Words: Eva Smedeby (she/her)
There is an existence within the “in between”.
We are not the first generation to fear what has passed, clutching onto the memory of material items, praying for what is forever gone. Points of liminality – felt in periods of transition, loss, and uncertainty – are not experiences unique to modernity.
Amid many cultures, and between many breaths of time, human beings have sought to identify this temporality. In doing so, they have found relief in Charon.
The Greek deity Charon, or Kharon, is mythologically regarded as the ferryman of the Underworld. Operating on the ever-flowing Acheron and Styx river, he would cart deceased souls into the beyond: Hades’ Underworld. As a toll, people of antiquity would place a singular obol coin in the mouths of the deceased, the lack thereof resulting in their loved one becoming a wanderer, floating aimlessly within the channel for a 100 years. To permit a soul’s existence within this transitional phase – a space many of us fear – was seen as a tragedy to the ancient Greeks. The offering of earthly material (1 obol = 6 days of a regular worker’s wage in Athens) was a sacrifice many were willing to make.
In The Aeneid, Charon is described as elderly man with sunken, flaming eyes and a gray beard cascading down his neck, making his sullen nature all the more unnerving. He is known to hold a pole, his ‘oar’ of a sort, covered in a tunic which Seneca describes as a ‘foul robe’ with ‘misshapen folds’, in his play Hercules Furens.
Within the past few centuries, artists have advanced the narrative of his unruliness, painting the deity to appear something more of a monster. Theodor von Holst depicts his lair in dark, quick strokes, suggesting Charon as a ghostly shape. The surrounding area is covered in serpentine creatures, an infernal maelstrom with feverishly red hues at the arch which Charon snakes out.
And yet, throughout time, people have entrusted this ‘monstrous’ figure to carry their loved ones onward, finding comfort, hope, and confidence in the sound and silhouette of his vessel.
Over a thousand years after publication of The Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno depicts perhaps the most dissimilar Charon of all known sources, who greets passengers Dante and Virgil with more expression than usual. Although, his vigor is not exactly enthusiastic. Rather, Charon’s passions are due to apprehension, as Dante persistently requests passage whilst being a living soul. After a short plea from Virgil, the characters eventually come to an agreement, Charon soon ferrying the living passengers over the Archeron river.
Many cultures of antiquity have their own versions of this temporal figure. In ancient Egyptian religion, people celebrated a sailor named (¡r.f-HA.f), guide to “the beyond”, who operated a papyrus boat. In sacred texts of Norse, Mesopotamian, and South Nigerian mythology, embodiments of Charon are likewise mentioned. Among these fluctuating interpretations, however, his occupation has always been respected, valued, and feared. Charon of antiquity and today remains a stoic figure of life, death, and most crucially, the “in between”.
Through examining all of his versions, Charon, (¡r.f-HA.f), and others, what does Charon reveal about human identity and our fears of transitory spaces? How do we find solace in the moments separating life and death, black or white, the gap between an end and a beginning? Ancient peoples used Charon as an emblem of relief, comforted in an identity characterized neither as life nor death, but as an escort from one to the other.
The “in between” serves a purpose. Charon wouldn’t have been shrouded in such symbolism if that weren’t the case. The creation of a guide through thresholds reveals how humans struggle to conceptualise the passage from life to death, and more broadly, the unknown. Brief moments in time, liminal spaces, and connecting words exist not only as identifiers to and from larger places, but as important elements of life. Thus, Charon not only represents the liminal space after death, but exists as the personification of transition at large.
Charon still pertains to modernity. Feelings of aimlessness during gap years, the search for a career following graduation, leaving one friend group in hopes of fitting into another… These are our “in-betweens”. Yet, amid this transitory distress, refuge lies with Charon.
Sources:
- The Boatman’s Call by Kelley Swain
- The Celestial Ferryman in Ancient Egyptian Religion “Sailor of the Dead” by Radwan Ahmed
- Hercules Furens by Seneca
