"Death Hands", coined by our costume and Hair & Makeup Designers, is not just a nickname for the five-card hand of aces and eights, but the literal touch of death...

In the words of Billy Blue, our Hair & Makeup Designer, "The death veins and hands came from this idea that the witch feeds on children and she thrives basically with death. We wanted to show her as menacing, creepy, almost decaying like sugar can decay teeth. We wanted to show a broken women falling apart."

Before Germ Theory, there existed Miasma Theory. A now-defunct medical theory that held that diseases were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of bad air, also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter.

Miasma was sometimes understood as a spiritual pollution and lingering aura of uncleanliness.

This concept dates back to Hellenic Greece and appears in many other religions and countries. In Japan ,kegare is the term for a state of pollution and defilement, important particularly in the Shinto region and its religion.

In Shinto miasma can even take the physical form of a dark cloud or become creatures called chimi, said to be born from the miasma in mountains and forests. Taking on an appearance with the face of a human, and the body of a beast, they would perplex humans. In the dictionary Wamyō Ruijushō from the Heian period and the Edo period encyclopedia, chimi were considered to be a type of oni under the Japanese name sudama.

Sometimes artists (like for Manga) will depict a miasma to be contagious physically and spread like across the body rapidly like a dark rash which dramatically expedites the decaying process in the human body physically. A blithe on the spirit will cause you to begin to die without proper access to spiritual cleansing.

Link Greek Katharsis & Miasma

Link Kegare Miasma