A popular idea today is that: good souls go up to heaven, and bad souls burn in hell, beneath the earth – the underworld.
But this belief is an evolution of an ancient one shared by many cultures across the world; that the underworld was a place where all of us go when we die. What’s interesting is that descriptions of the underworld from different cultures share common themes.
The 6 common themes of underworlds
- a place for the dead
- obstacles to overcome
- almost always includes rivers
- often a ferryman who guides the soul
- a place of no return
- discovery of secret knowledge
Today we’ll explore the common themes of the underworld shared by various cultures around the ancient world, and together we’ll seek to understand why humans have come up with these common imaginations of a world they couldn’t possibly know.
HOME OF THE DEAD
To most of the ancient world, from Mesopotamia to ancient Greece and Japan, all newly deceased souls travel to the underworld – or netherworld – and reside there indiscriminately, as mere shadows, continuing a purposeless life. That’s why people bury their family members with their favourite objects, such as a game or a comb, in order to make their residence in the underworld more tolerable.
To the ancients, the living resides on earth, and the dead reside in the underworld. This view was consistent across most world myths and religions. The idea could likely be due to the fact that since the stone age, humans have buried their dead in the ground.
It’s difficult to know exactly why they did so, but many theories point to hygiene and showing respect for the dead. Corpses being devoured by animals is not a pretty sight. Their stench is not a pretty smell either. It seems only natural that the early religions imagined a world of the dead beneath our feet.
All souls journey to the underworld, but the ancient Egyptians took it one step further; souls will eventually face judgment. The bad souls, whose heart weighs heavier than the feather of the goddess of Justice (Maat), end up destroyed.
The Greeks eventually added a judgement system to their underworld – or Hades. Albeit a judgment that’s not necessarily morally fair. One of the judges of Hades was, after all, an ex-king from Crete, who himself had done various evil acts.
Souls were directed according to the composition of the lives they led;
- Distinguished souls were sent to the Elysium, where the afterlife was easy
- Ordinary souls to the Asphodel Meadows
- Souls who wasted their lives on unrequited love went to the Mourning fields
- And the bad souls were sent to Tartarus, located deep beneath the underworld, where they would be punished for their sins
Sounds like today’s biblical hell huh? Well, the bible was first translated by the Greeks, so it’s no surprise. Sure enough, the word Tartarus survived and is mentioned in the bible, to describe hell. Let’s move on to the first common theme of the ancient underworlds…
OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME
The underworld is a place of many obstacles. As if the souls had to prove their strength in order to reside in the underworld.
The Xibalba, the Mayan underworld which means ‘place of fright’, is a place full of tests, trials and traps. There would be rivers full of scorpions or rivers full of blood which the soul must cross.
In other religions, the souls must overcome obstacles prior to being judged.
The ancient Egyptians write about their underworld – Duat – being divided into 12 sectors, representing the 12 hours of the night. Each of them contained obstacles that involved demons and supernatural animals, followed by a gate guarded by a goddess who would test the knowledge of the deceased.
Overall, the courage, strength and memory of the deceased were tested. All 12 gates must be passed in order for the weighing of the heart – or the judgement of the soul. All of these details are found in ancient Egyptian Funerary texts, which were discovered in excavated tombs. It’s concluded that Ancient Egyptians would bury their dead with these inscriptions to aid them in surpassing all the gates of the Egyptian underworld.
CROSSING THE RIVER
Of the underworld obstacles, rivers are extremely common. There is almost always a river that the dead must cross. There’s one in the Finnish Tuonela, the Maori Rarohenga, the Mictlan of the Aztec people, and let’s not forget: the famous ancient Greek river Styx through which souls must cross in order to reach the gate where they would be judged.
The presence of a body of water seems to be of great importance in the underworld – perhaps to symbolize life?
In the Hindu belief, as mentioned in the Puranas, there are 3 main worlds; the Heavenly (or Loka) divided into 7 levels, the Earthly, and the Underworld (or the Patalas) divided into 7 levels, beneath which there is the Naraka, the Hindu version of hell. The Naraka’s location varies depending on the scripture. And at the very bottom of these multiple levels of existence, there is a big ocean called Garbhodaka. Its location also depends on the Hindu scripture.
Hindus, along with Buddhists and Jains, believe that souls remain in a level of existence for a finite amount of time, depending on their karma. The souls would travel up or down the levels, again depending on their karma. Water might also symbolize transit or transport.
THE FERRYMAN
Transport is also represented by a ferryman or a guide in stories about the underworld. In the Greek Hades, Charon is the ferryman riding a boat on the river Styx, and he only boards souls that have had a proper burial. A proper Greek burial also consists of leaving a coin on the tongue of the deceased. That coin is to pay Charon for the crossing.
In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, the ferryman is Urshanabi, and he is mentioned in the oldest written poem, where he guides a hero named Gilgamesh.
The ferryman is essentially a guide for the newly deceased soul. He is also known as a psychopomp and isn’t necessarily represented as a boat pilot. The ancient Egyptians imagined their psychopomp as a Canine deity – Anubis to be exact. Just like how the ferryman onboards people and takes them places, the dog being the man’s best companion is his guide.
PLACE OF NO RETURN
Do you see how the ancient’s renditions of the world of the dead are essentially based on concepts they understand in “the real world”?
In Greek mythology, Persephone was abducted by the god of the underworld, Hades. Zeus had to appease her distraught mother, so he allowed Persephone’s return, but unfortunately, Persephone had eaten 6 pomegranate seeds, which bound her to the underworld eternally.
A similar plot is seen in the Japanese creation myth. The father god, Izanagi travelled to Yomi, the Japanese underworld, to retrieve his dead sister-wife Izanami, but because the latter had eaten food from its furnace, she was bound to remain there forever.
Myths also suggest that visitors are allowed into the netherworld but cannot bring the dead back to life, also using a particular narrative pattern, this time of “losing faith” or “not following instructions”.
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Hades allows Orpheus to take his dead wife back on one condition; that he doesn’t look back. On their way out of the underworld, Orpheus couldn’t help himself; he wanted to be 100% sure that she really was behind him … because he looked back, he lost her for good.
The same goes for the Japanese creation myth, where Izanami was given a second chance to return to the living world with her husband, under one condition; that he keeps walking and does not look for her. Unfortunately, he lost faith and did go looking for her… and found her decaying corpse.
Dead people just don’t come back.
TREASURES, SACRED KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM
According to ancient myths, the underworld is also a place where wisdom, treasures and knowledge reside.
In Hindu belief, the 7 levels of the underworld, or Patalas, are the realm of the Naga snakes. Remember that the Patalas are different from the Naraka or hell, according to the Puranas at least. And despite the Patalas often interpreted by modern Hindus as a hellish place of monstrous beings, demons and greed, South Asian scriptures describe the Nagas as protectors and supporters. Nagas are associated with water, and like water, they can be dangerous but are often beneficial to humans.
In the Hindu creation myth, the king of all nagas supports the Lord Vishnu as he rests. In the Buddhist myth, a Naga shelters the buddha from incoming dangers.
Nagas are also seen as the guardians of jewels. The Puranas (Bhavagata and Vishnu Puranas) describe the lower realm as even more beautiful than the Svarga (heaven). According to the texts, it’s like an underground paradise, filled with light-emitting jewels.
The ancient Maori people also saw their underworld – the Rarohenga – as a heavenly abode. In fact, they saw it as equal to the upper heaven, and it is up to the dead to choose between the heaven above and the one below to reside in.
This also makes sense from a burial practice point of view; other methods of discarding the dead exist, such as cremation, or letting vultures eat away at dead corpses – a practice known as sky burial. These methods could have led to the idea of dead souls travelling upwards. Nonetheless, the ancient Maori believed that the wisdom that brought about their customs and rituals (such as their facial tattoos) came from the underworld.
For some reason, the humans of antiquity envision the underworld as a place of knowledge.
In Sumerian mythology, the underworld (or Kur) contains – check this out – a tree that bears the fruit of knowledge… If this doesn’t ring a bell to you!.. Though unlike the knowledge of good and evil, as explicitly told in the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve, this knowledge is of sex.
Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and war, really badly wanted to eat that fruit, so she asked her twin brother, the sun god Utu, to take her there. So he did. And because Inanna ate from the fruit of knowledge of sex…… she … became knowledgeable about sex! (Haha, did you think she’d get banished?) Hence, Inna also being a goddess of sex.
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Myths of secret knowledge and wisdom residing in the underworld are abundant, and it makes one wonder why. Perhaps it is due to the regenerative forces of the earth.
Put yourself in the ancient human’s shoes (in this case, bare feet!); you see trees and fruits constantly reproducing out of the soil. Beneath the soil, there are snakes, worms and creepy creatures of all sorts, which could likely have influenced the idea of obstacles in the underworld – one must be very strong to endure that.
Furthermore, once buried, dead bodies eventually disappear. Without understanding the science of nature, one can only believe that beneath the earth reside magical powers. Powers of reproduction and transformation.
Today, through science, we understand that soil, water and sun provide the chemical energy to turn a seed into a tree. We understand how bacteria and fungi decompose organic bodies. Nonetheless, religions continue to exist. However, their narratives have evolved.
The “underworld” of today is associated with hell, where evil souls are damned to suffer in lavas of fire hotter than we could imagine. Perhaps this evolution of idea also has to do with the association of the earth’s excruciating heat (heat baths, volcanoes…) with suffering. Or the association of the skies with “respect”, and that of creepy creatures below our feet with “disrespect”.
Some would theorize that as humans advanced from being animals to becoming wiser, they started walking upright with their heads higher up. Whereas animals, less wise, are closer to the ground. Some associate evil with the ground for other reasons – Nietzsche called the devil the spirit of gravity because through him all things fall.
Religious narratives evolve as human understanding and conception of the world evolve. We reject religious stories that don’t make sense to us anymore. We keep those that do, whether scientifically or symbolically. And sometimes, we’re so culturally attached to old ideas that we choose to make them make sense to us.
That’s human nature; telling stories, reassessing them and modifying them in order to cope with life and understand it.
