Like the moth at her feet, the female corpse is a messenger. "It was commonly believed that the hypnotised, often feminine medium, in its corpse-like state, could gain access to the realm of the dead and enter into a dialogue with the deceased….At the same time anatomists believed that opening a corpse during dissection allowed the unseen realm of the human body's interior to become visible”. ![]() Regarding the link between the soul and the body, Elisabeth Bronfen states, He studied painting at the Prague Academy of Arts, as well as subjects as diverse as mystical traditions, philosophy, Darwinism and parapsychology, including hypnotism and spiritualism. While von Max's moth is relatively generic, this iconographic goldmine would not have been lost on him. The Death-head is mainly responsible for the associations between death and moths, entering popular mythologies through Dracula and, of course, as the calling card of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Acheron references one of the rivers in Hades that the souls of the dead had to pall through. Their scientific name, Acherontia atropos, references Atropos, the third Greek Fate who snipped the thread of life with her scissors. This moth produces a 'squeak', occasionally mistaken for a voice in anguish. Of course, the most metal of all moths is the Death-head hawk-moth identified by the skull-shaped form on its body. Gaelic traditions specifically cite a butterfly or moth flitting over a corpse as the presence of its soul. Given to hovering over graves, they gave form to the souls of the dead. ![]() Meanwhile, moths took on associations with resurrection and the afterlife. During the 18th and 19th centuries, western conceptualisations of death grew increasingly taboo, and death rituals became elaborate.
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