Guides of Souls: Hermes, Anubis, Charon, the Valkyries, and Marzanna
In nearly every culture, the dead do not journey to the afterlife alone. Someone leads them, ferries them, or comes to collect them. The Greeks called such figures psychopomps.
Ezostylia Editorial Team · facts checked in sources · updated 31.10.2026
Hermes and Anubis
The Greek word psychopompos means "guide of souls". This role was fulfilled by Hermes, the messenger of the gods, who led souls to Hades with his golden staff. In Egypt, a similar task belonged to Anubis, with his jackal's head: he oversaw embalming, escorted the deceased to judgement, and weighed their heart.
Charon and the Obol
Charon ferried souls across the River Styx. The Greeks placed a small coin, an obol, in the mouth of the deceased as payment for the crossing. Archaeologists find such coins in graves outside Greece as well, and the custom of placing a coin in the coffin survived in certain regions of Europe, including Poland, well into the twentieth century.
Valkyries and Angels
In Norse mythology, the Valkyries chose the fallen on the battlefield and carried them to Valhalla. In Islamic and Jewish tradition there appears an angel of death — known in Islam as Azrael — who separates the soul from the body. In Christian iconography, the Archangel Michael leads souls to heaven.
Birds and Animals
Many peoples believed that birds either foretold death or carried the soul away: the owl, the tawny owl, the raven, the cuckoo. In Poland it was said that the hooting of a tawny owl beneath the window of the sick augured death. Animals as guides also include dogs, from Cerberus to the dog Xolotl among the Aztecs.
Marzanna and Death with a Scythe
Marzanna (Morana) is the Slavic goddess of winter and death. To this day, on the first day of spring, her straw effigy is drowned, bidding farewell to winter. The figure of the skeleton with a scythe — Death — became widespread in Europe in the late Middle Ages, during the times of great epidemics, and returned in Polish literature, for instance in the fifteenth-century "Rozmowa Mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią" ("A Conversation of Master Polykarpa with Death").
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You will find all 30 topics in the section Mysteries of life and death.
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Sources
Frequently asked questions
What Does Psychopomp Mean?
From the Greek psychopompos, "guide of souls": a mythological figure who leads the dead to the afterlife, such as Hermes, Anubis, or the Valkyries.
Why Did the Greeks Give the Dead a Coin?
The obol was payment to Charon for ferrying the soul across the River Styx to Hades.