"The phonographs of Hades in the brain
  Are tunnels that rewind themselves; And love (is)
"A burnt match skating in a urinal"
  —Hart Crane, THE BRIDGE: The Tunnel

Hells can be mapped into domains other than the strictly (meta)physical: time, space, pain, etc. Hells may exist before, during, or after life, and/or in parallel universes, and/or in any realm we may consider or deal with. Such flexibility! Here are some more possibilities for (quasi-)eternal torment, or whatever.

A STRUCTURED AFTERLIFE OR SOMETHING

"Purgatory takes a meditative, non-partisan view of reality. This ambiguous position is possible thanks to its geographical placement, midway between the earthly community and the region presided over by the Utopian States (those provinces that lay emphasis on recuperation) and the Dystopian States..."

STRIP MAP OF THE PRINCIPAL UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN STATES (TOP TO BOTTOM)
DYSTOPIAS  Inferno Satanic Mills Terminus Hell Naraka Styz Orcus Pandemonium Mordor Nastrond Hades Amenti	UTOPIAS  Eden Shangri-La Fiddler's Green Falak al Aflak Heaven Avalon Elderado Capolan Nirvana Tir-na-n'Og New Jerusalem Valhalla
Purgatory Earth

A HELL OF A TIME, AND VICE-VERSA

But beyond the topographical rendering of Hell, the Mayans saw Hell as being not spatial, but temporal. Hell consisted of certain sequences of 52-year periods. [For an inadequate reference, see HELL: An Illustrated History Of The NETH­ERWORLD, by Richard Craze.] Building on that, we can see Hell as existing within dimensions other than those of space. And since mathe­matically a dimension is just any vector that you want to keep track of, Hell (or Hells) may therefore exist in any variable that can be tracked. The most common other variable besides the 'x,y,z' spatial dimensions are the 't' temporal dimensions (of which there are at least nine - see THE DANCE OF LIFE: The Other Dimension Of Time, by Edward T. Hall), giving Hell as some period of time. But any other factor that can be mapped could be hosting a hell. Or THE Hell. Or no hell. Or whatever.

How Hall Maps Time:
(in a diamond with Meta-Time in the center)


•   Categories along vertical / horizontal axes:
  • Philosophical & Conscious Time
  • Unconscious Emergent Time
  • Explicit Technical, Existential Time (Low Content Time)
  • Situational Culture (High Content Time)
  
  
•   Categories along diagonal axes:
  • GROUP | INDIVIDUAL
  • CULTURAL | PHYSICAL
  
  
•   Distinct Types of Time:
  1. Sacred Time (Philosophical & Conscious / GROUP)
  2. Private Time (Situational Culture / INDIVIDUAL)
  3. Micro Time (Situational Culture / CULTURAL)
  4. Sync Time (Unconscious Emergent / PHYSICAL)
  5. Personal Time (Unconscious Emergent / INDIVIDUAL)
  6. Biological Time (Explicit Technical, Existential / GROUP)
  7. Physical Time (Explicit Technical, Existential / PHYSICAL)
  8. Metaphysical Time (Philosophical & Conscious / CULTURAL)

  (Hall also distinguishes between Monochronic and Polychronic Time - linearity and simultaneity)

The implication of combining the Mayan time-hell paradigm with Hall's temporal sturcture is that numerous Hells can and do exist within the time-consciousness of any individual and/or group and/or culture, as will as within and beyond physical time. These hells may only exist for specific periods — but since our time-sensation is flexible, an infinity of hells can and do overlap as long as humans exist.

Craze writes:

"The Mayans of South America (sic) ...did not believe in hell as a place at all; for them it was certain periods of time. They believed that there were nine hells, each lasting fifty-two years, and that hell only began in 1519, coinci­ding with the arrival of the white man. Their hell was an absence of Mayans and should have finished in 1987, when they predicted that a new Mayan age would begin."

PUTTING THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

MAPPING THE NEXT MILLENNIUM by Stephen S. Hall)

ARTICLES