Impalement

Impalement, as a method of execution, is the penetration of a human by an object such as a stake, pole, spear, or hook, often by complete or partial perforation of the torso. It was used particularly in response to "crimes against the state" and regarded across a number of cultures as a very harsh form of capital punishment and recorded in myth and art. Impalement was also used during wartime to suppress rebellion, punish traitors or collaborators, and as a punishment for breaches of military discipline.

Offenses where impalement was occasionally employed include: contempt for the state's responsibility for safe roads and trade routes by committing highway robbery or grave robbery, violating state policies or monopolies, or subverting standards for trade. Offenders have also been impaled for a variety of cultural, sexual and religious reasons.

References to impalement in Babylonia and the Neo-Assyrian Empire are found as early as the 18th century BC. Within the Ottoman Empire, this form of execution continued into the 20th century.

Impaled (illusion)

Impaled is a classic stage illusion in which a performer appears to be impaled on or by a sword or pole. The name is most commonly associated with an illusion that was created by designer Ken Whitaker in the 1970s and which is sometimes also referred to as "Beyond Belief" or "Impaled Beyond Belief". This version has become part of the stage magic repertoire and has been performed by many of the world's most famous magic acts.

Australian-born magician Les Levante (1892-1978) is also credited with devising an impalement illusion but this was different from Whitaker's.

Description of the Whitaker effect

Presentations of the effect vary but a typical one is as follows. The magician presents a stand, placed stage centre, which supports a sword in a vertical position with the sharpened tip pointing upwards. An assistant is introduced and the magician (sometimes with the help of additional assistants) picks her up and balances her in a supine position on the tip of the sword. The assistant holds her body rigidly horizontal and the small of her back rests on the tip of the sword. The magician then grasps the assistant's feet and rotates her on the sword tip. After spinning freely for a few turns the assistant sinks downwards, as if she has been impaled. As she drops her body goes limp so that she appears to hang lifelessly. The magician then appears to revive her with a kiss or with some magical gesture before lifting her from the sword and placing her back on her feet so that she can be seen to be unharmed.

Impalement (heraldry)

In heraldry, impalement is a form of heraldic combination or marshalling of two coats of arms side by side in one divided heraldic shield or escutcheon to denote a union, most often that of a husband and wife (and in certain cases, same-sex married couples), but also for unions of ecclesiastical, academic/civic and mystical natures. An impaled shield is bisected "in pale", that is by a vertical line.

Marital

The husband's arms are shown in the dexter half (on the right hand of someone standing behind the shield, to the viewer's left), being the place of honour, with the wife's paternal arms in the sinister half. For this purpose alone the two halves of the impaled shield are called baron and femme, from ancient Norman-French usage. Impalement is not used when the wife is an heraldic heiress, that is to say when she has no brothers to carry on bearing her father's arms, in which case her paternal arms are displayed on an escutcheon of pretence in the centre of her husband's arms, denoting that the husband is a pretender to the paternal arms of his wife, and that they will devolve upon the couple's heir(s) as quarterings. When a husband has been married more than once, the sinister half of femme is split per fess, that is to say horizontally in half, with the paternal arms of the first wife shown in chief and those of the second wife in base. The sinister side may thus be divided more than twice in similar fashion where required.