Myths of the Underworld

If the interior of the earth is habitable, and if within the chthonic quarters there resides a miniature sun that bestows heat upon the inhabitants, how are we to know whether the residents are cordial or not? Furthermore, how can we know for sure that these inhabitants have built an Arcadian wonderland and not some ruinous dynasty for their malevolent kin? Well, as we will see, there can always be two sides to the story. Most certainly it is up to an individual to decide what side of the story is more realistic.

When first venturing into the underground, or the sub-telluric areas, it is probably best to be aware of the perils one could encounter. Not only could you meet up with the nefarious dwarves and goblins of the JR Tolkien variety, you could also meet up with a mirror that perfectly reflects all the contents of your soul. The ancient Egyptians called this mirror holder Anubis; the one who resided in Duat, an underground place where the sun wanders from west to east. Wielding a feather, the jackal-headed Anubis judged each soul according to how many sins consumed their inner most recesses. If the soul happened to be adorned in too many sins, Ammut, the crocodile-headed goddess of Maat, would have gobbled them up.

According to Egyptian legend, Apophis contemptuously retreated to the underworld because the noble light of Ra, his adversary, was too strong. Apophis journeyed until he found Duat, and he rested there devising up a revenge stratagem. One ominous night, when Ra was sailing the thickly misted waters of Duat with some companions, Apophis was maliciously walking amidst the dark corridors. When Apophis saw Ra sailing in his boat, he jumped aboard, tried to attack Ra, and tried to devour the sun disk. But Apophis failed. He failed the next night, and he failed the night after that. In fact, this battle is still being waged when Ra sails into Duat every night.

This legend indeed tells us about the light and dark forces at work in the soul, and it even tells us how the Solar Principle (Ra) is connected with the chthonic realm. When working Anubis into the legend, we could infer that his role is akin to that of a gatekeeper. He enables Ra to have a safe passage in the realm of monstrosities and lost souls, and he may even disable Apophis from traveling back to the surface.

From the intricacies of Egyptian mythology we turn to Feng Du, the Chinese version of Hell. This time around we see a deity by the name of, “Yanluo Wang,” taking over the role of judge. Yanluo Wang is in charge of the fifth court of hell, where he inflicts severe pain on the wandering souls by pouring boiling water on them. He also has files on every soul; he knows when each and every soul is going to meet and greet death.

The traditional Chinese version of Hell draws parallels to the shamanic perspective of regeneration. However, unlike the shamanic perspective, where the soul is ripped to fragments and shards by malign deities, the Chinese version propounds that the soul can encounter as many as eighteen chambers of hell. Each chamber is designed to punish a soul for a particular wrongdoing carried out in life. In the chamber of dismemberment by chariot, odious overlords and slave drivers are punished in a rather unorthodox way; in the chamber of oil cauldrons, rapists and cheaters are dipped into a torrid, insidious liquid; in the chamber of blood, robbers who despise the will of the gods have their skin removed.

Although the eighteen chambers of hell seems slightly out-of-hand to the occidental mind and its one-dimensional perdition for sinners, it is important to make note of the fact that “Yanluo Wang” is the same as “Yama” in Buddhist and Vedic lore. Of course this point is important because Buddhism has been mushrooming amidst the reductionistic worldview of the west for the last four and a half decades or so. In the indispensable and seminal manual for mortals closing in on death—The Tibetan Book of the Dead—Padma Sambhava admonishes the passenger by saying:

“If you do not recognize your own visions, then the moment you die, reality arises in the between in the image of Yama Dharmaraja, the Lord of Death! The Yama Dharmaraja deities will arise at most filing all of space, at medium like huge mountains, filing the whole world. Their fanglike teeth protruding over their lips, their eyes like glass, their hair bound up on top of their heads, with protruding bellies, with thin necks, they carry punishment boards and shout, ‘Beat him!’ and ‘Kill him!’ They lick up your brains, they sever your head from your body, and they extract your heart and vital organs. Thus they arise, filing the world.”

If this seems macabre and unbearable it is only because the dying mortal has failed to merge with the Clear Light of the Void, their Original Face; so essentially, Yamaraja is nothing but a projection of unconscious fears and delusions. Seeing as in the Buddhist pantheon everything is subordinate and emanated from the ineffable Buddha—a translucency beyond rationalization—a light that can be seen in the corporeal world right around predawn—it is imperative that all experiences, or all images of evanescence, eventually return to the Buddha. As Padma Sambhava poignantly adds: “Hey, noble one! When it happens that such a vision arises, do not be afraid! Do not feel terror! You have a mental body made of instincts; even if it is killed or dismembered, it cannot die! Since in fact you are a natural form of voidness, anger at being injured is unnecessary! The Yama Lords of Death are but arisen from the natural energy of your own awareness and really lack all substantiality. Voidness cannot injure voidness!” In other words, Buddha cannot eradicate Buddha. The camouflaged Lord of Compassion, with his skullcap-wielding minions that fill up space in myriad variations of wretchedness, is simply in Naraka (the underworld) to let the wandering soul know that their true path has gone horribly awry.

Now, after briefly spending some time with the Buddhist conception of the underground, we shall briefly move onto the Hellenic world. Those of us familiar with Hellenic or Greek mythology will remember very lucidly that “Hades” is the place we should set our interests on. As some of you may know, the deceased entered the ghastly chthonic realm by crossing the Acheron River with Charon, the ferryman, as tour guide. But in order to have sailed across the perilous river, an obolus, a silver coin, was required. According to the mythos, on the far side of the river awaited the gnashing teeth of the tri-headed Cerberus, and beyond his insidiousness existed the five rivers (Lethe, Styx, Keran, Cocytus, and Phlegethon).

Now we turn to the Fields of Asphodel. It was known as a disconsolate place for spirits who had lost their humanism altogether. After Asphodel came Erebus, and after Erebus came the three impartial judges of Hades—Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus—who handed out the sentences. If these three judges propitiated a soul, the soul would have climbed the firmamental stairs to the Elysium, the abode of the heroic and noble.

Turning our attention to a bona fide Hellenic myth, we find Persephone, daughter of Demeter, unwittingly abducted by Hades (the god version) and Zeus. As the story goes, collusions took place between these two mighty gods; they discussed the elegance of Persephone, and Hades wanted her to be his wife. Unfortunately for these two imperious gods, Helios (the sun god) heard their secret conversations and informed Demeter. But it was too late. Zeus and Hades had already taken the young Persephone to the Stygian depths. However, this did not stop Demeter from cunningly wreaking havoc upon Zeus’ and Hades’ plans. She desiccated the lands and famished the poor mortals. Seeing as this would have affected their worshippers, Zeus sent Hermes (the messenger) into the underworld so he could inform Hades about the troubles on the land. Hades wasn’t sure what to do after hearing the news; he loved his abducted bride, but he was also sympathetic to Demeter’s curmudgeon. Being the trickster he was, Hades slipped a pomegranate seed into one of Persephone’s meals so she would be connected with him forever. Although Persephone returned to the surface, she was destined to go back to Hades, her husband, for one-third of the year. This sentence back into the underworld was based on one of Zeus’ omnipotent declarations. Of course, when Persephone descended back into the underworld yet again, Demeter was pissed.

“Angra Mainyu” (Ahriman) is the name of the twin brother of the Holy Spirit in Zoroastrianism. He is tantamount to the diabolical ruler of hell in the Christian pantheon. We are concerned with this figure because of his symbolic nature: to drag humanity into irrational, mad, and hopeless waters. Daniel Pinchbeck—journalist, psychonaut, and prophet—writes about this Destructive Spirit by saying, “Ahriman drags us downward—into the mineral world, materiality, mechanization, and death. Our age of materialism represents the temporary ascendance of Ahriman, who strives to make the world into a machine.” Even though this dark and looming figure only seems like an imaginative creature, a phantasm that once haunted our adolescent dreams, there is mounting evidence to support the existence of Ahriman in the contemporary age. Take a look at how companies are slowly mechanizing their labor forces by stressing importance on numerical identities. Take a look at the masculine interest in car parts vis-à-vis that of the Arts. These analogies aren’t just aberrances that have no bearing on the reality at hand. They give momentum to the fact that we are slowly becoming more robotic and less psychically malleable. As Nietzsche said in concise and convincing fashion, “God is Dead.” Now, he could have died at the hands of a mechanized consumerism, but we must wonder: did Ahriman really deliver the fatal blow against his twin brother?

Rudolph Steiner, the forefather of Waldorf schools and the Anthroposophical movement, gave a series of lectures in Zurich right around World War one. In these lectures he discussed the relationship between the Ahrimanic impulse and the mysterious existence of the doppelganger. “So, we arrive in this world with the garment of our organism without being able to reach down into it with our soul to any great extent. Instead, shortly before we are born, not very long before we are born, there is also an opportunity for another being, apart from our soul, to take possession of our body.” Steiner then went on to explicate to the audience that this ahrimanic being, this being who stands aloof from the luminousness of the soul, is interested in using the electrical impulses broadcasting from our earth for fodder. By staying in the subconscious for an indeterminable length of time, the being is able to gobble up corporeal delicacies such as gravity and elemental isotopes without being detected by the rationalizing mind. To combat this subconscious parasite, Rudolph Steiner recommends the propagation of spiritual knowledge. “Knowledge of these beings will increasingly have to take hold in humanity over the coming centuries. Over the coming centuries human beings need to know that they bear a double within them, an ahrimanic, mephistophelean double.” So, the message is clear: take back the subconscious, heed to the path of true knowledge, and leave Ahriman, the counterpart of Ohrmazd, behind to wallow in the irrational, grotesque dust. Or transform Ahriman by transforming the inner self, and then get on with the day by planting noble seeds for the next generation.