Record #35
Eater of the Dead
A composite beast that devours the souls condemned in afterlife judgement.
Original Text
There is a strange literary genre which, spontaneously, has sprung up in various lands and at various times. This is the manual for the guidance of the dead through the Other World. Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg, the writings of the Gnostics, the Tibetan Bardo Thödol (which, according to Evans-Wentz, should be translated as ‘Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane’), and the Egyptian Book ofthe Dead do not exhaust the possible examples. The similarities and differences of the latter two books have attracted the attention of esoteric scholarship; for us, let it be enough to recall that in the Tibetan manual the Other World is as illusory as this one, while to the Egyptians it has a real and objective existence.
In both texts there is a Judgement Scene before a jury of deities, some with the heads of apes; in both, a symbolical weighing of evil and good deeds. In the Book ofthe Dead, a heart and a feather are weighed against each other, ‘the heart representing the conduct or conscience of the deceased and the feather righteousness or truth’ . In the Bardo Thödol, white pebbles and black pebbles are placed on either side of the balance. The Tibetans have demons or devils who lead the condemned to the place of purgation in a hell-world; the Egyptians have a grim monster attending their wicked, an Eater of the Dead.
The dead man swears not to have caused hunger or sorrow, not to have killed or to have made others kill for him, not to have stolen the food set aside for the dead, not to have used false weights, not to have taken the milk from a baby’s mouth, not to have driven livestock from their pasturage, not to have netted the birds of the gods.
If he lies, the forty-two judges deliver him to the Eater, ‘who has the head of a crocodile, the trunk of a lion, and the hinder parts of a hippopotamus’ . The Eater is assisted by another animal Babaí, of whom we know only that he is frightening and that Plutarch identifies him with the Titan who fathered the Chimera.
In both texts there is a Judgement Scene before a jury of deities, some with the heads of apes; in both, a symbolical weighing of evil and good deeds. In the Book ofthe Dead, a heart and a feather are weighed against each other, ‘the heart representing the conduct or conscience of the deceased and the feather righteousness or truth’ . In the Bardo Thödol, white pebbles and black pebbles are placed on either side of the balance. The Tibetans have demons or devils who lead the condemned to the place of purgation in a hell-world; the Egyptians have a grim monster attending their wicked, an Eater of the Dead.
The dead man swears not to have caused hunger or sorrow, not to have killed or to have made others kill for him, not to have stolen the food set aside for the dead, not to have used false weights, not to have taken the milk from a baby’s mouth, not to have driven livestock from their pasturage, not to have netted the birds of the gods.
If he lies, the forty-two judges deliver him to the Eater, ‘who has the head of a crocodile, the trunk of a lion, and the hinder parts of a hippopotamus’ . The Eater is assisted by another animal Babaí, of whom we know only that he is frightening and that Plutarch identifies him with the Titan who fathered the Chimera.