Most major religions have a version of Hell.
A place in the afterlife, usually where corrupt and immoral souls are cast, and usually for
eternal damnation… or at least until they truly repent of their sins.
Or until Judgment Day.
Or reincarnation.
So, what if you really were to find yourself at its door?
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if you fell
through the gates of Hell?
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Though most religions preach Hell, or at least parts of the afterlife that aren’t Heaven,
there aren’t many belief systems where you can reasonably expect to find yourself lost
there by accident before your death.
It’s not as though you can unexpectedly trip and fall into the fire as there’s almost
always a reason you wind up there, and not a good one at that!
In most mythologies, there’s a path, an entrance and some kind of keeper of Hell…
earn passage past all of them, though, and unfortunately you have made it.
In Greek myth, for example, if you know where an entrance to the Underworld is, you can
simply go there… but unless your time among the living is actually up, you’ll have trouble
getting in.
You won’t be able to get past the various chthonic inhabitants and forces, which all
strive to stop the dead from escaping.
Religious belief and theology aside, however, we can say that the Gates of Hell do really
exist in the real world because there are multiple locations across the world map all
claiming to be them.
Usually, these claims are based on either stories about certain places or just because
they look particularly hellish.
The Darvaza Gas Crater in Turkmenistan, for example, is nicknamed the Gates of Hell because
it’s a giant, desolate crater that’s been on fire since the 1970s… so, it’s not
exactly a welcoming vista.
The real-life Gates often match with volcanoes, too, for fairly obvious reasons.
One of Earth’s most infamous volcanoes, Mount Etna in Sicily off the coast of southern
Italy, has a long history of being branded a portal to Hell.
The fire and brimstone are key, then, but so’s the idea that you must descend into
Hell.
While Heaven is typically painted in the clouds, Hell reaches deep into Earth and stone.
The under of the underworld is always crucial.
In Greek mythology, perilous descents actually form a genre of fable in their own right,
called katabasis - which literally means to go down or descend.
One famous katabasis is the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where Orpheus, grief-stricken
over his wife Eurydice’s death, descends to the Underworld and charms Hades to let
him take her back to the surface.
The catch is that for as long as the journey back takes, Orpheus mustn’t look back at
his beloved.
Tragically, he does look back, and Eurydice’s ghost is lost forever.
Stories like this are particularly prevalent in Greek myth, appearing in influential epics
like Homer’s Odyssey, but they crossover into many other systems and cultures, too.
Even Jesus is said to have visited Hell during the three days between his crucifixion and
resurrection.
But perhaps the most famous descent story of all isn’t a Greek myth, but Dante Alighieri’s
“Divine Comedy”.
“The Divine Comedy” is a medieval epic poem which follows Dante as he gets lost in
the woods and finds himself descending deep into the Earth.
He encounters the Roman poet Virgil – who himself also wrote an iconic descent story
in the “Aeneid”.
Virgil then becomes Dante’s guide through a version of the afterlife that draws mostly
from Christian tradition, but with Greek influences too.
The first and most famous part of the “Divine Comedy” is “Inferno”, where Dante travels
through the Nine Circles of Hell itself, witnessing the tortures that await those who have committed
various sins throughout their life.
The Circles descend in severity from the First at the top, Limbo, where pagans are punished
simply by refusal into Heaven… all the way to the tundra of the Ninth Circle, Treachery,
where sinners are frozen in a vast lake for eternity.
Other versions of Hell feature similar grades, too… such as with Jahannam in Islam, which
is also split into levels, above which it’s said there’s a bridge that sinners are destined
to fall from, quite literally, into Hell.
For Hindus, Buddhists, and with many other Eastern religions, there’s Naraka… another
unenviable place composed of many realms where you’ll be, amongst other things, burned
and tortured.
One difference with Naraka compared to most other concepts of Hell, however, is that being
cast there isn’t necessarily an eternal fate.
Instead, it’s where you go to suffer the consequences of your actions until you’ve
been punished enough, at which point it’s possible that you’ll be reincarnated.
Finally, even back in the Ancient Greek Underworld, where all souls wound up, the tiered system
persists… with the regions Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium, roughly translating as Hell,
Purgatory, and Heaven respectively.
There are further sub-sections to the Greek afterlife, too, like the Mourning Fields (a
place for those who suffered unrequited love in life) and the Isles of the Blessed (a place
for the most exceptional entrants into Elysium).
But back to Dante, who is definitely experiencing a predominantly Christian Hell.
That’s clear enough from the fact that Virgil, his guide, is unable to reach Paradise because
he’s a Pagan (and not Christian) soul.
Regardless, Dante and Virgil encounter lots of demons on their epic journey, and they
even pass through a literal gate of Hell at the beginning, which is famously inscribed
with the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.
So, if you were to fall through the same gates, you could expect a similarly pessimistic sentiment.
Luckily for Dante, though, since he isn’t actually dead yet, he isn’t stuck in the
Inferno forevermore.
Instead, Dante and Virgil venture through the Nine Circles and eventually ascend a mountain
back to Purgatory.
For the third and final part of the “Divine Comedy”, Dante is allowed into Paradise
where, having left Virgil behind, he’s guided by Beatrice instead.
In Paradise, he meets angels and saints and, eventually, God, who bestows upon him a deep
understanding of life and the afterlife.
Say you had this understanding, though, and took it back to Earth…
It could be a double-edged sword, seeing as mortals aren’t usually permitted to know
the secrets of what happens after you die.
In some versions of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, for example, Orpheus himself is
smote by Zeus because he knows too much.
But that is Dante’s fate.
He doesn’t need Faith in the afterlife anymore, because he’s seen it.
If you somehow fell through the Gates of Hell, somehow survived, and went the way of Dante,
then it bodes fairly well for you.
Since most iterations of Hell are presented as one part of a fair and just afterlife,
it would be unfair and unjust for you to be damned there ahead of your time – especially
if you had done your best to live a moral life in the mortal world.
In the same tradition as Dante, Virgil, and various mythological heroes and religious
figures of old, you’d perhaps be treated (in the loosest sense of the word) to a guided
tour of Hell and its many regions and demons.
And maybe you’d even be permitted into Heaven, too, for a quick look around.
But then, it would be back to the daily grind of life on Earth.
Only, now, you’d have enlightenment.
If you were to go more the way of Orpheus, then not only would your experience in Hell
irreversibly ruin the rest of your life… but you might not be permitted to live for
long back on this mortal plane, anyway.
With such incredible knowledge inside your head, you’d be an unwelcome link between
here and the Great Beyond.
Prone to spilling all the secrets of Hell whenever anybody asked for them.
Death could quickly come for you, then, even though you will have already survived Hell
once before.
Or perhaps an even worse fate would await you on Earth, because you’d be driven mad
by fear of the eternal torments that you - and only ­you - have already witnessed.
Such knowledge of the divine machinations behind life and death could simply prove too
much for humans to understand.
Of course, if you ended up in Hell because you had actually died, rather than by some
infernal fluke, then there’s pretty much zero chance of you being so fortunate as to
get away easy.
Depending on which version of the afterlife you subscribe to, or which you ultimately
encountered… you’re either going to be tortured for a long time or forever.
The best you could hope for is to be doomed to roam listlessly, as a lost soul in some
version of Limbo.
Otherwise, you’re in for pain, misery, loneliness… or being boiled alive in a river of flaming
blood for all eternity.
Nobody’s about to prove that Hell in the afterlife truly exists, but as a concept it
offers plenty of possibilities… without much by way of an enviable outcome.
Get lucky, and you get a tour of the Underworld like Dante.
Get unlucky, and you endure many lifetimes of merciless suffering.
And that’s what would happen if you fell through the Gates of Hell.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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