Worlds Beyond
What happens after death, and how the universe is arranged: underworlds, heavens, bridges of judgement and wheels of rebirth, as each tradition pictures them.
Ancient underworlds
The houses of the dead of Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, the Norse and the Aztecs.
- Kur Kur, the Land of No Return, was the Mesopotamian underworld ruled by Ereshkigal, where the dead ate dust in darkness and depended on the offerings of the living.
- The Duat The Duat was the ancient Egyptian realm of the dead, crossed by the sun each night, where the heart was weighed against truth before the blessed reached the Field of Reeds.
- Hades Hades was the Greek kingdom of the dead, reached across the Styx in Charon’s boat, where most shades lived on dimly while heroes found Elysium and the worst sinners Tartarus.
- The Nine Worlds Norse myth pictured a cosmos of worlds around the ash tree Yggdrasil, where the dead went to Valhalla, Freyja’s Fólkvangr, the sea or the cold realm of Hel.
- Mictlan In Aztec belief most of the dead made a four-year journey through nine levels to Mictlan, while drowned people, warriors and mothers lost in childbirth went to other worlds.
Judgement and resurrection
Heaven, hell and the last judgement in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism.
- The Chinvat Bridge In Zoroastrian belief the soul crosses the Chinvat Bridge, meets its own conscience as a maiden or a hag, and passes to the House of Song or the House of Lies until the world is renewed.
- Sheol and the world to come Jewish ideas of the afterlife grew from the shadowy Sheol of the Hebrew Bible to resurrection, Gan Eden, Gehinnom and the world to come, with a wide range of views held to this day.
- Akhirah In Islamic belief the dead are questioned in the grave, wait in the barzakh and rise on the Day of Judgement, when deeds are weighed and souls cross as-Sirat to Jannah or Jahannam.
- Christian afterlife Christian hope centres on resurrection and the Last Judgement, with heaven and hell as final destinies and, in Catholic teaching, purgatory as a place of purification after death.
Wheels of rebirth
Karma, the realms of rebirth and the way out of the cycle in Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese belief.
- Samsara In Hindu belief the soul passes through countless lives, shaped by karma, through heavens, hells and Yama’s court, until moksha frees it from samsara, the wheel of rebirth.
- The bardo Tibetan Buddhism describes the bardo, the passage of up to 49 days between death and rebirth, with its clear light, peaceful and wrathful deities and the text read aloud to guide the dead.
- Diyu Diyu, the Chinese underworld of Buddhist, Daoist and folk belief, sends the dead through the Ten Courts of judgement to King Yama, Meng Po’s soup of forgetting and a new birth.
- The six realms Buddhist teaching describes six realms of rebirth, from gods to hell beings, painted on the wheel of life around Mount Meru, and points beyond them all to nirvana, which is not a place.