Oscar the Psychopomp
Death has been on my mind lately; not in a depressing way, but it just keeps popping up. The latest was the story about Oscar the cat . Dubbed the "furry harbinger of death," Oscar has unfailingly appeared during the last couple of hours before death at the sides of 25 patients in a Providence, Rhode Island, nursing home. He jumps on the bed of a patient and sniffs the air. If the end is very near, he sits down and waits. If not, he jumps off and leaves.
I think about something someone told me; no matter how many people surround you when you die, you still die alone. But do you? Is the line between being alive and being dead that inflexible? People who have had near-death experiences claim that they can see and hear everything that is going on in the room; some while hovering in the air, others because they have the ability to see their surroundings in 360-degree panorama. So many people have reported this “phenomena” that I’ve had to take note; why would they lie about it?
But is their experience a chemical reaction that happens to all humans as we near death, as some scientists believe? That might explain Oscar’s sniffing the air—he may be smelling a physical change that humans can’t. That’s not so far off from the fact that certain dogs can accurately predict when an epileptic is about to have a seizure, or sniff and find cancer in a human.
People who know me well know I’m not so wedded to the idea that the only thing that is real is what I’ve experienced or seen or touched. I think it is a kind of small-minded arrogance to confine my beliefs to my experience, or the narrow experience of a few people in the course of human history who thought to write down those experiences. Facts are only as good as their last proof. I've learned this from learning the "facts" of history, over and over. Truth is subjective. Five people witness an accident and five "truths" will be told. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is correct or incorrect. I think of death in the same way.
Do we go alone into the afterlife? Many cultures believe we do not, that psychopomps, or guides of the souls, help the dead along. Perhaps the most well-known is the Gree
k Charon, who ferries the dead across the River Styx into Hades. In Vodou, there are the Gede, spirits of the dead. Some of their number are considered psychopomps (although I wouldn't want to mess with them too much, they like to drink rum laced with hot peppers, and I'm talking habanero hot).
A good friend of mine and I had a lengthy discussion yesterday about the human fear of death. Many of us do fear it because it is a mystery. A few, like the people who have experienced near death say that they see beloved dead relatives or beings of lights, or even angels. Atheists and agnostics scoff; I ask “why scoff?” As long as you don’t kill other people in the belief that your going to an afterlife where 70 virgins will tend to your every need, what’s wrong with believing in an afterlife? If we could be born into something, meaning life on Earth, couldn’t we just as easily die into something?
In my conversation with my friend, the ancient Egyptians were brought up. They prepared, as best they could, for a comfortable afterlife, placing in their tombs, food, furniture, and other items. For the well-to-do, starting in the Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 B.C) servants, in the form of statuettes called “shabti” were placed in tombs to wait on the deceased.
But wait, there’s more! The Egyptians planned on savoring the afterlife, so a special priest,—a psychopomp of sorts called a Sem performed a ceremony called “Opening the Mouth”, which restored all of the deceased's five senses so that he or she could more thoroughly enjoy life after death.
Animals can be
psychopomps, although often they are birds—ravens, owls, crows, creatures you would not be surprised to see hanging around the dead and dying. The owls are nocturnal; the raven is a natural, and the star of an Edgar Allen Poe poem; some crows (the carrion variety) eat the dead. In some cultures a whippoorwill hanging outside your window for days on end means death for sure. I haven’t found much on cats, yet. Cats as sacred, yes. Cats as magical, yes. Cats as portents of death—not so much. Perhaps Oscar the Psychpomp is the next thing in feline evolution.
Image of Charon from Favorite Greek Myths, by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Troy Howell, p. 44; A magic lantern slide of “The Raven” painted by Joseph Boggs Beale
I think about something someone told me; no matter how many people surround you when you die, you still die alone. But do you? Is the line between being alive and being dead that inflexible? People who have had near-death experiences claim that they can see and hear everything that is going on in the room; some while hovering in the air, others because they have the ability to see their surroundings in 360-degree panorama. So many people have reported this “phenomena” that I’ve had to take note; why would they lie about it?
But is their experience a chemical reaction that happens to all humans as we near death, as some scientists believe? That might explain Oscar’s sniffing the air—he may be smelling a physical change that humans can’t. That’s not so far off from the fact that certain dogs can accurately predict when an epileptic is about to have a seizure, or sniff and find cancer in a human.
People who know me well know I’m not so wedded to the idea that the only thing that is real is what I’ve experienced or seen or touched. I think it is a kind of small-minded arrogance to confine my beliefs to my experience, or the narrow experience of a few people in the course of human history who thought to write down those experiences. Facts are only as good as their last proof. I've learned this from learning the "facts" of history, over and over. Truth is subjective. Five people witness an accident and five "truths" will be told. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is correct or incorrect. I think of death in the same way.
Do we go alone into the afterlife? Many cultures believe we do not, that psychopomps, or guides of the souls, help the dead along. Perhaps the most well-known is the Gree
k Charon, who ferries the dead across the River Styx into Hades. In Vodou, there are the Gede, spirits of the dead. Some of their number are considered psychopomps (although I wouldn't want to mess with them too much, they like to drink rum laced with hot peppers, and I'm talking habanero hot).A good friend of mine and I had a lengthy discussion yesterday about the human fear of death. Many of us do fear it because it is a mystery. A few, like the people who have experienced near death say that they see beloved dead relatives or beings of lights, or even angels. Atheists and agnostics scoff; I ask “why scoff?” As long as you don’t kill other people in the belief that your going to an afterlife where 70 virgins will tend to your every need, what’s wrong with believing in an afterlife? If we could be born into something, meaning life on Earth, couldn’t we just as easily die into something?
In my conversation with my friend, the ancient Egyptians were brought up. They prepared, as best they could, for a comfortable afterlife, placing in their tombs, food, furniture, and other items. For the well-to-do, starting in the Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 B.C) servants, in the form of statuettes called “shabti” were placed in tombs to wait on the deceased.
But wait, there’s more! The Egyptians planned on savoring the afterlife, so a special priest,—a psychopomp of sorts called a Sem performed a ceremony called “Opening the Mouth”, which restored all of the deceased's five senses so that he or she could more thoroughly enjoy life after death.
Animals can be
psychopomps, although often they are birds—ravens, owls, crows, creatures you would not be surprised to see hanging around the dead and dying. The owls are nocturnal; the raven is a natural, and the star of an Edgar Allen Poe poem; some crows (the carrion variety) eat the dead. In some cultures a whippoorwill hanging outside your window for days on end means death for sure. I haven’t found much on cats, yet. Cats as sacred, yes. Cats as magical, yes. Cats as portents of death—not so much. Perhaps Oscar the Psychpomp is the next thing in feline evolution.Image of Charon from Favorite Greek Myths, by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Troy Howell, p. 44; A magic lantern slide of “The Raven” painted by Joseph Boggs Beale
