Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

266 Underworld
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Underworld
The underworld has been typically viewed in
various mythical and religious traditions as a
world located under the surface of the earth where
the spirits of the dead live, often under the rule of
a divine being. In ancient religious traditions
across the globe, the underworld dimension could
be reached through a tunnel or opening that led
underground. This opening was often identified as
the mouth of a mythical monster. The hero who
entered the underworld usually aimed to rescue a
loved one or to gain the gift of immortality, almost
always in vain.
The Maori of New Zealand explained the
origin of humankind’s mortality with the descent
of their mythical hero Maui into her giant
mother’s own body while she was asleep. However,
she awoke while he was in her mouth, and was
slain. In relation to the daily movement of the sun
from east to west, the sunset was used by many
traditions to locate the realm of the dead in the
west. In ancient Mesopotamia, the underworld
was viewed as a dark realm, a land of no return
under the tyrannical rule of a queen (later a king
and a queen).
The idea of a hereafter that differed depending
upon social status was an innovation of the
ancient Egyptians. Aristocrats were believed to
travel to celestial blessed lands to enjoy a life
devoid of pain and suffering. Common people, on
the other hand, were believed to spend eternity
near their own tombs or in the netherworld (they
were buried in dry sand that accelerated the
decomposition process). The netherworld of
ancient Egypt, as depicted in the Book of the Dead,
was ruled by Osiris (originally, possibly a divinity
of the vegetation) who according to myth was
dismembered by his jealous brother and recomposed
by his wife Isis.
A less negative conception of the underworld
was found in Greco-Roman civilization where the
underworld was ruled by King Hades (Roman
Pluto) and his wife Persephone (Roman
Proserpina): Upon death, the individual’s soul was
believed to assume a ghostly shape that resembled
the person when alive. Death leveled all social or
moral distinctions among the dead, bound to live
forever in a state of boredom. Those bound to
some sort of punishment or suffering either had
remained unburied or were not fed enough sacrificial
food. The kingdom of Hades was a dark
underground realm surrounded on all sides by
five rivers (Lethe, Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, and
Cocytus) and at the entrance the mythical threeheaded
dog Cerberus stood guard. Plato introduced
the idea of a postmortem judgment based
on good and evil deeds during one’s life into Greek
spirituality. This philosopher also aimed at understanding
Hades as a psychological state rather
than as a physical location, while all the symbology
related to it was interpreted allegorically.
In Judaism the underworld was viewed as a
dusty shadowy realm called Sheol, representing
the extreme point in the universe, at the opposite
end from heaven. In the Ethiopian Apocalypse of
Enoch, Sheol is subdivided into three areas
according to merit: subsequently it came to be
identified with the Gehenna (hell), imagined