MUERTE
CONTENTS
01
Introduction
74
O
05
Dictionnaire de la Mort
76
P
06
A
78
Q
22
B
80
R
26
C
84
S
34
D
94
T
38
E
99
U
42
F
102
V
46
G
102
W
52
H
108
X
56
I
112
Y
58
J
114
Z
58
K
114
#
60
L
118
Credits
62
M
70
N
DICTIONNAIRE DE LA MORT
MUERTE Dictionnaire de la Mort #3 November 2018 Editor: Ernesto Perez Rea Junca
Previous page and cover: Reinterpretation of illustration by Catherine Frances Frere for the book Old Deccan Days
MUERTE
We don’t want to die. Nowadays we are surrounded by a term that bombs us in our everyday life: wellness. We are obsessed with prolonging life - eat clean, quit drinking, take drugs under medical control, exercise, reduce stress, yoga- do everything possible to expand our lifespan the most until our mind doesn’t realize we are dying anymore. 21st century generations avoid talking about death as if denying it will erase the only certainty we have the moment we are born. In 2014, Dying Matters, a British coalition of individual and organisational members which aims to help people talk more openly about dying, death and bereavement, made a survey in which eight of ten people were found uncomfortable talking about dying and death. The “demonization” of death is quite recent; according to the philanthropist Satish Modi, “In the late 19th century, the standard of life used to be much lower and people died much earlier. The time people had on this planet was very limited – the average life expectancy was around 48 [by 1901]. Nowadays people can expect to live into the high 90s. In the Victorian era, people understood that they had little time left to live a life, and they confronted and talked about mortality, operations and medicine as people around them died. Now the lifespan has increased, people don’t talk about it.”
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In ancient societies, there was always a ritual for death events. People followed its procedures and learned from it, they spent their whole life preparing for its biggest life event. Since the very beginning of human kind, societies developed and built pyramids, tombs, mausoleums, mastabas, among many other typologies of funerary architecture. Now we are completely unprepared for death as if its denial will save us from it. Maybe its got something to do with our capitalist system kind of society this constant denial. Death depresses the market, it doesn’t sell. Death removes customers from the marketplace and sadness other customers, it’s not affordable. There is a necessity to remove death from the contemporary city: “no mourning, no funerals anymore. Traffic cannot stop, shops cannot close. No Lent, no Muharram. Always Christmas, always Mardi Gras.” (San Rocco Magazine) Death is essential. Without death there is no meaning or importance in anything we do. Our limited time transforms goals into achievements and achievements into transcendence. What meaning would life have without dead? Peter Saul, an emergency doctor, in a conference in 2011, showed graphs about four different ways of death and how common it is each of those nowadays: Sudden death, which has become very rare. Terminal illness, which happens to younger people, since by the time you’ve reached 80 this is unlikely to happen anymore, only one of ten people will die of cancer. The big growth industry are organ failure and frailty. The first one, means an admission to an intensive care hospital in which at some point someone says enough is enough and the doctors stop. The second one is the most common in our time (6 out of 10 people will die of this) which is the dwindling of capacity. A candle light fading away. The void is waiting. We must be conscious of how the worst thing that could possibly
• 02 •
happen, will happen. The end of our individual world. A personal apocalypse.
MUERTE is a fanzine that confronts death, which is published monthly. It is designed for a four months plan, in which each of the four editions will speak about death related topics approached from architecture, design, photography, philosophy and literature. MUERTE aims to explore the relation between human and death with the premise that its crucial for our society to prepare and confront for the inevitable.
(Publication themes are being selected from the Call For Papers of San Rocco’s Magazine.)
• 03 •
Reinterpretation of an illustration by Charles Herny Benette for the book Quarles' emblems. 1825
• 04 •
DICTIONNAIRE DE LA MORT
In 1967 Robert Sabatier published a thorough compendium related to death, from remarkable testaments to weird burials, from iconography to decorations, from curses to poems from all times and places. An all-you-can-eat death buffet. This edition presents a new dictionary of the death defined during the present digital era where all you want to know is just on click away.
Symbology Author/Source: Wikipedia Merriam-Webster Editor (Ernesto Pérez Rea Juncá) Other (Specified on the text) Related words
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a
Adultery:
noun. Sex between a married man or woman with someone which is not their spouse.
fig. 1
infidelity, cheating, sex, libido, desire ****************** “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10) ****************** El Pais, November 18th 1993
Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco The Amy Fisher story is one of the most infamous love triangles. Amy, known as the Long Island Lolita, was 17 when she began having an affair with Joey Buttafuoco, an auto body shop owner. Eventually Joey ended the relationship, choosing his wife Mary Jo over Amy. The teen didn’t take it well. On May 19, 1992, Amy knocked on Mary Jo’s door, and told her that Joey was having an affair with her 16-year-old sister. Mary Jo told Amy to leave, and Amy shot her in the face. Amy was sentenced to seven years for first-degree murder attempt. Joey was sentenced to six months for statutory rape. Mary Jo survived the attack but suffered paralysis on one side of her face as well as hearing issues. Philip Barton Key Philip Barton Key was shot and killed by U.S congressman and Union General, Daniel Sickles, after he was caught having an affair with Sickles’ wife. In 1859, Sickles shot Key in Lafayette Park, which lies across the street from the White House. Sickles became famous for being the first person to plea temporary insanity for a defense. Sickels’ defense team said that he was driven insane by his wife’s affair. The testimony proved to be convincing and Sick-
• 06 •
les was eventually acquitted from his crime. ****************** Adultery in literature
Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby; Tender Is the Night Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary James Joyce: Ulysses Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
African Elephant:
Second animal-related death cause in the world according to Animal Planet.
fig. 2
animal, Africa, elephantidae, mammoth, mastodon.
Alcoholism: alcohol addiction.
fig. 3
drink, booze, intoxication, cirrhosis, liver, kidney, drunk ****************** World Health Organization
Alcohol is a psychoactive substance with dependence-producing properties that has been widely used in many cultures for centuries. The harmful use of alcohol causes a large disease, social and economic burden in societies. Environmental factors such as economic development, culture, availability of alcohol and the level and effectiveness of alcohol policies are relevant factors in explaining differences and historical trends in alcohol consumption and related harm. Alcohol-related harm is determined by the volume of alcohol con-
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Top: Lovers. Line engraving, France. 18th Century. Bottom: 19th century engraving of an African elephant. Next Page: Lot made drunk by his daughters. Line engraving by Vienot after C. Mellan.
fig. 1
fig. 2
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fig. 3
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sumed, the pattern of drinking, and, on rare occasions, the quality of alcohol consumed. The harmful use of alcohol is a component cause of more than 200 disease and injury conditions in individuals, most notably alcohol dependence, liver cirrhosis, cancers and injuries. The latest causal relationships established are those between alcohol consumption and incidence of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
Alebrije:
Mexican folk art bright-coloured sculptures made of wood (commonly copal), of fantastical creatures created from different animal parts. &
fig. 4 5
artisan, craftsman, colors, animal, magic, fiction, hallucination ****************** Vice
Pedro learned his father’s trade. The business was the manufacture of masks, skulls and judas (a doll that represents the devil and it is burned on Glory Saturday night. One afternoon in 1932 Peter fell ill. The doctor who treated him told him that he had a gastric ulcer. Pedro stayed the same, he had no idea what the doctor was talking about, what was an ulcer? Pedro lived in extreme poverty: dirt floor and some rollers. He didn’t even have the means to treat himself. The ulcer burst, the man thinned, and evacuated blood. One day his body did not resist the pain and fainted. He suffered a kind of coma. He seemed dead, just as people began the ritual of wakefulness in their own bed, as the traditions demands. They placed candles around him and prayers were heard for the salvation of his soul. But Pedro was not dead. Pedro was immersed in a dream. In it there was a bell in the air which attracted a mass of people towards it. After a while he realized this people were the deceased after recognizing his brother among the public which had had died many years before, when he was still very young. They had to go through a narrow road where you could only walk by putting one foot in front of the other. On one side there was a wall and the
• 10 •
other abyss. Many went through walking, others on their knees or crawling. Those who did not have enough determination fell into the void. Suddenly Pedro’s brother came towards him: -And what are you doing here? You do not belong to this place. Go where you came from. -I’ll leave-, the cardboard master replied, -just tell me which way, because I do not even know how I ended up here. Pedro began walking in the opposite direction. Little by little he became distant from the people. He came to a place where the soil was dry and arid, with an exception of a few bushes, the vegetation did not grow there. The place was dark. The man was afraid. Suddenly, from the shadows, a fog arose, and strange animals began coming out. It was like a stampede of horrible beings composed of different animal parts. They stalked him. Their look was demonic. They wanted to eat him. At the same time, he heard the sound that their throats produced, something that was understood as “lebrija” or “alebrije”. The voices of the animals were so loud that they drilled his ears. Pedro ran like he had never in his life done it. After fleeing from those beings, he woke up. He did not know how, even though he knew he had something to do with it. The people around his bed were startled. He had resurrected. Pedro with anguish told his sisters and friends what he had seen: a donkey with wings and tongue of fire, a snake with crow’s feet and hair instead of scales, a lion with a dog’s head and a dragon’s tail. However, nobody understood. What was this man which came back to life as the biblical Lazarus talking about? So, Pedro decided to explain himself the only way he knew how to express well: with the cardboard. He created his first demonic animal and decided to call him with the strange word he heard in his nightmare: alebrije. Pedro did not know that years later an English filmmaker would be fascinated with his fantastic creations, that he would travel to the United States and the whole world where he would be treated as a great contemporary artist, that he would leave school and that a year before he died, in 1990, he would be awarded the National Prize for Science and Arts.
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Top: Alebrije. Engraving by Joel Rendon. Bottom: Reinterpretation of an Albrije being sold online. 2018 Next Page: Edgar Allan Poe. Mark Summers.
fig. 4
fig. 5 • 12 •
fig. 6 • 13 •
Allan Poe, Edgar:
The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849, has remained mysterious, the circumstances leading up to it are uncertain and the cause of death is disputed. On October 3, the American author was found delirious in Baltimore, Maryland, “in great distress, and in need of immediate assistance”, according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. He was 40 years old. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.
fig. 6
raven, poetry, romanticism, mystery, macabre, detective fiction
Amulet:
An amulet is an object that is typically worn on one’s person, that some people believe has the magical or miraculous power to protect its holder, either to protect them in general or to protect them from some specific thing; it is often also used as an ornament though that may not be the intended purpose of it.
fig. 7
magic, ornament, religion, paganism, object, sacred, power. ****************** Notes on some funerary amulets, Alan W. Shorter, The Journal Of Egyptian Archeology
Funerary amulets in ancient egypt: The Heart-Scarab (Beetle) Amulet placed on Egyptian mummies to prevent “the heart from giving evidence against the deceased in the Judgment before Osiris…these amulets were originally designed to replace or stimulate the functions of the dead man’s back, his blood and his heart respectively.” The Two Fingers This amulet was explained as “the two fingers of Horus which the latter extended to his father Osiris, in order to assist him to mount to the top of the heavenly ladder”. This belief was not translated from the Book of the Dead, but from the Pyramid Text, the oldest • 14 •
found hieroglyphs of spells, and it stated that the deceased king, “springs up to the sky, to the two fingers of the god, the lord of the ladder”. Another theory for this amulet is that symbolizes the two fingers of Anubis, the embalmer of Osiris. This is because the amulet was usually found on the left side of the pelvis where the first incision was made, into which the two fingers of the embalmer may have been inserted at the start of the mummification process. The Name-bead The amulet was usually just worn around the throat of the mummy, with the name of the deceased. It was in the shape of a barrel or flattened bead and made from carnelian, which is a pale to deep reddish brown of clear chalcedony (which is also a translucent to transparent grayish quartz with microscopic crystals). The name beads were found in the Middle Kingdom coffins or anthropoid coffins The Serpent-head amulet This amulet is a representation of the uraeus, a figure of the scared serpent, worn by the Sun-god, to help protect the dead from the dangerous serpents of the Underworld. The belief was the deceased laying in the tomb could possibly be bitten in the throat, so the amulet could protect the deceased. The Golden Falcon-head Collar The purpose for this amulet was to help free the deceased by Osiris, Isis and Horus from their “mummy-wrappings so that he may live once more. The Djed Pillar or ‘tet’ amulet This amulet was a symbol of stability and protection. Another source deciphered this amulet as a ‘tet’ which resembles a mason’s table and is an emblem that symbolizes Osiris the lord of Tettu, great god of the Underworld.
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This page: Steel Engraving Necklace Amulet. Roman Pompeii, Italy. Costume Archeolog. 1871 Next Page: Anubis. Reinterpretation based on New Kingdom tomb paintings.
fig. 7
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fig. 8
• 17 •
Two Frogs Seen as a symbol of eternal life.
Anubis:
the Greek name of a god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head. Archeologists have identified Anubis’s sacred animal as an Egyptian canid, the African golden wolf.
fig. 8
god, Egypt, canine, dog, man. mummification, afterlife
Auschwitz:
a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I (the original concentration camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combined concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp to staff an IG Farben factory), and 45 satellite camps. The best estimates of the number of victims at the Auschwitz camp complex, including the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 1940 and 1945 are: Jews (1,095,000 deported to Auschwitz, 960,000 died) Non-Jewish Poles (140,000- 150,000 deported, 74,000 died) Roma (Gypsies) (23,000 deported, 21,000 died) concentration, camp, jewish, genocide, Nazi, extermination
Ayotzinapa:
municipality in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, in which the night of the 26th of September, a group of 43 students disappeared, eight died and twenty-seven where wounded when they clashed with the municipality police. The series of violent episodes between the police and students, unleashed a social and political movement in which people stood up against the government for the existent impunity in the country against forced disappearances. Under the slogan “Alive were taken, alive we want them” the family of the disappeared, protest through the country demanding the government the whereabouts of their lost children. &
fig. 9 10
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violence, impunity, kidnapping, government, police, corruption, students, protest, repression) ****************** On September 26, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were forcibly taken then disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. They were allegedly taken into custody by local police members from Cocula and Iguala, colluded with the organized crime. According to official reports, the students’ annual commandeering of several buses to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre turned deadly. During the journey, local police attempted to intercept several of the buses, commandeered by the students, through the use of road blocks and the firing of weapons. Details of what happened during and after the assault remain unclear, but the government investigation concluded that once 43 of the students were forcibly taken into custody, they were handed over to the local Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”) crime syndicate and presumably killed. This official version from the Mexican government is disputed. In September 2015, the results of a six-month investigation by a panel of experts assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that the government’s claim that the students were killed in a garbage dump because they were mistaken for members of a drug gang was “scientifically impossible” given the setting’s conditions. Mexican authorities claimed Iguala’s mayor, José Luis Abarca Velázquez (es) a member of the PRD, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, masterminded the abduction, although neither of them were convicted or even put on trial for the students’ disappearance. There are also reports linking Federal forces to the case, some stating that military personnel in the area deliberately omitted helping the students in distress. Others state a direct involvement of the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican
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This page: Ayotzinapa. Engraving by Leopoldo Mendez. Next Page: Photography by Carlos Ayala
fig. 9
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fig. 10
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Army in the kidnapping and murder of the students. ****************** Forensic Architecture
b
On the night of 26-27 September 2014, students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa were attacked in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, by local police in collusion with criminal organisations. Numerous other branches of the Mexican security apparatus either participated in or witnessed the events, including state and federal police and the military. Six people were murdered, including three students. Forty more were wounded, and forty-three students were forcibly disappeared. The whereabouts of the disappeared students remains unknown, and their status as ‘disappeared’ persists to this day. Instead of attempting to solve this historic crime, the Mexican state has failed the victims, and the rest of Mexican society, by constructing a fraudulent and inconsistent narrative of that night’s events. Forensic Architecture was commissioned by – and worked in collaboration with – the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF) and Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez (Centro Prodh) to conceive of an interactive cartographic platform to map out and examine the different narratives of this event. The project aims to reconstruct, for the first time, the entirety of the known events that took place that night in and around Iguala and to provide a forensic tool for researchers to further the investigation.
Beretta:
Founded in the 16th century, Beretta is the old-
est active manufacturer of firearm components in the world. In 1526 its inaugural product was arquebus barrels; by all accounts Beretta-made barrels equipped the Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Beretta has supplied weapons for every major European war since 1650.
fig. 11
gun, Lepanto, weapon, dinasty, italian, machine • 22 •
Black Death:
Also known as the Great Plague, the
Black Plague, or simply the Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which results in several forms of plague, is believed to have been the cause. The plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. The Black Death is thought to have originated in the dry plains of Central Asia, where it travelled along the Silk Road, reaching Crimea by 1343. From there, it was most likely carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships, spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe’s total population. In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century. It took 200 years for the world population to recover to its previous level. The plague recurred as outbreaks in Europe until the 19th century.
fig. 12
plague, Europe, pandemic
Blood:
noun. the fluid that circulates in the heart, arter-
ies, capillaries, and veins of a vertebrate animal carrying nourishment and oxygen to and bringing away waste products from all parts of the body.
fig. 13
fluid, body, nutrient, oxygen, cells, metabolic, waste, water ******************
• 23 •
fig. 11
Top: Original M9 exploded view from 1985 Contract. Bottom: Circa 1656, a plague doctor in protective clothing. Next Page: 1879 Engraving Print Anatomy Human Body Blood Vessel System is a piece of digital artwork by MN Digital which was uploaded on March 20th, 2014.
fig. 12 • 24 •
fig. 13 • 25 •
459 BC. Themistocles, the Athenian general who won the Battle of Salamis, actually died of natural causes in exile, but was widely rumoured to have committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood. Since bull’s blood is not actually poisonous Themistocles cannot have actually died in this way, but the legend is widely retold in classical sources The early twentieth-century English classicist Percy Gardner proposed that the story about him drinking bull’s blood may have been based on an ignorant misunderstanding of a statue showing Themistocles in a heroic pose, holding a cup as an offering to the gods. The comedic playwright Aristophanes references Themistocles drinking bull’s blood in his comedy The Knights (performed in 324 BC) as the most heroic way for a man to die.
Borromini, Francesco:
The famous disputes that the
artist from had with his rival Gian Lorenzo Bernini finally ended with his life. His sullen and gloomy nature was intensified after the loss of assignment for the design of which is now the fountain of Piazza Navona and the tomb of Pope Alexander VII which ended in Bernini’s hands. Finally, on the morning of August 2nd, 1667, Borromini pounced on a sword hanging over his bed. Given the ban at the time of burying the dead by suicide, his body was not buried in San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, as was he wished. Today his remains are in the Church of St. John of the Flo-
c
rentines (Roma). barroque, architect, suicide, sword
Camus, Albert:
French philosopher, author,
and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism
• 26 •
while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957, the second youngest recipient in history.
Date of Death: 4 January 1960
Cause: car accident.
Location: Le Grand Fossard, Villeblevin, France.
absurd, suicide, Sisyphus, nihilism, Nobel, existentialism
Cannibalism: noun. also called anthropophagy, eating of human flesh by humans. The term is derived from the Spanish name (Caríbales, or Caníbales) for the Carib, a West Indies tribe well known for its practice of cannibalism. A widespread custom going back into early human history, cannibalism has been found among peoples on most continents.
fig. 14
consuming, human, flesh, meat, cannibal ****************** Britannica
Famous cannibals through history: 1.
Issei Sagawa
2.
Andrei Chikatilo
3.
Jeffery Dahmer
4.
Jose Luis Calva
5.
Armin Meiwes
6.
Joachim Georg Kroll
7.
Albert Fish
Carpet viper:
third must dangerous animal in the
world, just after the African elephant. This animal is responsible
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This page: Engraving depicting cannibalism in Brazil. Philip Edwards. Next page: Photo published by Animal Sake Website.
fig. 14
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fig. 15
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for most of the snake related deaths in the world since most of the bites occur in areas that lack modern medical facilities, so the victims slowly bleed to death over the course of several weeks according to Animal Planet.
fig. 15
snake, poisonous, venomous, Echis, sizziling.
Cataclysm: noun. 1. Flood, deluge. 2.Catastrophe 3.A momentous and violent event marked by overwhelming upheaval and demolition. apocalypse, destruction, end, extinction
Cecil Hotel: a budget hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, located at 640 S. Main Street, opened in 1927. It has 600 guest rooms. The hotel has a violent history but is currently being renovated and redeveloped into a mix of hotel rooms and residential units. There is a list of more than 20 deaths that have happened inside the hotel. haunted, violence, hotel, California, murder, american
Cenote:
a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the
collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Especially associated with the YucatĂĄn Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes were sometimes used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings. mayan, tradition, sacrifice, nature, sink, water, jungle
Charon:
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (is the fer-
ryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from
• 30 •
the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. In the catabasis mytheme, heroes – such as Aeneas, Dionysus, Heracles, Hermes, Odysseus, Orpheus, Pirithous, Psyche, Theseus and Sisyphus – journey to the underworld and return, still alive, conveyed by the boat of Charon.
fig. 16
mythology, boatman, river, Styx, underworld.
Cholera:
Seven cholera pandemics have occurred in the
past 200 years, with the seventh pandemic originating in Indonesia in 1961. Additionally, there have been many documented cholera outbreaks, such as a 1991-1994 outbreak in South America and, more recently, the 2016–18 Yemen cholera outbreak. pandemia, bacterium, contamination, water, dehydration
Comala:
Scenario of Juan Rulfo’s novel, Pedro Paramo. A
ghost town. novel, literature, Mexico, Colima, Rulfo
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur:
author and creator of
the famous detective Sherlock Holmes known for his crime and detective fiction. As most of the literary genre does, his stories go around crimes which may be murders to be solved. detective, Sherlock, Holmes, murder, mystery, crime, England
Coven:
usually refers to a gathering of witches. The word
“coven” remained largely unused in English until 1921 when
• 31 •
Margaret Murray promoted the idea, now much disputed, that all witches across Europe met in groups of thirteen which they called “covens”. The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused, nineteen of whom were found guilty and executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and at least five people died in jail. It was the deadliest witch hunt in the history of the United States. Twelve other women had previously been executed in Massachusetts and Connecticut during the 17th century. Despite being generally known as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in several towns: Salem Village (now Danvers), Salem Town, Ipswich, and Andover. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. witches, reunion, occultism, execution, witchcraft, Salem
Curse: come upon one.
noun. a prayer or invocation for harm or injury to
fig. 17
imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, wish, misfortune
• 32 •
This page: Gustave Dore created this engraving to be included in a version of the "Divine Comedy" which was published in 1890. It is from Dante Alighieri's Inferno.(New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1890). Next page: 19th-century illustration, "Burning of Jacques de Molay." Jacques de Molay, grand master of the religious order of the Knights Templar, is burned after being found guilty of heresy in 1314.
fig. 16
fig. 17 • 33 •
d
Danse Macabre:
The Danse Macabre (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: no matter one’s station in life, the Dance Macabre unites all.
fig. 18
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 laborer. They were produced as mementos mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life. 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. dance, unity, middle age, personification.
Death Note:
a Japanese manga series written by Tsu-
gumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The story follows Light Yagami, a high school student who stumbles across a mysterious otherworldly notebook: the “Death Note”, which belonged to the Shinigami Ryuk, and grants its user the power to kill anyone whose name and face he knows. The series centers around Light’s subsequent attempts to use the Death Note to change the world into a utopian society without crime as a god-like vigilante named “Kira” and the subsequent efforts of an elite task-force of law enforcement officials, consisting of members of the Japanese police agency led by L, an enigmatic international consulting detective, to apprehend him and end his reign of terror. anime, manga, japanese, Kira, crime, ethics.
Devil: thority in hell.
personification of the evil. The maximum au-
fig. 19 • 34 •
evil, hell, authority, force, destructive, religion, tradition, power. ****************** The history of this concept intertwines with theology, mythology, psychiatry, art and literature, maintaining a validity, and developing independently within each of the traditions. It occurs historically in many contexts and cultures, and is given many different names — Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles — and attributes: It is portrayed as blue, black, or red; It is portrayed as having horns on its head, and without horns, and so on.
Divine Comedy:
an Italian long narrative poem
by Dante Alighieri, completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered to be the preeminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem’s imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written (also in most present-day Italian-market editions), as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. dante, italian, language, literature, poem, narrative, afterlife
Dracula:
a novel published in 1897 generally defined as
gothic horror novel written by Bram Stoker. The main character, Count Dracula, a vampire, moves from Transylvania to England in search of fresh new blood. vampire, blood, literature. ******************
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This page: Danse macabre, 1493. Paris. Bibliothoque des Arts decoratifs. Next page: : Cornelis Galle I, "Lucifer" (1595), engraving (all images courtesy Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University)
fig. 18
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fig. 19
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Abilities: hypnotism, telepathy, illusions, wisdom, command animals, manipulate weather and elements such as fog and mist, convert into a bat, between many others. ****************** Options to kill Dracula: -Wooden stake through his heart. -Decapitation -Fire -Silver
e
-Blood thirst -Sunlight
Ectoplasm:
noun. 1. The outer relatively rigid gran-
ule-free layer of the cytoplasm usually held to be a gel reversibly convertible to a sol 2. A substance held to produce spirit materialization and telekinesis. paranormal, energy, spitirual, medium, spirituality. ****************** In spiritualism, ectoplasm is said to be formed by physical mediums when in a trance state. This material is excreted as a gauzelike substance from orifices on the medium’s body and spiritual entities are said to drape this substance over their nonphysical body, enabling them to interact in the physical and real universe. Some accounts claim that ectoplasm begins clear and almost invisible, but darkens and becomes visible, as the psychic energy becomes stronger. Still other accounts state that in extreme cases ectoplasm will develop a strong odor. According to some mediums, the ectoplasm cannot occur in light conditions as the ecto-
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plasmic substance would disintegrate. Arthur Conan Doyle described ectoplasm as “a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes”.
Envy:
the desire of something you lack of; a desire to
posses the same advantages; jealousy. One of the seven deadly sins. sin, desire, emotion, lack, possession, superior, inferiority.
Epitaph:
noun. 1. An inscription on or at a tomb or a grave
in memory of the one buried there 2. Arief statement commemorating or epitomizing a deceased person or something past. text, honor, poem, prose, deceased, brief, post-mortem ****************** Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) Si monumentum requiris circumspice [If you require a monument, look around.] ****************** H.G. Wells (1866-1946) “Goddamn you all: I told you so.” ****************** Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) Don’t Try
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****************** Mel Blanc (1908-1989) That’s All Folks ****************** William Shakespear (1564-1616) Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Eschatology:
noun. 1. A branch of theology concerned
with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind. 2. A belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind. theology, final, event, destiny, humanity, world, time.
Exctintion: noun. 1. The act of making extinct or causing to be extinguished 2. The condition or fact of being extinct or extinguished 3: the process of eliminating or reducing a conditioned response by not reinforcing it. termination, evolution, eradication. ****************** Animal Planet 2018
The 8 most endangered animals in 2018:
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1.
Amur Leopard
2. Gorillas 3.
Sea Turtles
4. Orangutan 5.
Sumatran Elephant
6. Saola 7. Vaquita 8. Tiger
Exhumation:
transitive verb. 1. To take out of the grave
or tomb 2. To bring back from neglect or obscurity 3. To bring back into awareness or prominence.
fig. 20
sacrilege, unburial, grave, tomb. ****************** Taking out a body which was buried. In many religions it is considered a sacrilege. Exhumation of Rossini au Pere-Lachaise. Engraving done from a photograph made by Pierre Petit. 1887.
fig. 20 • 41 •
f
Famine:
absence or scarcity of food caused by diverse fac-
tors such as crop failure, war, population imbalance, inflation or government policies. hunger, food, scarcity, starvation, malnutrition, epidemic.
Ferdinand, Archduke Franz:
Archduke of Austria,
member of the Habsburg family lineage which was the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. He was shot death in Sarajevo, triggering a series of war declarations between Austro-Hungary’s and Serbia’s allies which later detonated the World War I. WWI, assassination, Sarajevo, Habsburg, war.
Finis Gloriae Mundis:
painting done by the baroque
painter Juan de Valdés Leal which belong to the genre of vanitas.
fig. 21 baroque, vanitas, transience, mortality, art, painting.
Funeral:
ceremony performed when a person dies which
varies depending on the culture, country and religion. Accompanying a body before burial, cremation or any post mortem treat the body will have. ceremony, burial, resurrection, body, soul, memorial, service. ****************** Remarkable funerals
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Alexandre The Great Alexander III of Macedon was known as ‘the Great’ for good reason; by the age of 30 he had forged one of the largest ancient empires, stretching almost six thousand miles from Greece to India, covering more than 3.5 per cent of the world’s land mass. Alexander died aged 32, in the ancient city of Babylon, in what’s now modern-day Iraq. The cause of his death is unknown, but historians suggest it was possibly malaria or typhoid fever. Making a funerary cart impressive enough to carry the world’s most powerful man would take nearly two years. In the meantime, Alexander’s body was preserved by Egyptian embalmers, according to the Greek writer Plutarch’s account. Once the golden cart was complete, the funeral procession began a long, arduous journey of over 1,300 miles, first travelling from Babylon to Memphis in Egypt and then on to Alexandria. Alexander’s tomb became a place of pilgrimage. Roman emperor Julius Caesar visited to pay his respects to his personal hero in 45 BC. However, the whereabouts of the tomb are now unknown. Many an archaeologist has searched in vain to find the burial site of the classical world’s greatest leader. ****************** Abraham Lincoln When Lincoln was assassinated on the evening of April 14, 1865, the entire nation mourned. Businesses closed, and flags were flying at half-mast. His body lay in state for three days at the Capitol Rotunda, before embarking on a 1,600-mile cross-country train journey back to his home state of Illinois. The dedicated funeral train, dubbed ‘the Lincoln Special’, made its way through 180 cities and seven states, making regular stops so that citizens could pay their respects. At each stop the President was taken off the train and placed on a horse-drawn cart so
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that the funeral procession could pass through the town. Accompanying Lincoln on his last journey was the body of his beloved son, Willie, who had died of typhoid fever aged just 11. His grave in Washington had been exhumed so that he could be re-buried next to his father. The train’s last stop was Springfield, Illinois, where father and son were interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery. Sadly, the famous Lincoln Special train was destroyed in a fire in 1911. ****************** Victor Hugo Victor Hugo, author of French classics Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, was given the largest funeral France had ever seen. Hugo had witnessed some of the most turbulent moments in French history. He lived through the 1870 siege of Paris, during which starving citizens were forced to eat rats and animals from the Paris zoo to survive. Despite seeing such times of misery and uncertainty, he lived to the age of 83, dying of pneumonia on May 22 1885. Although he requested a simple pauper’s burial, France could not deny their favorite poet an extravagant funeral. Hugo’s body was displayed under the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris during the night of May 22, before being carried to the Panthéon for burial the following day. More than two million people attended his funeral procession, with some 40,000 waiting overnight to get a good view. The New York Times reported on the event, calling it “one of the greatest pageants ever seen in France.” ******************
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Mahatma Gandhi When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, more than two million people turned out for an epic funeral procession that took five hours to travel five miles. A political activist who led India’s independence movement against the British, Gandhi was beloved by the millions of Indians who shared his beliefs. He was shot and killed by a nationalist who opposed his political ideas. For the funeral, a weapons carrier was repurposed as a hearse with a platform so that his body could be raised up, allowing the crowds to see him. It took 50 men to pull the hearse with four ropes. Over 6,000 troops and members of the armed forces were in attendance, representing the regiments of the Indian Army. After the procession, Gandhi’s body was bathed in the Jumna river, a branch of the sacred Ganges, and covered in flowers. He was cremated according to Hindu tradition and his ashes were divided into several urns, to be scattered on water at different significant locations. Finis gloriae mundi. Juan de Valdes Leal.
fig. 21 • 45 •
g
Ganges:
river which flows through India and Bangladesh;
it is one of the most sacred rivers for the hindus. In the last years, the river has been highly polluted becoming a health threat to the habitants around it.
fig. 22
river, India, burial, memorial, ashes, pollution. ****************** The Pyres of Varanasi: Breaking the Cycle of Death and Rebirth, National Geographic
“Funeral practices vary worldwide. Of those I’ve witnessed, few are as transparent and raw as the Hindu ritual on the banks of the Ganges River. The Hindu believe that if a deceased’s ashes are laid in the Ganges at Varanasi, their soul will be transported to heaven and escape the cycle of rebirth. In a culture that believes in reincarnation, this concept called moksha is profound. The holier the place, the better the chances you achieve moksha and avoid returning to Earth as a cow or a cricket in your next life. Since many believe Varanasi has been inhabited for 5,000 years (which would make it one of the world’s oldest cities), it is considered to be the most sacred of cities on the banks of the Ganges River. People come from all over to pray, collect sacred water, bathe, and yes, attend to their dead. Some even come to die.”
Gaudi, Antoni:
Gaudi was run down by a street-
car and died in 1926. He is buried in the Sagrada Familia. After his death, Gaudí’s works suffered a period of neglect and were largely unpopular among international critics, who regarded them as baroque and excessively imaginative. In his homeland he was equally disdained by Noucentisme, the new movement which took the place of Modernisme. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Gaudí’s workshop in the Sagrada Família was ransacked, and a great number of his documents, plans and scale models were de-
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stroyed. architect, catalan, modernism, organic, tragedy, streetcar.
Genoicide:
noun. the deliberate and systematic de-
struction of a racial, political, or cultural group. destruction, extinction, racism, mass, murder.
Grimoire:
also known as a “book of spells”, is a
textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination, and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, and demons. In many cases, the books themselves are believed to be imbued with magical powers, although in many cultures, other sacred texts that are not grimoires (such as the Bible) have been believed to have supernatural properties intrinsically. In this manner, while all books on magic could be thought of as grimoires, not all magical books should be thought of as grimoires. While the term grimoire is originally European and many Europeans throughout history, particularly ceremonial magicians and cunning folk, have made use of grimoires, the historian Owen Davies noted that similar books can be found all across the world, ranging from Jamaica to Sumatra. He also noted that in this sense, the world’s first grimoires were created in Europe and the Ancient Near East. magic, book, spells, invoke, ceremony, magician, charm.
Grógaldr:
one of six eddic poems involving necro-
mantic practice. It details Svipdag’s raising of his mother Groa, a völva, from the dead. Before her death, she requested him to do so
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Engraving of a photograph by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851
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fig. 22
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if he ever required her help; the prescience of the völva is illustrated in this respect. The purpose of this necromancy was that she could assist her son in a task set him by his cunning stepmother. Svipdag’s mother, Gróa, has been identified as the same völva who chanted a piece of Hrungnir’s hone from Thor’s head after their duel, as detailed in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. There, Gróa is the wife of Aurvandil, a man Thor rescues from certain death on his way home from Jötunheim. The news of her husband’s fate makes Gróa so happy, she forgets the charm, leaving the hone firmly lodged in Thor’s forehead. book, poems, necromancy.
Guadalajara:
During the month of September of 2018,
there was a headline in the Mexican news which spoke about a trailer of death bodies going around different municipalities of Guadalajara, Jalisco in Mexico. Apparently, all the forensic services of the city where completely full and they didn’t have any more spaces to put the bodies in. So they rented two trailers which where left in different neighbourhoods streets, lasting no more than a week per place because of the neighbour’s complains on the strong odour the came from the parked trailer. Approximately there was 157 bodies inside the container and this was a clear proof of the lack of infrastructure for the missing bodies which have been victims of the drug dealing and insecurity the country is going through. corruption, overcapacity, morgue, mortuary, corpse.
Guillotine:
machine used to decapitate someone’s
head. It is well known for being used in France during the French Revolution in 1789. Two of the most remarkable beheaded characters in world’s history are Marie Antoinette and king Louis XVI
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of France.
fig. 23
beheading, assessination, murder, France, blade, executioner
Gulag:
the penal system of the U.S.S.R. consist-
ing of a network of labor camps. camps, soviet, communism, punishment, exile. ****************** Government agency in charge of the Soviet forced labor camp system that was created under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term is also commonly used in the English language to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps which existed in post-Stalin times. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. Engraving of a Guillotine by Corbis
fig. 23 • 51 •
h
Hades:
In Greek mythology, Hades was regard-
ed as the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although the last son regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated their father’s generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth—long the province of Gaia—available to all three concurrently. Hades was often portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus.
fig. 24
god, deity, underworld, greek. ****************** Greek Mythology Website
Hades is the Ancient Greek god of the Underworld, the place where human souls go after death. In time, his name became synonymous with his realm. It has to be said unsurprisingly – since he barely left it. Appropriately, the most significant myth related to Hades concerns one of the very few times he did – to abduct Demeter’s daughter, Persephone.
Hanal Pixan: Yucatan Website
Hanal pixán, or “food of the souls”, is a tradition of the Mayan people that is carried out to remember in a special way the friends and relatives who have already departed in the eternal journey. It is a special event for the relatives of the deceased, because they know that, these days, from October 31 to November 2, the souls “receive permission” to visit their relatives. The first day is dedicated to children and they call it u hanal palal. The second day, November 1, is dedicated to dead adults and it is called u hanal nucuch uinicoob, and the third day is the u hanal pixanoob, also called in some places misa pixán, because that day a
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mass dedicated to the souls is made. The tradition includes several rites, but the main one is to put a table that functions as an altar, lit with wax candles, under the trees of the courtyard and near the graves of relatives, where the typical food of the season is placed: atole, pibes or mucbipollos, jícamas, tangerines, oranges, xec (mixture made with orange, tangerine, jicama and other fruits, as well as ground chili), sweet papaya, coconut and pineapple, tamales de x’pelón, vaporcitos, balché (alcohol beverage made with the bark of a tree called the same way), sweet bread and jícaras of tasty tan-chucuá (atole that is made with corn dough, cocoa, pepper and anise). All that adorned with candles, flowers, branches of rue and photographs of the deceased. The day of the deceased children the altar is decorated with a tablecloth embroidered in cheerful tones, in which are placed, in addition to food, sweets and toys, and is decorated with flowers of xpujuc, xtés in red and virginias. These dishes go all night from November 1 to 2, in those small altars, under the trees. And when the souls of the deceased “have taken the grace”, the relatives dine the mucbipollos and the pibinales, while drinking the atole and the balché. tradition, Mexico, food, memorial, ceremony, soul.
Hinduism: Hinduism Website
Hinduism believes in the rebirth and reincarnation of souls. The souls are immortal and imperishable. A soul is part of a jiva, the limited being, who is subject to the impurities of attachment, delusion and laws of karma. Death is therefore not a great calamity, not an end of all, but a natural process in the existence of a jiva (being) as a separate entity, a resting period during which it recuperates, reassembles its resources, adjusts its course and returns again to the earth to continue its journey. In Hinduism, unless a
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soul is liberated, neither life nor after life are permanent. They are both part of a grand illusion. Death is a temporary cessation of physical activity, a necessary means of recycling the resources and energy and an opportunity for the jiva (that part which incarnates) to reenergize itself, review its programs and policies and plan for the next phase of life. Each life experience on earth and each incarnation of soul offers the jiva an opportunity to learn and overcome its inconsistencies and blemishes so that it can become the whole. We cannot have likes and dislikes, preferences, prejudices and attachment and yet expect ourselves be liberated. Even a preference for purity becomes an impediment at some stage in our lives. The soul therefore needs to be born again and again till it overcomes its state of delusion, achieves the state of equanimity and realizes its completeness. When a person dies, his soul along with some residual consciousness leaves the body through an opening in the head and goes to another world and returns again after spending some time there. religion, dharma, karma, truth, eternity, salvation, rebirth.
Houdini, Harry:
The renowned master
escapee and daredevil died in 1926 on Halloween. Towards the end of his life, Houdini had become mystified by the idea of an afterlife and spiritual mediums. Houdini promised his wife, Bess, that he would contact her in the afterlife, using a pre-planned ten-digit secret message that only she would know, to silence naysayers when she eventually reported his presence (she never did). His last will and testament also stated that a sĂŠance should be held each anniversary of his death. illusionist, performer, escape, afterlife, seance.
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Pluto & Proserpina. I. Smith. London. 1709.
fig. 24
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i
Imiut Fetish:
religious object that has been docu-
mented throughout the history of Ancient Egypt. It was a stuffed, headless animal skin, often of a feline or bull. This fetish was tied by the tail to a pole, terminating in a lotus bud and inserted into a stand. The item was present in ancient Egyptian funerary rites from at least the earliest dynasties. Although its origin and purpose is unknown, the imiut fetish dates as far back as the First Dynasty (3100-2890 BC).
fig. 24
amulet, funerary, ceremony, rite, Egypt.
Immortality:
eternal life; someone or something
which doesn’t perish; 21th century maximum desire. Peter pan, the boy who never grows old and Dracula are some examples of immortality. Such as Xavier López Rodríguez, also known as Chabelo, who, in Mexican culture, is believed to be immortal. eternity, life.
Infanticide:
the act of assassination of an infant as
the word suggests. assassination, infant, child, baby, minor. ****************** “Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which
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he had diligently inquired of the wise men.� -Matthew 2:16
Informed Consent: US National Library of Medicine National Insitutes of Health
Informed consent is an ethical and legal requirement for research involving human participants. It is the process where a participant is informed about all aspects of the trial, which are important for the participant to make a decision and after studying all aspects of the trial the participant voluntarily confirms his or her willingness to participate in a particular clinical trial and significance of the research for advancement of medical knowledge and social welfare. The concept of informed consent is embedded in the principles of Nuremberg Code, The Declaration of Helsinki and The Belmont Report. Informed consent is an inevitable requirement prior to every research involving human being as subjects for study. Obtaining consent involves informing the subject about his or her rights, the purpose of the study, procedures to be undertaken, potential risks and benefits of participation, expected duration of study, extent of confidentiality of personal identification and demographic data, so that the participation of subjects in the study is entirely voluntary. paperwork, format, permission, legality, information. Imiut Fetish by Jeff Dahl.
fig. 25 • 57 •
j
Jeanneret-Gris Charles-Édouard (Le Corbusier): Against his doctor’s orders, on 27 August 1965, Le Corbusier went for a swim in the Mediterranean Sea at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. His body was found by bathers and he was pronounced dead at 11 a.m. It was assumed that he may have suffered a heart attack. His funeral took place in the courtyard of the Louvre Palace on 1 September 1965, under the direction of writer and thinker André Malraux, who was at the time France’s Minister of Culture. He was buried alongside his wife in the grave he had designated at Roquebrune.
k
fig. 25
architect, modernism, machine, living, drowning, heart-attack.
Kahn Louis:
His death was strange and unusual
like his life and his complex family relationships. One Sunday in March 1974 Louis Kahn died of a heart attack being 73 years old in the toilets of Penn Station in New York during a return trip from Bangladesh. It was not until three days after his death when they identified the architect, because, for unknown reasons, had crossed the data on his passport. During his funeral, for the first time the children and wives of three couples-marriage he had met (Esther, his colleague Anne Tyng, and Harriet Pattison), who unknowingly were family and that the architect had kept hidden for decades until his death.
fig. 26 architect, modernism, monumentality, monolithic.
Kali, Samashana:
also called Vama Kali, Samhara
Kali is the embodiment of the power of destruction. Smashana Kali is the most dangerous and powerful form of Goddess Kali. Smashana Kali is the chief goddess of Tantric texts. It is said that
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if Kali steps out with the left foot and holds the sword in her right hand, she is in the form of Smashana Kali. She is the Kali of the cremation ground and is worshiped by tantrics. As Samhara Kali she gives death and liberation. According to the Mahakala Samhita, Smashana Kali is two armed and black in complexion. She stands on a corpse and holds a freshly cut head and a plate to collect the dripping blood. She is worshiped by warriors, tantrics the followers of Tantra. tantric, deity, hinudism, liberation, femenine.
Katabasis:
is a descent of some type, such as mov-
ing downhill, the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, a trip to the underworld, or a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast. The term has multiple related meanings in poetry, rhetoric, and modern psychology. underworld, descent.
fig. 25
Top: Courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection / Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania.
fig. 26 • 59 •
Bottom: Murale (Etching with drypoint, engraving and aquatint in black ink) 1948, Le Corbusier
l
Latin America:
In 2018, Business Insider made
a statistic analysis on the most violent cities all around the world. The ranking contains cities with populations of more than 300,000 and does not count deaths in combat zones or cities with unavailable data, so some dangerous cities don’t appear on the list. Of the 50 cities on the list, 42 are in Latin America, including 17 in Brazil, 12 in Mexico, and five in Venezuela. Colombia had three, Honduras had two, and El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica all had one. The region’s violence is in large part driven by drug trafficking and organized crime— in Mexico, fragmentation of criminal groups has stoked more bloodshed in recent months. Insecurity is also exacerbated by political instability, poverty, and poor economic conditions. Corruption, abuses by officials, and impunity also facilitate crime. group, countries, violence, corruption, crime, dangerous.
Laughter:
1. To show emotion (such as mirth,
joy, or scorn) with a chuckle or explosive vocal sound. 2. To find amusement or pleasure in something. 3. To produce the sound or appearance of laughter.
fig. 27
reaction, humans, phyisical, funny, brain, interaction. 31 May 1410. Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. According to tradition, Martin was suffering from indigestion on account of eating an entire goose when his favourite jester, Borra, entered the king’s bedroom. When Martin asked Borra where he had been, the jester replied with: “Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him
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for stealing figs.” This joke caused the king to die from laughter.
Louisiana Voodoo:
Synonymous with New Orleans,
voodoo first came to Louisiana with enslaved West Africans, who merged their religious rituals and practices with those of the local Catholic population. Voodoo was bolstered when followers fleeing Haiti after the 1791 slave revolt moved to New Orleans and grew as many freed people of color made its practice an important part of their culture. Voodoo queens and kings were spiritual and political figures of power in 1800s New Orleans and none were more famous than Marie Laveau (1794-1881), a legendary practioner buried in St. Louis Cemetery No.1. Today gris-gris dolls, potions and talismans are still found in stores and homes throughout the city – a reminder of the New Orleans fascination with spirits, magic and mystery. (New Orleans Website) rituals, worship, religion, Africa, singing.
fig. 27 • 61 •
Stipple engraving by G.T. Stubbs after G. Stubbs, 1800.
m
Macondo:
town where the novel Cien años de Sole-
dad by Gabriel García Márquez, takes place; Buendia’s family hometown. hispanic, literature, Buendia, family, town. ****************** “Somos tan pacíficos que ni siquiera nos hemos muerto de muerte natural –dijo-. Ya ve que todavía no tenemos cementerio” (Cien años de soledad, p. 57) “We are so pacifist than we have not even die of a natural death- he said-. As you may see, we do not have yet a cemetery”
Manson, Charles: (1934-2017) American criminal and cult leader. In the late 1960s, he formed what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune in California. Manson’s followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971, he was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, all of which members of the group carried out at his instruction. Manson was also convicted of first-degree murder for two other deaths. criminal, cult leader, psychopath, butcher, music, Beach Boys.
Mausoleum :
external free-standing building con-
structed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb, or the tomb may be considered to be within the mausoleum.
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monument, funeral, burial, building, tomb. ****************** Famous Mausoleums through history: Unesco
Taj Mahal An immense mausoleum of white marble, built in Agra between 1631 and 1648 by order of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favourite wife, the Taj Mahal is the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world’s heritage.
fig. 28
Unesco
Terracotta Army No doubt thousands of statues still remain to be unearthed at this archaeological site, which was not discovered until 1974. Qin (d. 210 B.C.), the first unifier of China, is buried, surrounded by the famous terracotta warriors, at the centre of a complex designed to mirror the urban plan of the capital, Xianyan. The small figures are all different; with their horses, chariots and weapons, they are masterpieces of realism and also of great historical interest. Unesco
Humayun’s Tomb This tomb, built in 1570, is of particular cultural significance as it was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent. It inspired several major architectural innovations, culminating in the construction of the Taj Mahal. Unesco
Mausoleum of the Shirvanshahs
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Built on a site inhabited since the Palaeolithic period, the Walled City of Baku reveals evidence of Zoroastrian, Sasanian, Arabic, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman, and Russian presence in cultural continuity. The Inner City (Icheri Sheher) has preserved much of its 12th-century defensive walls. The 12th-century Maiden Tower (Giz Galasy) is built over earlier structures dating from the 7th to 6th centuries BC, and the 15th-century Shirvanshahs’ Palace is one of the pearls of Azerbaijan’s architecture. The complex contains the main building of the palace, Divanhane, the burial-vaults, the shah’s mosque with a minaret, Seyid Yahya Bakuvi’s mausoleum (the so-called “mausoleum of the dervish”), south of the palace, a portal in the east, Murad’s gate, a reservoir and the remnants of a bath house. Earlier, there was an ancient mosque, next to the mausoleum. Unesco
Tomb of Jahangir The Monument, a single story structure, square in plan, consists of a platform with tall octagonal corner towers and a projecting entrance bay in the middle of each side. The exterior of the monument including the lowest stage of the towers, has a red sandstone facing with rich panel decoration inlaid with marble decorative motifs. The four corner towers, with white marble cupolas, rise in five stages to a height of 100 feet with a zigzag inlay of white and yellow marble: the building is divided into a series of vaulted compartments. The interior is embellished with floral frescoes, delicate inlay work (pietra dura) and brilliant marble intersia of various colors. The marble cenotaph with its delicate and colorful pietra dure is engraved with the ninety-nine attributes of Allah. Imam Husayn Shrine The mosque and burial site of Husayn ibn Ali, the third Imam of Islam, in the city of Karbala’, Iraq. It stands on the site of the Mau-
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soleum of Imam Husayn, who was a grandson of Muhammad, near the place where he was martyred during the Battle of Karbala’ in 680 C.E.. The tomb of Imam Husayn is one of the holiest places for Shi‘ites, outside of Mecca and Medina, and many make pilgrimages to the site. Every year, millions of pilgrims visit the city to observe Ashura, which marks the anniversary of Imam Husayn’s death. Every year for arba’een rituals that occurs forty days after the Day of Ashura up to 45 million people go to the city of Karbala in Iraq. Castel Sant’Angelo The Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as Castel Sant’Angelo (English: Castle of the Holy Angel), is a towering cylindrical building in Parco Adriano, Rome, Italy. It was initially commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family. The building was later used by the popes as a fortress and castle and is now a museum. The structure was once the tallest building in Rome. Lenin Mausoleum Also known as Lenin’s Tomb, situated in Red Square in the centre of Moscow, is a mausoleum that currently serves as the resting place of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. His preserved body has been on public display there since shortly after his death in 1924, with rare exceptions in wartime. Alexey Shchusev’s diminutive but monumental granite structure incorporates some elements from ancient mausoleums, such as the Step Pyramid, the Tomb of Cyrus the Great and, to some degree, Temple of the Inscriptions. Tomb of Cyrus Monument of Cyrus the Great approximately 1 km southwest of the palaces of Pasargadae. According to Greek sources, it dates back to 559-29 B.C. The most extensive description based on a
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lost account by Aristobulus, who had accompanied Alexander the Great on his eastern campaign in the late 4th century B.C., is to be found in the Anabasis of Arrian (6.29). written in the 2nd century A.D.
fig. 29
Top: Photo from the Archeological Survey of India. Bottom: Photo by Sebastia Giralt.
fig. 28
fig. 29 • 66 •
Mishima, Yukio:
Japanese author, poet, play-
wright, actor, model, film director, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change. Mishima committed the ritual suicide by seppuku. (See seppuku) seppuku, literature, eastern, culture.
Moliere:
:he French playwright Molière suffered
a pulmonary haemorrhage caused by tuberculosis while playing the character Argan, a severe hypochondriac, in his own play Le malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). He disguised his convulsion as part of his performance and finished out the show, which included a scene in which the character he was playing faked his own death to find out how his wife really felt about him. After the show, Molière’s actual wife, who played the daughter of his character, realized that he really was ill and carried him across the street to their house in the same chair he had pretended to die in as part of the performance. He began coughing up blood and she sent for a priest to hear him renounce his acting career, so he could be buried on sacred ground, but Molière died before a sympathetic priest could be found. writer, France, Louis XIV, universal literature.
Morgan, Lee:
(1938-1972) famous American trum-
petist which began his career playing for musicians such as Dizzie Gillespie, John Coltrane and Art Blakey. Sometimes he is defined
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This page: Lee Morgan by EHoffman Prints. Next page: From DA 69, to accompany an essay by Seth on the "Canadian Vernacular".
fig. 30
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fig. 31
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as the successor of Clifford Brown. In 1957, he recorded his own album The Sidewinder which became one of the most sell records of Blue Note Records. In February of 1972, Helen, Morgan’s wife, went to the Slug’s Saloon, a jazz club in New York where Morgan was playing that night and shot him. That night a heavy snowfall covered the streets of New York, making the ambulance take to long to arrive to the club and Morgan bled to death.
fig. 30
crime of passion, jazz, love, murder, gun, trumpet.
Mosquito:
Number one cause of animal-related deaths in
the world. It has been estimated that mosquitoes transmit diseases to almost 700 million people annually resulting in 2 to 3 million deaths every year. (Animal Planet)
Murder:
fig. 31
noun. Assasinante; the act of taking a life. ******************
Edward II of England was rumoured to have been murdered, after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs
n
without marking his body. However, there is no real academic consensus on the manner of Edward II’s death and it has been plausibly argued that the story is propaganda.
Nahual:
human which can transform into an animal
such as jaguar, coyote, puma, dog, wolf, between others. The term comes from the Mesoamerican culture and they can be either good or evil depending on the person’s personality.
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Necromancy:
noun. 1. conjuration of the spirits of the dead
for purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events 2. Magic, sorcery. practice, magic, deceased, spirit, divination, black magic.
Necronomicon:
fictional grimoire (textbook of
magic) appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft’s 1924 short story “The Hound”, written in 1922, though its purported author, the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City”. Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them. Lovecraft wrote that the title, as translated from the Greek language, meant “an image of the law of the dead”, compounded respectively from nekros “dead”, nomos “law”, and eikon “image”. Robert M. Price notes that the title has been variously translated by others as “Book of the names of the dead”, “Book of the laws of the dead”, “Book of dead names” and “Knower of the laws of the dead”. fiction, grimoire, horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
Necropolis:
city of the death; large cemeteries nor-
mally on the outskirts of ancient cities.
fig. 32 & 33
city, death, cemetery, ancient, tombs, urbanism.
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fig. 32
This page: 1890 Wood Engraving Necropolis Kerameikos Athens Greece Ancient Greek Art Next page: 1878 Wood Engraving Royal Necropolis Golkonda Architecture India Dom.
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fig. 33
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o
Odyssey:
one of the most important ancient epic
poems written by Homer. The odyssey is fundamental for the Western literature. It is believed that it was written during the 8th century BC. The odyssey addresses “the ideological function of dying. One of his characters, Achilles, represents the ideal of a hero who still survives in our days, assuming the inevitable fate of a glorious death to be remembered eternally.” (Altima-Sfi) epic poem, Homer, mythology, greek.
Ogunabali:
is the traditional Igbo Death deity. His
name is considered to be a literal description of his character as he is said to kill his victims in the night, these usually being criminals or those who have committed an unspeakable taboo. The Igbo are an ethnic group native to the southeast and south-central Nigeria. tradition, deity, Nigeria.
Osiris:
god of the afterlife, the underworld,
and rebirth in ancient Egyptian religion. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh’s beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, and holding a symbolic crook and flail. (He was one of the first to be associated with the mummy wrap. When the brother cut him up into pieces after killing him Isis, his wife, found all the pieces and wrapped his body up.) Osiris was at times considered the eldest son of the god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son. He was also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning “Foremost of the Westerners”, a reference to his kingship in the land of the dead. As ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called “king of the living”: an-
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cient Egyptians considered the blessed dead “the living ones”. Through syncretism with Iah, he is also the god of the Moon.
fig. 34 god, afterlife, acient Egypt, judge, underworld.
Ouija:
also known as a spirit board or talking board, is
a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words “yes”, “no”, “hello” (occasionally), and “goodbye”, along with various symbols and graphics. It uses a small heartshaped piece of wood or plastic called a planchette. Participants place their fingers on the planchette, and it is moved about the board to spell out words. “Ouija” was formerly a trademark belonging to Parker Brothers, and has subsequently become a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States, but is often used generically to refer to any talking board. According to Hasbro, players take turns asking questions and then “wait to see what the planchette spells out” for them. It is recommended for players over the age of 8. spirit board, talking board, Hasbro, paranormal, supernatural. 1886 Wood Engraving Egyptian Figures Taouris Savak Osiris Historic Ancient
fig. 34 • 75 •
p
Pan de Muerto:
Aserca, Mexico's Government Website
Type of bread that is prepared and eaten during October and during Day of the Dead celebrations, which take place every November 2nd; besides it is a vital element for the altars. The origin of this peculiarly-named bread, dates back to pre-Hispanic times, and there are several versions and no clear answer on what is the exact background of this treat. Some legends indicate that ancient civilizations performed human sacrifices to honor their deities, one of these rituals required to take the heart of a princess and place it in a pot with amaranth; the ritual leader would have to bite the heart, as a sign of gratitude. The bread making came in when the Spaniards forbade any of these sacrificial rituals, ergo the pre-Hispanic people started making bread in the shape of a heart and covered in red sugar to resemble the blood. food, tradition, Mexico, sugar, bread, October, November.
Pantheon:
noun. A temple dedicated to all the gods
2. A building serving as the burial place of or containing memorials to the famous dead of a nation 3. A group of illustrious or notable persons or things. temple, gods, burial, space, architecture. ****************** The Panteón de Dolores is the largest cemetery in Mexico and contains the “Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres” (English: Rotunda of Illustrious Persons). It is located on Constituyentes Avenue in the Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City, between sections two and three of Chapultepec Park.
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The history of the cemetery goes back to 1870 when Juan Manuel Benfield, owner of El Rancho de Coscoacoaco (his wife was Concepción Gayosso y Mugarrieta sister of Eusebio Gayosso) set aside an area of his ranch measuring 240 square hectometres (590 acres), called La Tabla de Delores, on which to found a cemetery. In 1875, the cemetery was opened and named El Panteon Civil de Dolores. Juan Manuel Benfield founded the Cemetery in honor of his sister who died in Veracruz shortly after she had arrived from London with their parents. As they were Anglicans, and all cemeteries in Veracruz were consecrated for use only by Roman Catholics, the only suitable burial ground to be had was on the beach. Today the cemetery has about 700,000 tombs, many with multiple occupants. ****************** The historian Ethel Herrera says there isn’t any habitant in Mexico City which doesn’t have a relative or acquaintance buried in there.
Papyrus of Ani:
papyrus manuscript with cur-
sive hieroglyphs and color illustrations created c. 1250 BCE, in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Egyptians compiled an individualized book for certain people upon their death, called the Book of Going Forth by Day, more commonly known as the Book of the Dead, typically containing declarations and spells to help the deceased in their afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani. manuscript, hieroglyphs, declarations, spell, afterlife.
Parricide:
the act of assassinating your father or
mother. Example: Game of Thrones S04E10
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Patzcuaro:
Town in the state of Michoacán, Méxi-
co. During Dia de Muertos the 1st and 2nd of November of each year there is a massive celebration for the death in the island of Janitzio in the middle of Patzcuaro’s lake. town, Michoacan, tradition, culture, celebration, ceremony.
Phillip IV of France:
1268-1314.
King
of
France
which belonged to the House of Capet and was also known as the Iron King. He was the responsible for the death of Jacques de Molay, the last grand Master of the Knights Templar, which cursed the king, pope Clement V, his descendants for seven generations and everyone who supported his death. The curse was fulfilled and this were known as the cursed kings.
fig. 35
Q
monarchy, Middle Age, templars, curse, Cursed Kings.
Qin Shi Huang:
was the founder of the Qin dy-
nasty and was the first emperor of a unified China. He was born Ying Zheng or Zhao Zheng, a prince of the state of Qin. He became Zheng, the King of Qin when he was thirteen, then China’s first emperor when he was 38 after the Qin had conquered all of the other Warring States and unified all of China in 221 BC. The Chinese historian Sima Qian, writing a century after the First Emperor’s death, wrote that it took 700,000 men to construct the emperor’s mausoleum. British historian John Man points out that this figure is larger than the population of any city in the world at that time and he calculates that the foundations could have been built by 16,000 men in two years. While Sima Qian never mentioned the terracotta army, the statues were discovered by a group of farmers digging wells on March 29, 1974. The soldiers
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were created with a series of mix-and-match clay molds and then further individualized by the artists’ hand. There are around 6,000 Terracotta Warriors and their purpose was to protect the Emperor in the afterlife from evil spirits. Also, among the army are chariots and 40,000 real bronze weapons.
fig. 36
mausoleum, dynasty, chinsese, founder, conqueror.
Top: Philip The Fair. King Of France, 1285-1314. Steel Engraving. France. 19th Century. Bottom: Engraving from the Agostini Picture Library.
fig. 35
fig. 36 • 79 •
r
Rasputin, Grigori: Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia. mysticism, Tsar, Imperial Russia, monk, strannik, wanderer.
Requiem:
also known as Mass for the dead (Latin:
Missa pro defunctis or Missa defunctorum), is a Mass in the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal. It is usually, but not necessarily, celebrated in the context of a funeral. Musical settings of the propers of the Requiem Mass are also called Requiems, and the term has subsequently been applied to other musical compositions associated with death, dying, and mourning, even when they lack religious or liturgical relevance. mass, catholicism, ceremony, soul, liturgy, Roman Missal ****************** The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, is a requiem mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year. A completed version dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who commissioned the piece for a Requiem service to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death on 14 February.
Resurrection:
to come back from the death.
Jesus Christ, life, dying-and-rising
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fig. 37
Right to Die:
Movement concept based on the opin-
ion that a human being is entitled to end their own life or to undergo voluntary euthanasia. Possession of this right is often understood to mean that a person with a terminal illness, or without the will to continue living, should be allowed to end their own life or to use assisted suicide or to decline life-prolonging treatment. The question of whom, if anyone, should be empowered to make this decision is often central to debate. end, decission making, voluntary euthanasia, assisted suicide.
Rigor Mortis:
also known as postmortem rigidity, the
third stage of death, is one of the recognizable signs of death, caused by chemical changes in the muscles after death, which cause the limbs of the corpse to stiffen. In humans, rigor mortis can occur as soon as 4 hours post mortem. (Cambridge Dictionary) postmortem, rigidity, chemical change, corpse, stiffen.
Roddenberry, Gene:
The creator of Star Trek and in-
ventor of the notable quote “to boldly go where no man has gone before” made certain to maintain that statement long after his passing. His last will and testament included instructions to have his ashes scattered via a space satellite orbiting earth. The act was carried out in 1997. Star Trek, screenwriter, producer, Army Air Forces, writer.
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Diana Scultori (Mantua, before 1542-1612, Rome) The Resurrection (B. 10, Albricci 35), engraving after Giulio Romano. This is a reverse copy of her father's engraving (Bartsch 5). Inscribed lower right: "Iulius Mantuanus inv."
fig. 37
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s
Sacrifice:
noun. 1. An act of offering to a deity something
precious 2. Something offered in sacrifice 3. Destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else. offer, value, ceremonial, Mayans, culture. ****************** Ayn Rand speaks about how a sacrifice is a demonstration of your priorities in life. If you are sacrificing going shopping for picking up your kids from school, this sacrifice means that shopping its more important to you than your kids since you are mourning not being able to go to the mall. As she said, a sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favour of which you don’t.
Saltwater Crocodile:
Third most dangerous
animal in the world. It’s the third animal in the list of statistics on animal related deaths. (Animal Planet)
fig. 38
reptile, riparian predator, dangerous.
Santa Muerte:
female deity or folk saint in
Mexican and Mexican-American folk Catholicism. A personification of death, she is associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife by her devotees. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, her religion has become increasingly prominent since the 2000s.
fig. 39
deity, folk saint, prayer, rite, skeleton, female. ******************
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Vice
“To devotees, Santa Muerte has two roles: Overall devotional saint, and spiritual worker. “As a saint, she protects you and guides you through life,” said Steven Bragg, a devotee since 2010 who leads a Santa Muerte church in New Orleans. “Instead of turning right, you turn left and avoid the traffic accident. Small things like that. But when it comes to big things, I turn to the three votives.” This is where she morphs into a spiritual worker, when devotees summoning her power through three color-coded candles. White is for healing, peace, and prosperity. Red is for love, jobs, and justice. Black is for “darker forces,” like protection from witchcraft. “She’ll move mountains for you,” said Bragg.
Saturn:
Saturn Devouring His Son is the name
given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. According to the traditional interpretation, it depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanized to Saturn), who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children, ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya’s death and has since been held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
fig. 40 & 41
planet, mythology, gas giant, god, Rome, agriculture.
Scarpa, Carlo:
recognized
Italian
architect.
Died on Japan when he was trying to see a stair’s detail, fell and spent 10 days in the hospital where he finally died because of the serious injuries caused by the accident. Apparently, he was buried standing up. architect, modernism, Italia, detail.
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Seppuku:
Also known as harakiri (“abdomen/belly
cutting”), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai but was also practiced by other Japanese people later on to restore honour for themselves or for their family. A samurai practice, seppuku was used either voluntarily by samurai to die with honour rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture) or as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the abdomen open. If the cut is performed deeply enough it can sever the descending aorta, causing massive blood loss inside the abdomen, which results in a rapid death by exsanguination. suicide, samurai, katana, intestines, bleeding.
This page: 1894 Crocodile, Alligator Antique Print Vintage Lithograph Reptiles Illustration, Krokodile, Nile Crocodile, Gavial, American Alligator. Next page: Santa Muerte. Enrgaving by Ravi Zupa.
fig. 38 • 86 •
fig. 39 • 87 •
This page: Saturn, wholelength naked figure, with a wooden leg, holding a struggling child and scythe, encircled by ethereal clouds; below zodiacal symbols, including the goat of Capricorn (and Aquarius). Engraving. 1520 ca. Next page: Engraving of rocket ship blasting off a moon of saturn. Free Public Domain.
fig. 40
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fig. 41
• 89 •
Shakespear, William: Britannica
(1564-1616) Shakespeare also spelled Shakspere, byname Bard of Avon or Swan of Avon, was a English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. poet, english, dramatist, poems, narrative, theatre, plays. ****************** Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. ****************** Hamlet, portraits the issue of death with everyday life, through the figure of the gravedigger, as the only solution to the misery of life. The death was one of the obsessions of the famous writer in his literary career.
Shipman, Harold:
was an English general practi-
tioner and one of the most prolific serial killers in history. On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of fifteen murders of patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment
• 90 •
with the recommendation that he never be released. The Shipman Inquiry, a two-year-long investigation of all deaths certified by Shipman, which was chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined Shipman’s crimes. The inquiry identified 218 victims and estimated his total victim count at 250, about 80% of whom were elderly women. His youngest confirmed victim was a 41-year-old man, although “significant suspicion” arose concerning patients aged as young as four. serial killer, doctor, general practitioner, suicide, hanging. ****************** Also known as: Dr. Death, The Good Doctor, The Angel of Death.
Snake:
elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles
of the suborder Serpentes. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws.
fig. 42
repitle, carnivorous, amniote vertebrates, scales, elongated ****************** It is believed that the the semi-legendary viking, Ragnar Lodbrok, was captured during the 13th century by King Ælla of Northumbria and executed by being thrown to a pit of snakes.
Socrates:
one of the most important classical Greek phi-
losophers in western philosophy. Socrates was put on trial and found guilty of both corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens
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fig. 42
This page: Snake head structures. Comparative Zoology, Structural and Systematic. Orton, Birge (1883) Next page: The suicide of Cleopatra: Line engraving by J.B. de Poilly after a statue in the Vatican.
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fig. 43
• 93 •
and of impiety (asebeia, “not believing in the gods of the state”), and as a punishment sentenced to death, caused by the drinking of a mixture containing poison hemlock. philosophy, moral, art, literature, greek.
Suicide:
taking your own life; self-assassination.
fig. 43
intentionality, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, disorder. ****************** Characters through history which have taken their own life: Alan
t
Turing, Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Cleopatra, Hunter S. Thompson, Alexandre McQueen, Anthony Bourdain.
Tagetes erecta:
Commonly called tagete, and known in
Mexico as cempasúchil, cempoalxóchitl, cempaxochitl, cempoal (or zempoal), flower of the death or Chinese carnation, is a species of the family Asteraceae, native to Mexico, where it is found in the wild mainly in the states of Chiapas, Mexico, Morelos, Puebla, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Tlaxcala, Oaxaca, Jalisco and Veracruz. It is also found in the other countries of Central America. Despite its American origin, in English it is known as African Marigold.
fig. 44 flower, plant, orange, Day of the Death.
Tate, Sharon:
(1943-1969) American actress and mod-
el. During the 1960s, she played small television roles before appearing in films and was regularly featured in fashion magazines as a model and cover girl. On January 20, 1968, Tate married Roman Polanski, her director and co-star in 1967’s The Fearless
• 94 •
Vampire Killers. On August 9, 1969, Tate and four friends were murdered by members of the Manson Family in the home she shared with Polanski. At the time of her death, she was eight-anda-half months pregnant with the couple’s son. actress, model, Roman Polanski, Manson Family.
Taxidermy:
noun. The art of preparing, stuffing, and
mounting the skins of animals and especially vertebrates. preservation, stuffing, animal, sculpture, painting.
Thanatology:
noun. The description or study of the
phenomena of death and of psychological mechanisms for coping with them. scientific, study, psychology, social aspect.
Tlatelolco: NPR
In the summer of 1968, Mexico was experiencing the birth of a new student movement. But that movement was short-lived. On Oct. 2, 1968, 10 days before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police officers and military troops shot into a crowd of unarmed students. Thousands of demonstrators fled in panic as tanks bulldozed over Tlatelolco Plaza. Government sources originally reported that four people had been killed and 20 wounded, while eyewitnesses described the bodies of hundreds of young people being trucked away. Thousands of students were beaten and jailed, and many disappeared. Forty years later, the final death toll remains a mystery, but documents recently released by the U.S. and Mexican governments give a better picture of what may have triggered the massacre. Those docu-
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fig. 44
• 96 •
Previous page: Photography for the newspaper "El Sol del Centro" This page: Three Skulls on a Carved Tomb, engraving by Master S (Flemish active 1520s-50s) National Gallery of Victoria
fig. 45
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ments suggest that snipers posted by the military fired on fellow troops, provoking them to open fire on the students.
Tomb:
noun. 1. An excavation in which a corpse
is buried; grave. 2. A house, chamber, or vault for the dead.
fig. 45
grave, burial, vault, hole.
Tortoise:
noun. 1. Any of a family (Testudinidae) of terres-
trial turtles 2. Someone or something regarded as slow or laggard.
fig. 46 testudines, carapace, shell, plastron, reptile, long-lived. ****************** Aeschylus 455BC According to Valerius Maximus, Aeschylus, the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians, was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny, in his Naturalis HistoriĂŚ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object.
Torture:
noun. 1. The infliction of intense pain (as from
burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure 2. Something that causes agony or pain. pain, interrogation, suffering, Middle Age, confession
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fig. 47
Underworld:
In mythology, the Greek underworld is
an otherworld where souls go after death. The original Greek idea of afterlife is that, at the moment of death, the soul is separated from the corpse, taking on the shape of the former person, and is transported to the entrance of the underworld. The underworld itself—sometimes known as Hades, after its patron god—is de-
u
scribed as being either at the outer bounds of the ocean or beneath the depths or ends of the earth. It is considered the dark counterpart to the brightness of Mount Olympus with the kingdom of the dead corresponding to the kingdom of the gods. Hades is a realm invisible to the living, made solely for the dead.
fig. 48 religion, mythology, soul, departed, purgatory.
Top: 1860 Antique Tortoises Print. Bottom: O What a Rogue and Peasant State Am I: Torture and Impunity in the United States of America by Jordan Calazan Manalastas.
fig. 47
fig. 46
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Gustave Dore (1832-1883), Canto I, Inferno, Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (12651321), 1869 edition.
Gustave Dore (1832
I, Inferno, Divine Co
te Alighieri (1265 edition.
• 100 •
2-1883), Canto
omedy by Dan-
5-1321), 1869
• 101 •
fig. 48
v
Valhalla:
In Norse mythology, Valhalla is a majestic, enor-
mous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin. Chosen by Odin, half of those who die in combat travel to Valhalla upon death, led by valkyries, while the other half go to the goddess Freyja’s field Fólkvangr. In Valhalla, the dead join the masses of those who have died in combat known as Einherjar and various legendary Germanic heroes and kings, as they prepare to aid Odin during the events of Ragnarök. norse, mythology, hall, Asgard, Odin, heaven, valkyries.
Voodoo:
noun. 1. Religion that is derived from African
polytheism and ancestor worship and is practiced chiefly in Haiti 2. A person who deals in spells and necromancy. 3. A sorcerer’s spell. 4. Hexed object.
w
polytheism, worship, spell, magic, necromacy.
Wagner, Richard: German composer and conductor of the 19th century. He died of a heart attack in front of Ca’Vendramin Calergi in Venice, Italy. The legend that the attack was prompted by argument with Cosima over Wagner’s supposedly amorous interest in the singer Carrie Pringle, who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth. After a funerary gondola bore Wagner’s remains over the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth.
fig. 49
classical, music, composer, german, heart-attack, Venice
Walt Disney:
(1901 –1966) American entrepreneur,
animator, voice actor and film producer. A pioneer of the Amer-
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ican animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
fig. 50 & 51 entrepreneur, animator, cartoon, Mickey Mouse, animation. ****************** Walt Disney's curious fascination with death, USA Today
From the evil queen’s desire to kill a beautiful maiden in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), to the wooden puppet in Pinocchio (1940) who must die to be reborn as a real boy, to the fawn in Bambi (1942) witnessing his mother’s (off-screen) murder, the Grim Reaper looms large over many Disney tales. And while death is a fixture in some of the greatest children’s literature, including Grimm’s Fairy Tales — on which several of Disney’s biggest hits were based — Disney’s animations take the dance with death to a whole new level. In the somewhat disturbing “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence in Fantasia (1940), for example, monstrous demons and bare-breasted female ghouls join skeletons and other nocturnal creatures to plot the invasion of a small mountain village. Disney’s personal encounters with death continued to multiply during that period. As his daughter Diane would later recount, in the early 1930s, a fortune-teller informed the famous animator that he would die at age 35, prompting a burst of productivity from the paranoid Disney, and leading him to avoid funerals for the rest of his life. Perhaps the most scarring incident, however, was the tragic, accidental death of Disney’s mother, Flora.
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In 1938, following the success of Snow White, Disney bought his parents a home in North Hollywood. Shortly after moving in, they complained of gas fumes coming from the furnace, and Disney promptly dispatched some studio hands to fix it. The furnace was not fixed properly, and Flora died from asphyxiation a few days later. We will never know exactly how such events influenced Disney’s creative output. But as Laderman is quick to remind us, it is not the presence of death that gives so many Disney films their “mythic power in American culture” — it is the happy ending or
Venice Map Circa 1650
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redemption for which death so often serves as the conduit. Bambi’s perseverance in the wake of losing his mother, Snow White finding happiness with her prince or Pinocchio with his father — these are the moments that drew generations of fans to Disney’s compelling brand of family fantasy. In the end, it was lung cancer that brought the dancing skeletons to Disney’s door in 1966. But his death, like those depicted in his films, would be transcended by the millions of lives he touched along the way.
fig. 49 • 105 •
Reinterpretations from Walt Disney's movies Bambi and Snow White.
fig. 50
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fig. 51
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Whitechapel:
District in London, England.
It is within Central and East London and in the East End. Because the area is close to the London Docklands and east of the City of London, it has been a popular place for immigrants and the working class. The area was the centre of the London Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century, and the location of the infamous Whitechapel Murders of Jack the Ripper in the late 1880s. In the latter half of the 20th century, Whitechapel became a significant settlement for the British Bangladeshi community and today Brick Lane is an ethnic enclave known as Banglatown.
x
district, London, Jack The Ripper, Jewish, dockland
Xanax:
Alprazolam affects chemicals in the
brain that may be unbalanced in people with anxiety. Xanax is used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and anxiety caused by depression. Xanax may also be used for recreative purposes.
fig. 52
medicine, drug, depression, recreational, anxiety. ****************** How Xanax Became the British Teenager's Drug of Choice, Vice
Dan doesn’t fit the profile of a former drug addict, but that’s exactly what he is. Until recently, like an increasing number of teenagers in Britain, he was regularly using a huge amount of the benzodiazepine Xanax – enough to make him physically dependent on the drug. “For me, it’s easier to get Xanax than it is to get alcohol,” he says over the phone from his family home. “If I order alcohol off Amazon or whatever, I’ll have to sign on delivery. Xans, you can get next-day delivery and have it in your postbox waiting for you.”
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Xanax is cheap, too: anywhere between 30p to £3 a bar, depending on where Dan was buying it, from dark web marketplaces or the dealers at his sixth-form college. Xanax is the trade name for alprazolam, a benzodiazepine sold by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. When prescribed for anxiety, doctors recommend 1.5mg a day, and to never surpass 4mg daily. At the height of his addiction, Dan was taking the equivalent of 5mg a day, and sometimes more if he was stressed about something (“meeting up with a girl, an exam, a night out”). Like the vast majority of UK users, though, the pills he was popping were likely counterfeit Xanax – alprazolam that had been pressed into tablets by DIY dealers and marketed on the dark web as the legitimate branded stuff, meaning his true daily dosage could have been even higher. Like many teens now addicted to Xanax – or similar drugs from the benzodiazepine family – Dan was introduced to the pills recreationally at raves and parties, often mixing them with alcohol or other drugs. However, he quickly realised they were what he calls a “cure” for his anxiety – something he had suffered from throughout his teens, like his brother before him – and was the first of his group to become dependent. “I tried to keep it quiet, but if I was like, ‘I want to bring Xans [to school],’ it wasn’t an embarrassing thing to do,” he says. “It’s [seen as] kinda cool. It worked for me. I was pretending I was using them recreationally, when really I was reliant on them just to cope.”
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Xanxiety by Hannah Ewens. Vice. 2018.
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fig. 52 • 111 •
y
Ya sang:
is said to be a form of black magic performed in
Thailand’s northeast, Isan. It is based on traditional knowledge of plant poisons, some causing stomach ailments, physical pain, and intoxication, leading to death. black magic, pain, witchcraft.
Yurei:
According to traditional Japanese beliefs, all hu-
mans have a spirit or soul called a reikon. When a person dies, the reikon leaves the body and enters a form of purgatory, where it waits for the proper funeral and post-funeral rites to be performed, so that it may join its ancestors. If this is done correctly, the reikon is believed to be a protector of the living family and to return yearly in August during the Obon Festival to receive thanks. However, if the person dies in a sudden or violent manner such as murder or suicide, if the proper rites have not been performed, or if they are influenced by powerful emotions such as a desire for revenge, love, jealousy, hatred or sorrow, the reikon is thought to transform into a yūrei, which can then bridge the gap back to the physical world. The emotion or thought need not be particularly strong or driving, and even innocuous thoughts can cause a death to become disturbed. Once a thought enters the mind of a dying person, their Yūrei will come back to complete the action last thought of before returning to the cycle of reincarnation. The yūrei then exists on Earth until it can be laid to rest, either by performing the missing rituals, or resolving the emotional conflict that still ties it to the physical plane. If the rituals are not completed or the conflict left unresolved, the yūrei will persist in its haunting. Oftentimes the lower the social rank of the person who died violently, or who was treated harshly during life, the more powerful as a yūrei they would return. violent, spirit, evil , ghost, soul.
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fig. 53
Katsukawa Sunsho Yurei and Crow
fig. 53
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z
Zoroastrianism: BBC
one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions. It was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago. For 1000 years Zoroastrianism was one of the most powerful religions in the world. It was the official religion of Persia (Iran) from 600 BCE to 650 CE. Amesha Spentas translates as ‘Holy Immortals’. Just as light rays are emanated from the sun but are not the sun, so the Amesha Spentas are emanated by God but are not God. These emanations are seen as the divine attributes of God. They helped God fashion the world and each is associated with a particular aspect of creation. Western scholars have likened the Amesha Spentas to the Archangels in Christianity. This is not strictly correct as they also represent spiritual attainments. Zoroastrians believe that man can know God through his Divine Attributes. In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda has an adversary called Angra Mainyu (meaning ‘destructive spirit’). Angra Mainyu is the originator of death and all that is evil in the world. Ahura Mazda, who is perfect, abides in Heaven, whereas Angra Mainyu dwells in the depths of Hell. When a person dies they will go to Heaven or Hell depending on their deeds during their lifetime. It is generally accepted that in the Abrahamic religions, the concepts of Heaven and Hell, as well as the Devil, were heavily influenced by Zoroastrian belief.
#
religion, ancient, monotheism, good, evil, eschatology, Iran.
10050 Cielo Drive:
address where the Manson fam-
ily butchered Sharon Tate and Polanski’s friends. Manson family, assassination, murder, butcher, Beach Boys. • 114 •
27 Club:
known as a group of actors, artists, and
other famous people who died at the age of 27, normally related to drug or alcohol abuse. Some of its members are: Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, between many others. young, rock, artist, musician, legend, curse. ****************** The white lighter myth or white lighter curse is an urban legend based on the 27 Club in which it is claimed several musicians and artists died while in possession of a white lighter, causing white lighters to be attributed to bad fortune. The myth is primarily based on the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain. The myth has been integrated with cannabis culture. In 2017, Snopes.com published an article discrediting the theory, noting that Bic did not begin producing white disposable lighters until several years after the deaths of members of the 27 Club including Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison, and that disposable lighters produced by other companies were not widely available at that time.
fig. 54 White Bic Lighter. Pngimg Website.
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"Triumph of Death". Engraving. Phillip Galle. 1610.
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Credits
Editor: Ernesto Perez Rea Junca As mentioned in the introduction, the text sources are specified by the symbology before each definition. All images references are specified on the text. If you would like to contribute to MUERTE, please contact the editor on: ernestoprj@hotmail.com
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On this page: Demon. An illustration for the article "Tables tournantes" on "Dictionnaire infernal" by Collin de Plancy. Louis Le Breton. 1863 Back cover: Joseph Sattler (1867-1931). German painter and Art Nouveau illustrator. Modern Dance of Death. Engraving. "La Ilustracion Artistica", 1885.
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