Ancient Egypt '' scene, a person's heart is weighed on the scale of
Maat against the
feather of truth, by the canine-headed
Anubis.
Thoth,
scribe of the
gods, records the result. If his heart is lighter than the feather, the person is allowed to pass into the
afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the crocodile-headed
Ammit. With the rise of the cult of
Osiris during the
Middle Kingdom, the "democratization of religion" offered to even his humblest followers the prospect of eternal life, with moral fitness becoming the dominant factor in determining a person's suitability. At death a person faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges. If they had led a life in conformance with the precepts of the goddess
Maat, who represented truth and right living, the person was welcomed into the heavenly
reed fields. If found guilty the person was thrown to
Ammit, the "devourer of the dead" and would be condemned to the
lake of fire. The person taken by the devourer is subject first to terrifying punishment and then annihilated. These depictions of punishment may have influenced medieval perceptions of the inferno in hell via early
Christian and
Coptic texts. Purification for those considered justified appears in the descriptions of "Flame Island", where humans experience the triumph over evil and rebirth. For the damned complete destruction into a state of non-being awaits but there is no suggestion of eternal torture; the weighing of the heart in
Egyptian mythology can lead to annihilation. The Tale of Khaemwese describes the
torment of a rich man, who lacked charity, when he dies and compares it to the blessed state of a poor man who has also died. Divine pardon at judgment always remained a central concern for the ancient Egyptians. Modern understanding of Egyptian notions of hell relies on six ancient texts: •
The Book of Two Ways (
Book of the Ways of Rosetau) •
The Book of Amduat (
Book of the Hidden Room,
Book of That Which Is in the Underworld) •
The Book of Gates •
The Book of the Dead (
Book of Going Forth by Day) •
The Book of the Earth •
The Book of Caverns Ancient Mesopotamia impression showing the god
Dumuzid being tortured in the
Underworld by
galla demons The
Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue "a shadowy version of life on earth". and was believed to be ruled by the goddess
Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, During the
Third Dynasty of Ur, it was believed that a person's treatment in the afterlife depended on how he or she was buried; As a place of punishment, it can be considered a hell. The classic
Hades, on the other hand, is more similar to Old Testament Sheol. The Romans later
adopted these views.
East Africa The hell of
Swahili mythology is called
kuzimu, and belief in it developed in the 7th and 8th century under the influence of Muslim merchants at the
East African coast. It is imagined as very cold. In Serer religion, acceptance by the ancestors who have long departed is as close to any heaven as one can get. Rejection and becoming a wandering soul is a sort of hell for one
passing over. The souls of the dead must make their way to
Jaaniw (the sacred dwelling place of the soul). Only those who have lived their lives on earth in accordance with
Serer doctrines will be able to make this necessary journey and thus be accepted by the ancestors. Those who cannot make the journey become lost and wandering souls, but they do not burn in "hell fire". In
Yoruba religion, irredeemably wicked people (guilty of e.g. theft, witchcraft, murder, or cruelty) are confined to
Ọrun Apaadi (
heaven of clay potsherds), while the good and charitable people continue to live in the ancestral realm,
Orun Baba Eni (
heaven of the fathers of humanity).
Pacific The
Bagobo of the
Philippines have the otherworld "Gimokodan", where the Red Region is reserved who those who died in battle, while ordinary people go to the White Region.
East Asia According to a few sources, hell is below ground, and described as an uninviting wet or fiery place reserved for sinful people in the
Ainu religion, as stated by missionary
John Batchelor. However, belief in hell does not appear in
oral tradition of the Ainu. Instead, there is belief within the Ainu religion that the soul of the deceased (ramat) would become a
kamuy after death.
Judaism Judaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a mystical/Orthodox tradition of describing
Gehinnom. Gehinnom is originally a grave and in later times a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on one's life's deeds, or rather, where one becomes fully aware of one's own shortcomings and negative actions during one's life. The
Kabbalah explains 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 Gehinnom 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. According to Jewish teachings, hell is not entirely physical; rather, it can be compared to a very intense feeling of shame. People are ashamed of their misdeeds and this constitutes suffering which makes up for the bad deeds. When one has so deviated from the will of
God, one is said to be in Gehinnom. This is not meant to refer to some point in the future, but to the very present moment. The gates of
teshuva (return) are said to be always open, and so one can align his will with that of God at any moment. Being out of alignment with God's will is itself a punishment according to the
Torah. Many scholars of Jewish mysticism, particularly of the
Kabbalah, describe seven "compartments" or "habitations" of hell, just as they describe seven divisions of heaven. These divisions go by many different names, and the most frequently mentioned are as follows: •
Sheol (
Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל – "
underworld", "
Hades"; "grave") •
Abaddon (
Hebrew: אֲבַדּוֹן – "doom", "perdition") • '''Be'er Shachat'
(Hebrew: בְּאֵר שַׁחַת, Be'er Shachath'' – "pit of corruption") •
Tit ha-Yaven (
Hebrew: טִיט הַיָוֵן – "clinging mud") • '''Sha'are Mavet'
(Hebrew: שַׁעֲרֵי מָוֶת, Sha'arei Maveth'' – "gates of death") •
Tzalmavet (
Hebrew: צַלמָוֶת,
Tsalmaveth – "shadow of death") •
Gehinnom (
Hebrew: גֵיהִנוֹם,
Gehinnom – "valley of
Hinnom"; "
Tartarus", "
Purgatory") Besides those mentioned above, there also exist additional terms that have been often used to either refer to hell in general or to some region of the underworld: •
Azazel (
Hebrew: עֲזָאזֵל, compd. of
ez עֵז: "goat" +
azal אָזַל: "to go away" – "goat of departure", "scapegoat"; "entire removal", "damnation") •
Dudael (
Hebrew: דּוּדָאֵל – lit. "cauldron of God") •
Tehom (
Hebrew: תְהוֹם – "
abyss"; "sea", "deep ocean") •
Tophet (
Hebrew: תֹּפֶת or תוֹפֶת,
Topheth – "fire-place", "place of burning", "place to be spit upon"; "inferno") •
Tzoah Rotachat (
Hebrew: צוֹאָה רוֹתֵחַת,
Tsoah Rothachath – "boiling excrement") •
Mashchit (
Hebrew: מַשְׁחִית,
Mashchith – "destruction", "ruin") •
Dumah (
Hebrew: דוּמָה – "silence") •
Neshiyyah (
Hebrew: נְשִׁיָּה – "oblivion", "
Limbo") •
Bor Shaon (
Hebrew: בּוֹר שָׁאוֹן – "cistern of sound") •
Eretz Tachtit (
Hebrew: אֶרֶץ תַּחְתִּית,
Erets Tachtith – "lowest earth"). •
Masak Mavdil (
Hebrew: מָסָך מַבְדִּ֔יל,
Masak Mabdil – "dividing curtain") •
Haguel (
Ethiopic: ሀጉለ – "(place of) destruction", "loss", "waste") •
Ikisat (
Ethiopic: አክይስት – "serpents", "
dragons"; "place of future punishment")
Maimonides declares in
his 13 principles of faith that the hells of the rabbinic literature were pedagogically motivated inventions to encourage respect of the
Torah commandments by mankind, which had been regarded as immature. Instead of being sent to hell, the souls of the wicked would actually get annihilated.
Christianity ''. Christ leads Adam by the hand, c.1504 The Christian doctrine of hell derives from passages in the
New Testament. The English word
hell does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words
Tartarus or
Hades, or the Hebrew word
Gehinnom. In the
Septuagint and New Testament, the authors used the Greek term Hades for the Hebrew Sheol, but often with Jewish rather than Greek concepts in mind. In the Jewish concept of Sheol, such as expressed in Ecclesiastes, Sheol or Hades is a place where there is no activity. However, since
Augustine, some Christians have believed that the souls of those who die either rest peacefully, in the case of Christians, or are afflicted, in the case of the damned, after death until the
resurrection. While these three terms are translated in the KJV as "hell", they have three very different meanings. • Hades has similarities to the Old Testament term,
Sheol as "the place of the dead" or "grave". Thus, it is used in reference to both the righteous and the wicked, since both wind up there eventually. •
Gehenna refers to the "Valley of Hinnom", which was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. It was a place that contained a dump where people burned their garbage. Bodies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation (such as people who committed suicide) were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection. •
Tartaróō (the verb "throw to
Tartarus", used of the fall of the Titans in a
scholium on
Iliad 14.296) occurs only once in the New Testament in II Peter 2:4, where it is parallel to the use of the noun form in
1 Enoch as the place of incarceration of the fallen angels. It mentions nothing about human souls being sent there in the afterlife. According to the Roman Catholic Church, the
Council of Trent taught, in the 5th canon of its 14th session, that damnation is eternal: "...the loss of eternal blessedness, and the eternal damnation which he has incurred..." The
Catholic Church defines hell as "a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed". One finds oneself in hell as the result of dying in
mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love, becoming eternally separated from him by one's own free choice immediately after death. In the Roman Catholic Church, many other Christian churches, such as the
Methodists,
Baptists and
Episcopalians, and some
Greek Orthodox churches, hell is taught as the final destiny of those who have not been found worthy after the
general resurrection and
last judgment, where they will permanently separated from God. The nature of this judgment is inconsistent with many
Protestant churches teaching the saving comes from accepting Jesus Christ as their savior, while the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches teach that the judgment hinges on both faith and works. However, many
Liberal Christians throughout
Mainline Protestant churches believe in
universal reconciliation. Regarding the belief in hell, the interpretation of
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is also relevant. Some modern Christian theologians subscribe to the doctrines of
conditional immortality. Conditional immortality is the belief that the soul dies with the body and does not live again until the resurrection. As with other Jewish writings of the
Second Temple period, the New Testament text distinguishes two words, both translated "hell" in older English Bibles:
Hades, "the grave", and
Gehenna where God "can destroy both body and soul". Some Christians read this to mean that neither Hades nor Gehenna are eternal but refer to the ultimate destruction of the wicked in the lake of fire after resurrection. However, because of the Greek words used in translating from the Hebrew text, the Hebrew ideas have become confused with Greek myths and ideas. In the Hebrew text when people died they went to
Sheol, the grave and the wicked ultimately went to Gehenna and were consumed by fire. The Hebrew words for "the grave" or "death" or "eventual destruction of the wicked", were translated using Greek words and later texts became a mix of mistranslation, pagan influence, and Greek myth.
Christian mortalism is the doctrine that all men and women, including Christians, must die, and do not continue and are not conscious after death. Therefore,
annihilationism includes the doctrine that "the wicked" are also destroyed rather than
tormented forever in hell. Christian mortalism and annihilationism are directly related to the doctrine of conditional immortality, the idea that a human
soul is not immortal unless it is given eternal life at the
second coming of Christ and
resurrection of the dead. Biblical scholars looking at the issue through the Hebrew text have denied the teaching of innate immortality. Rejection of the
immortality of the soul, and advocacy of Christian mortalism, was a feature of Protestantism since the early days of the
Reformation with
Martin Luther himself rejecting the traditional idea, though his mortalism did not carry into orthodox
Lutheranism. One of the most notable English opponents of the immortality of the soul was
Thomas Hobbes who describes the idea as a Greek "contagion" in Christian doctrine. Modern proponents of conditional immortality include some in the
Anglican church such as
N. T. Wright and as denominations the
Seventh-day Adventists,
Bible Students,
Jehovah's Witnesses,
Christadelphians,
Living Church of God,
Church of God International, and some other
Protestant Christians. The Catholic Catechism states "The souls of sinners descend into hell, where they suffer 'eternal fire. However,
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, said "there's nowhere in Catholic teaching that actually says any one person is in hell". The 1993
Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell and "they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire. The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God" (CCC 1035). During an Audience in 1999,
Pope John Paul II commented: "images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."
Other denominations • The
Seventh-day Adventist Church's
official beliefs support
annihilationism. They deny the Catholic purgatory and teach that the dead lie in the grave until they are
raised for a last judgment, both the righteous and wicked await the resurrection at the
Second Coming. Seventh-day Adventists believe that
death is a state of
unconscious sleep until the resurrection. • Adventists teach that the resurrection of the righteous will take place shortly after the second coming of
Jesus, whereas the resurrection of the wicked will occur after the
millennium. Adventists reject the traditional doctrine of hell as a state of everlasting conscious torment, believing instead that the wicked will be permanently destroyed after the millennium by the
lake of fire, which is called 'the
second death' in Revelation 20:14. •
Jehovah's Witnesses hold that the soul ceases to exist when the person dies and therefore that hell (Sheol or Hades) is a state of non-existence. This belief is held by some
Unitarian-Universalists. • According to
Emanuel Swedenborg's
Second Coming Christian revelation, hell exists because evil people want it. They, not God, introduced evil to the human race. In
Swedenborgianism, every soul joins the like-minded group after death in which it feels the most comfortable. Hell is therefore believed to be a place of happiness for the souls which delight in evilness. • Members of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) teach that hell is a state between death and resurrection, in which those spirits who did not repent while on earth must suffer for their own sins (Doctrine and Covenants 19:15–17). After that, only the
Sons of perdition, who committed the
Eternal sin, would be cast into
Outer darkness. However, according to Mormon faith, committing the Eternal sin requires so much knowledge that most persons cannot do this.
Islam , a tree in Hell, whose dwellers are compelled to eat the bitter fruit for eternity. In Islam,
Jahannam (in
Arabic: جهنم) (related to the Hebrew word
gehinnom) is the counterpart to heaven and likewise divided into seven layers, both co-existing with the temporal world, filled with blazing fire, boiling water, and a variety of other torments for those who have been condemned to it in the hereafter. In the Quran, God declares that the fire of Jahannam is prepared for both mankind and
jinn. After the Day of Judgment, it is to be occupied by those who do not believe in God, those who have disobeyed
his laws, or rejected his
messengers. "Enemies of Islam" are sent to hell immediately upon their deaths.
Muslim modernists downplay the vivid descriptions of hell common during Classical period, on one hand reaffirming that the afterlife must not be denied, but simultaneously asserting its exact nature remains unknown. Other modern Muslims continue the line of
Sufism as an interiorized hell, combining the eschatological thoughts of
Ibn Arabi and
Rumi with Western philosophy. Not all Muslims and scholars agree whether hell is an eternal destination or whether some or all of the condemned will eventually be forgiven and allowed to enter paradise. Over hell, a narrow bridge called
As-Sirāt is spanned. On
Judgment Day one must pass over it to reach paradise, but those destined for hell will find too narrow and fall into their new abode.
Iblis, the temporary ruler of hell, is thought of residing in the bottom of hell, from where he commands his hosts of infernal demons. But contrary to Christian traditions, Iblis and his infernal hosts do not wage war against God, his enmity applies against humanity only. Further, his dominion in hell is also his punishment. Executioners of punishment are the 19
zabaniyya, who have been created from the fires of hell. The seven gates of
jahannam, mentioned in the Quran, inspired
Muslim exegetes (
tafsir) to develop a system of seven stages of hell, analogue to the seven doors of paradise. The stages of hell get their names by seven different terms used for hell throughout the Quran. Each is assigned for a different type of sinners. The concept later accepted by Sunni authorities list the levels of hell as follows, although some stages may vary: •
Jahannam (جهنم Gehenna) •
Laza (لظى fierce blaze) •
Hutama (حُطَمَة crushing fire) • '''Sa'ir''' (سعير raging fire) •
Saqar (سقر scorching fire) •
Jahim (جحيم furnace) •
Hawiya (هاوية infernal abyss) The highest level (
jahannam) is traditionally thought of as a type of
purgatory reserved for Muslims. Polytheism (
shirk) is regarded as a particularly grievous sin; therefore entering Paradise is forbidden to a polytheist
(mushrik) because his place is hell; and the second lowest level (
jahim) only after the bottomless pit for the hypocrites (
hawiyah), who claimed aloud to believe in
God and his messenger but in their
hearts did not. Although the earliest reports about
Muhammad's
journey through the heavens, do not locate hell in the heavens, only brief references about visiting hell during the journey appears. But extensive accounts about Muhammad's night journey, in the non-canonical but popular Miraj-Literature, tell about encountering the angels of hell.
Malik, the keeper to the gates of hell, namely appears in
Ibn Abbas' Isra and Mi'raj. whereupon Muhammad requests a glaze at hell.
Ibn Hisham gives extensive details about Muhammad visiting hell and its inhabitants punished wherein, but can only endure watching the punishments of the first layer of hell. Muhammad meeting Malik, the Dajjal and hell, was used as a proof for Muhammad's Night Journey. Medieval sources often identified hell with the seven earths mentioned in
Quran 65:12, inhabited by
devils,
harsh angels, scorpions and serpents, who torment the sinners. They described thorny shrubs, seas filled with blood and fire and darkness only illuminated by the flames of hell. •
Adim or
Ramaka (رمکا) - the surface, on which humans, animals and
jinn live. •
Basit or
Khawfa (خوفا) •
Thaqil or '
Arafa (عرفه) - antechamber •
Batih or
Hadna (حدنه) - a valley with stream of boiling sulphur. •
Hayn or
Dama (دمَا) •
Sijjin, (سجىن dungeon or prison) or
Masika (sometimes, Sijjin is at the bottom) -
Quran 83:7 •
Nar as-Samum,
Zamhareer or
As-Saqar /
Athara, or
Hanina (حنينا) - venomous wind of fire and a cold wind of ice.
Baháʼí Faith In the
Baháʼí Faith, the conventional descriptions of hell and heaven are considered to be symbolic representations of spiritual conditions. The
Baháʼí writings describe closeness to God to be heaven, and conversely, remoteness from God as hell. According to
Brahma Kumaris, the Iron Age (
Kali Yuga) is regarded as hell.
Jainism In
Jain cosmology,
Naraka (translated as hell) is the name given to realm of existence having great suffering. However, a Naraka differs from the hells of
Abrahamic religions as souls are not sent to Naraka as the result of a divine judgment and punishment. Furthermore, length of a being's stay in a Naraka is not eternal, though it is usually very long and measured in billions of years. A soul is born into a Naraka as a direct result of his or her previous
karma (actions of body, speech and mind), and resides there for a finite length of time until his karma has achieved its full result. After his karma is used up, he may be reborn in one of the higher worlds as the result of an earlier karma that had not yet ripened. The hells are situated in the seven grounds at the lower part of the universe. The hellish beings are a type of souls which are residing in these various hells. They are born in hells by sudden manifestation. The hellish beings possess
vaikriya body (protean body which can transform itself and take various forms). They have a fixed life span (ranging from ten thousand to billions of years) in the respective hells where they reside. According to Jain scripture,
Tattvarthasutra, following are the causes for birth in hell: • Killing or causing pain with intense passion • Excessive attachment to things and worldly pleasure with constantly indulging in cruel and violent acts • Vowless and unrestrained life
Meivazhi According to
Meivazhi, the purpose of all religions is to guide people to heaven. However, those who do not approach God and are not blessed by Him are believed to be condemned to hell.
Sikhism In Sikh thought, heaven and hell are not places for living hereafter, they are part of spiritual topography of man and do not exist otherwise. They refer to good and evil stages of life respectively and can be lived now and here during our earthly existence. For example,
Guru Arjan explains that people who are entangled in emotional attachment and doubt are living in hell on this Earth i.e. their life is hellish.
Taoism Ancient
Taoism had no concept of hell, as morality was seen to be a man-made distinction and there was no concept of an immaterial soul. In its home country
China, where Taoism adopted tenets of other religions, popular belief endows Taoist hell with many deities and spirits who punish sin in a variety of horrible ways. Buddhist hells became "so much a part of [many Daoist sects] that during
funeral services[,] the priests hang up scrolls depicting" similar scenes. Typically, Daoist hells are "said to be ten in number" and "are sometimes said to be situated under a high mountain in
Sichuan". The sacred
Gathas mention a "House of the Lie″ for those "that are of an evil dominion, of evil deeds, evil words, evil Self, and evil thought, Liars". However, the best-known Zoroastrian text to describe hell in detail is the
Book of Arda Viraf. It depicts particular punishments for particular sins—for instance, being trampled by cattle as punishment for neglecting the needs of work animals. Other descriptions can be found in the
Book of Scriptures (Hadhokht Nask), Religious Judgments (Dadestan-i Denig) and the
Spirit of Wisdom (Menog-i Khrad).
Mandaeism The
Mandaeans believe in purification of souls inside of
Leviathan, whom they also call
Ur. Within detention houses, so called
Matartas, the detained souls would receive so much punishment that they would wish to die a
Second death, which would, however, not (yet) befall their spirit. At the
end of days, the souls of the Mandaeans which could be purified, would be liberated out of Ur's mouth. After this, Ur would get destroyed along with the souls remaining inside him, so they die the second death.
Wicca The
Gardnerian Wicca and
Alexandrian Wicca sects of
Wicca include "
wiccan laws" that
Gerald Gardner wrote, which state that wiccan souls are privileged with reincarnation, but that the souls of wiccans who break the wiccan laws, "even under torture", would be cursed by the goddess, never be reborn on earth, and "remain where they belong, in the Hell of the Christians". Other recognized wiccan sects do not include Gerald Gardner's "wiccan laws". The influential wiccan author
Raymond Buckland wrote that the wiccan laws are unimportant. Solitary wiccans, not involved in organized sects, do not include the wiccan laws in their doctrine. ==In literature==