Hell

Medieval illustration of Hell in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript of Herrad of Landsberg (about 1180)

Hell refers to a place or state of dammnation where the wicked and unrighteous are punished for their transgressions. The concept of hell is prevalent in many world religions and cultures though its exact description varies from one religion to another. In Christianity, Islam, and the popular imagination, hell is frequently depicted as a firery pit located underground where souls are tormented by their past sins and demonic forces. In other religious traditions, however, hell is sometimes described as a freezingly cold and despondently gloomy place.

Hell may also be described as an existential or psychological state (or condition) of the human mind. Modern literary understandings of hell often depict it abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally under the ground. Religions with a linear view of history typically depict hell as an endless, infinite abyss; conversely, religions with a cyclic view of history often depict hell as an intermediary period between incarnations (for example, the Chinese Di Yu or the Buddhist Naraka). Despite these variations, the common ground among the descriptions is that Hell is a place of estrangment and alientation from Divinity, which translates into unbearable pain and suffering.

Etymology

The origin of the English word "hell" comes from the Germanic language. "Hel" In German, originally meant "to cover," and it was also used to designate the goddess of the Norse underworld and daughter of Loki.

Religious accounts

Judaism

The Jewish equivalent of hell is Gehenna, which is described as a firey place of torment. The word Gehenna originates from the Hebrew גי(א)-הינום (Gêhinnôm) meaning the "Valley of Hinnom's son" - a real place outside the city walls of Jerusalem, where child sacrifices were once made to the idol Moloch, and bodies of executed criminals and garbage were once dumped. Fires were kept burning in the valley to keep down the stench. Consequently, Gehenna became associated with abomination of child sacrifice and the horror of buring flesh.

However, Gehenna in Judaism is not exactly hell, but rather a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on their life's deeds. The Kabbalah describes it as a "waiting room" (commonly translated as an "entry way") for all souls (not just the wicked). The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not in Gehenna forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 months, however there has been the occasional noted exception. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Olam Habah (heb. עולם הבא; lit. "The world to come", often viewed as analogous to Heaven). This is also mentioned in the Kabbalah, where the soul is described as breaking, like the flame of a candle lighting another: the part of the soul that ascends being pure and the "unfinished" piece being reborn.

Ancient Greek religion

Another source for the idea of 'Hell' is the Greek and Roman Tartarus, a place in which conquered gods, men and other spirits were punished. Tartarus formed part of Hades in both Greek mythology and Roman mythology, but Hades also included Elysium, a place for the reward for those who lead virtuous lives, whilst others spent their afterlife in the asphodels fields. Like most ancient (pre-Christian) religions, the underworld was not viewed as negatively as it is in Christianity and Islam.

Christianity

Most Christians see hell as the eternal punishment for unrepentant sinners, as well as for the Devil and his demons. Virtuous unbelievers (such as pagans or members of divergent Christian denominations) are said to deserve hell on account of original sin, and even unbaptized infants are sometimes said to be damned. Exceptions, however, are often made for those who have failed to accept Jesus Christ but have extenuating circumstances (youth, not having heard the Gospel, mental illness, etc.). As opposed to the concept of Purgatory, damnation to hell is considered final and irreversible. Various interpretations of the torment of hell exist, ranging from fiery pits of wailing sinners to lonely isolation from God's presence.

Most Christians believe that damnation occurs immediately upon death (particular judgment), others that it occurs after Judgment Day. Attitudes toward hell and damnation have softened over the centuries (for example, see Limbo), and several Christian denominations reject the traditional concept of hell altogether (see Annihilationism, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Unitarian-Universalists, and Universalists).

Islam

Muslims believe in Jahannam (in Arabic: جهنم) (Hebrew: Ge-hinnom). In the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, there are literal descriptions of the condemned in a fiery Hell, as contrasted to the garden-like Paradise enjoyed by righteous believers.

The meaning of jahannam is to do with hotness (whereas in Hebrew Gehenna is said to mean a narrow deep valley). The word for paradise is jannah which means garden.

In addition, Heaven and Hell are split into many levels depending on the actions taken in life, where punishment is given depending on the level of evil done in life, and good is separated into other levels depending on how well one followed God (Allah) while alive.

There is an equal number of mentions of both hell and paradise in the Qur'an.

The Qur'an also says that some of those who are damned to hell are not damned forever, but instead for an indefinite period of time. When Judgement Day comes, the formerly damned will be judged as to whether or not they may enter into Paradise. In any case, there is good reason to believe that punishment in Hell is not meant to actually last eternally, but instead serves as a basis for spiritual rectification.

Chinese religions

The structure of Hell is remarkably complex in many Chinese religions. The ruler of Hell has to deal with politics, just as human rulers do. Hell is the subject of many folk stories and in many cases people in hell are able to die again.

The Chinese depiction of Hell does not necessarily mean a long time suffering for those who enter Hell, nor does it mean that person is bad. The Chinese view Hell is similar to a present day passport or immigration control station. In a Chinese funeral, they burn many Hell Bank Notes for the dead. With this Hell money, the dead person can bribe the ruler of Hell, and spend the rest of the money either in Hell or in Heaven.

Hinduism

In Hinduism, there are contradictions as to whether or not there is a hell (referred to as 'Nark' in Hindi). For some, it is a metaphor for our conscience. However, in the Mahabharata there is a mention of the Pandavas and the Kauravas going to hell. It is believed that people who commit 'paap' (sin) go to hell and have to go through the punishments in accordance to the sins they committed (even if they have been fundamentally good). Thus, the heros of the Mahabharata, who symbolized righteousness, still went to hell because of their past sins. However, in contrast to western views of hell as an eternal place of suffering, hell in Hinduism is a temporary stop in the cycle of reincarnation/

According to Hindu lore, the god Yama, the god of death, is also said to be the king of hell. The Garuda Purana gives a detailed account on hell, its features and enlists amount of punishment for most of the crimes (analogus to a modern day penal code). The detailed accounts of all the sins committed by an individual are supposed to be kept by Chitragupta who is the record keeper in Yama's court. Chitragupta reads out the sins committed and Yama orders the appropriate punishments to be given to the individuals. These punishments include dipping in boiling oil, burning in fire, torture using various weapons etc. in various hells. Individuals who finish their quota of the punishments are reborn according to their karma. All of the created are imperfect and thus have at least one sin to their record, but if one has led a generally pious life, one ascends to Heaven, or Swarga after a brief period of expiation in hell.

Buddhism

As diverse as other religions, there are many beliefs about Hell in Buddhism.

Most of the schools of thought, Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna would acknowledge several hells, which are places of great suffering for those who commit evil actions, such as cold hells and hot hells. Like all the different realms within cyclic existence, an existence in hell is temporary for its inhabitants. Those with sufficiently negative karma are reborn there, where they stay until their specific negative karma has been used up, at which point they are reborn in another realm, such as that of humans, of hungry ghosts, of animals, of asuras, of devas, or of Naraka (Hell) all according to the individual's karma.

There are a number of modern Buddhists, especially among Western schools, who believe that hell is but a state of mind. In a sense, a bad day at work could be hell, and a great day at work could be heaven. This has been supported by some modern scholars who advocate the interpretation of such metaphysical portions of the Scriptures symbolically rather than literally.

Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith regards the conventional description of hell as a specific place to be symbolic. Instead the Bahá'í writings describe hell as a "spiritual condition" where remoteness from God is defined as hell; conversely heaven is seen as a state of closeness to God. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane, but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.

Bahá'u'lláh likened death to the process of birth. He explains: "The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother." The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Bahá'í view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Bahá'ís view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities that will be needed in the next life. The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the Manifestations of God, the most recent of which, Bahá'ís believe, is Bahá'u'lláh.

Unification Church

The Unification Church teaches that hell is the condition of being separated from God's love. Hell can be said to exist in this world as well as in the afterlife. Those in the state of hell can repent and change their condition, both before and after death. The Divine Principle, the main scripture of Church's teachings, says:

It is not God who decides whether a person's spirit enters heaven or hell upon his death; it is decided by the spirit himself. Humans are created so that once they reach perfection they will fully breathe the love of God. Those who committed sinful deeds while on earth become crippled spirits who are incapable of fully breathing in the love of God. They find it agonizing to stand before God, the center of true love. Of their own will, they choose to dwell in hell, far removed from the love of God.[1]

Iconography

Hell, the right panel from the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights

Hell is often depicted as a place underground, with fire and molten rock where the devil lives. The devil is popularly depicted as a being or creature who carries a pitchfork (which is actually a trident), has flaming red skin, horns on his head, a black goatee beard, and a long thin tail with a triangle shaped barb on it. In some monotheistic doctrines, Hell is often populated by demons who torment the damned. The fallen angel Lucifer in Christian cultures, (sometimes identified as the same individual as Satan) is portrayed in popular culture as the ruler of Hell. Christian theologians portray Hell as the abode of the Devil and the fallen angels (demons). Hell is also defined as complete and final separation of God's love and mercy from sinners who have rejected his moral standards of goodness and have chosen to live a rebellious life of sin. Purgatory, as believed by Catholicism, is a place of penance for the sinner who has ultimately achieved salvation but has not paid penance for the sins committed in life. Hell on the contrary is commonly believed to be for eternity with no chance of redemption or salvation for those who suffer there. Some branches of the Christian faith teach it is a domain of boundless torment. Many monotheistic religions regard Hell as the absolute ultimate worst-case-scenario, per se. For some Gnostics, including the Cathars, hell was none other than this present life on earth. Furthermore, hell is sometimes thought by others to be a permanent state of unconsciousness for all eternity, i.e. permanent death. Every account of Hell is usually interpreted as a purely symbolic way of describing states of mind causing pain and suffering, and the actions which supposedly result in one's soul being sent to Hell (i.e. the so called "sins") are precisely those actions that in everyday life cause those states of mind.

The most imaginative and famous depiction of hell can be viewed in several paintings by medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch.

Hell appears in several mythologies and religions . It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people.

Hell is often depicted in art and literature, perhaps most famously in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Many Hellenistic Neopagans believe in Tartarus, which may also be considered a version of Hell.

What Dreams May Come, a 1998 movie that won an Academy Award for its depiction of heaven and hell as the subjective creations of the individual, was an essentially new age model of heaven, hell and reincarnation. It was based on the eponymous novel by Richard Matheson.

The 2006 film Silent Hill depicts Hell numerous times throughout the movie. It implies a private hell, where we punish ourselves by denying our guilt and fate, only prolonging our suffering and agony. The overall concept of the film is the lengths a mother will go to for her child, travelling to 'Hell and back'. Hell is also depicted as a modern world, but decayed and rusted, populated by strange and horrific creatures. In a number of respects, this concept is rather far removed from the game setting.

Hell in Literature

Dante And Virgil In Hell - William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Many of the great epics of European literature include episodes that occur in Hell. In the Roman poet Virgil's Latin epic, the Aeneid, Aeneas descends into Dis (the underworld) to visit his father's spirit. The underworld is only vaguely described, with one unexplored path leading to the punishments of Tartarus, while the other leads through Erebus and the Elysian Fields.

A vision of hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Illustration by Gustave Doré.

Dante's The Divine Comedy is a classic inspiration for modern images of hell. In his Divina commedia ('Divine comedy'; set in the year 1300), Dante Alighieri employed the conceit of taking Virgil as his guide through Inferno (and then, in the second cantiche, up the mountain of Purgatorio). Virgil himself is not condemned to Hell in Dante's poem but is rather, as a virtuous pagan, confined to Limbo just at the edge of Hell. The geography of Hell is very elaborately laid out in this work, with nine concentric rings leading deeper into the Earth and deeper into the various punishments of Hell, until, at the center of the world, Dante finds Satan himself trapped in the frozen lake of Cocytus. A small tunnel leads past Satan and out to the other side of the world, at the base of the Mount of Purgatory.

John Milton's Paradise Lost (1668) opens with the fallen angels, including their leader Satan, waking up in Hell after having been defeated in the war in heaven and the action returns there at several points throughout the poem. The nature of Hell as a place of punishment, as portrayed by Dante, is not explored here; instead, Hell is the abode of the demons, and the passive prison from which they plot their revenge upon Heaven through the corruption of the human race.

C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce (1945) borrows its title from William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) and its inspiration from the Divine Comedy as the narrator is likewise guided through Hell and Heaven. Hell is portrayed here as an endless, desolate twilight city upon which night is imperceptibly sinking. The night is actually the Apocalypse, and it heralds the arrival of the demons after their judgement. Before the night comes, anyone can escape Hell if they leave behind their former selves and accept Heaven's offer, and a journey to Heaven reveals that Hell is infinitely small; it is nothing more or less than what happens to a soul that turns away from God and into itself.

In the play "Man and Superman", George Bernard Shaw pictures Hell as a place of idle worship of youth and beauty.

The idea of hell was highly influential to writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre who authored the play "No Exit" about the idea that, "hell is other people". Although not a religious man, Sartre was fascinated by his interpretation of a hellish state of suffering.

Non-religious context

The word "Hell" used away from its religious context was long considered to be profanity, particularly in North America. Though its use was commonplace in everyday speech and on television by the 1970s, many people in the US still consider it somewhat rude or inappropriate language, particularly involving children. Many, particularly among religious circles and in certain sensitive environments, still avoid casual usage of the word. In British English and some parts of North America, the word has fallen into common use and is not considered profane; often considered to be a safer and less offensive alternative to swearing.

Vernacular Usage

Satan frozen at the center of Cocytus, the ninth circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno.

Another example of common use of “hell” in daily language, a “cold day in hell” is a paradox and an idiom, since most imagery of hell depicts it as hot and fiery, such as in the Bible in Revelation, where sinners are cast into a lake of fire. Therefore, an event that will transpire “on a cold day in hell” will never occur. Similar or related phrases include: “over my dead body,” “when hell freezes over,” “a snowball's chance in hell,” “when the devil goes ice-skating,” and “when pigs fly.” Still, the phrase "cold as hell" is understood to describe something very cold.

Interestingly, Cocytus, the bottom circle of Hell, which held traitors, in Dante's Divine Comedy, is depicted as an ice-covered lake.

External links

• Concept of Hell in Iranian culture
• Christian site with paintings, audio and video about hell, Satan and demons.
• Christian Doctrines of Hell - statements from the Old Testament, New Testament, church fathers and modern denominations on Hell, plus common arguments for and against Hell.
• A Cathar perspective on Hell
• Hell as non-eternal (Universalist study)
• The Jehovah's Witnesses perspective
• Dying, Yamaraja and Yamadutas + terminal restlessness
• example Buddhist hells
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Heaven and Hell
• The Jewish view of Hell
• Aquinas on The Inferno (parallel Latin English text)
• 'Hell' in the Bible interpreted as the grave

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