Across thousands of years , there have been numerous cultures on Terra with varying underworlds .

Ancient Egypt had an underworld that grew like a plant as this Pharaoh or that Pharaoh added their mind palaces to it . Places like the Water Caves and the Lake of Fire were almost certainly real places , so deep underground that only the shamans know the route , while aetheric realms like the Field of Reeds were places one·s Akh could go to after the body dies and is mummified .

The Hebrews , and the Sumerians , on the other hand , had as their underworld Sheol, the Empty Tomb World of enormous, angular abandoned halls of bare stone , where raven angels eat dust for bread and clay for meat , and kings put away their crowns forever and wander the empty halls until they grind their souls into the stone . And Lo , when the time came , it came .

The Grecian , Hades , was a very real place , in the many many caves beneath the hills and mountains . A very great many sacrificial rituals occurred in those hills , where the souls of those sacrificed in burning fire to Moloch wail in torment and drive seekers mad , a place of traitorous nighttime deals that make Judas look like a blessing in disguise .

Aztec , and other South American peoples , portioned their underworld into Houses , Hot House, Cold House, Jaguar House , and others . Using plants like mescaline and ayahuasca , they made contact with a bright and vibrant world of clearly identifiable spirits , with personalities and names . Their underworld was a place that one accessed by stepping in between the shadows deep in the jungle .

Concepts of a dualistic Heaven and Hell did not emerge until the 12th Century , erupting into the world via artists the likes of Hieronomous Bosch . By this time , cathedral-building in Europe had begun to come into an art form , and as the tools and techniques grew , so too did the depictions of angels , of orders of angels , mathematically arrayed in high high heaven . By 1088 AD , the SaEt [metatext] on the depiction of Christ in the entryway of the Cathedral de St. Foy read "This way is better . They are more insistant ."

America is a modern country , and the American underworld is a modern world , of rain-soaked and grime-caked back alleys and seedy bars that still reek of cigarette smoke to this day . The American devil wears a suit , and the Queen of Hell a knee-length black dress and heels . Those who achieve great feats of cop-killing and bank-robbing become immortalized as mythological figures . Yu·ll never take me alive, see? Nyah .

Scandinavian Catholocism posits two Heavens and two Hells, namely Elysium, Þrymheimr, Asgard, Sheol . There is a cool Heaven and a warm Heaven , and a Hot Hell and a Frigid Hell , and all the worlds described on the Yggdrasil , and orders and choirs of angels arrayed in perfect mathematical completion , all ready to take warriors to one world and newts to another .

If we take the entire diaspora of underworlds described in all the books and codexes and look at them as a single continuous map , we see a world that stretches from base material reality to filigree light dancers in an astral palace , across worlds identifiable to human experience to planes of elemental order and chaos , from literal water caves and pools of open magma to places the soul can only go to by leaving the body behind .

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