Hell in different religions and cultures
Equally widespread are the notions of hell or Purgatory - a place where the dead are subjected to terrible torture.
• In the Hebrew tradition, the land of the dead - Sheol - is depicted as a huge pit or a walled city underground, a “land of oblivion”, a “world of silence”, where disembodied human beings live in darkness, in mud, covered with larvae, and forgotten by Yahweh. This is the land of shadows, because people have left the "spirit" or "life-giving breath" through which God gives them life. After the later Jewish form of the place of the afterlife of sinners was Gehenna - a deep hollow with a blazing fire, where sinners are subjected to cruel torture. Originally, Gehenna was a valley southeast of Jerusalem, in which the ancient Jews from the 10th to the 7th centuries. BC e. burned children, sacrificing them to the Ammonite god Moloch. Images of people being burned became the basis for the concept of "hellfire" in Jewish and Christian eschatology.
• Christian Hell includes a hierarchy of evil devils who subject sinners to unthinkable torture with physical pain, suffocation, heat of fire, and immersion in excrement. These terrible tests correspond to the punishment for the 7 deadly sins - pride, envy, anger, laziness, greed, gluttony, and lust. Hell is located deep underground, and its gates are dark forests, volcanic craters, or the gaping mouth of Lephiafan. In the Book of Revelation, a burning lake of sulfur is mentioned, where after death falls "a coward, an unbeliever, a depraved, a murderer, an adulterer, a sorcerer, an idolater, and a liar." To a lesser extent, cold and ice are mentioned as hellish instruments of torture.
• In the Roman Catholic faith, there is also the concept of Purgatory - an intermediate state after death, during which it is possible to atone for minor sins and restore good relations with God. In some forms of Christianity, a distinction is made between Purgatory, as a place of temporary punishment and cleansing, and Limbo, as a waiting place for people such as pagans and unbaptized babies. The Christian teachings on Paradise, Hell, and Purgatory have received remarkable and powerful expression in Dante's Divine Comedy.
• The Muslim picture of Hell is very similar to the picture of the Judeo-Christian tradition from which it originated. Miraj Name - Description of Muhammad's Miraculous Travel, depicts the Muslim hell, Gehenna, as Muhammad saw him during his visit with Archangel Gabriel. The gates of Gehenna are guarded by the silent angel Malik, who made an exception when visiting Muhammad and broke his silence to greet him.
Gehenna's nature is ugly and dangerous; poisonous fruits in the form of demons hang from the spiked trees of hell. Sinners are subjected to terrible torture: they are hanged and strangled, their tongues are cut off, they are immersed in pus and boiling water, their bodies are fried over a fire, while their skin is restored, and torture by fire continues, they endure many other types of torment, depending on their character their misdeeds. In addition, in the Islamic tradition there is an intermediate state for souls - barzakh (literally, "barrier"), a place or state in which both righteous and sinful souls are waiting for the day of resurrection.
• The Zoroastrian painting of Hell, graphically depicted in the Book of Ard Viraf, looks especially shocking and disgusting. Hell is located far to the north, in the bowels of the earth; it's a creepy, nasty and smelly place full of demons. Here the souls of sinners, "followers of lies" remain after death in grief and suffering, until the god of darkness himself, Ahriman, is destroyed. The doomed are tormented by demons, evil creatures (hrafstars), snakes, and scorpions. They are tormented by hunger and thirst, fed with garbage, whipped with stinging snakes, repeatedly torn to pieces, and subjected to numerous other bloody and terrifying tortures.
Promotional video:
Reasons for this terrible torment include sodomy, violation of menstrual taboos, adultery, and the desecration of water and fire. According to the Zoroastrian religion, hell is not an eternal punishment; torments will last only until the victory of Ahura Mazhda over Ahriman in the Cosmic Battle, and the subsequent renewal of the world (frashegird). In the Zoroastrian religion there is also an intermediate area called hamestagan, which is intended for those who do not deserve either Paradise or Hell, because the total weight of their good thoughts, words, and deeds is equal to the weight of bad ones. These souls are in a kind of purgatory - the abode of the shadows, where there is no joy or torment.
• Ancient Greek underworld - Tartarus or Hades was a dungeon full of gloomy darkness, which Homer described as "Realm of Destruction, horrifying the gods themselves." The main river of the underworld was the Styx, with stinking swamp water, through which Charon ferried the dead for a few coins. The dead in the Greek afterlife were bloodless copies, shadows that had to be revived with infusions of blood, honey, wine, and water so that they could speak. The entrance to Hades was guarded by the enormous three-headed dog Cerberus.
Greek mythology portrayed archetypal figures who experienced truly epic eternal suffering for wrongdoing against the gods. Those who personally insulted Zeus were imprisoned in the bottomless pit of Tartarus, where they were tortured. Sisyphus, who tried to cheat death, had to endlessly roll a huge stone up the mountain at the very bottom of Tartarus. Tatal, who tried to test the omniscience of the gods by serving them as a meal, their son Pelops, cut into pieces, was placed up to his neck in a pool of clean water under a large ripe bunch of grapes, and he was always tormented by hunger and thirst, unable to reach either one or to another. Ixion, who tried to seduce Hera, was crucified on a fiery wheel that circled endlessly around Hades. Prometheus is a titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to people along with knowledge of crafts and technology,was chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains, where he was periodically attacked by the eagle of Zeus, who pecked and devoured his liver.
• Ancient Scandinavian afterlife - called Niflheim or Helheim, and located under one of the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil. They were ruled by the fierce and merciless goddess Hel. It was a cold, dark, and hazy world of the dead, located north of the Void (Ginnum-gagap), in which the world was created. Niflheim, also called the World of Darkness, was divided into several parts, one of which was Nastrond - the shore of corpses. Here stood a north-facing castle filled with the venom of snakes, in which murderers, adulterers, and oath-breakers were tortured, while the dragon Nidhogg drank blood from their bodies.
In Niflheim there was a spring, Hvergelmir, from which many rivers flowed. Brave warriors who fell in the battle went not to Niflheim, but to the god Odin, to Valhalla - the Hall of the Slain. In world mythology, there are pictures of cold hells. They met in Christianity, and also form part of the Tibetan afterlife. Dante used the medieval image of a cold hell for the lowest circle of Hell, and depicted Satan sitting in the center of the earth in a lake of frozen blood.
• There are numerous types and levels of hell in Hinduism and Buddhism. Like the various Gardens of Eden, they are not places of eternal residence for the dead, but only transitional stages in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In Buddhism, the Adas are considered a creation of the mind, full of self-deception and self-centeredness, and the suffering experienced there is at least as varied, cruel, and inventive as those described in other traditions. Aside from hellish areas where punishment includes physical pain and suffocation, Buddhist mythology describes hot Hells with walls of fire, rivers of molten iron, and scorching volcanic lava. Cold Hells, where the doomed suffer from icy cold and painful frostbite, are no less colorfully described.
The duration of passage through these Hells corresponds to the amount of bad karma that must be destroyed. In the infamous Adu Avichi (literally, "without space"), sinners experience terrible torment for countless kalpas (Brahminical aeons). When leaving Hell, sinners degenerate into animals, for example, dogs or jackals, covered with boils and scabs. In Buddhist Hells, there are judges who determine the fate of the dead. For example, Emma-O - a character from one of the hot hells of Japanese Buddhism - judges with the help of two severed heads: the red one tells him about all the evil deeds of the deceased, and the white one - about all the good deeds. He judges the souls of men, while his sister judges the souls of women. In the Hells of Chinese Buddhism, there are 4, or sometimes 10 judges.
• The afterlife of the Aztecs - Miktlan - a country of complete darkness, which is ruled by the terrible Lord of the Dead Miktlantecutli. His face is covered by a mask shaped like a human skull, his black curly hair is dotted with star-like eyes, and a human bone is threaded into his ear. In the Aztec tradition, the fate of the deceased was determined not by his behavior, but by his activities and how he died. Those of the dead who were not chosen for one of the Paradise were subjected to a series of magical trials in Mictlan, during which they had to go through nine hells before reaching their final resting place. These Hells were not places where sinners fell for punishment, but were considered as necessary stages of transition in the cycle of creation, because in the cosmic process of the Aztec tradition,all created things inevitably plunged into matter and returned back to the light and their creator.
Grof Stanislav