during the seventh lunar month. It is known as Ghost Month.[48] While some have compared it to Halloween, it has no relations and the overall meaning is different. In recent years, mainly as a result of American pop culture, Halloween is becoming more widespread amongst young Taiwanese people. Halloween events are held in many areas across Taipei, such as Xinyi Special District and Shilin District where there are many international schools and expats.[49] Halloween parties are celebrated differently based on different age groups. One of the most popular Halloween event is the Tianmu Halloween Festival, which started in 2009 and is organised by the Taipei City Office of Commerce.[50] The 2-day annual festivity has attracted more than 240,000 visitors in 2019. During this festival, stores and businesses in Tianmu place pumpkin lanterns outside their stores to identify themselves as trick-or-treat destinations for children.[51]
Australia and New Zealand
Halloween display in Sydney, Australia
Non-religious celebrations of Halloween modelled on North American festivities are growing increasingly popular in Australia despite not being traditionally part of the culture.[52] Some Australians criticise this intrusion into their culture.[53][54] Many dislike the commercialisation and American pop-culture influence.[54][55] Some supporters of the event place it alongside other cultural traditions such as Saint Patrick's Day.[56]
Halloween historian and author of Halloween: Pagan Festival to Trick or Treat, Mark Oxbrow says while Halloween may have been popularised by depictions of it in US movies and TV shows, it is not a new entry into Australian culture.[57] His research shows Halloween was first celebrated in Australia in Castlemaine, Victoria, in 1858, which was 43 years before Federation. His research shows Halloween traditions were brought to the country by Scottish and Irish miners who settled in Victoria during the Gold Rush.
Because of the polarised opinions about Halloween, growing numbers of people are decorating their letter boxes to indicate that children are welcome to come knocking. In the past decade, the popularity of Halloween in Australia has grown.[58] In 2020, the first magazine dedicated solely to celebrating Halloween in Australia was launched, called Hallozween,[59] and in 2021, sales of costumes, decorations and carving pumpkins soared to an all-time high[60] despite the effect of the global COVID-19 pandemic limiting celebrations.
In New Zealand, Halloween is not celebrated to the same extent as in North America, although in recent years non-religious celebrations have become more common.[61][62] Trick-or-treat has become increasingly popular with minors in New Zealand, despite being not a "British or Kiwi event" and the influence of American globalisation.[63] One criticism of Halloween in New Zealand is that it is overly commercialised - by The Warehouse, for example.[63]
Europe
A jack-o'-lantern in Finland
Over the years, Halloween has become more popular in Europe and has been partially ousting some older customs like the Rübengeistern [de] (English: turnip ghosts, beet spirit), Martinisingen, and others.[64]
France
Halloween was introduced to most of France in the 1990s.[65] In Brittany, Halloween had been celebrated for centuries and is known as Kalan Goañv (Night of Spirits). During this time, it is believed that the spirits of the dead return to the world of the living lead by the Ankou, the collector of souls.[66] Also during this time, Bretons bake Kornigou, a pastry shaped like the antlers of a stag.[citation needed]
Germany
"Don't drink and fly" Halloween decoration in Germany
Halloween was not generally observed in Germany prior to the 1990s, but has been increasing in popularity. It has been associated with the influence of United States culture, and "Trick or Treating" (German: Süßes sonst gibt's Saures) has been occurring in various German cities, especially in areas such as the Dahlem neighborhood in Berlin, which was part of the American zone during the Cold War. Today, Halloween in Germany brings in 200 million euros a year, through multiple industries.[67] Halloween is celebrated by both children and adults. Adults celebrate at themed costume parties and clubs, while children go trick or treating. Complaints of vandalism associated with Halloween "Tricks" are increasing, particularly from many elderly Germans unfamiliar with "Trick or Treating".[68]
Greece
In Greece, Halloween is not celebrated widely and it is a working day, with little public interest, since the early 2000s. Recently, it has somewhat increased in popularity as both a secular celebration; although Carnival is vastly more popular among Greeks. For very few, Halloween is[when?] considered the fourth most popular festival in the country after Christmas, Easter, and Carnival. Retail businesses, bars, nightclubs, and certain theme parks might organize Halloween parties. This boost in popularity has been attributed to the influence of western consumerism.
Since it is a working day, Halloween is not celebrated on 31 October unless the date falls on a weekend, in which case it is celebrated by some during the last weekend before All Hallow's Eve, usually in the form of themed house parties and retail business decorations. Trick-or-treating is not widely popular because similar activities are already undertaken during Carnival. The slight rise in popularity of Halloween in Greece has led to some increase in its popularity throughout nearby countries in the Balkans and Cyprus. In the latter, there has been an increase in Greek-Cypriot retailers selling Halloween merchandise every year.[69]
Ireland
A plaster cast of a traditional Irish Halloween turnip (rutabaga) lantern on display in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland[70]
On Halloween night, adults and children dress up as various monsters and creatures, light bonfires, and enjoy fireworks displays; Derry in Northern Ireland is home to the largest organized Halloween celebration on the island, in the form of a street carnival and fireworks display.[71]
Snap-Apple Night, painted by Daniel Maclise in 1833, depicts apple bobbing and divination games at a Halloween party in Ireland
Games are often played, such as bobbing for apples, in which apples, peanuts, other nuts and fruits, and some small coins are placed in a basin of water.[72] Everyone takes turns catching as many items possible using only their mouths. Another common game involves the hands-free eating of an apple hung on a string attached to the ceiling. Games of divination are also played at Halloween.[73] Colcannon is traditionally served on Halloween.[72]
31 October is the busiest day of the year for the Emergency Services.[74] Bangers and fireworks are illegal in the Republic of Ireland; however, they are commonly smuggled in from Northern Ireland where they are legal.[75] Bonfires are frequently built around Halloween.[76] Trick-or-treating is popular amongst children on 31 October and Halloween parties and events are commonplace.
Italy
A carved pumpkin in Sardinia
In Italy, All Saints' Day is a public holiday. On 2 November, Tutti i Morti or All Souls' Day, families remember loved ones who have died. These are still the main holidays.[77] In some Italian tradition, children would awake on the morning of All Saints or All Souls to find small gifts from their deceased ancestors. In Sardinia, Concas de Mortu (Head of the deads), carved pumpkins that look like skulls, with candles inside are displayed.[78][79][80] Halloween is, however, gaining in popularity, and involves costume parties for young adults.[81] The traditions to carve pumpkins in a skull figure, lighting candles inside, or to beg for small gifts for the deads e.g. sweets or nuts, also belong to North Italy.[82] In Veneto these carved pumpkins were called lumère (lanterns) or suche dei morti (deads' pumpkins).[83]
Poland
Since the fall of Communism in 1989, Halloween has become increasingly popular in Poland. Particularly, it is celebrated among younger people. The influx of Western tourists and expats throughout the 1990s introduced the costume party aspect of Hallowe'en celebrations, particularly in clubs and at private house parties. Door-to-door trick or treating is not common. Pumpkin carving is becoming more evident, following a strong North American version of the tradition.
Romania
Romanians observe the Feast of St. Andrew, patron saint of Romania, on 30 November. On St. Andrew's Eve ghosts are said to be about. A number of customs related to divination, in other places connected to Halloween, are associated with this night.[84] However, with the popularity of Dracula in western Europe, around Halloween the Romanian tourist industry promotes trips to locations connected to the historical Vlad Tepeș and the more fanciful Dracula of Bram Stoker. One of the most successful Halloween Parties in Transylvania takes place in Sighișoara, the citadel where Vlad the Impaler was born. This party include magician shows, ballet show and The Ritual Killing of a Living Dead[85] The biggest Halloween party in Transylvania take place at Bran Castle, aka Dracula's Castle from Transylvania.[86]
Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Romania discourage Halloween celebrations, advising their parishioners to focus rather on the "Day of the Dead" on 1 November, when special religious observances are held for the souls of the deceased.[87] Opposition by religious and nationalist groups, including calls to ban costumes and decorations in schools in 2015, have been met with criticism.[88][89][90] Halloween parties are popular in bars and nightclubs.[91]
Russia
In Russia, most Christians are Orthodox, and in the Orthodox Church, Halloween is on the Saturday after Pentecost, and therefore 4 to 5 months before western Halloween. Celebration of western Halloween began in the 1990s around the downfall of the Soviet regime, when costume and ghoulish parties spread in night clubs throughout Russia. Halloween is generally celebrated by younger generations and is not widely celebrated in civic society (e.g. theaters or libraries). In fact, Halloween is among the Western celebrations that the Russian government and politicians—which have grown increasingly anti-Western in the early 2010s—are trying to eliminate from public celebration.[92][93][94]
Spain
In Spain, celebrations involve eating castanyes (roasted chestnuts), panellets (special almond balls covered in pine nuts), moniatos (roast or baked sweet potato), Ossos de Sant cake and preserved fruit (candied or glazed fruit). Moscatell (Muscat) is drunk from porrons.[95] Around the time of this celebration, it is common for street vendors to sell hot toasted chestnuts wrapped in newspaper. In many places, confectioners often organise raffles of chestnuts and preserved fruit.
The tradition of eating these foods comes from the fact that during All Saints' night, on the eve of All Souls' Day in the Christian tradition, bell ringers would ring bells in commemoration of the dead into the early morning. Friends and relatives would help with this task, and everyone would eat these foods for sustenance.[96]
Other versions of the story state that the Castanyada originates at the end of the 18th century and comes from the old funeral meals, where other foods, such as vegetables and dried fruit were not served. The meal had the symbolic significance of a communion with the souls of the departed: while the chestnuts were roasting, prayers would be said for the person who had just died.[97]
The festival is usually depicted with the figure of a castanyera: an old lady, dressed in peasant's clothing and wearing a headscarf, sitting behind a table, roasting chestnuts for street sale.
In recent years, the Castanyada has become a revetlla of All Saints and is celebrated in the home and community. It is the first of the four main school festivals, alongside Christmas, Carnestoltes and St George's Day, without reference to ritual or commemoration of the dead.[98]
Galicia is known two have the second largest Halloween or Samain festivals in Europe and during this time, a drink called Queimada is often served.
Sweden
On All Hallow's Eve, a Requiem Mass is widely attended every year at Uppsala Cathedral, part of the Lutheran Church of Sweden.[99]
Throughout the period of Allhallowtide, starting with All Hallow's Eve, Swedish families visit churchyards and adorn the graves of their family members with lit candles and wreaths fashioned from pine branches.[99]
Among children, the practice of dressing in costume and collecting candy gained popularity beginning around 2005.[100] The American traditions of Halloween have however been met with skepticism among the older generations, in part due to conflicting with the Swedish traditions on All Hallow's Eve and in part due to their commercialism.[101] In Sweden, All Saint's Day/ All Hallow's Eve is observed on the Saturday occurring between October 31 and November 6, whereas Halloween is observed on October 31, every year.
Switzerland
In Switzerland, Halloween, after first becoming popular in 1999, is on the wane, and is most popular with young adults who attend parties. Switzerland already has a "festival overload" and even though Swiss people like to dress up for any occasion, they do prefer a traditional element, such as in the Fasnacht tradition of chasing away winter using noise and masks.[102][103]
United Kingdom and Crown dependencies
England
See also: Mischief Night and Allantide
In the past, on All Souls' Eve families would stay up late, and little "soul cakes" were eaten. At the stroke of midnight, there was solemn silence among households, which had candles burning in every room to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes and a glass of wine on the table to refresh them. The tradition of giving soul cakes that originated in Great Britain and Ireland was known as souling, often seen as the origin of modern trick or treating in North America, and souling continued in parts of England as late as the 1930s, with children going from door to door singing songs and saying prayers for the dead in return for cakes or money.[104]
Trick or treating and other Halloween celebrations are extremely popular, with shops decorated with witches and pumpkins, and young people attending costume parties.[105]
Scotland
The name Halloween is first attested in the 16th century as a Scottish shortening of the fuller All-Hallow-Even, that is, the night before All Hallows' Day.[106] Dumfries poet John Mayne's 1780 poem made note of pranks at Halloween "What fearfu' pranks ensue!". Scottish poet Robert Burns was influenced by Mayne's composition, and portrayed some of the customs in his poem Halloween (1785).[107] According to Burns, Halloween is "thought to be a night when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands".[108]
Among the earliest record of Guising at Halloween in Scotland is in 1895, where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money.[109] If children approached the door of a house, they were given offerings of food. The children's practice of "guising", going from door to door in costumes for food or coins, is a traditional Halloween custom in Scotland.[3] These days children who knock on their neighbours doors have to sing a song or tell stories for a gift of sweets or money.[110]
A traditional Halloween game includes apple "dooking",[111] or "dunking" or (i.e., retrieving one from a bucket of water using only one's mouth), and attempting to eat, while blindfolded, a treacle/jam-coated scone hanging on a piece of string.
Traditional customs and lore include divination practices, ways of trying to predict the future. A traditional Scottish form of divining one's future spouse is to carve an apple in one long strip, then toss the peel over one's shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name.[112]
In Kilmarnock, Halloween is also celebrated on the last Friday of the month, and is known colloquially as "Killieween".[113]
Isle of Man
See also: Hop-tu-Naa
Halloween is a popular traditional occasion on the Isle of Man, where it is known as Hop-tu-Naa.
Elsewhere
The children of the largest town in Bonaire gather together on Halloween day.
Saint Helena
In Saint Helena, Halloween is actively celebrated, largely along the American model, with ghosts, skeletons, devils, vampires, witches and the like. Imitation pumpkins are used instead of real pumpkins because the pumpkin harvesting season in Saint Helena's hemisphere is not near Halloween. Trick-or-treating is widespread. Party venues provide entertainment for adults." (wikipedia.org)