dminoz
Here are some ideas about the Death image. The following is a quote from a book titled "Gods of Eden", by William Bramley (listed on Amazon). The subject is the Black Death.
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"Sightings of unusual aerial phenomena usually occurred from several minutes to a year before an outbreak of Plague.
Where there was a gap between such a sighting and the arrival of the Plague, a second phenomenon was sometimes reported: The appearance of frightening human-like figures dressed in black. Those figures were often seen on the outskirts of a town or village and their presence would signal the outbreak of an epidemic almost immediately.
A summary written in 1682 tells of one such visit a century earlier:
In Brandenburg (Germany) there appeared in 1559 horrible men of whom at first fifteen and later on twelve were seen ... the others (had) fearful faces and long scythes, with which they cut at the oats, so that the swish could be heard at a great distance, but the oats remained standing ... The visit of the strange men to the oat fields was followed immediately by a severe outbreak of the Plague in Brandenburg.
This incident raises intriguing questions: who were the mysterious figures?
What were the long scythe-like instruments they had that emitted a loud swishing sound?
It appears that the "scythes" may have been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden gas.
This would mean that the townspeople misinterpreted the movement of the "scythes" as an attempt to cut oats when, in fact, the movements were the act of spraying aerosols on the town.
Similar men dressed in black were reported in Hungary ... there appeared so many black riders that the opinion was prevalent that the Turks were making a secret raid, but who rapidly disappeared again, and thereupon a raging plague broke out in the neighborhood.
Strange men dressed in black, "demons" and other terrifying figures were observed in other European communities. The frightening creatures were often observed carrying long "brooms," "scythes," or "swords" that were used to "sweep" or "knock at" the doors of people's homes. The inhabitants of those homes fell ill with plague afterwards. It is from these reports that people created the popular image of "Death" as a skeleton or demoncarrying a scythe. The scythe came to symbolize the act of Death mowing down people like stalks of grain ..
Of all the phenomena connected to the Black Death, by far the most frequently reported were the strange, noxious "mists." The vapors were often observed even when other phenomena were not. Mr. Nohl points out that moist pestilential fogs were "a feature which preceded the epidemic throughout its whole course." A great many physicians of the time took it for granted that the strange mists caused the Plague.
The connection was established at the very beginning of the Black Death..."
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The above is extracted from this page:
http://fernlothng.freeservers.com/plague_spray.html
...which also contains an interesting graphic of cupid-like figures with not only bows and arrows, but also two vases.
Now clearly, the logical common-sense explanation of this is that the mysterious figures doing the spraying were time-travelling Mossad-Halliburton agents, and that their base was in Bavaria, since that was the one part of Europe which never experienced the plague; but we should never rule out more bizarre explanations as well.
Does anyone have any historical timeline for the image of Death as being a figure holding a scythe? Where does it come from, and did it exist before the Black Death? Or is William Bramley right in the above quote from "Gods of Eden", and did the image originate with the Black Death?
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"Sightings of unusual aerial phenomena usually occurred from several minutes to a year before an outbreak of Plague.
Where there was a gap between such a sighting and the arrival of the Plague, a second phenomenon was sometimes reported: The appearance of frightening human-like figures dressed in black. Those figures were often seen on the outskirts of a town or village and their presence would signal the outbreak of an epidemic almost immediately.
A summary written in 1682 tells of one such visit a century earlier:
In Brandenburg (Germany) there appeared in 1559 horrible men of whom at first fifteen and later on twelve were seen ... the others (had) fearful faces and long scythes, with which they cut at the oats, so that the swish could be heard at a great distance, but the oats remained standing ... The visit of the strange men to the oat fields was followed immediately by a severe outbreak of the Plague in Brandenburg.
This incident raises intriguing questions: who were the mysterious figures?
What were the long scythe-like instruments they had that emitted a loud swishing sound?
It appears that the "scythes" may have been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden gas.
This would mean that the townspeople misinterpreted the movement of the "scythes" as an attempt to cut oats when, in fact, the movements were the act of spraying aerosols on the town.
Similar men dressed in black were reported in Hungary ... there appeared so many black riders that the opinion was prevalent that the Turks were making a secret raid, but who rapidly disappeared again, and thereupon a raging plague broke out in the neighborhood.
Strange men dressed in black, "demons" and other terrifying figures were observed in other European communities. The frightening creatures were often observed carrying long "brooms," "scythes," or "swords" that were used to "sweep" or "knock at" the doors of people's homes. The inhabitants of those homes fell ill with plague afterwards. It is from these reports that people created the popular image of "Death" as a skeleton or demoncarrying a scythe. The scythe came to symbolize the act of Death mowing down people like stalks of grain ..
Of all the phenomena connected to the Black Death, by far the most frequently reported were the strange, noxious "mists." The vapors were often observed even when other phenomena were not. Mr. Nohl points out that moist pestilential fogs were "a feature which preceded the epidemic throughout its whole course." A great many physicians of the time took it for granted that the strange mists caused the Plague.
The connection was established at the very beginning of the Black Death..."
-------------------------------------------
The above is extracted from this page:
http://fernlothng.freeservers.com/plague_spray.html
...which also contains an interesting graphic of cupid-like figures with not only bows and arrows, but also two vases.
Now clearly, the logical common-sense explanation of this is that the mysterious figures doing the spraying were time-travelling Mossad-Halliburton agents, and that their base was in Bavaria, since that was the one part of Europe which never experienced the plague; but we should never rule out more bizarre explanations as well.
Does anyone have any historical timeline for the image of Death as being a figure holding a scythe? Where does it come from, and did it exist before the Black Death? Or is William Bramley right in the above quote from "Gods of Eden", and did the image originate with the Black Death?
