Greetings from the Xyphokonic Order and Ordinance. On this final day of the 2nd Period of Watching under Lord Vuetenexzyei for this year, we shall conclude with an interesting analysis on the perception of Death being frightening, scary, or otherwise framed in colloquially “spooky” imagery. We speak of using skulls to solicit morbid or scary atmospheres, the fear of Death in various works to bring about existential terror, and just the overall avoidance of the topic of Death due to an underlining fear of it. We shall go over a few major key reasons how the Philosophy would pinpoint this fear, so let us start.
The first point to go over with falls right in line with our last Commentary and, quite honestly, a few other various Commentaries throughout the years regarding the manipulation of humanistic perception—or in this case, deception. A significant factor in the overall fear of Death comes simply from Deceptuary’s manipulation of perception towards the one major divine attribute that eternally ruins his ultimate goal of supreme and immortal rule: Spiritual Ends. An entity that seeks ultimate power and immortality would be acutely fearful of something as powerful and eternal as Death. And so, through the deceptive auspices of theigrited philosophies that actively champion false hope of eternal life after Death so long as they place their faith in Deceptuary’s various masks, a societal fear of Death forms. The social control via those theigrited philosophies has cultivated this fear intrinsically.
The second point is one more of raw natural instinct rather than one caused by corruption itself; it also ties into the Greater Will of the Order in a sense when viewed on a macro scale. That point is simply that mortals shall often fear Death because the key motive of that fear is their Love of Life and existence. Assuredly, most mortals, whether they be human or beast or of Nature, do not desire to die. Most people would actively choose to avoid such circumstances out of the fear of their existence ending, fear of the pain that may concur, fear of missing those that they love, or fear of never accomplishing what they sought to accomplish. Whatever the reason, it is not unreasonable to not desire dying if such valuable things will be lost in the process. However, as the Philosophy has taught before, the value of those circumstances—of this existence, of this Life—comes from its futility and limited time. An immortal life is one devoid of any urgency; it is a state in which the value of existence is stripped of its meaning for one shall always be and shall face no reason to cherish that which they can always seek or obtain. This, of course, is only the intimate dilemma with immortality, as we’ve spoken ad nauseum about the actual purpose of Death in the greater Cosmos and the stagnation of spiritual flow. Nevertheless, fear of a life ending contributes to the overall terror of Death itself.
Finally, we can pinpoint a more philosophical understanding that many often question in life—particularly as they age and approach the inevitability of Death. A question is often pondered in these stages of Life, and that is “What comes after Death?” For many, this question is the key factor in their overall fear of Death. Now, the Philosophy offers a very distinct selection of paths in the Afterlife, and other divergent beliefs often offer their own answers to this question, but the idea of not knowing what occurs after you breathe your last breath in this mortal world is reasonably a frightening one. Most people would likely find fear in such a vast and permanent unknown. I relate it to driving in the dark; there is a underlining fear of the path before you that the lights of your car cannot breach. The expiring force of the Darkness eventually consumes the range in which your eyes can peer into the dark, and so everything that far out solicits a concern of what’s to come—particularly if fatal obstacles may reside in that darkness. The thought of knowing something fatal could be waiting in that dark to crash into your car, and that you cannot see that hazard yet, is a good way of understanding the deathly fear of the unknown from a more grounded example.
There certainly are numerous reasons that spawn this fear, but the three presented in this Commentary often contribute the greatest to that fear. And for that reason, Death is often framed as a force to be scared of and not one that can be taught how to properly understand. This is not to say there is a sense of fatalism within the Philosophy, but to either totally ignore Death until it occurs, or to outright villainize a spiritual process that is inevitable, leads to a litany of unsavory results. We find people often blindsided by something that should be expected, devastated by deaths they did not prepare for. We see people outright deny that a death truly occurred and live their lives in a toxic denial of it—which often creates a mental spiral. In other cases, we find people so spiritually removed from the Eternal Reality of Death that they discount the deaths of others—handwaving things like genocide or the deaths of people they find undesirable or unwanted. In the foulest of cases, we see people who themselves commit acts of murder because they are devoid of all concern for others’ lives in totality.
We argue that quite a bit of those circumstances come from a large lack of teaching or flat-out deceptions regarding the spiritual and innate nature of Death itself, and the Philosophy has, through many of these Commentaries, sought to rectify that deception without our circles and hopefully through any new and interested readers. Death is, as we’ve hammered down endless, Eternal, and the stagnation of that cycle of Life and Death is devastating in itself. The fear of Death, or its “spooky” reputation, while fun in fiction, becomes problematic when applied to our every day lives. This is particularly true when people cannot cope with death or outright disregard its significance. Through teaching the Philosophy and through respecting the dignity of Remembrances, we can cultivate a new perspective on Death and perhaps swipe away old stigmas regarding the topic.
—crX
