![momento mori momento mori](https://dailystoic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/mementomoricoin_1024x1024@2x.jpg)
Those of you who attended the Death Salon in Philly may have caught the haunting performance of the Divine Hand Ensemble.
![momento mori momento mori](https://remedianetwork.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/andrea_previtali-memento_mori.jpg)
The list seems to only be getting longer these days (thankfully)! Memento Mori Music There are books about near-death experiences, books about death and art, and stories from inside the death profession. There are memoirs from cancer survivors (and those who did not survive). There are countless self-help books for those dealing with grief. Two especially famous pieces of writing from this time are Sir Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia, Urn Buriall, and Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Holy Dying. In the Victorian era, literary elegies, or poetic laments for the dead, were also popular forms of memento mori writing. The pieces that comprised this collection focused on matters of mortality, death, and dying. A number of authors published works that were part of something called the Cult of Melancholia. In the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods of British history, another memento mori form emerged with great popularity. The remains were typically taken from the body of a deceased love one, hence the alternate title of “mourning jewellery.” These pieces were both reminders of mortality, but also reminders and keepsakes of deceased loved ones. However, memento mori jewellery would also frequently be crafted from human remains, such as bone or hair. These pieces of jewellery would feature similar imagery as memento mori art and architecture, such as skulls. Memento Mori ArchitectureĪ trend that was popularized in Victorian-era Europe was the crafting and wearing of memento mori, or mourning, jewellery.
![momento mori momento mori](https://intagliomint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Memento-Mori-Obverse.jpg)
Even the New Yorker’s cartoons feature death on a regular basis. Death has recently been animated by Pixar, interpreted by Noah Scalin, and beautifully illustrated in the works of Landis Blair, to name a few. Today, death has seen a resurgence in art and media. A typical form of memento mori in art is a still life form of painting called vanitas, or “vanity”. These paintings, the like one featured above, include symbols of mortality, such as skulls, flowers losing their petals and writing utensils. Sculptures of similar images are also easily found. Indeed, there are many depictions of the living and dead together as well.
![momento mori momento mori](http://www.skullspiration.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/flower-and-sugar-skull-full-back-tattoo.jpg)
Because of the early Christian emphasis on the afterlife, and the fleeting nature of our lives on Earth, paintings depicting skulls the dead and dying funeral processions the afterlife, and the Grim Reaper are very common. Memento Mori Throughout History Memento Mori Artīecause of this concept’s religious significance, many early examples of memento mori objects are found in Christian art. With this history in mind, here are 5 different ways that the concept of memento mori has been used. As a Christian idea, memento mori also held religious significance, reminding Christians to turn away from vanity and obsession with the physical self, and focus on the immortal soul and the afterlife. In its original context, this ideology encouraged people to renounce or devalue worldly goods. In Plato’s Phaedo, he recounts the death of Socrates, and declares that practicing philosophy is “about nothing else but dying and being dead.” The placement of death at the centre of life carried into the early Christian period as well, when memento mori as a phrase started to be used. Originally a medieval Christian phrase, memento mori reflected the theory and practice of reflecting on the inevitability of death, and how the knowledge of our ultimate fate should influence how we live our lives. The idea of remembering our morality can be traced back to at least the time of Socrates. As we began to be distanced from death in a number of ways by the 20th century, memento mori fell out of fashion. Reminders of our mortality were literally carved in marble. Translated from the original Latin, Memento Mori means “remember that you will die.” This phrase once influenced art, architecture, philosophy, literature and more.