Hell

[5][6] Proto–Germanic *xalja-wītjan (or *halja-wītjan) is reconstructed from Old Norse hel-víti 'hell', Old English helle-wíte 'hell-torment, hell', Old Saxon helli-wīti 'hell', and the Middle High German feminine noun helle-wīze.

[16] 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.

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.

[23] Modern understanding of Egyptian notions of hell relies on six ancient texts:[24] The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground,[25] where inhabitants were believed to continue "a shadowy version of life on earth".

[26]: 58  Nonetheless, funerary evidence indicates that some people believed that the goddess Inanna, Ereshkigal's younger sister, had the power to award her devotees with special favors in the afterlife.

It is either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades (the entire underworld) with Tartarus being the hellish component.

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.

[35] According to a few sources, hell is below ground, and described as an uninviting wet[36] or fiery place reserved for sinful people in the Ainu religion, as stated by missionary John Batchelor.

[38] There is also belief that the soul of someone who has been wicked during lifetime, committed suicide, got murdered or died in great agony would become a ghost (tukap) who would haunt the living,[38] to come to fulfillment from which it was excluded during life.

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[71] immediately after death.

However, many Liberal Christians throughout Mainline Protestant churches believe in universal reconciliation (see below), even though it contradicts the traditional doctrines that are usually held by the evangelicals within their denominations.

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".

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.

[citation needed] Christian Universalists believe in universal reconciliation, the belief that all human souls will be eventually reconciled with God and admitted to heaven.

[citation needed] 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,[104] filled with blazing fire, boiling water, and a variety of other torments for those who have been condemned to it in the hereafter.

[108] 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.

[119] 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.

Polytheism (shirk) is regarded as a particularly grievous sin; therefore entering Paradise is forbidden to a polytheist (mushrik) because his place is hell;[122] 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.

[104] One popular concept arrange the earths as follows:[130][131] In the Baháʼí Faith, the conventional descriptions of hell and heaven are considered to be symbolic representations of spiritual conditions.

All created beings are imperfect and thus have at least one misdeed to their record; but if one has generally led a meritorious life, one ascends to Svarga, a temporary realm of enjoyment similar to Paradise, after a brief period of expiation in hell and before the next reincarnation, according to the law of karma.

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.

Incorporating ideas from Taoism and Buddhism as well as traditional Chinese folk religion, Diyu is a kind of purgatory place which serves not only to punish but also to renew spirits ready for their next incarnation.

Punishment also varies according to belief, but most legends speak of highly imaginative chambers where wrong-doers are sawn in half, beheaded, thrown into pits of filth or forced to climb trees adorned with sharp blades.

However, most legends agree that once a soul (usually referred to as a 'ghost') has atoned for their deeds and repented, he or she is given the Drink of Forgetfulness by Meng Po and sent back into the world to be reborn, possibly as an animal or a poor or sick person, for further punishment.

Zoroastrianism has historically suggested several possible fates for the wicked, including annihilation, purgation in molten metal, and eternal punishment, all of which have standing in Zoroaster's writings.

[citation needed] In his Divina commedia (Divine Comedy), set in the year 1300, Dante Alighieri employed the concept of taking Virgil as his guide through Inferno (and then, in the second canticle, up the mountain of Purgatorio).

John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) opens with the fallen angels, including their leader Satan, waking up in hell after having been defeated in the war in heaven and the action returns there at several points throughout the poem.

Piers Anthony in his series Incarnations of Immortality portrays examples of heaven and hell via Death, Fate, Underworld, Nature, War, Time, Good-God, and Evil-Devil.

Michael Moorcock is one of many who offer Chaos-Evil-(Hell) and Uniformity-Good-(Heaven) as equally unacceptable extremes which must be held in balance; in particular in the Elric and Eternal Champion series.