Charon's Obol - Olivia Ezeani

January 12, 2019

Obol

Hovering waves singe our skin
We waited all night for morning, where we would go and get a ransom
Our skin were filled with sticky venoms
The fore bearer announced our death, when our venoms couldn't be transferred to dogu.
And we parade, hoping the grim reaper never chooses us, but which was better
The ferryman would always ask for his ransom, so still we'd pray the grim reaper chooses us
So that the ferryman would set us free and help us cross the border
If these grave goods was kept for posterity,
the product of each era, would experience illuminating flame and not linger the street in darkness.

First of all, this Charon's obol is a myth by
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope. 'A a pre-Raphealite interpretation'

Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.

Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity."

The custom is primarily associated with the ancient greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East.

In western Europe, a similar usage of coins in burials occurs in regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among the Germanic of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century.

Among the Christians

Among Christians, the practice of burying a corpse with a coin in its mouth was never widespread enough to warrant condemnation from the Church, but the substitute rite came under official scrutiny; the viaticum should not be, but often was, placed in the mouth after death, apparently out of a superstitious desire for its magical protection. By the time Augustine wrote his Confessions, "African bishops had forbidden the celebration of the eucharist in the presence of the corpse.

This was necessary to stop the occasional practice of placing the eucharistic bread in the mouth of the dead, a viaticum which replaced the coin needed to pay Charon’s fare." Pope Gregory I, in his biography of Benedict of Nursia, tells the story of a monk whose body was twice ejected from his tomb; Benedict advised the family to restore the dead man to his resting place with the viaticum placed on his chest.

The placement suggests a functional equivalence with the Goldblattkreuze and the Orphic gold tablets; its purpose — to assure the deceased’s successful passage to the afterlife — is analogous to that of Charon’s obol and the Totenpässe of mystery initiates, and in this case it acts also as a seal to block the dead from returning to the world of the living.

Ideally, the journey into death would begin immediately after taking the sacrament.