He presents an ominous sight to anyone unfortunate enough to meet him. There are many personifications of Death throughout world cultures. Death always has a menacing and frightening appearance. Two of the most frightening ones are found in Irish folklore. The Banshee appears to announce the death of someone with a heart-stopping scream. The scary ghostly female is dressed in red or green and has long, wild hair. She has several forms of either a frightening, ugly hag or a beautiful young woman.
Her shriek is said to vibrate to the person's very soul. Another Irish folklore describes a Dullahan. This entity rides a black horse or drives a black carriage with black horses. This entity of death carries its head underneath one of its arms.
The creepy head features oversized eyes and an evil, blood-curdling, ear-to-ear smile. The Dullahan stops outside the home of an unlucky person doomed to die. Cloaked in black, the reaper appears as a skeletal figure holding a scythe peering out from underneath a black hood. When it's your time, the Grim Reaper comes to take you to the other side. It's his job to collect souls as they pass from one world to the other. This generalized description of an angel that brings death is an ominous one indeed.
It's no surprise such a figure is automatically associated with an evil nature, especially when viewed from the perspective of fear about what happens to the soul after death. The Grim Reaper is represented in a very wide range of forms throughout television and movies.
The television show Touched By An Angel had a character named Andrew who was the one who delivered the death notice. His character was kindhearted, and his role was to escort the deceased's soul into the afterlife. More evil characters representing Death have been depicted in numerous movies and TV shows. Regardless of the medium, it's clear the mythology of the Grim Reaper representing Death permeates all aspects of modern society.
The Angel of Death has many personifications throughout the cultures of the world. Hence the Dance of Death , or Danse Macabre, in which skeletons are shown dancing and cavorting with people from all walks of life. On the next page, we'll look at the meaning behind his form and figure. Everything about the Grim Reaper is imbued with meaning.
The objects he carries, even the clothes he wears, tell us something about his nature and his intentions when he finally arrives. Let's look at some of the symbolism, item by item.
This image of the Grim Reaper was so pervasive that it even appeared in religious texts. The best example comes from the Bible's Book of Revelation. In Revelation , four horsemen appear to usher in calamities signaling the end of the world. The horsemen are Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. Of the four, only Death is explicitly named. He rides a pale horse, which is often interpreted as pale green, the color of disease and decay.
In most depictions, Death is shown as the Reaper himself, black cloak framing a grinning skull and scythe held ready for the grisly work ahead. In the next section, we'll look at some examples of how the Reaper appears in popular culture. One archetypal story -- the "cheating death " story -- tells of a person trying to trick the Reaper in an effort to escape death. In Longfellow's poem, death comes for the holy man with a grim announcement: "Lo!
Death hands the weapon to the rabbi, who quickly runs and hides until God can intervene on his behalf. God appears and spares Ben Levi's life, but tells the rabbi to return the sword to its rightful owner. Other seminal works have solidified our modern view of the Reaper, such as the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, a type of play that emerged in the wake of the Black Death.
The purpose of these plays was to prepare churchgoers for the inevitability of death. The play usually took place in a cemetery or churchyard and dramatized a victim's meeting with death, personified as a skeleton. The victim provides several arguments why his life should be spared, but these are found insufficient and death, accompanied by an entourage of other skeletal figures, finally leads him away.
The scenes of this play became popular subjects for several German engravers, including Bernt Notke and Hans Holbein. The prints of these artists showed skeletons dancing among persons from all walks of life -- a lesson that no one, not even royalty, could escape death. The film tells of Antonius Block played by Max von Sydow , a knight who returns from the Crusades to find that the plague has killed many of his countrymen.
Death played by Bengt Ekerot waits for Block, as well. Stalling, the knight challenges Death to a chess match, which Block eventually loses. Although the story is haunting, it is the image of Ekerot's Death -- ominous white face hidden beneath a black cloak -- that endures so vividly. But even if storytellers grow tired of dealing with death and dying, the Reaper will wait patiently in the shadows -- and come for each of us in the end.
Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Science Vs. Strange Creatures. How the Grim Reaper Works. The Grim Reaper is one of the most recognizable figures around, but that doesn't mean anyone is happy to see him when he noiselessly appears.
Accepting Our Own Mortality " ". Not everyone's afraid of the Grim Reaper. A small religious sect that worships death is now fighting the Mexican government for recognition. An artist's illustration of a man suffering from buboes and splotches during the medieval-era plague epidemic.
Skulls and skeletons. The Grim Reaper is a spectral entity that is said to be the sentient manifestation of Death itself. She takes many forms, but usually a frightful old hag, or sometimes as a beautiful and young lady. Several banshees can appear at once, and when they do it means a holy or great person is about to die. Another encounter with the most universally recognized ghost or spirit entity of all time, the Grim Reaper — the Angel of Death — a frequent apparition experienced by virtually every culture and religion since Biblical times.
The most common modern psychopomp appearing in popular culture is the Grim Reaper, which dates from 15th-century England and has been adopted into many other cultures around the world over the years; for instance, the shinigami in Japanese culture today, or Santa Muerte.
I played through the RPGmaker game of this anime and I gotta say it was a good 10 or so hours of fun. It is written that the Son of God became human that by his death he might destroy the devil; this is the head of the Antichrist referred to as, One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.
But it could alternately refer to the Devil separately, who was also said to have been destroyed, and yet has revived. That is, whether Death is the Devil or an agent of Satan is unclear. The final destruction of Death is referenced by Paul in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians; he says that after the general resurrection, the prophecies of Isaiah and Hosea - He will swallow up death forever, and Where, O death, is your sting?
Septuagint , will be fulfilled. According to Paul, the power of Death lies in sin, which is made possible by the Law, but God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. That victory over Death is prophetically revealed in the Revelation of John, discussed below.
Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. In Rev. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.
This describes the destruction of the last enemy. After this, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. There, he balances them in his scales one of his symbols.
He is said to give the dying souls the chance to redeem themselves before passing as well. In Mexico, a popular Catholic cult regards the personification of death as a saint, known as Santa Muerte. The figure is uncanonized and the Church refuses to acknowledge its existence.
He is charged with the task of separating and returning from the bodies the souls of people who are to be recalled permanently from the physical world back to the primordial spiritual world. This is a process whose aspect varies depending on the nature and past deeds of the individuals in question, and some suggest that Azrael is also accompanied by helpers or associates. Apart from Azrael's responsibilities and the characteristics he has in common with other angels in Islam, little else concerning his personality can be derived from fundamental Muslim texts.
Many references are made in various Muslim legends, however, some of which are included in books authored by Muslim poets and mystics. For instance, the following tale is in the Masnavi, written by the well-known Maulana Rumi: When the Almighty determined to create mankind He deputed the angel Gabriel to bring a handful of earth for the purpose of forming Adam's body.
But the Earth, being apprehensive that the man so created would rebel against God and draw down God's curse upon her, remonstrated with Gabriel, and besought him to forbear Then God deputed [the angel] Michael on the same errand, and the Earth made similar excuses to him, and he also Then God sent the angel Israfil on the same errand, and he also was diverted from the execution of it by a divine intimation At last God sent 'Izrail, the angel of death, who, being of sterner disposition than the others, resolutely shut his ears to the Earth's entreaties, and brought back the required handful of earth.
The Earth pressed him with the argument that God's command to bear away a handful of her substance against her will did not override the other divine command to take pity on suppliants; but 'Izrail would not listen to her, remarking that, according to the canons of theological interpretation, it was not allowable to have recourse to analogical reasoning to evade a plain and categorical injunction.
He added, that in executing this injunction, painful though it might be, he was to be regarded only as a spear in the hand of the Almighty. The character of Death has recurred many times in popular fiction.
He has made appearances in many stories, from serious dramatic fiction to comedy, including playing roles in science fiction and fantasy stories. Encyclopedia of Monsters Wiki Explore. Wiki Content. Recent blog posts Forum.
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