From Ancient Egypt's Anubis to Norse Valkyries, we embark on a journey through diverse cultures and discover the unique roles these guides of the afterlife play.
In this episode, we'll be talking about the intriguing realm of the "psychopomps" and their origins.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called “psychopomps”.
[00:00:26] The word “psychopomp” might be unfamiliar to you, it’s certainly not a common one in English either, but it means someone who guides you in the afterlife, after you die.
[00:00:38] And in this episode we are going to talk about these people, these often god-like figures, and how they have been interpreted through history.
[00:00:47] On our journey we’ll travel through Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Norse Mythology Hinduism and Middle Age Italy.
[00:00:57] We have a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:02] The Greek philosopher Socrates is once reported to have said, “To fear death is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”
[00:01:28] In this quote, Socrates is reminding us that nobody knows what happens after death, yet we fear it like it is the worst possible thing that can happen. If you are to take a purely atheist, non-believing perspective, and you would prefer to be alive than dead, then yes, surely death is the worst thing that can happen to you.
[00:01:51] You die, nothing happens, and there is no possibility of return. It is not good news.
[00:01:58] But if you have some kind of religious faith, perhaps you believe that something happens after you die.
[00:02:06] Perhaps you will go to some kind of heaven, if you’ve led a good life, you will meet loved ones, you might be changed into an animal of some sort, perhaps it will be marvellous.
[00:02:18] Perhaps you might not be so sure whether you’ve led a “good life”, and you might be slightly nervous about what might happen to you after death.
[00:02:30] As Socrates points out, even those with the most fervent of religious beliefs don’t claim to know exactly what will happen.
[00:02:40] Death is a leap into the unknown, but if you believe that there is something that awaits you after you take your last breath, you will no doubt be happy to have someone guide you, to show you the way, to help you with the transition.
[00:02:56] These people, these figures, are called “psychopomps”, and many world religions and belief systems have some form of guide of the afterlife who leads you and helps you make the journey from the land of the living to the land of the dead.
[00:03:14] Now, theoretical, or perhaps theological, part out of the way, let’s meet our first psychopomp.
[00:03:21] His name is Anubis, or Inpu in Ancient Egyptian.
[00:03:27] You might be able to picture him.
[00:03:29] He looks like a man, but has a black dog’s head, with large pointy black ears.
[00:03:36] His head is the head of a jackal, really, the sort of wolf-like dog native to Northern Africa.
[00:03:44] And this gives us our first clue as to where Anubis is thought to have come from.
[00:03:51] You’ll know that Ancient Egyptian pharaohs, the ancient kings, were buried in underground tombs and at times under pyramids, but most people in Ancient Egypt didn’t get such a royal burial.
[00:04:05] They were buried in relatively shallow, underground graves, often only a few centimetres underground, which meant that their bodies would be dug up by these hungry dogs and eaten.
[00:04:18] I know it's probably not a nice thought, but it leads us directly to the creation of Anubis.
[00:04:25] Because these jackals used to lurk around gravesites, eager for a fresh grave to be dug and lunch to be waiting for them, these animals came to be associated with death.
[00:04:39] So, in early Ancient Egypt, the god whose role was to be a protector of graves was depicted as a fierce jackal.
[00:04:48] After all, jackals were the threat, so what better animal to fight off the jackals than another jackal?
[00:04:57] Now, as things progressed, this jackal god changed slightly, turning from a full jackal into a man with the head of a jackal, and his role also started to change.
[00:05:11] He was no longer merely the protector of graves; he was given several crucial psychopomp duties.
[00:05:19] His role was to help people cross from the realm of the living to that of the dead, so when you died, he would be there waiting for you.
[00:05:29] He would then take you to the important next step, which would dictate what happened next.
[00:05:36] This was the weighing of the heart, where the heart of the dead person would be weighed against the feather of an ostrich.
[00:05:46] If the heart weighed more than an ostrich feather, the dead person would be eaten by Ammit, a terrible creature that had the back legs of a hippopotamus, the front legs and body of a lion, and the face of a crocodile.
[00:06:03] And, to state the obvious, you didn’t want to be eaten by Ammit, this was not good news at all, and meant that you would essentially die again, this time permanently.
[00:06:14] But, if your heart was lighter than the ostrich feather, this would mean that your soul was pure and true, and Anubis would then guide you towards Ancient Egyptian heaven.
[00:06:28] Importantly, and this is going to be a theme with several of the psychopomps we’ll encounter, Anubis did not judge; he led the dead person to the scales and helped them make the journey.
[00:06:41] He was neither good nor bad, he did not try to influence what happened, he was merely a helpful guide, but an essential one; without him, the dead person had no way of knowing where they needed to go, no way of getting to the weighing of the heart, and therefore no way of getting to heaven.
[00:07:02] Now, our next psychopomp is one that you will probably know if you are a fan of Greek myths, and that is Charon.
[00:07:10] Charon is the boatman of the Greek underworld, picking up the souls of the dead and carrying them across the River Acheron and River Styx in his boat.
[00:07:22] He was normally depicted as a grim, elderly man, or more as a skeletal figure, linking him closely to the idea of death and mortality.
[00:07:34] And of course crucial to the idea of Charon was the idea of travel, travelling from life to death, the known to the unknown, across the river in his boat.
[00:07:47] Importantly, Charon’s service was not free, there was a fee to cross the river.
[00:07:54] And if you could not pay the fee, well Charon was not running a charity down there; he wouldn’t let you cross, the rules were the rules.
[00:08:04] In the Aeneid, Virgil describes what happened to people who didn’t have any money to pay the fee, and that was the punishment of having to wait at the shore for a hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river and enter the underworld.
[00:08:19] And, as you may know, coins were often found in the burial sites of people in ancient Greece, and the reason archaeologists believe that people were buried with money was to pay Charon, the boatman, and avoid the fate of essentially being “stuck on the platform” for 100 years.
[00:08:40] Now, moving on to our next category of psychopomp, we are going to jump forward a few centuries, and go further north, to Scandinavia.
[00:08:51] And this category of psychopomp is a little different, it will buck the trend, as they are all female.
[00:09:00] A valkyrie is a sort of female guide in Norse mythology who guides the souls of soldiers who have died in battle to the Norse heaven of “Valhalla”.
[00:09:12] In fact, the Valkyries buck another trend because they are not merely non-judgmental guides; it is the role of the Valkyries to decide who dies in battle and who doesn’t.
[00:09:26] Now, you might be thinking that this makes them kind of nasty, evil, figures, if they are choosing who will live and who will die, but if that’s what you’re thinking, you are not thinking like a Viking.
[00:09:38] Remember that for a Viking warrior, almost the best thing that can happen is to die a glorious death in battle, it’s something you look forward to, not fear.
[00:09:51] And the Valkyries decided who would die based on valour and prowess in battle; a viking warrior had to earn the right to die in battle, it was a reward, not a punishment.
[00:10:04] If a warrior was so lucky as to die in battle, this was where the Valkyries really came into their own.
[00:10:11] They were beautiful, majestic women who rode on horseback, angel-like figures almost.
[00:10:17] They would descend on the battlefield and guide the souls of the fallen warriors towards Valhalla, the huge banqueting hall in Asgard, the home of the Norse gods.
[00:10:29] But that wasn’t it. Upon arriving in Valhalla, Valkyries also played a role in welcoming and integrating the warriors into their new existence.
[00:10:40] This existence, this life in Valhalla, was essentially a non-stop feast and battle, which would continue until something called Ragnarok, which is a huge battle in Norse mythology in which several important Norse gods die, there are huge fires and then a massive flood, the entire world is submerged underwater.
[00:11:03] If you ask me, Valhalla doesn’t exactly sound like heaven by my standards, but I am obviously not thinking like a Viking.
[00:11:11] Now, let’s move on to psychopomp number four, which is a very different kind of afterlife guide to the valkyries.
[00:11:20] Yama is a god that features prominently in both Hinduism and Buddhism, and there are also similar characters in Iranian mythology and in Japanese culture.
[00:11:32] Now, because the character of Yama is so spread between cultures and religions, he varies greatly, but here are some of the key themes.
[00:11:43] In Hinduism, he is depicted as a fearsome deity with green or red skin, four arms, riding a buffalo and carrying various weapons.
[00:11:56] He isn’t the kind of person that I imagine you would particularly look forward to meeting after death, but it turns out that he has quite an important role to play, not just as a guide.
[00:12:07] Unlike characters like Charon or Anubis, who do not judge and merely direct, Yama can decide where to send a soul.
[00:12:17] He is the lord of hell, but he can, if he so wishes, send a soul elsewhere; to purgatory or even to heaven.
[00:12:27] And after deciding where someone goes, he actually sends them there, fulfilling his important role as a psychopomp in those religions.
[00:12:37] Now, our fifth and final psychopomp is the most important of all, the most interesting, in my opinion, the best “guide”, and the father of all psychopomps.
[00:12:48] And he is also unique in that he is an example of how a historical figure can be reimagined as a psychopomp in literature.
[00:12:59] If you have read Dante’s Divine Comedy, La Divina Comedia, you will remember how Dante recounts his own journey through hell, purgatory and then heaven, and the characters he meets along the way.
[00:13:13] It’s an epic poem, in every sense of the word, and it is also an epic journey.
[00:13:21] Of course, Dante was unable to make this journey on his own, so his account called for a guide to the afterlife, a psychopomp.
[00:13:30] And we’ve actually already heard his name in this episode, it’s the Roman poet Virgil.
[00:13:37] Right at the start of Dante’s Inferno, “Hell”, he comes across a man who he realises is one of his literary heroes, Virgil.
[00:13:46] Virgil is not in hell himself. I mean, he hasn’t been sent to hell, he has been sent down from heaven specifically to guide Dante on this divine journey.
[00:13:59] And if you've read The Divine Comedy, you will know how much of a pivotal figure Virgil is, advising Dante on his journey, pointing out different people, and explaining different punishments.
[00:14:11] In fact, Virgil plays an important role before Dante even gets into hell proper.
[00:14:18] If you recall psychopomp number two, Charon, he also features in Dante’s Inferno. Dante and Virgil approach the river Acheron, but Charon refuses to carry Dante across.
[00:14:32] After all, Dante the character isn’t actually dead, and so he has no right to be taken across the river.
[00:14:40] It is only the intervention of Virgil, who tells Charon that Dante is on a divine journey, that allows him to cross the river and start his voyage.
[00:14:50] And this is only the beginning.
[00:14:52] The other psychopomps we have talked about today have pretty specific roles, whether that be the weighing the heart of a dead person or ferrying them from one side of a river to another.
[00:15:04] Virgil’s role as a psychopomp is the most multi-faceted. He guides, he advises, he protects, and he explains.
[00:15:15] He is also used as a literary device by Dante the poet to demonstrate things like the limits of human reason. Virgil is a pre-Christian character, so despite the fact that he represents the pinnacle of classical human knowledge and wisdom, there are limits to his understanding. In other words, he’s used as a literary device to show that there are spiritual things that even the most intelligent people can not understand, if they do not have faith in God.
[00:15:48] And there we have it, a brief journey through time and myth, exploring the fascinating figures known as psychopomps.
[00:15:57] From the ancient tombs of Egypt to the ethereal realms of Valhalla, and from the judgement halls of Yama to the poetic guidance of Virgil, we've seen how different cultures and belief systems have grappled with the universal mystery of death and the afterlife.
[00:16:13] What's fascinating is how these guides of the afterlife, these psychopomps, though varied in their roles and origins, share a common purpose – to escort us through the transition from life to whatever lies beyond.
[00:16:29] In learning about these figures, perhaps we can find some comfort in the face of the unknown and recognise the shared human quest to understand life, death, and the mysteries that lie beyond our mortal understanding.
[00:16:45] OK then, that is it for today's episode this brief exploration of Psychopomps.
[00:16:51] As always, I would love to know what you thought of the episode.
[00:16:54] What other psychopomps, both spiritual and fictional, do you think we should have included?
[00:16:59] I'd love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:02] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:15] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called “psychopomps”.
[00:00:26] The word “psychopomp” might be unfamiliar to you, it’s certainly not a common one in English either, but it means someone who guides you in the afterlife, after you die.
[00:00:38] And in this episode we are going to talk about these people, these often god-like figures, and how they have been interpreted through history.
[00:00:47] On our journey we’ll travel through Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Norse Mythology Hinduism and Middle Age Italy.
[00:00:57] We have a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:02] The Greek philosopher Socrates is once reported to have said, “To fear death is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”
[00:01:28] In this quote, Socrates is reminding us that nobody knows what happens after death, yet we fear it like it is the worst possible thing that can happen. If you are to take a purely atheist, non-believing perspective, and you would prefer to be alive than dead, then yes, surely death is the worst thing that can happen to you.
[00:01:51] You die, nothing happens, and there is no possibility of return. It is not good news.
[00:01:58] But if you have some kind of religious faith, perhaps you believe that something happens after you die.
[00:02:06] Perhaps you will go to some kind of heaven, if you’ve led a good life, you will meet loved ones, you might be changed into an animal of some sort, perhaps it will be marvellous.
[00:02:18] Perhaps you might not be so sure whether you’ve led a “good life”, and you might be slightly nervous about what might happen to you after death.
[00:02:30] As Socrates points out, even those with the most fervent of religious beliefs don’t claim to know exactly what will happen.
[00:02:40] Death is a leap into the unknown, but if you believe that there is something that awaits you after you take your last breath, you will no doubt be happy to have someone guide you, to show you the way, to help you with the transition.
[00:02:56] These people, these figures, are called “psychopomps”, and many world religions and belief systems have some form of guide of the afterlife who leads you and helps you make the journey from the land of the living to the land of the dead.
[00:03:14] Now, theoretical, or perhaps theological, part out of the way, let’s meet our first psychopomp.
[00:03:21] His name is Anubis, or Inpu in Ancient Egyptian.
[00:03:27] You might be able to picture him.
[00:03:29] He looks like a man, but has a black dog’s head, with large pointy black ears.
[00:03:36] His head is the head of a jackal, really, the sort of wolf-like dog native to Northern Africa.
[00:03:44] And this gives us our first clue as to where Anubis is thought to have come from.
[00:03:51] You’ll know that Ancient Egyptian pharaohs, the ancient kings, were buried in underground tombs and at times under pyramids, but most people in Ancient Egypt didn’t get such a royal burial.
[00:04:05] They were buried in relatively shallow, underground graves, often only a few centimetres underground, which meant that their bodies would be dug up by these hungry dogs and eaten.
[00:04:18] I know it's probably not a nice thought, but it leads us directly to the creation of Anubis.
[00:04:25] Because these jackals used to lurk around gravesites, eager for a fresh grave to be dug and lunch to be waiting for them, these animals came to be associated with death.
[00:04:39] So, in early Ancient Egypt, the god whose role was to be a protector of graves was depicted as a fierce jackal.
[00:04:48] After all, jackals were the threat, so what better animal to fight off the jackals than another jackal?
[00:04:57] Now, as things progressed, this jackal god changed slightly, turning from a full jackal into a man with the head of a jackal, and his role also started to change.
[00:05:11] He was no longer merely the protector of graves; he was given several crucial psychopomp duties.
[00:05:19] His role was to help people cross from the realm of the living to that of the dead, so when you died, he would be there waiting for you.
[00:05:29] He would then take you to the important next step, which would dictate what happened next.
[00:05:36] This was the weighing of the heart, where the heart of the dead person would be weighed against the feather of an ostrich.
[00:05:46] If the heart weighed more than an ostrich feather, the dead person would be eaten by Ammit, a terrible creature that had the back legs of a hippopotamus, the front legs and body of a lion, and the face of a crocodile.
[00:06:03] And, to state the obvious, you didn’t want to be eaten by Ammit, this was not good news at all, and meant that you would essentially die again, this time permanently.
[00:06:14] But, if your heart was lighter than the ostrich feather, this would mean that your soul was pure and true, and Anubis would then guide you towards Ancient Egyptian heaven.
[00:06:28] Importantly, and this is going to be a theme with several of the psychopomps we’ll encounter, Anubis did not judge; he led the dead person to the scales and helped them make the journey.
[00:06:41] He was neither good nor bad, he did not try to influence what happened, he was merely a helpful guide, but an essential one; without him, the dead person had no way of knowing where they needed to go, no way of getting to the weighing of the heart, and therefore no way of getting to heaven.
[00:07:02] Now, our next psychopomp is one that you will probably know if you are a fan of Greek myths, and that is Charon.
[00:07:10] Charon is the boatman of the Greek underworld, picking up the souls of the dead and carrying them across the River Acheron and River Styx in his boat.
[00:07:22] He was normally depicted as a grim, elderly man, or more as a skeletal figure, linking him closely to the idea of death and mortality.
[00:07:34] And of course crucial to the idea of Charon was the idea of travel, travelling from life to death, the known to the unknown, across the river in his boat.
[00:07:47] Importantly, Charon’s service was not free, there was a fee to cross the river.
[00:07:54] And if you could not pay the fee, well Charon was not running a charity down there; he wouldn’t let you cross, the rules were the rules.
[00:08:04] In the Aeneid, Virgil describes what happened to people who didn’t have any money to pay the fee, and that was the punishment of having to wait at the shore for a hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river and enter the underworld.
[00:08:19] And, as you may know, coins were often found in the burial sites of people in ancient Greece, and the reason archaeologists believe that people were buried with money was to pay Charon, the boatman, and avoid the fate of essentially being “stuck on the platform” for 100 years.
[00:08:40] Now, moving on to our next category of psychopomp, we are going to jump forward a few centuries, and go further north, to Scandinavia.
[00:08:51] And this category of psychopomp is a little different, it will buck the trend, as they are all female.
[00:09:00] A valkyrie is a sort of female guide in Norse mythology who guides the souls of soldiers who have died in battle to the Norse heaven of “Valhalla”.
[00:09:12] In fact, the Valkyries buck another trend because they are not merely non-judgmental guides; it is the role of the Valkyries to decide who dies in battle and who doesn’t.
[00:09:26] Now, you might be thinking that this makes them kind of nasty, evil, figures, if they are choosing who will live and who will die, but if that’s what you’re thinking, you are not thinking like a Viking.
[00:09:38] Remember that for a Viking warrior, almost the best thing that can happen is to die a glorious death in battle, it’s something you look forward to, not fear.
[00:09:51] And the Valkyries decided who would die based on valour and prowess in battle; a viking warrior had to earn the right to die in battle, it was a reward, not a punishment.
[00:10:04] If a warrior was so lucky as to die in battle, this was where the Valkyries really came into their own.
[00:10:11] They were beautiful, majestic women who rode on horseback, angel-like figures almost.
[00:10:17] They would descend on the battlefield and guide the souls of the fallen warriors towards Valhalla, the huge banqueting hall in Asgard, the home of the Norse gods.
[00:10:29] But that wasn’t it. Upon arriving in Valhalla, Valkyries also played a role in welcoming and integrating the warriors into their new existence.
[00:10:40] This existence, this life in Valhalla, was essentially a non-stop feast and battle, which would continue until something called Ragnarok, which is a huge battle in Norse mythology in which several important Norse gods die, there are huge fires and then a massive flood, the entire world is submerged underwater.
[00:11:03] If you ask me, Valhalla doesn’t exactly sound like heaven by my standards, but I am obviously not thinking like a Viking.
[00:11:11] Now, let’s move on to psychopomp number four, which is a very different kind of afterlife guide to the valkyries.
[00:11:20] Yama is a god that features prominently in both Hinduism and Buddhism, and there are also similar characters in Iranian mythology and in Japanese culture.
[00:11:32] Now, because the character of Yama is so spread between cultures and religions, he varies greatly, but here are some of the key themes.
[00:11:43] In Hinduism, he is depicted as a fearsome deity with green or red skin, four arms, riding a buffalo and carrying various weapons.
[00:11:56] He isn’t the kind of person that I imagine you would particularly look forward to meeting after death, but it turns out that he has quite an important role to play, not just as a guide.
[00:12:07] Unlike characters like Charon or Anubis, who do not judge and merely direct, Yama can decide where to send a soul.
[00:12:17] He is the lord of hell, but he can, if he so wishes, send a soul elsewhere; to purgatory or even to heaven.
[00:12:27] And after deciding where someone goes, he actually sends them there, fulfilling his important role as a psychopomp in those religions.
[00:12:37] Now, our fifth and final psychopomp is the most important of all, the most interesting, in my opinion, the best “guide”, and the father of all psychopomps.
[00:12:48] And he is also unique in that he is an example of how a historical figure can be reimagined as a psychopomp in literature.
[00:12:59] If you have read Dante’s Divine Comedy, La Divina Comedia, you will remember how Dante recounts his own journey through hell, purgatory and then heaven, and the characters he meets along the way.
[00:13:13] It’s an epic poem, in every sense of the word, and it is also an epic journey.
[00:13:21] Of course, Dante was unable to make this journey on his own, so his account called for a guide to the afterlife, a psychopomp.
[00:13:30] And we’ve actually already heard his name in this episode, it’s the Roman poet Virgil.
[00:13:37] Right at the start of Dante’s Inferno, “Hell”, he comes across a man who he realises is one of his literary heroes, Virgil.
[00:13:46] Virgil is not in hell himself. I mean, he hasn’t been sent to hell, he has been sent down from heaven specifically to guide Dante on this divine journey.
[00:13:59] And if you've read The Divine Comedy, you will know how much of a pivotal figure Virgil is, advising Dante on his journey, pointing out different people, and explaining different punishments.
[00:14:11] In fact, Virgil plays an important role before Dante even gets into hell proper.
[00:14:18] If you recall psychopomp number two, Charon, he also features in Dante’s Inferno. Dante and Virgil approach the river Acheron, but Charon refuses to carry Dante across.
[00:14:32] After all, Dante the character isn’t actually dead, and so he has no right to be taken across the river.
[00:14:40] It is only the intervention of Virgil, who tells Charon that Dante is on a divine journey, that allows him to cross the river and start his voyage.
[00:14:50] And this is only the beginning.
[00:14:52] The other psychopomps we have talked about today have pretty specific roles, whether that be the weighing the heart of a dead person or ferrying them from one side of a river to another.
[00:15:04] Virgil’s role as a psychopomp is the most multi-faceted. He guides, he advises, he protects, and he explains.
[00:15:15] He is also used as a literary device by Dante the poet to demonstrate things like the limits of human reason. Virgil is a pre-Christian character, so despite the fact that he represents the pinnacle of classical human knowledge and wisdom, there are limits to his understanding. In other words, he’s used as a literary device to show that there are spiritual things that even the most intelligent people can not understand, if they do not have faith in God.
[00:15:48] And there we have it, a brief journey through time and myth, exploring the fascinating figures known as psychopomps.
[00:15:57] From the ancient tombs of Egypt to the ethereal realms of Valhalla, and from the judgement halls of Yama to the poetic guidance of Virgil, we've seen how different cultures and belief systems have grappled with the universal mystery of death and the afterlife.
[00:16:13] What's fascinating is how these guides of the afterlife, these psychopomps, though varied in their roles and origins, share a common purpose – to escort us through the transition from life to whatever lies beyond.
[00:16:29] In learning about these figures, perhaps we can find some comfort in the face of the unknown and recognise the shared human quest to understand life, death, and the mysteries that lie beyond our mortal understanding.
[00:16:45] OK then, that is it for today's episode this brief exploration of Psychopomps.
[00:16:51] As always, I would love to know what you thought of the episode.
[00:16:54] What other psychopomps, both spiritual and fictional, do you think we should have included?
[00:16:59] I'd love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:02] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:15] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called “psychopomps”.
[00:00:26] The word “psychopomp” might be unfamiliar to you, it’s certainly not a common one in English either, but it means someone who guides you in the afterlife, after you die.
[00:00:38] And in this episode we are going to talk about these people, these often god-like figures, and how they have been interpreted through history.
[00:00:47] On our journey we’ll travel through Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Norse Mythology Hinduism and Middle Age Italy.
[00:00:57] We have a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:02] The Greek philosopher Socrates is once reported to have said, “To fear death is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”
[00:01:28] In this quote, Socrates is reminding us that nobody knows what happens after death, yet we fear it like it is the worst possible thing that can happen. If you are to take a purely atheist, non-believing perspective, and you would prefer to be alive than dead, then yes, surely death is the worst thing that can happen to you.
[00:01:51] You die, nothing happens, and there is no possibility of return. It is not good news.
[00:01:58] But if you have some kind of religious faith, perhaps you believe that something happens after you die.
[00:02:06] Perhaps you will go to some kind of heaven, if you’ve led a good life, you will meet loved ones, you might be changed into an animal of some sort, perhaps it will be marvellous.
[00:02:18] Perhaps you might not be so sure whether you’ve led a “good life”, and you might be slightly nervous about what might happen to you after death.
[00:02:30] As Socrates points out, even those with the most fervent of religious beliefs don’t claim to know exactly what will happen.
[00:02:40] Death is a leap into the unknown, but if you believe that there is something that awaits you after you take your last breath, you will no doubt be happy to have someone guide you, to show you the way, to help you with the transition.
[00:02:56] These people, these figures, are called “psychopomps”, and many world religions and belief systems have some form of guide of the afterlife who leads you and helps you make the journey from the land of the living to the land of the dead.
[00:03:14] Now, theoretical, or perhaps theological, part out of the way, let’s meet our first psychopomp.
[00:03:21] His name is Anubis, or Inpu in Ancient Egyptian.
[00:03:27] You might be able to picture him.
[00:03:29] He looks like a man, but has a black dog’s head, with large pointy black ears.
[00:03:36] His head is the head of a jackal, really, the sort of wolf-like dog native to Northern Africa.
[00:03:44] And this gives us our first clue as to where Anubis is thought to have come from.
[00:03:51] You’ll know that Ancient Egyptian pharaohs, the ancient kings, were buried in underground tombs and at times under pyramids, but most people in Ancient Egypt didn’t get such a royal burial.
[00:04:05] They were buried in relatively shallow, underground graves, often only a few centimetres underground, which meant that their bodies would be dug up by these hungry dogs and eaten.
[00:04:18] I know it's probably not a nice thought, but it leads us directly to the creation of Anubis.
[00:04:25] Because these jackals used to lurk around gravesites, eager for a fresh grave to be dug and lunch to be waiting for them, these animals came to be associated with death.
[00:04:39] So, in early Ancient Egypt, the god whose role was to be a protector of graves was depicted as a fierce jackal.
[00:04:48] After all, jackals were the threat, so what better animal to fight off the jackals than another jackal?
[00:04:57] Now, as things progressed, this jackal god changed slightly, turning from a full jackal into a man with the head of a jackal, and his role also started to change.
[00:05:11] He was no longer merely the protector of graves; he was given several crucial psychopomp duties.
[00:05:19] His role was to help people cross from the realm of the living to that of the dead, so when you died, he would be there waiting for you.
[00:05:29] He would then take you to the important next step, which would dictate what happened next.
[00:05:36] This was the weighing of the heart, where the heart of the dead person would be weighed against the feather of an ostrich.
[00:05:46] If the heart weighed more than an ostrich feather, the dead person would be eaten by Ammit, a terrible creature that had the back legs of a hippopotamus, the front legs and body of a lion, and the face of a crocodile.
[00:06:03] And, to state the obvious, you didn’t want to be eaten by Ammit, this was not good news at all, and meant that you would essentially die again, this time permanently.
[00:06:14] But, if your heart was lighter than the ostrich feather, this would mean that your soul was pure and true, and Anubis would then guide you towards Ancient Egyptian heaven.
[00:06:28] Importantly, and this is going to be a theme with several of the psychopomps we’ll encounter, Anubis did not judge; he led the dead person to the scales and helped them make the journey.
[00:06:41] He was neither good nor bad, he did not try to influence what happened, he was merely a helpful guide, but an essential one; without him, the dead person had no way of knowing where they needed to go, no way of getting to the weighing of the heart, and therefore no way of getting to heaven.
[00:07:02] Now, our next psychopomp is one that you will probably know if you are a fan of Greek myths, and that is Charon.
[00:07:10] Charon is the boatman of the Greek underworld, picking up the souls of the dead and carrying them across the River Acheron and River Styx in his boat.
[00:07:22] He was normally depicted as a grim, elderly man, or more as a skeletal figure, linking him closely to the idea of death and mortality.
[00:07:34] And of course crucial to the idea of Charon was the idea of travel, travelling from life to death, the known to the unknown, across the river in his boat.
[00:07:47] Importantly, Charon’s service was not free, there was a fee to cross the river.
[00:07:54] And if you could not pay the fee, well Charon was not running a charity down there; he wouldn’t let you cross, the rules were the rules.
[00:08:04] In the Aeneid, Virgil describes what happened to people who didn’t have any money to pay the fee, and that was the punishment of having to wait at the shore for a hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river and enter the underworld.
[00:08:19] And, as you may know, coins were often found in the burial sites of people in ancient Greece, and the reason archaeologists believe that people were buried with money was to pay Charon, the boatman, and avoid the fate of essentially being “stuck on the platform” for 100 years.
[00:08:40] Now, moving on to our next category of psychopomp, we are going to jump forward a few centuries, and go further north, to Scandinavia.
[00:08:51] And this category of psychopomp is a little different, it will buck the trend, as they are all female.
[00:09:00] A valkyrie is a sort of female guide in Norse mythology who guides the souls of soldiers who have died in battle to the Norse heaven of “Valhalla”.
[00:09:12] In fact, the Valkyries buck another trend because they are not merely non-judgmental guides; it is the role of the Valkyries to decide who dies in battle and who doesn’t.
[00:09:26] Now, you might be thinking that this makes them kind of nasty, evil, figures, if they are choosing who will live and who will die, but if that’s what you’re thinking, you are not thinking like a Viking.
[00:09:38] Remember that for a Viking warrior, almost the best thing that can happen is to die a glorious death in battle, it’s something you look forward to, not fear.
[00:09:51] And the Valkyries decided who would die based on valour and prowess in battle; a viking warrior had to earn the right to die in battle, it was a reward, not a punishment.
[00:10:04] If a warrior was so lucky as to die in battle, this was where the Valkyries really came into their own.
[00:10:11] They were beautiful, majestic women who rode on horseback, angel-like figures almost.
[00:10:17] They would descend on the battlefield and guide the souls of the fallen warriors towards Valhalla, the huge banqueting hall in Asgard, the home of the Norse gods.
[00:10:29] But that wasn’t it. Upon arriving in Valhalla, Valkyries also played a role in welcoming and integrating the warriors into their new existence.
[00:10:40] This existence, this life in Valhalla, was essentially a non-stop feast and battle, which would continue until something called Ragnarok, which is a huge battle in Norse mythology in which several important Norse gods die, there are huge fires and then a massive flood, the entire world is submerged underwater.
[00:11:03] If you ask me, Valhalla doesn’t exactly sound like heaven by my standards, but I am obviously not thinking like a Viking.
[00:11:11] Now, let’s move on to psychopomp number four, which is a very different kind of afterlife guide to the valkyries.
[00:11:20] Yama is a god that features prominently in both Hinduism and Buddhism, and there are also similar characters in Iranian mythology and in Japanese culture.
[00:11:32] Now, because the character of Yama is so spread between cultures and religions, he varies greatly, but here are some of the key themes.
[00:11:43] In Hinduism, he is depicted as a fearsome deity with green or red skin, four arms, riding a buffalo and carrying various weapons.
[00:11:56] He isn’t the kind of person that I imagine you would particularly look forward to meeting after death, but it turns out that he has quite an important role to play, not just as a guide.
[00:12:07] Unlike characters like Charon or Anubis, who do not judge and merely direct, Yama can decide where to send a soul.
[00:12:17] He is the lord of hell, but he can, if he so wishes, send a soul elsewhere; to purgatory or even to heaven.
[00:12:27] And after deciding where someone goes, he actually sends them there, fulfilling his important role as a psychopomp in those religions.
[00:12:37] Now, our fifth and final psychopomp is the most important of all, the most interesting, in my opinion, the best “guide”, and the father of all psychopomps.
[00:12:48] And he is also unique in that he is an example of how a historical figure can be reimagined as a psychopomp in literature.
[00:12:59] If you have read Dante’s Divine Comedy, La Divina Comedia, you will remember how Dante recounts his own journey through hell, purgatory and then heaven, and the characters he meets along the way.
[00:13:13] It’s an epic poem, in every sense of the word, and it is also an epic journey.
[00:13:21] Of course, Dante was unable to make this journey on his own, so his account called for a guide to the afterlife, a psychopomp.
[00:13:30] And we’ve actually already heard his name in this episode, it’s the Roman poet Virgil.
[00:13:37] Right at the start of Dante’s Inferno, “Hell”, he comes across a man who he realises is one of his literary heroes, Virgil.
[00:13:46] Virgil is not in hell himself. I mean, he hasn’t been sent to hell, he has been sent down from heaven specifically to guide Dante on this divine journey.
[00:13:59] And if you've read The Divine Comedy, you will know how much of a pivotal figure Virgil is, advising Dante on his journey, pointing out different people, and explaining different punishments.
[00:14:11] In fact, Virgil plays an important role before Dante even gets into hell proper.
[00:14:18] If you recall psychopomp number two, Charon, he also features in Dante’s Inferno. Dante and Virgil approach the river Acheron, but Charon refuses to carry Dante across.
[00:14:32] After all, Dante the character isn’t actually dead, and so he has no right to be taken across the river.
[00:14:40] It is only the intervention of Virgil, who tells Charon that Dante is on a divine journey, that allows him to cross the river and start his voyage.
[00:14:50] And this is only the beginning.
[00:14:52] The other psychopomps we have talked about today have pretty specific roles, whether that be the weighing the heart of a dead person or ferrying them from one side of a river to another.
[00:15:04] Virgil’s role as a psychopomp is the most multi-faceted. He guides, he advises, he protects, and he explains.
[00:15:15] He is also used as a literary device by Dante the poet to demonstrate things like the limits of human reason. Virgil is a pre-Christian character, so despite the fact that he represents the pinnacle of classical human knowledge and wisdom, there are limits to his understanding. In other words, he’s used as a literary device to show that there are spiritual things that even the most intelligent people can not understand, if they do not have faith in God.
[00:15:48] And there we have it, a brief journey through time and myth, exploring the fascinating figures known as psychopomps.
[00:15:57] From the ancient tombs of Egypt to the ethereal realms of Valhalla, and from the judgement halls of Yama to the poetic guidance of Virgil, we've seen how different cultures and belief systems have grappled with the universal mystery of death and the afterlife.
[00:16:13] What's fascinating is how these guides of the afterlife, these psychopomps, though varied in their roles and origins, share a common purpose – to escort us through the transition from life to whatever lies beyond.
[00:16:29] In learning about these figures, perhaps we can find some comfort in the face of the unknown and recognise the shared human quest to understand life, death, and the mysteries that lie beyond our mortal understanding.
[00:16:45] OK then, that is it for today's episode this brief exploration of Psychopomps.
[00:16:51] As always, I would love to know what you thought of the episode.
[00:16:54] What other psychopomps, both spiritual and fictional, do you think we should have included?
[00:16:59] I'd love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:02] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:15] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
