Hell

**Hell**, is a spiritual realm for punishment and pain of the afterlife in the Abrahamic religions, as well as a prison for some inhuman creatures. Human souls who are sent to Hell are tormented and tortured for all eternity. Hell is said to be so terrible that even the Demons are said to hate it.

## **Characteristics and Appearance**

Hell is described to be a place so bad that even its own inhabitants fear and despise it. Hell appears in several religions. It is 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*.

Punishment in Hell typically corresponds to sins committed during life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each sin committed. but sometimes they are general, with condemned sinners relegated to one or more chamber of Hell or to a level of suffering.

In Christianity and Islam, Hell is often depicted as fiery, painful, and harsh, inflicting suffering on the guilty. Despite these common depictions of Hell as a place of fire, some other traditions portray Hell as cold. Among Christian descriptions Dante's *Inferno* portrays the innermost circle of Hell as a frozen lake of blood and guilt. But cold also played a part in earlier Christian depictions of Hell, beginning with the Apocalypse of Paul, originally from the early third century.

## **Locations**

### Nine Circles of Hell (Christianity)

* **Limbo** - Limbo contains the souls of unbaptized humans, although not sinful enough, did not accept the Abrahamic religions. Limbo is described as a gloomy and lonely place without torture.
* **Lust** - Lust is the second level of Hell, and contains the souls of those who were overcome with lust and were condemned for allowing their reason to be blinded by lust. These souls are buffeted back and forth by violent storms without rest. This symbolizes the power of lust.
* **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. Souls here are tortured by Hellhounds and skinned.
* **Greed** - The fourth level is inhabited by the souls of greedy and selfish humans. Souls condemned to this level are forced to fight each other with extremely heavy weights tied to their chests.
* **Wrath** - In the fifth level, the actively wrathful fight each other viciously on the surface of a slime lake, while the passively wrathful are trapped beneath the slime and blackness.
* **Heresy** - Souls condemned to Hell for heresy are locked away beneath the earth in flaming tombs for eternity.
* **Violence** - In the seventh level, murderers, rapists, war-makers, plunderers and tyrants are immersed in a river of boiling blood and fire.
* **Fraud** - Sinners condemned to this level are either whipped by horned Demons for eternity, forced to fight each other, placed downwards in holes while fires burn their feet, having their heads twisted backwards, getting thrown into a pit of hot boiling tar, being teared apart by Demons, walking down a narrow track for eternity while being weighed down with leaden robes, thrown and bound in a pit of snakes, or being hacked and mutilated by a Demon with a bloody sword.
* **Betrayal** - In the last level of Hell, sinners who betrayed other people have their heads trapped in holes of ice, and have their bodies mutilated by having their bodies twisted and distorted in every position.

### Seven Layers of Hell (Islam)

* **Jahannam** - This level is for Muslims who were sinful in the world. It has the least heat among all the levels and has the least painful punishment for the sinners. As the sinners enter through its gates their faces will be burned and the fire will eat their flesh. Here God will renew their flesh every time after they are burned.
* **Ladah** - This level is situated below Jahannam, and it is for people and Djinn who did not believe in God, rejected the Prophet’s messages and did not believe in them as the messengers of God. The main punishment in this level is that fire will eat away one’s organs one by one both externally and internally, and will finally destroy their body.
* **Saqar** - The third level of Jahannam and it is situated below Ladah. The punishment for the people here is that fire will eat up their flesh but not bones. The four reasons for which people land up in this level of Jahannam are: They did not perform Salah (prayer), they did not offer food to the poor, they used to talk vainly to those who in vain that is they used to follow the path of unjust and falsehood, and they refused the existence of the Day of Reward and Resurrection.
* **Al-Hutamah** - In this level, situated below Saqar, it is believed that the fire here will burn the sinners to the bones and emblaze their heart and inner organs. The fire will start from their feet and then go up to their heart. It is believed that the sinners will cry to the point where their tear glands will dry out, the blood will dry out.
* **Jaheem** - It is believed that it lies below Al-Hutamah, which is a big piece of coal and is bigger than the lowest level. Sinners will be thrown here because for three reasons: They did not give correct belief to God, declined to give the correct right to the creations, and did not encourage feeding the poor.
* **Saeer** - This level of hell is situated below Jaheem. This level has been kindling since it was made. It consists of 300 castles which have 300 huts each in which there are 300 rooms each and, in each room, there are 300 different types of penalties. The pain here is unimaginable, unbearable and it is very painful. Here there are scorpions, snakes, chain, ropes and whatnot. Also, it has a pit of agony which is the most painful punishment in the whole of hell.
* **Al-Hawwiyah** - This is the last and the worst level of hell. It is the seventh level of hell, situated below Saeer. It is said that no sinner will be released from this level. There is pitch darkness on this level. Backbiters and non-believers are punished here. The sinners in this level will be crushed under mountains with them lying on their faces. The hands of the sinners will be bound to their necks and their necks to their legs. And Zabanniyah surely will stand on them. The hands of these demons are supposed to be made of strong iron and as punishment to the sinners they will beat the sinners with their bare hands.

## **Inhabitants**

* Demons
* Hellhounds
* Damned Souls