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Don_Dickle@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world · 23 hours ago

Why does the Grim Reaper hold a scythe? Was he or she farming or something when they became the grim reaper?

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Why does the Grim Reaper hold a scythe? Was he or she farming or something when they became the grim reaper?

Don_Dickle@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world · 23 hours ago
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  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org
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    14 hours ago

    It separates grass from ground, and heads from bodies. Wooosh!

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    22 hours ago

    Scythes reap grain.

    The grim reaper uses it to reap souls.

    • MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca
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      22 hours ago

      reap souls.

      That’s grim.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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        17 hours ago

        At least the E is after the R and not the P.

        • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          That’s a different guy, he goes by POTUS.

        • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          It’s before the A.

          EDIT: Now you got me wondering how you could rape a soul. Is it ghost fucking, like Ghostbusters? Probably not the best example but it’s what came to mind.

          • MrShankles@reddthat.com
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            5 hours ago

            Beverly Crusher is the expert, I would defer to her

          • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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            17 hours ago

            lol oops. That was supposed to be an R.

      • saltesc@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Well, they also cut down overgrown flora and grasses. In there lies a metaphor about humans being a pestilence to every other thing in proximity trying to survive.

    • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      “What can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the reaper man?”

      • DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca
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        20 hours ago

        Can’t beat Pratchett when it comes to wise words.

    • tektite@slrpnk.net
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      20 hours ago

      [It’s a Mr. Death or something; he’s come about the reaping??

      I don’t think we need any at the moment…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0frHw-7J4Mk)

    • sixty@sh.itjust.works
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      21 hours ago

      KOLANAKI

  • 5ibelius9insterberg@feddit.org
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    22 hours ago

    Because he is reaping the souls.

    The scythe as an artistic symbol of death has deliberate agricultural associations since the medieval period due to the importance of farming and seasons. The tool symbolizes the removal of human souls from their bodies in huge numbers, with the analogy being to a farmer (reaper) cutting through large swaths of grain crops during harvest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Reaper

    Edit: Death personified as someone harvesting is a very old metaphor:

    For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets. Speak, Thus saith the LORD, Even the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them. Jeremia 9, 21-22

  • Hegar@fedia.io
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    21 hours ago

    Linking the agricultural cycle of planting, growing, harvest with the human lifecycle is a very common metaphor.

    We see this in the myth of persephone, where going into the underworld and returning (ie death and rebirth) is a metaphor for the harvest cycle. Greek mystery cults were all over this too and it’s likely a pre-greek remnant from the Early European Farmers who inhabited the area before steppe-descended greek speakers began moving in.

    So the association of death and harvesting probably starts fairly early.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      5 hours ago

      Isn’t “reap” an agricultural term to begin with? “You reap what you sow”?

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    13 hours ago

    grim reaper, Death also has the touch of death, they can instantly simply by touching or imagining it. also other things, could be controlling the forces of nature

  • andyburke@fedia.io
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    21 hours ago

    We are the wheat.

    • jim_v@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      We are the children. 🎶

      • anistorian@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        We are the ones who make a writer gay

  • eurodyne@piefed.world
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    22 hours ago

    for reaping

  • it_depends_man@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    When scythes were invented, they were a very hot, new, efficient tool. Previously they only had some curved had knifes and had to harvest every few bits of wheat individually, but with a scythe you could take those wide swings and get lots of wheat at once.

    Think of it as going from a handgun revolver to a machine gun, except in a way that a medieval peasant would understand.

    • thomasloven@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      To add to this, the image of the grim reaper carrying a scythe first started showing up during the bubonic plague in Europe, where people were dying en masse.

  • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
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    22 hours ago

    As ye have sown so shall ye reap!

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