In the Jewish tradition, there are many sensational stories about the Angel of Death, Azrael. Paintings depict him with 4000 wings of two types: the wings of grace and the wings of punishment. Azrael is also described having four different faces, and his whole body is covered by plenty of eyes and tongues. Legend has it that their number correspond to the number of humans inhabiting the earth.
Azrael is said to visit our homes and walk through our cities at all the time. Stories say that, sword in hand, he prowls around those he has come to strike. According to one Muslim tradition, 40 days before the death of a person, God drops a leaf from a tree below the heavenly throne on which Azrael reads the name of the person he must take with him. Azrael isn’t really a personification of death. Azrael is more like a “psychopomp”: he is the one to transport the soul into the afterlife.
What is important about a death narrative is that one's own passing away becomes a gift for those who follow, as well as an address to them. Death narratives are vocative; they call to one's survivors for some mode of response. James Hadley, cited in Deborah Bird Rose Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction
Of course, for some people, this is only pure superstition; or a myth, or a mystery. Maybe. But I invite you to open up and to consider the possibility. Entrust Nietzsche for his wisdom words: “Mystery is not a problem to be solved, it is an experience to be cultivated”. As mythological and as mysterious as it might be, whether we attune to this or not, the mere existence of the Death Angel has created some very original practices. In one of her recent lectures, Delphine Horvilleur1, a French Rabbi, explains that Azrael can follow you everywhere you go, that he knows all your moves jus as you are about to make them, that he will be around when it is time for you to cross. But Delphine explains that there are ways to fool him and even to send him away for a while! In some Jewish families, when someone gets sick, when things get really serious, they decide to give that person a new identity, a new name. The name of the sick person is changed in order to mislead Azrael - in case he would have the bad idea to come and knock at their door. Imagine that the Angel of Death comes knocking at the door; he is here to claim the life of a certain, let’s call him, Paul. The person answering the door would then calmly respond: “Sorry, there is no Paul here. Here it is the house of …Pierre” using the new name attributed to the dying person. Azrael would then just apologise for the disturbance, turn around and walk away! No questions asked. As simple as that!
This can be laughed at, scorned, but I find this practice so beautiful, so intense, so deep. It speaks to many subtle truths. One : it is the nature of humanity to believe that we can keep death away, create barriers or stories, prevent us from meeting death, contrive to keep it at bay. Two: we are beings of language, beings of name. Rituals, words, incantations, libations, intentions, and acts have immense power.
When I first heard about this story, not so long ago, I had a eureka moment. I couldn’t prevent myself thinking that, me too, by (recently) changing my name, I might have practiced this ancient ritual of misleading the Death Angel. What if my decision with all the rational and irrational explanations behind it, was also a way to lure Azrael? I love that.
Many times, during my life, I have escaped death. Literally, an auto-immune disease when I was 18 and a tragic car accident when I was 33 plus many psychological deaths, bigger and smaller ones - like most of us. I have given voice to these many times here. Even when escaping one of those, I would feel as if I have barely survived. Barely breathing. Barely moving. This is how and why I have integrated death in my life. I know that in order to live, something has to die. In order to die, something has to be alive. I tell you: it does make it easier to accept things when they happen.
But it still hurts, and I am still scared of death. Every day. Every night.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” Joan Didion - The White Album.
Oh dear! Sage you truly seemed to have had more than your share of life threatening events. I hope you are in a better spot now?