Several human cultures have devised ultimate repositories for their reprehensible (or less-than-perfect) members. Such locations are sometimes referred to as 'Hell'. Euro-Xian cultures seem to favor a model of Hell based on descriptions in the 'Inferno' portion of Dante's 'Comedy', sometimes called "The Divine Comedy". Also notable are Hindu Hells. Further evolution of culture suggests that other models may be relevant. Here are some possibilities.

Further Notes On Hell(s)

(Dictated to tape - rough draft)

Hell is inextricably bound up with concepts of afterlife, notions of existence after corporeal existence ends. There are many possibilities for such afterlives, including:

• When you're dead, you're dead. There is no afterlife. That's it.
  
  
• Or, when you're dead, your mental existence continues, indistinguishable from the preceding life. Either the afterlife is just the same as the life, or you die and you don't even notice and you just keep on going.
  
  
• Or, you die, and you have a 'soul', and it goes 'somewhere':
  
  
  • That 'somewhere' may be indistinguishable from chaos, meaningless to normal humans, incomprehensible to living / conscious / sentient entities.
    
    
  • Or the afterlife, like our conscious life, may be just another area within the universal Dreamtime of Aboriginal Australians.
    
    
  • Or, a 'soul' may go to something like the old Catholic categories of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory - Purgatory being a waiting room, as it were, kinda like Limbo. A decision is made as to whether you 'deserve' Heaven or Hell, or whatever.
    
    
  • Or you may automagically beam-down to any of a number of possible destinations, depending on your culture:
    
    
    • the Happy Hunting Grounds of certain Aboriginal Americans
    • somewhere into the 18 class-based levels of the traditional Chinese afterlife
    • to any of the numerous Buddhist hells (not endorsed by Buddha himself)
    • to an appropriate room in the Swahili 7-floor building (vast, underground)
    • to the Viking realms of Asgard (heaven, for warriors) or Niflheim (icy darkness, for everyone else)
    • thru one of the 7 gates into the Babylonian hell of Kurnugia
    • into the Greek hell of Hades, or its lower pit of Tartarus, if you're not good enough for the Elysian Fields
    • if you didn't qualify (by merit or bribery) for the Egyptians' glorious Fields Of Peace, you'd just be eaten by the lion/croc/hippo god Am-Mut
    • you could bribe your way into the Aztec hell of Mictlan, or hang around outside with grisly demons
    
    
  • Zo, that leads to the idea that your soul goes to a 'someplace' of reward or punishment; and that may be because of actions or thoughts you have committed in life; or it may be REGARDLESS of any actions or thoughts you have committed in life; or there may be some other criteria entirely.

Once you accept that, then we have to define the topology of the afterlife, the netherworld. Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, other... Most of those topologies in human cultures apparently have been defined spatially, as geography, as territory, in many cases under the Earth; although there are those who hold that the entire Earth is Hell, we are the lost souls, those of us who are here. Uh, normal existence and Heaven are elsewhere.

A concept related to the idea that Hell is here and Heaven is elsewhere, that Hell is Earth, is um, relates to reincarnation. Beings continually reincarnate into this less-than-perfect existence, this Hell on Earth, until such time as they attain suitable understanding and/or perfect behaviour, that they no longer reincarnate, and thus escape hell. But the concept that existence is Hell, and non-existence is Heaven, is essentially nihilistic, driving us to seek such non-existence. Let's all suicide now. Race ya to the oven, eh?

There are, of course, the well-known dictums: Hell is other people; or, Hell is a great smoky city; uh, somewhere I had a file of quotes about hell, I'll have to dig that up again.

Oh yes, it's 14th of February, year 2001, St. Valentine's Day, a good day to be talking about Hell.