What do reapers carry

Since the 15th century, Death has commonly been perceived to be an animated human skeleton, draped in pitch black robes and carrying a scythe. With this scythe, the Reaper severs the soul's last ties to life and grants the soul safe passage to the afterlife.

The Grim Reaper has often - falsely - been depicted as an evil spirit that preys on mortals. In truth, however, they are neither evil nor good, merely a force of nature and order. Death is a fundamental part of life and it is the Grim Reaper's duty to claim the souls of the deceased so as to maintain the balance of nature. The Reaper does not "kill" mortals, but merely guides their spirits to the next realm and it is not their place to judge souls or determine what will become of them.

Thanatos was one of two twin sons born to Nyx, the primordial goddess of Night with Thanatos's twin having been the sleep-god Hypnos. In Thanatos's most famous myth, he was captured and imprisoned by the Sysiphus, the mad king of Corinth. Thanatos was chained and bound in the castle of Sysiphus resulting in no living being on Earth being able to die which lead to an uproar from the God of War, Ares.

The origin of the Grim Reaper figure comes from the Medieval Europe during the 14th century when more and more Europeans found themselves dying of the mysterious new plague known as "Black Death" now known as Bubonic Plague.

The Grim Reaper embodied the concept of the living being like wheat which the Reaper harvests when they grow too old, hence the reaper's scythe. Although the figure is generally devoid of religious ties the Reaper is often affiliated with the Horseman of Death from the Abrahamic faith, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Due to this the Reaper is often portrayed as having a Pale Horse. The Grim Reaper is a near universal representation of demise and is found in a wide variety of different cultures with many different names.

British-influenced cultures tend to portray the Reaper as being male or devoid of gender or sex but in languages with grammatical gender E. Over time, a scythe came to replace these other instruments of death. A scythe was a tool used to reap, or cut, grain or grass. What is death's name? Are there multiple Grim Reapers? His job was easy, in the beginning. Does the Grim Reaper have a weakness? They do not have human weakness such as hunger or thirst. They do not Disobey any Commandments.

Yes, they do sometimes Question when they fail to perceive Rationale. Why does the Grim Reaper carry a scythe? Death personified as the Grim Reaper carries a scythe to reap the dead.

This image came about in the Middle Ages, a largely agrarian society so it not surprising to find agricultural motifs in their representation of death. Humans have been very creative in their artistic depictions of death. What are other names for the Grim Reaper?

Wiktionary Grim Reaper propernoun Synonyms: reaper, angel of death, Azrael, death. Grim Reaper propernoun A personification of Death as an old man, or a skeleton, carrying a scythe, taking souls to the afterlife. Synonyms: Azrael, death, angel of death, reaper.

How does the Grim Reaper collect souls? The Grim Reaper, as he is often named, is the personification of death. In almost all cultures and religions, humans were first created as immortal beings who fell from their state of perfection.

The fall of Adam and Eve is the classic example, chronicled in the Bible. The first man and woman lived in the Garden of Eden, a perfect place. God told Adam to take care of the garden and harvest fruit from any tree -- except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Unfortunately, Satan, speaking through a serpent , tricked Eve into eating the fruit.

She then took the fruit to Adam, who also ate it even though he knew it was wrong. As their punishment for disobeying God, Adam and Eve experienced both spiritual and physical death. In other religions, humans were created as mortals who tried, but failed, to achieve immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells this story. A product of Mesopotamian literature, Gilgamesh was the son of a goddess and a human king. Gilgamesh, however, remained just as mortal as any other man, including his best friend Enkidu.

When Enkidu dies, the great hero becomes haunted by the prospect of death and sets out on a quest for immortality. His travels bring him to Utnapishtim, a human who has been allowed by the gods to live forever.

Utnapishtim promises to grant Gilgamesh immortality if the hero can stay awake for a week. Gilgamesh eventually falls asleep, but Utnapishtim still rewards him with a plant that has the power to rejuvenate its owner. On the journey home, a hungry snake devours the plant, ending any hope Gilgamesh has of becoming immortal.

In Mesopotamian legend, Gilgamesh returns home and happily accepts his life as a mortal man. Most humans, however, aren't so easygoing.

We're troubled by the idea of our own mortality. Death is a constant shadow hanging over everything we do. Research bears this out.

A survey found that 20 percent of Americans aged 50 and older become frightened when they think about what happens to them when they die. Fifty-three percent believe in the existence of spirits or ghosts; 73 percent in life after death [source: AARP ]. Clearly, what happens as we die, as well as what happens after we die, is a major concern, as it has been for thousands of years.

To make sense of dying and mortality, humans rely on a tried-and-true method: They give death a form they recognize. This turns an abstract, invisible phenomenon into something real and tangible. If you look at death and see a familiar face, you can understand it. If you look at death and see a kind, gentle face, even better -- you can put aside your fears. Of course, it can work the other way.

You can find a terrifying countenance when you look upon death. As we'll see in the next section, the frightening face of the Grim Reaper evolved after a particularly difficult time in human history. Thanatos was the twin brother of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and both were portrayed as young, pleasant men. In some illustrations, Thanatos appears with wings and an extinguished flame.

His job was to accompany the departed to Hades , the Greek underworld. There, Thanatos would deliver the souls to Charon, the ferryman on the River Styx.

In this version, death isn't ugly and frightening, but attractive and helpful. In Norse mythology , the Valkyries were beautiful young women who served both as Odin's messengers and as escorts to the souls of warriors killed in battle. In fact, Valkyries means "choosers of the slain. Then they would transport these souls to Valhalla, Odin's hall. Once in the afterlife, the brave souls were enlisted to fight in the battle of Ragnarok, an apocalyptic conflict signaling the end of the world.

In some stories, angels carry messages to mortals or protect them from harm. In other stories, they interact with the deceased, tormenting those who have sinned. The Angel of Death -- a spirit that extracts one's soul from the body at the moment of death -- appears in many religions and cultures.

The archangels Michael and Gabriel have acted as angels of death in Judeo-Christian religion. Azrael is the Islamic Angel of Death, who sometimes appears as a horrifying spirit with eyes and tongues covering his entire body.

Azrael maintains a massive ledger in which he records and erases the birth and death, respectively, of every soul in the world. Sometimes, the task of escorting recently deceased souls to the afterlife falls not to human forms, but to animals known as psychopomps. Certain species of birds -- owls, sparrows, crows and whip-poor-wills -- appear frequently as psychopomps.

But an epidemiological event occurred in the late 14th century that would forever change how the average person viewed, and responded to, death. That event was the medieval-era plague , one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. At least 25 million people died in the initial outbreak of the plague, and millions more continued to die in outbreaks that flared up for centuries [source: National Geographic ]. Fear -- of dying, of the unknown pestilence, of the pain associated with the late stage of the disease, when the skin on a victim's extremities turned black and gangrenous -- gripped the entire continent.

A general mood of morbidity hung over all activities and influenced writers and painters of the time. Not surprisingly, death began to appear as a skeleton in artwork from this era.

In fact, most artists portrayed the skeletal form of death in similar ways. He was often shown holding a dart, crossbow or some other weapon. Eventually, these implements would be replaced with a scythe, a mowing tool composed of a long curving blade fastened at an angle to a long handle. Many paintings showed death swinging the scythe through a crowd of people, mowing down souls as if they were grain.