The Grim Reaper

[benidict]

It’s one of the theories. Others say it had an influence on chess, still others that chess influenced it (how when tafl is older I do not know but some folks wanna say the Germanic tribes never had an orignal idea in their combined heads. Like how people say the Catholic Church stole everything today.)

lol! thanx for the reply cyberwolf. appreciate it. just dont tell everybody where us Catholics hid the goods! just between you and me, okay?

 

[cyberwolf001]

lol! thanx for the reply cyberwolf. appreciate it. just dont tell everybody where us Catholics hid the goods! just between you and me, okay?

No problem…

Hope no one notices the set up for a trickle of it to go into ADFs coffers at a right of 5 bucks a month… Opps did I say that out loud? Hey look at this! * puts on ray-bans and uses neuralyzer*

 

[IanCorrigan]

Where did the image of the Grim Reaper (as a robed skeleton with a scythe that plays chess) come from? I’m inclined to think it’s some sort of medieval invention that’s synthesized with the Greek mythological figure Charon.

To my knowledge the depiction of various dancing skeletons and corpses as personified Death began during the plague eras of the Middle Ages. In fact the landscape of Europe became littered with corpses at various times, and the artists of the period took up the motif with a kind of macabre glee. Do an image-search on Death of Death for a selection of this sort of thing. All in all I think the Grim Reaper figure has no pre-Christian Pagan connotation at all, and is just an artistic motif. Charon, for instance, is never pictured in that way.
Ian