The Folklore of Discworld

important to be done. You must face and accept Judgement, the Judgement you pass on yourself in the light of clear self-knowledge and accurate memory. And that , as Brutha guessed, begins as soon as you die, at this end of the desert.
    And then Brutha sees Vorbis, hunched on the sand, too paralysed with fear to have even started the journey.
    ‘But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!’
    Y ES . H E HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE . A LL ALONE WITH HIMSELF . I F HE DARED .
    ‘He’s been here for a hundred years?’
    P OSSIBLY NOT . T IME IS DIFFERENT HERE . I T IS … MORE PERSONAL .
    ‘Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?’
    A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY.
    Whereupon Brutha, true to his own nature, offers companionship to Vorbis, and they set out to cross the desert together.
    It may come as a surprise to those whose notion of Christian teaching about the afterlife is based on, say, the famous hell-fire sermon in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , that what is described in Discworld terms in Small Gods is pretty well what many modern theologians say – at any rate, as regards Brutha, Vorbis, and Fri’it, though maybe not the ship’s captain. Such teachers say that a lifetime’s daily choices determine what we are at the moment of death, and that God’s ‘Judgement’ consists in letting ussee, accurately and fully, what we have chosen to become. He does not hurl punishments; those who suffer, like Vorbis, do so because they have imprisoned themselves in their own evil. It is to be hoped that every Vorbis finds a compassionate Brutha.
    The same point emerges from the post-mortem experience of the brutal, murderous, but mentally subnormal thug Mr Tulip (in The Truth ). Death makes him see the value of the many lives he had destroyed, and once he understands the truth about himself he is filled with huge remorse and passes his own judgement on himself, saying he wishes he could go back in time to kill himself before he could do such harm, but as that’s impossible he wants to spend the rest of his afterlife feeling ‘really sorry’. As Death notes, Tulip has ‘something in him that could be better’, given enough time. His purgatory is not harsh. Since he has been taught to expect reincarnation, reincarnation is what he gets, in a form agreeable to the best part of him, his love of good craftsmanship and beautiful antiques. He becomes a woodworm in a fine old desk.
    However, there is nothing good in the other thug, Mr Pin, who puts his trust in a lucky potato and whose remorse is simply pretence. He too reincarnates, but the outcome will not be pleasant. He becomes a potato, and is fried, since ‘Reincarnation enjoys a joke as much as the next philosophical hypothesis.’
    But to Death, a nature like Mr Pin’s is no joke.
    Death sighed deeply. W HO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?
    The Death of Rats looked up.
    S QUEAK , he said.
    Death waved a hand dismissively. W ELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME , he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE. [ The Truth ]
    One who may have answers to the questions that trouble Death’s lonely mind – questions about goodness and evil, and justice – isAzrael, his Lord. On Earth, ‘Azrael’ is the name given in the traditions of Islam to the Angel of Death, whose name is nowhere mentioned in the Bible itself. Muslims say he is one of the great Archangels, equal to Michael, Raphael or Gabriel in rank, and greater than them in wisdom. His name is Arabic, and means ‘Help of God’.
    But the nature of Azrael is best seen on the Discworld. He is known there as the Great Attractor, the Death of the Whole Multiverse, the Beginning and End of Time. He is so vast that he can only be measured in terms of the speed of light, and whole galaxies are lost in his eyes. Our Death, the Death who harvests all lives on Earth and on the Discworld, is only a little Death, and Azrael is his Lord.
    And at the end of all stories, Azrael, who knows the secret, thinks: I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN. [ Reaper Man ]
    16 Perhaps she recalled the words of St Francis: ‘By your holy death, help us to live each day as our last and to welcome sister Death.’

Bibliography and suggestions
for further reading
    Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality (Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-300-04126-8 hardback, 0-300-04859-9 paperback)
    Briggs, Katharine M. A Dictionary of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other