And Aaron shall lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites — all their sins — and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. (22) The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.’
— As transcribed from ancient memories in a book rewritten and reinterpreted numerous times over many centuries known as The Bible, Leviticus XVI 21, 22
They live among us – those who observe or otherwise absorb the depravities of other humans and who must then carry on with their own lives despite the wretched moral stench of what they have witnessed.
A few volunteer. Some do so for a fee.
They are among us, listening, ministering, perhaps seeking to bring harmony – to create amity between lost or broken souls and degenerate deeds.
They are social workers who listen to firsthand stories of spousal abuse, rape, child abuse, and other unfathomable tortures every day; then who must shake off such assaults upon their sensibilities, go home, and somehow carry out a regular life with his or her own family.
They are the police officers who see too many mangled bodies, too many murdered children, too many drowning victims, too many suicides, too many bodies bloated and putrefying that have to be identified and then moved to mortuaries – and who, restrained by the law, must endure taunts and insults from cowards and bullies in their communities, then go home and feel safe and normal around their spouses and children. Yet, they are called ‘peacekeepers.’
They are the priests, ministers, foster parents, psychiatrists, bartenders, nurses, counselors, hairdressers, and jail professionals who listen to or otherwise bear witness to the most despicable, humiliating degeneracy of others and who try to provide penance, absolution, an excuse or a rational reason to put the sins aside and hope that their charges may somehow become effective members of the larger tribe.
They are the co-dependent spouse or significant other or child or friend who believes, “If I can just be a better person, he or she won’t abuse me anymore.”
They are the Sin Eaters.
They live among us even today. They will continue to do so as long as some are selfishly depraved. I suppose there’s always someone willing to do a job, even if it means risking their own souls in the process.
It is not a new or even recent phenomenon. Tlazōlteōtl1 – the Aztec goddess of filth, vice, sex, and purification had a religious role in the redemption of sinners. Her name literally means ‘Sacred Filth’, ‘Eater of Ordure’ – Tlahēlcuāni.
Near or at the end of life a person was allowed to confess his bad deeds to her – through human priests of course.
According to Aztec legend, she would then devour those sins, often symbolized by eating dirt or even excrement, thereby purifying the sinner’s soul for entry into the afterlife.
To that end, she was depicted with umber-colored symbols of divine feces around her mouth and nose.
Tlazōlteōtl is the ancient, cyclical dance of death and life, of decay and death feeding life, of mortal life’s constant journey to mortal death. Legend has it that through her actions she brought peace and unity to communities.
I recall reading an account by the seventeenth-century diarist John Aubrey, “ … at funerals to hire poor people, who were to take upon them all the sinnes of the party deceased. One of them I remember lived in a Cottage on Rosse-high way. (He was a long, lean, ugly, lamentable Raskel.) The manner was that when the Corps was brought out of the house, and layd on the Biere; a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the Corps, and also a Mazar-bowl of maple (Gossips bowle) full of beer, which he was to drinke up, and sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.”
Apparently, in those days someone would come in, have a few bar snacks and a drink using the dead guy’s chest as a table, absorb whatever horrible stories exuded from the corpse, get paid then slink back to oblivion. No one wants a person like that living in their neighborhood.
It seems to me that the greater the magnitude of sins the greater the skills and endurance required of the Sin Eater. They must be strong of personal will lest their souls be crushed by the weight of horrors they consume.
(I anticipate that “Requiem For Ancient Footsteps” will be published this year. I know – I know – I said that last year! It is slow going!)
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