In Roman mythology, Libitina was the goddess of death, corpses and funerals. Her name was also a synonym for death [see Horace Odes 3.30].
Her face was seldom portrayed; hardly any sacrifices were offered to her, as they were to Orcus, her male equivalent. Today, her very name has sunk into such obscurity that it is seldom mentioned when the gods and goddesses of antiquity are reviewed. Her name was comparable to our idea of death, and she was worshipped by the ancients and often sung about by their poets. This female deity, remembered today mostly from Roman verse, was a reigning personification of Death. She was manifest as a black robed, dark winged figure who might, like an enormous bird of prey, hover above her intended victim until the moment came to seize it. In some traditions, she is the same as Venus or Persephone. Servius Tullius is said to have been the first to set up temples to her that housed all the equipment necessary for funerals, including gravediggers. Her temples also usually contained the registers of the dead. It is believed that the Colosseum had one gate dedicated to Libitina for all of the fallen gladiators that fought within the Colosseum.
As a deity of death, Libitina was most often invoked at funerals: it was a tradition for a coin to be brought to her temple when someone died, and undertakers were known as libitinarii.
If I ever have a daughter I'll name her Libitina
2 comments:
Wow!!!!
The world, in all in its tactile and even emotional finality comes down upon us as your raven. Libitina, in wind blown tatters waiting at the gates of what green park land?
We conger mythology to act as half-lite shining dimly into a limted space of gray that slowly, then somehow dramatically--but still without edge--extends into what will always be mystery.
The Mystery.
Nothingness that bears and destroys all. Sunlight, sadness, mud and rain.
These odd artificialities of apparent transition that are--perhaps--our very breathing, eating, shitting, fucking lives. Bread for pigeons in this same vivid park land.
The meaning is clear....there is no permenence, not even for meaning, nor for your perspective in grasping this. Did it, I, you, morning, the sea, the night, the stars, ever EXIST at all?
That same wind at Labatina's back. Cold descending. Blood in your cheeks. Slow and vaugely painful movement in your fingers. Bread crumbs on cracked asphalt fading to grey.
Love to you Dani.
I feel creepy saying this…while searching for a picture Libitnia for a new tattoo my searches led me here..I felt compelled to read your blog and I got super excited with all the macabre pictures, the post mortem photography which I love..and youre a mortuary science student? Eek! I graduated Upstate from a mortuary science program but moved to NYC to get involved with Forensic Science. Im sure youre just as interested in The Body Farm, and the Bodies museum and the Mutter Museum? ^v^
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