Hell

### Aliases

Sitra Achra, Sitra Ahra, Nine Hells, Hades, the Underworld, the Abyss, Gehenna, Sheol, the Netherworld, the Demon World, the Burning Hells, Jahannam, Chaoplasm, Abrahamic Underworld, Inferno, Jekkad, Dark Realm, Lake of Fire, Topheth, Home for Infinite Losers, Makai, Heck, countless other names

## Details

### Notable Inhabitants

Ayin, Demons, False Gods, demonic Monsters, damned souls, Fallen Angels

### Located within

World Tree

**Hell** is a realm that exists in the deepest and darkest layers of the universe, in the farthest and distant place possible from the light of God. Hell was created by Ayin, ruled by Satan and Lucifer.

## Overview

Hell is described as the most terrifying, horrible plane of existence where the wicked and sinful are punished for eternity (or at least for immensely long periods of time) for their sins and often in the most horrific of ways.

In Hell is where people are condemned and punished for their crimes and evils during life. Even if a person manages to escape the punishment of men during their lifetime, they will not be able to escape Yaldabaoth's punishment in Hell, regardless of the speech used like "give me another chance" or "I promise I won't do that if you revive me". The time for repentance is during life, not after death, and unlike Heaven and Earth, Hell is the fairest place in the universe, since there is no mercy for those who do evil, no matter the position, amount of money, supplications or prayers, none of this saves a person from Hell, because there is no hope there. Hell is such a horrible place that even the Devil himself doesn't like to be there.

Hell is believed to be a realm that is far larger than the human world, and that houses different regions or kingdoms where various demon lords, demonic nobles and devils rule much like the global hierarchy of Earth. Hell is said to be so terrible that even demons despise it with many losing their sense of self and become nothing but mindless spirits. Hell is ever-growing and it differs for every person with only those of the supernatural being able to see the true Hell. If the sinner's crimes are particularly serious and dangerous, special torture chambers shall be built specifically for these sinners, where they will be tortured non-stop for eternity that couldn't be described by mere words.

Hell is similar to Purgatory but differs in the fact that Hell is usually seen as a permanent state of suffering and evil opposed to Purgatory, which is traditionally seen as a place of temporary punishment before being admitted into Paradise. Purgatory, however, is also known to be another form of Hell for the monsters of Earth.

Despite this thought, Hell isn't permanent for most, just a provisional punishing for whatever done when alive. After the punishment they are placed in Purgatory and are allowed to make up for these sins, giving them a chance to enter Heaven. Hell is the punishment, Purgatory is the redemption, and Heaven is the reward.

## Description

One infamous account of Hell comes from Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet, writer, philosopher and demonologist who notably traveled through **Hell**, Purgatory and Heaven, meeting the souls of the damned and saved, as well as demons, angels and even God Himself. He wrote his experiences down as the Divine Comedy, a three part poem recounting his experiences. Besides the play, he also wrote down countless amount of notes describing the afterlife, and the various beings that inhabit those realms, which has served as important lore for all those who investigate the supernatural, occult, demonic or divine.

### Limbo

Limbo is the First Circle of Hell along with being the edge of Hell, is the place that it was speculative about the afterlife condition of those who die in the original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned and also the burning place. It is also connected to one of the doors of Heaven.

At the end of Limbo where the souls of the damned are sentenced to their suffering by King Minos. Limbo is also revealed to be the Circle that is connected to the various pagan Underworlds.

### Lust

In the second circle of Hell are those overcome by lust. These "carnal malefactors" are condemned for allowing their appetites to sway their reason. These souls are buffeted back and forth by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow needlessly and aimlessly: "as the lovers drifted into self-indulgence and were carried away by their passions, so now they drift for ever. The bright, voluptuous sin is now seen as it is – a howling darkness of helpless discomfort." Since lust involves mutual indulgence and is not, therefore, completely self-centered, Dante deems it the least heinous of the sins and its punishment is the most benign within Hell proper. The "ruined slope" in this circle is thought to be a reference to the earthquake that occurred after the death of Christ.

### Gluttony

In the third circle, the gluttonous wallow in a vile, putrid slush produced by a ceaseless, foul, icy rain – "a great storm of putrefaction" – as punishment for subjecting their reason to a voracious appetite. Cerberus, not the three-headed dog, (described as "il gran vermo", literally "the great worm"), the monstrous three-headed beast of Hell, ravenously guards the gluttons lying in the freezing mire, mauling and flaying them with his claws as they howl like dogs.

The gluttons grovel in the mud by themselves, sightless and heedless of their neighbors, symbolizing the cold, selfish, and empty sensuality of their lives. Just as lust has revealed its true nature in the winds of the previous circle, here the slush reveals the true nature of sensuality – which includes not only overindulgence in food and drink, but also other kinds of addiction.

### Greed

The Fourth Circle is guarded by a figure known as Plutus, the deity of wealth in classical mythology.

Those whose attitude toward material goods deviated from the appropriate mean are punished in the fourth circle. They include the avaricious or miserly (including many "clergymen, and popes and cardinals"), who hoarded possessions, and the prodigal, who squandered them. The hoarders and spendthrifts joust, using great weights as weapons that they push with their chests.

### Wrath

In the swampy, stinking waters of the river Styx – the Fifth Circle – the actively wrathful fight each other viciously on the surface of the slime, while the sullen (the passively wrathful) lie beneath the water, withdrawn, "into a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe". At the surface of the foul Stygian marsh, "the active hatreds rend and snarl at one another; at the bottom, the sullen hatreds lie gurgling, unable even to express themselves for the rage that chokes them". As the last circle of Incontinence, the "savage self-frustration" of the Fifth Circle marks the end of "that which had its tender and romantic beginnings in the dalliance of indulged passion."

#### Entrance to Dis

In the distance, there are high towers that resemble fiery red mosques, which is later revealed to be the City of Dis. Dis, itself surrounded by the Stygian marsh, contains Lower Hell within its walls. Dis is one of the names of Pluto, the classical king of the underworld, in addition to being the name of the realm. The walls of Dis are guarded by fallen angels, the Furies, and Medusa.

### Heresy

In the sixth circle, heretics are trapped in flaming tombs. A damned soul known as Farinata explains that what the souls in Hell know of life on earth comes from seeing the future, not from any observation of the present. Consequently, when "the portal of the future has been shut", it will no longer be possible for them to know anything.

### Violence

The Seventh Circle, divided into three rings, houses the Violent where sinners whom have committed violence against others and themselves.

* **Ring 1: Against Neighbors: I**n the first round of the seventh circle, the murderers, war-makers, plunderers, and tyrants are immersed in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood and fire. Ciardi writes, "as they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever, each according to the degree of his guilt". The Centaurs, commanded by Chiron and Pholus, patrol the ring, shooting arrows into any sinners who emerge higher out of the boiling blood than each is allowed.

* **Ring 2: Against Self:** The second round of the seventh circle is the Wood of the Suicides, in which the souls of the people who attempted or committed suicide are transformed into gnarled, thorny trees and then fed upon by Harpies, hideous clawed birds with the faces of women; the trees are only permitted to speak when broken and bleeding.

* **Ring 3: Against God, Art, and Nature:** The third round of the seventh circle is a great Plain of Burning Sand scorched by great flakes of flame falling slowly down from the sky, an image derived from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Blasphemers (the Violent against God) are stretched supine upon the burning sand, the Sodomites (the Violent against Nature) run in circles, while the Usurers (the Violent against Art, which is the Grandchild of God) crouch huddled and weeping.

In the lower portions of the Circle and by the gates of Fraud is the Monster of Fraud, Geryon. Geryon, meanwhile, is an image of fraud, combining human, bestial, and reptilian elements: Geryon is a "monster with the general shape of a wyvern but with the tail of a scorpion, hairy arms, a gaudily-marked reptilian body, and the face of a just and honest man".The pleasant human face on this grotesque body evokes the insincere fraudster whose intentions "behind the face" are all monstrous, cold-blooded, and stinging with poison.

### Fraud

The Eighth Circle, called Malebolge ("Evil ditches"), is the upper half of the Hell of the Fraudulent and Malicious. The Eighth Circle is a large funnel of stone shaped like an amphitheatre around which run a series of ten deep, narrow, concentric ditches or trenches called bolge (singular: bolgia). Within these ditches are punished those guilty of Simple Fraud. From the foot of the Great Cliff to the Well (which forms the neck of the funnel) are large spurs of rock, like umbrella ribs or spokes, which serve as bridges over the ten ditches. Dorothy L. Sayers writes that the Malebolge is, "the image of the City in corruption: the progressive disintegration of every social relationship, personal and public. Sexuality, ecclesiastical and civil office, language, ownership, counsel, authority, psychic influence, and material interdependence – all the media of the community's interchange are perverted and falsified".

Fraud is divided into ten trenches, called Bolgia. Each Bolgia holds a different kind of fraudulent souls:

* Bolgia 1: Panderers and seducers march in separate lines in opposite directions, whipped by demons.
* Bolgia 2: Flatterers are steeped in human excrement, which represents the words they produced.
* Bolgia 3: Those who committed simony are placed head-first in holes in the rock with flames burning on the soles of their feet.
* Bolgia 4: Sorcerers, astrologers, and false prophets here have their heads twisted around on their bodies backward, referring primarily to attempts to see into the future by forbidden means.
* Bolgia 5: Corrupt politicians are immersed in a lake of boiling pitch, which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their corrupt deals.
* Bolgia 6: Hypocrites listlessly walking along wearing gilded lead cloaks, which represent the falsity behind the surface appearance of their actions.
* Bolgia 7: Thieves are pursued and bitten by snakes and lizards. The full horror of the thieves' punishment is revealed gradually: just as they stole other people's substance in life, their very identity becomes subject to theft here, and the snake bites make them undergo various transformations.
* Bolgia 8: Fraudulent advisers or evil counselors are concealed within individual flames. These are not people who gave false advice, but people who used their position to advise others to engage in fraud.
* Bolgia 9: A sword-wielding demon hacks at the Sowers of Discord, dividing parts of their bodies as in life they divided others. As they make their rounds the wounds heal, only to have the demon tear apart their bodies again.
* Bolgia 10: Various sorts of falsifiers (fake alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impostors), who are a "disease" on society, are themselves afflicted with different types of diseases.

#### Central Well of the Malebolge

By the end of the Malebolge is the Central Well, at the bottom of which lies the Ninth and final Circle of Hell. The classical and biblical Giants – who perhaps symbolize pride and other spiritual flaws lying behind acts of treachery – stand perpetual guard inside the well-pit, their legs embedded in the banks of the Ninth Circle while their upper halves rise above the rim and can be visible from the Malebolge. Among the Giants, there is Nimrod (who tried to build the Tower of Babel; he shouts out the unintelligible Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi); Ephialtes and Otus (who both tried to storm Olympus during the Gigantomachy; they have their arms chained up) and Briareus (who is claimed to have challenged the gods); and Tityos, who insulted Jupiter. Also here is Antaeus, who did not join in the rebellion against the Olympian gods and therefore is not chained.

### Treachery

Treachery is the Ninth Circle of Hell where lies the souls of those who betrayed that which matters most.

Treachery is the deepest part of Hell that is the only connection to the Greek Underworld via Cocytus. It acts as a prison for powerful and dangerous figures such as Samael and Kokabiel. It is also serves as a home to many rare and dangerous creatures such as the Pale Horse. It’s for those who committed the gravest sins or those who perpetrated betrayals were eternally bound in the cruelest depths of Hell.

There are four concentric zones, or "rounds", to Treachery, each in descending order of seriousness, from betrayal of family ties, to betrayal of community ties, betrayal of guests, and betrayal of liege lords.

* Round 1: Named Caïna, after Cain, who killed his brother. Traitors to kindred are here immersed in the ice up to their chins.
* Round 2: Named Antenora, after Antenor of Troy, who according to medieval tradition, betrayed his city to the Greeks. Traitors to political entities, such as parties, cities, or countries, are located here and imprisoned in the same way as the traitors in Caïna.
* Round 3: Named Ptolomaea, after Ptolemy, son of Abubus, who invited Simon Maccabaeus and his sons to a banquet and then killed them. Traitors to their guests are punished here, lying supine in the ice, which covers them, except for their faces. They are punished more severely than the previous traitors, since the relationship to guests is an entirely voluntary one.
* Round 4: Named Judecca, after Judas Iscariot, Biblical betrayer of Christ. Here are the traitors to their lords and benefactors. All of the sinners punished within are completely encapsulated in ice, distorted in all conceivable positions.

## History

### Creation

In the beginning, the Creator came to be, and along with Him, the Decreator also came to be. When Yesh tried to start creation, Ayin tried to destroy God's universe, challenging Him to war. God managed by His power to prevail over Ayin; for "light always conquers darkness." The Great Beast of Evil, frightened, fled to the darkest corners and farthest from the light of the Lord of the Megaverse.

The Great Beast then decided to create her own realm to live within. This realm was an extension of her body, similar to a butterfly that creates a cocoon of its own body, where Ayin stayed to dwell within. When the Lord found Ayin, He realized that the Great Beast was sleeping in the Abyss created by herself, probably in a kind of hibernation. The Almighty, taking advantage of the opportune moment, chained the Beast of Darkness with a seal of forbidden level known as the "Coffin of Eternal Darkness", binding the Primal Beast in Hell. When Ayin "woke up", she realized that she was trapped and could not break free as the seal placed on her had weakened her powers to an infinite level, with her now being unfathomably inferior to what she was in time immemorial.

After being imprisoned in Hell, Ayin began to lay eggs of herself, while some sources say she gives birth asexually, from her own body. In any case, from Ayin's body were born several creatures, known as Demons, among them, Satanel. These creatures born from Ayin's body began to reproduce and generate more demons, these being her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and descendants, and perhaps her greatest creation. It is said that Ayin's intention is for her children to break the seal that is imprisoning her, which is why Satanel purposely wanted to enter God's troops to allow the influence of the Mother of Hell to reach the Son of Dawn and start a rebellion, with little by little the seal being weakened as evil and darkness spread across the universe.

### Empire

After Satanel and Lucifer's fall, he and his angels, now demons, were cast into Hell by Michael and his angels. When the Morning Star arrived in Hell, he realized that Hell was a very dark and gloomy place, and living up to his title of "bearer of light", Lucifer with his flames lit the lights in that dimension, transforming Hell into a place in an unusually large area filled with fire, magma and smoke. After Lucifer turned on the lights of Hell, he conquered most of the regions of the Infernal Abyss and determined each region of Hell that each of the Seven Princes of Hell would dominate.

Although commonly considered a place where sinners are sent by God, this is actually due to confusion, as people confuse Hell with the Lake of Fire that was made for Satan and his demons, which is where God manifests his wrath. Hell was created by Ayin, Satan and Lucifer. When a sinful soul dies, it doesn't ascend to Heaven or go to Purgatory, which leaves it alone in the spiritual realm, causing the demons to take advantage of the soul's being alone and catch it and throw it into Hell, where they they torture souls with fire, ice, knives, swords, axes and spears, scourging, crucifying, trampling, raping, dismembering, among various other methods of unimaginable torture, the soul, again and again. However, God could do nothing to help souls, for this was the consequence of free will; people choose their salvation or destruction.

### Love descends into Hell

For thousands of years, Satan and his demons tortured sinful human beings cruelly and bloody, in a realm where injustice and evil reign. Tired of so much evil on the part of the Devil towards his children, God got tired of sitting around looking at what the Devil and Ayin did to humans. God then took provision, and sent His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to go to Earth and take upon Himself all the sins of mankind, so that He would be punished in their place, and so Jesus did, accepting the mission given by His Father. Jesus on the cross took upon himself all the sins of human beings, not becoming a sinner, but sin itself embodied. By becoming sin itself, God took all his wrath towards sin on Jesus, who after receiving all divine punishment, surrendered his spirit to God.

When Jesus died, his body lost its spirit, with his spirit returning to God and his body dying. Jesus' soul, however, was sent to Hell, not because he committed sin, but because he wanted to go there. When Jesus descended into the Flaming Abyss, Hell trembled at His arrival, with all souls witnessing Christ's descent into the Abyss, something that for Satan was something inexplicable for the Son of God descending into Hell of his own free will was not something that he had in mind, for his intention was to corrupt Jesus in order to condemn him, but the Enlightened One had not committed any sin.

Although Satan and his demons tried to stop Jesus from speaking, one word was enough and the Devil fell to the ground, forced to let Jesus speak to the humans. During Friday and Saturday, Jesus was preaching to the sinners in Hell, and explained to them that God still loved them and sent him to deliver them from there. Jesus explained that if they believed that God had the power to free them from Hell, it would be so, for their sins were already forgiven and Hell was no longer a place for them to live, but still, salvation was a choice of each one, for this was the fruit of free will.

The words of Jesus brought comfort and hope to the people who were in Hell that, when they believed in his words, on the third day after the death of the Enlightened One, a miracle took place. On Sunday night, Hell shook, the chains that bound sinners broke, and the fabric of the universe shook as the dead body of Jesus opened its eyes, releasing luminous, flaming energy from them. Along with Jesus' resurrection, all those who were in Hell and believed in his words were also resurrected, with their graves opening and they coming out as saints with their sins washed away.

It is believed that in the Apocalypse, God will destroy Hell forever, along with all the demons and all the sinners who even with Jesus' sacrifice refused to put aside their wickedness, sending them all to the Lake of Fire, where the wrath of God is manifested forever, with the flames of Yaldabaoth eternally burning the prisoners of it. While the Devil and his allies would be thrown into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone, Lucifer would be thrown back into his Cage, while Ayin would be thrown into the Abyss that was once his son. Finally, God would finish his last pretense: to separate Good from Evil, causing Hell to perish.