By David Metcalfe“A human being is experienced as a power, and power reveals itself to the human being. We have seen how in certain respects a dead person as compared to a living person experienced an increase in power. The dead person possessed knowledge of the future, which the living (using dead magic) could gain access to and utilize. The living corpse, the revenant in particular, has command of monstrous physical forces. A revenant could shift its physical location in a way that a living person could not, and it also had the ability to transform its shape.”
- from Barbarian Rites, by Hanz-Peter HasenFrantz (trans. by Michael Moynihan)
The internet is an immortality machine without the need for Kurzweil’s Singularity. All you need is a name on which to hang a thin frame of philosophy, a single photograph of emotional resonance, and you can affect a return. A physical site of personal importance is even more potent, a grave on which the living can focus their intentions, gifts, talismans and memories. Dead heroes return in the lives of their attentive lovers, and when a society wishes to forget, to forgo such revenant returns, it seeks ways to blot out the names, the memories, and most importantly the body of the deceased so no return can be made.
The body of Rudolph Hess, a close companion of Hitler, was recently exhumed from its resting place in a Bavarian cemetery, cremated, and scattered in an effort to take power away from his enduring image as a hero of nascent Neo-Nazis. According to the New York Daily News, Roland Schoeffel, deputy mayor of Wunsiedel where Hess was buried, said “Now, hopefully we can put it all behind us, we hope the phantom has left.” His tombstone, where someone had scratched “I Dared” was also removed.
Yes, it’s the 21st century, and we no longer hang apotropaic charms on our doorway, or conduct ritual mutilation, to keep the dead down (at least most don’t admit to doing so.) Fears of their return, however, are no less prevalent, and precautions are taken despite our wish to evolve away from our shadowy unconscious. We know that whether or not the dead themselves come back, their memories festering in the minds of admirers can bring them back as an impetus for actions that carry on the goals they had in life.
