THE Death and his twin brother, Sleep, are her sons Night, of a deity fearsome and terrible in antiquity. The two twin brothers have a grandfather (or grandmother, I don't know exactly) the Chaos, according to Isiod's Theogony. They live in Tartarus together, away from the sunlight. Sleep is present and dear to people, but Death, as expected, not so much. He is presented, however, as a handsome young man, sometimes with wings and for this reason he is perhaps symbolically associated with the butterfly. It is interesting that the poppy is also a symbol of Death - but in addition to Sleep and Night - as this flower was used in ancient times as a hypnotic and also for euthanasia.
About the cult of Death there is not much information. Perhaps this evil god does not want gifts from mortals, possibly so that he does not get emotionally attached and change his mind. He was defeated twice, once by Hercules and once by Sisyphus. No matter how limited our sources are now, if we look we will find many stories about Death, because mythology unfolds manifestations of the bottomless ingenuity of people.
So the mythology is imaginative but also magically logical as it unites death with sleep, with night, with chaos by blood ties.
And yes, the first thought of death naturally brings to mind darkness and chaos. However, it is not death that may bring chaos, but its absence.
So driven by two completely different books, the About Death of Jose Saramago and the Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett, I want to try to present some alternative forms of death through the timelessness of literature. Such a subject, however, requires small portions of food so that it does not weigh us down too much. So I'll stop here, until next time. I was going to say a good night's sleep, but after what you've read, I don't know how you're going to take that.
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