Eyes of a dying man

Posted by Häuptling in Spiritual | 3 comments

Jun 19, 11

The following are excerpts from the book On the Sacral Origins of the Germanic Death Penalties written by Folke Ström, published in 1942. As the title suggests, the author is tracing the nature of Middle Age death penalties and executions – and the laws surrounding these – to pre-Christian human sacrifices. In many cases, death penalties were even carried out in the very same locations, that were previously holy sites for the pre-Christian Nordic religion, and many elements of the sacrificial liturgy remained intact in the later death penalties, without its performers even knowing they were carrying on age old traditions with heathen roots.
We are going to take a closer look at parts of the chapter called Dangerousness of the Dying Man, and let Folke Ström speak for himself.

Dangerousness of the Dying Man

A custom that has not been bound to any particular form of execution, but that from time immemorial and right up to our own day has been a constant feature of executions in general, is the binding of the delinquent’s eyes, or covering of his head. The Frisian Hunsigoer law uses the expression thene suarta doc as a term in the formulation of the death penalty. That this ritual feature has been intended to protect the bystanders against the criminal’s evil eye, is a generally held and well-founded explanation that can be confirmed with ancient evidence that cannot be misinterpreted. The Icelandic sagas give direct proof of the existence of this notion, precisely in connection with executions. Particularly dangerous was the look from persons versed in magic. According to a wide spread popular belief it was of importance, vis-á vis such persons, to see them first, i.e. before they had an opportunity to use the dangerous power in their look. Also ghosts were considered to possess a terrible and dangerous power in their look, a power that might have fatal consequences for one who happened to cross its focus.
But if the looks of evil-doers possessed a magical dangerousness already under normal conditions, this power was still further increased in the moment of death. Altogether, the look in the eye of the dying was in an eminent degree dangerous, and this was true not only of human beings, but also animals. It was for this reason that pregnant women were formerly not allowed to be present at a slaughter.
In an Icelandic saga, Hrafnkels saga, there is a description of the way in which a horse is killed, the stallion Freyfaxi, that was dedicated to the god Freyr. The horse is driven to the edge of a precipice and thrust over, after a cloth has been drawn over its head. Throwing over a precipice seems in Norway to have been a common popular method for killing horses, and the precautionary measure of blindfolding the animal seems to have been a regular feature in the procedure. In the documented case of the living burial of a horse in 1842 in Denmark, to stay a cattle-plague, it is mentioned that the animal was blindfolded. The measure is thus a ritual feature that recurs with remarkable consistency.
The magical power of the dying was, however, not restricted to the emanation from his eyes. In olden times it was a wide-spread belief that the power of the human personality grew as death approached, to culminate in magical force in the moment of dying. The latent magical power of a human being was released, actualized and rendered active in the moment of death.
In a penetrating analysis of the myth of Odin’s suicide by hanging, van Hamel plausibly suggest that it is based upon the belief that a martyrdom that takes the subject into a state between life and death, is calculated to bring about an increase in personal magical potency, an increase that in the case of a god must provoke an extraordinarily high potential of creative force. In this connection van Hamel assumes that the idea of a person’s own force and strength (megin, máttr) that we meet within the sources of the transition period is not a product of the scepticism of this period, but has its roots in an ancient pre-deistic belief in the magical power of the individual. Odin’s hanging is thus according to van Hamel not a sacrifice, although sacral elements from the cult of Odin have been combined therewith, it is a martyrdom intended to actualize all the potential magical power of the god in order to overcome a resistance.

[…]

Among the old Icelanders we find the notion of the magical dangerousness of the dying or those in the shadow of death as a living belief. Their words had the power to ruin, and the curses they pronounced were fulfilled. When in the Laxdæla saga Hallbjorn is to be executed, he curses his employer, and according to the saga the curse was fulfilled. The slave Gilli and Draumr Þorsteins Sídu-Hallssonar, who had murdered his master, is subjected to torture, and when dying he utters the following words: “Torment me no longer, Yngvildr, or I will pronounce the word that for all time will live in the memory of your posterity and that will be fulfilled”. We find the same theme in several sagas, and in the Edda poem Fáfnismál the notion is given the precise form of the dogma. In an intercalated prose passage in the poem, after Sigurðr has mortally wounded Fáfnir, we read: “Sigurðr concealed his name, for in olden times it was believed that the words of a dying man had great power, if he cursed his enemy and called him by name”. In the Volsung saga the dying Fáfnir says: “I advice you to take your horse and ride away as fast as you can, for it frequently happens that one who is mortally wounded avenges himelf”.

[…]

From Grettis saga it appears that the capacity to set magical powers in action in connection with the “second death” was ascribed to ghosts. In Göngu-Hrólfs saga, in which we, in spite of its fantastic and unhistorical character, may nonetheless still find notes that are of value for social history, it is told how to protect against the magical power of a dying enemy. As a protective measure against feared verbal magic, one is to thrust a piece of wood in his mouth; and in order to obviate the fatal power in his looks one is to lay a shield over his eyes. In another place in the same saga a traitor is hanged and a ginkefli put in his mouth (so that the mouth is propped open). We may remind the reader of a regulation from the Gulating law, quoted in an earlier connection, where it is given as an aggravating circumstance to put a stick in the mouth of the cut-off head of one’s enemy.

[…]

Taking as his point of departure methods of slaughtering animals, and ritual precautionary measures connected therewith, the Swedish writer Ernst Klein has in a couple of essays developed a thesis concerning the ritual of the death penalty, arriving at results that in many respects coincide with those to which my own conclusions have taken me. Klein draws attention to the tendency on the part of the slaughterer, in certain old-fashioned methods for the slaughtering of certain categories of animals, to seem as little active as possible. These methods of slaughter are of ritual nature and have been conceived with reference to the magical dangers that were considered to attach to the procedure of killing. According to Klein, these methods were intended above all to prevent “dass etwas magisch Ansteckendes herausdrang”, for the animals against which they were practiced had of old been regarded as being in possession of a magically dangerous, demoniac nature, and were therefore the objects of taboo notions. Klein now draws a parallel between the methods of animal slaughter referred to, and the ritual forms of execution. In principle they very largely coincide, and exactly the same tendencies and motives converge and determine the ritual development. The forms of the death penalty are to be regarded as taboo forms of death; the ritual is shaped in accordance with the notion of the criminal’s eminently demoniac nature.