Baldr on this pyre, Artist unknown
All my life I have been interested in mythology... there's so much to learn about human nature in these stories.
As Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and others have said repeatedly from their farflung travels, these types of stories - the basic skeletons - appeared with new names and clothing all over the world... at a time when there was no contact between the different cultures.
One of my favorite myths in Norse Mythology was always the myth of Baldr.
His mother finds out from a prophecy that he will be killed young, so she goes all around the world securing oaths from all the growing plants so that they would do him no harm. It was a huge task for a mother who dearly loved her youngest son, the favorite of all the gods.
The only plant that would not agree was mistletoe.... so she felt pretty secure. Word was sent to everyone about an ixnay on the istletoemay... and so they would take turns hurling objects made of all sorts of other plants at Baldr as their favorite game, laughing as they bounced off.
[This is the part where if I were there, I might put in a, "But aren't you just asking for trouble here?" But, no - I was not there.]
Now Baldr himself knew about this prophecy, but it was to be the start of Ragnarok, the final battle between good and evil, after which the world shall be reborn in a new phase of development, so he did not shun it.
He accepted his destiny, though his mother could not. Neither, though, knew when nor how it might occur. Sounding quite familiar to many other mythologies.... Baldr was to come back, in elevated form, from the dead after a certain period of time.
So, Loki - the mischievous - came along and put an arrow made of mistletoe into Baldr's blind brother's hand, and the one killed the other. The prophecy was fulfilled.
I see this myth at play in my sorrow at the deaths of so many young men (I know there are other myths and stories for female sacrifice). After all these years, it's worked its way into my psyche to the point that I grieve as if some of them were known to me, personally. I think culturally, too, it is in force.... as James Dean, Heath Ledger, and so many others with great potential.... all the soldiers at war as well - are elevated to a mutual grief. I'm prone to it, I think.... due to my early imbibing of that story.
Youth, Beauty, Potential, and Belovedness... gone in an instant, yet still to come.