An Old-fashioned Set of Scales With a Heart on One Side and a Feather on the Other Side
The weighing of souls (Ancient Greek: psychostasia)[one] is a religious motif in which a person'south life is assessed by weighing their soul (or some other part of them) immediately before or afterward death in order to judge their fate.[2] This motif is most unremarkably seen in medieval Christianity.[3]
Ancient Egyptian organized religion [edit]
This concept of weighing something in order to judge the fate of the deceased is outset seen in ancient Egypt effectually ii.400 B.C., where people'due south hearts are weighed on a scale confronting a plumage.[two]
The Weighing of the Heart would take identify in Duat (the Underworld) which the dead were judged by Anubis, using a feather, representing Ma'at, the goddess of truth and justice responsible for maintaining lodge in the universe. The heart was the seat of the life-spirit (ka). Hearts heavier than the plume of Ma'at were rejected and eaten by Ammit, the Devourer of Souls.
Among the Greeks [edit]
Later, during the contest of Achilles and Hector in the Iliad,[four] Zeus, weary from the battle, hung upwardly his golden scales and in them set twin Keres, "ii fateful portions of death"; this, so, is known as the kerostasia .[five] [3] Plutarch reports that Aeschylus wrote a play with the championship Psychostasia, in which the combatants were Achilles and Memnon.[6] This tradition was maintained among the vase painters. An early representation is establish on a black-figure lekythos in the British Museum;[7] she observes "The Keres or ψυχαί are represented equally miniature men; it is the lives rather than the fates that are weighed. So the notion shifts." In a psychostasia on an Athenian ruby-figure vase of about 460 BCE at the Louvre, the fates of Achilles and Memnon are in the balance held by Hermes.[8] Amid later Greek writers the psychostasia was the prerogative of Minos, judge of the newly deceased in Hades.
Christianity [edit]
The Final Judgment (1470), Archangel Michael separating the just from the damned while the devil tries to snatch them away.[9]
The first known depiction of literal weighing of souls in Christianity is from the 2nd century Attestation of Abraham.[10]
Archangel Michael is the one who is most commonly shown weighing the souls of people on scales on Judgement Day.[9] This delineation began to show upwards in early on Christianity, but is not mentioned in the Bible.[nine]
Demons are oft depicted trying to interfere with the rest of the scales.[11]
Other [edit]
In the literature of the Mandaeans, Abatur, an celestial being, has the responsibleness of weighing the souls of the deceased to determine their worthiness, using a ready of scales.[12]
See also [edit]
- Scales of justice (symbol)
- Libra
References [edit]
- ^
- Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1922), p. 183f;
- Isaac Myer, Oldest Books in the Earth (New York, 1900), 8: The Psychostasia or Judgment of the Soul of the Dead, pp 265-79. (Reprinted past Kessinger, 2005) ISBN 9781169220263.
- ^ a b Brandon 1969.
- ^ a b Brandon 1969, p. 99.
- ^ Iliad, XXII.208-213.
- ^ J.V. Morrison, "Kerostasia, the Dictates of Fate, and the Will of Zeus in the Iliad" Arethusa 30.two, Spring 1997, pp. 276-296.
- ^ Harrison 1922, p. 183; Harrison reports that according to the Onomasticon of Pollux (iv 130), Zeus and his attendants were suspended above the action in a crane.
- ^ BM B639, line drawing is Harrison'southward fig. 26, p.184
- ^ Musée du Louvre G399, Beazley Archive.
- ^ a b c Hopler, Whitney. "Archangel Michael Weighing Souls". Learn Religions . Retrieved March 7, 2019.
- ^ Brandon 1969, p. 104.
- ^ Brandon 1969, p. 110.
- ^ Matthew Bunson, Angels A to Z (New York:Crown), 1996.
Farther reading [edit]
- Brandon, Southward. Grand. F. (1969). "The weighing of the soul". In Kitagawa; Long (eds.). Myths and symbols: Studies in honor of Mircea Eliade. Chicago Academy Press. pp. 91–110 – via Internet Archive.
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