Death Eaters

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 120701


> Carol responds:
> <snip>
> 
> The Dark Mark seems to be a grotesque caricature of Salazar Slytherin
> with a Death's head (skull) for a face and a snake or basilisk for a
> tongue. Tom Riddle, Slytherin's heir and himself a parseltongue, seems
> to have taken a distorted version of the statue in the Chamber of
> Secrets with the basilisk coming out of its mouth and adopted it as
> his badge, to be burned into the arms of his Death Eaters so that they
> can never forget their sworn allegiance to him and to be cast into the
> air to mark the scene of their murders, claiming responsibility for
> them (as gangs of thugs and terrorists do in the RW) and warning the
> friends and relatives of the dead person of what they're about to
> find. It's a boast, a kind of group pride in doing evil, for which
> they get no individual credit because they are the masked and
> anonymous servants of the master whose sign they have cast like a
> curse into the darkness. And the more evil deeds they do, the more
> often that Dark Mark appears, the more terror it will hold for the
> ordinary citizens of the WW.
> 

Neri:

I certainly agree with the above, but I still maintain that the Dark
Mark is very closely connected with the concept of "eating death". The
evidence for that is not only in its shape, which could indeed be
interpreted as merely a grotesque caricature of Salazar Slytherin. The
additional evidence (which I recalled only now, and this is why I
return to this post a bit late) is the incantation that produces the
Dark Mark. This incantation is "morsmordere", which is interpreted by
the Lexicon as follows:

"mors" L. death + "mordere" L. to bite

And this of course reminds me of "Voldemort", which means "flight from
death" or "stealing death". So I still maintain that there is a very
close connection between Voldemort's immortality, eating death, the
Dark Mark and fear. 

Neri