Three hundred words on death

From medieval times comes the concept of the “wheel of fortune”, which carries with it the concept of a capricious “Fate” who spins the wheel and determines our lot. Also related to that image is the concept of a cycle, in which souls go up and down, from birth to the apex of life, then back down again to the dust. Implied in this great revolving circle is an infinite repetition, with no beginning or end; a cosmic merry-go-round that we all get on, ride for a while, and eventually get off. This cycle is the natural mindset realized and accepted in medieval times and bequeathed to us: a vertical, up-and-down, cycle of existence. 

Nowhere in that mindset is the concept of “progress”. The seasons cycle, people live and die, and nothing ever improves. It is only with the Enlightenment that Western Man starts to think about maybe making society better for the next generation. Medieval society never harbored such illusions, so they celebrated the sun’s cyclical process and life itself, and death was not a gateway to an eternal existence, but a re-sowing and a continuation of the cycle. If a human life seemed cheap and expendable to the medieval, it is because it was inevitable and did not matter: a person’s death was simply his arrival at the next station on the wheel and a gateway to more life. 

By the time the Enlightenment arrived Christianity had already been around for a thousand years, yet it is interesting to note, even in Christian countries, how the natural, primal mentality persisted in superseding the doctrinal, to the point that, in order to remain viable, Christianity was forced to adopt the natural festivals as their own. Saturnalia, the re-birth of the sun, has always been and will forever be a time to renew mankind’s hope. And the spring equinox, in its post-winter bluebonnet-blooming glory, a time to remind us that without death, there is no life.