How do the various Religions conceive of the Hereafter?

All, absolutely all cultures have developed a concrete image of the afterlife. The idea of ​​nothingness after death is a very modern concept; During the history of humanity, each community has generated a particular vision of life postmortem, some of them very elaborate and often presenting various points in common.

Today's article is intended to be a brief analysis of the vision of the afterlife of six civilizations with religions: Greek culture, Egyptian, Christian, Buddhism, Viking culture and the ancient Aztec religion. We have dedicated a section to each of them, although we will also establish a certain comparison that allows us to glimpse what aspects they have in common. Read on if you are interested in the topic.

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How do the various religions conceive of the afterlife?

Although we have commented in the introduction that each and every one of the cultures considers a reality concrete after death, it is obvious that this vision varies depending on the society that projects these ideas.

There are religions that affirm the existence of a trial after death, which will determine if the deceased is worthy of entering the kingdom of perpetual happiness or if, on the contrary, he deserves a punishment for all eternity.

On the other hand, we find other cultures, such as the Aztec, which "classify" the deceased according to the type of death and do not pay special attention to the way in which they have lived their existence earthly. Finally, other belief systems, such as those that make up Buddhism, focus on a state of mind rather than a specific place, as we will see.

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Greece and the abode of shadows

The ancient Greeks, at least until classical times, imagined the realm of the dead as a shadowy place where the souls of the deceased lived as shadows.. According to Homer, these shadows had no ability to discern, and wandered through Hades (the name of his abode) bewildered and aimless.

The prospect was, as we can see, very unflattering. Little by little, an authentic geography of Hades was formed, an authentic underground world that was accessed through through the Acheron, a real river that was hidden behind some rocks and that, according to the Greeks, was the entrance of the Hades. In that river Charon, the boatman, was waiting, whose mission was to transfer the deceased in his boat to the kingdom of the dead. This boatman had to be paid with an obolus (a coin), so the relatives of the deceased had the custom of depositing them in the eyes or in the mouth of the deceased.

We can't entertain ourselves here the description of the geography of the Greek Hades. Yes, we will mention the origin of the name; Hades was the god of the underworld, the lord of the dead, who had received the kingdom from him, according to tradition, from a game of chance he played with his brothers Zeus and Poseidon. The latter were lucky to receive the sky and the seas, respectively, while Hades had to settle for the dark world of the afterlife, which, according to the oldest texts, was not underground, but beyond the Ocean.

Hades's wife is Persephone, the kore of the mystery rites, the Roman Proserpina. Hades is her uncle, while the girl is the daughter of Demeter, sister of the gods and patroness of crops and the fertility of the earth. Infatuated with her niece, Hades kidnaps her and takes her to her infernal kingdom, from where the young woman can only leave every spring, when the fields bloom again. However, with the arrival of autumn, she is forced to return to her husband again.

This ancient myth establishes an evident relationship between death and life, a relationship that, on the other hand, was quite common in ancient peoples. Persephone would be, then, the seed that, buried in the earth (the homeland of the dead), makes life rise again and thus nourishes the world. Living and dead would therefore be indissolubly and eternally connected.

in the time of Plato (s. Goes. C.) significantly changes the concept of afterlife. In his work Gorgias, the philosopher exposes the theory of postmortem reward, according to which the virtuous and the heroes (that is, that is, those who participate in the idea of ​​the Good) will find eternal bliss on the Champs Elysées, surrounded by pleasure and beauty. On the other hand, the wicked who reject the Good and the Beautiful will be condemned to Tartarus, the gloomy region of Hades watered by Phlegeton, the river of fire. Thus, a clear parallel is established between the Platonic concept of fire as a purifying entity and the idea that would later prevail in Christianity.

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Egypt and eternal identity

This concept of "classification" of souls is also found in mythology postmortem of the ancient Egyptians, then, after death, the deceased witnesses the weighing of his heart, the only organ that has not been removed with mummification. Thus, the viscera is deposited on the scales of Maat, Justice, by the jackal-god Anubis. Osiris, the dead and risen and lord of the underworld, presides over the act.

On the saucer opposite the heart, Anubis places the feather of Maat, light and accurate, which will determine the weight of the actions of the deceased. If the heart weighs more than the feather, it will mean that the wickedness of the deceased is excessive, so he will not be allowed to access eternal life. In that case, Ammyt, the Great Devourer, gobbles up the deceased and that's the end of it.

There are obvious parallels between the monster Ammyt and the Leviathan of the Judeo-Christian tradition., in charge of devouring impious souls. We find numerous representations of this being in medieval church frescoes, often represented as a monster with a huge mouth and ferocious teeth, ready to devour the soul of the dead.

In the Egyptian case, this ending was especially tragic. In Egyptian culture, unlike the Greek (in which, remember, the deceased was nothing more than a nameless shadow), the soul of the deceased continues to maintain its identity. In fact, the main task of the mummification rite is to keep the shape of the dead "intact", so that, in this way, its Ba and his Ka (two of the spiritual parts of which the human being is made up) are able to recognize it and thus gather what had been scattered with death. That is to say that, for the Egyptians, death is an instant of "small" chaos, in which the components disintegrate; In order to guarantee eternal life, it is therefore necessary to reunite what has been separated and reshape the identity of the deceased, full and complete.

This is inevitably reminiscent of Osiris's death at the hands of his jealous brother Seth and his subsequent dismemberment. The different parts of the god's body were distributed throughout the earth, and Isis, her sister and her wife, was in charge of recovering them to rebuild the body of her husband. Thus, Osiris, the dead and risen (after three days, by the way, in clear parallelism with Jesus) becomes the lord of the dead and guarantor of eternal life.

Punishment and reward in the Judeo-Christian tradition

Another feature in common that the Egyptian concept of death has with Christianity is the idea of ​​preserving the body after death. Well, despite the fact that Christians do not mummify their dead, they are prohibited from cremating them. The idea is that you cannot intervene in the destruction of the flesh, since it will be resurrected on Judgment Day, at the second coming of Christ.

Initially, the Last Judgment was spoken of as the moment when the world would end and souls would be collectively judged based on their actions. However, this end, prophesied in the thousandth year of the coming into the world of the Savior, did not come. Nor was there any end of the world in the year 1033, the year that marked the thousandth anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Consequently, the concept of salvation began to change: there was no longer only a collective judgment at the end of time, but after individual death, the deceased would be judged personally. In this case, instead of Anubis, the iconography presents the archangel Michael holding the scales and fighting against the devil, who tries to unbalance it to take the soul.

In the Christian case we also find, therefore, a "classification" of souls based on their acts in life. To the traditional places of Paradise and Hell, the concept of Purgatory was added in the 13th century, an indefinite place where the “intermediate” souls (that is, those that were neither evil nor virtuous) “purged” their sins while waiting for a definitive access to the darling.

The case of Purgatory is curious, since its invention is due, in a certain way, to the evolution of society in the Late Middle Ages. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are the centuries of the rise of cities and trade and the rise of the bourgeoisie. The monetary loan has ceased to be a "Jewish thing", and Christian bankers begin to do business with interest. In other words, they take advantage of time, since the more time passes, the more interest the client to whom the money has been lent will have to pay. Therefore, the change in mentality is evident: time is no longer the exclusive patrimony of God, but also belongs to man. It is the time when Christians pay the Church to shorten years of Purgatory for their loved ones. God no longer has the last word, then, in eternal punishment.

The Viking sagas and the last resting place of the warriors

Viking society, while eminently warrior, gave special importance to death in heroic combat. Those who had fallen honorably on the battlefield were raised by the Valkyries, beautiful women who rode winged steeds and carried them to Asgard, the home of the gods. There, in the "Hall of the Fallen" (the famous Valhalla), these warriors enjoyed a life of pleasures for all eternity, in the company of Odin, the lord of the gods.

In Viking mythology about the afterlife we ​​find a concept similar to that of Aztec mythology: that of "classifying" those killed by their type of death rather than by their actions, although, in the Viking case, these were also taken into account. consideration. So, those who died due to natural causes went to another place, the Bilskimir, run in this case by Thor, the lord of thunder. Of course, it could only be accessed if the deceased had a nobility of heart.

Finally, there was a third place, Helheim, the territory of Hela, the chilling goddess of death, daughter of the evil Loki. It was an inhospitable and desolate place, like the Greek Tartarus, where the souls of those who had been truly wicked rotted. Helheim (more than likely root for the English word hell, hell), was found in the depths of Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree, and, In a similar way to what happened with Cerberus (the three-headed dog that guarded Hades), he was protected by Garm, a dog monstrous. Helheim was a truly terrifying place, but unlike the Greek Tartarus (which we remember was bathed in a river of fire) and the Christian hell, the punishment Viking was made up of masses and masses of ice and icy storms, which proves, once again, that the concept of the afterlife is adapted to the environment of the society that creates.

The different Aztec “types of death”

Mictlán was the land of the dead in the ancient Aztec culture. It was run by Mictlantecuhtli, the terrible lord of death, and his wife Mictecacíhuatl. Mictlán was a place located underground that was made up of no less than nine stories deep, infested with spiders, scorpions, centipedes and nocturnal birds. And if the kingdom was terrible, the lord of it was no less so; Mictlantecuhtli was represented as a skeleton whose skull brimmed with teeth, in a sinister eternal smile. His hair was matted and his eyes shone in the darkness of Mictlán.

In a curious way similar to the Greek Hades, the kingdom of the dead was watered by several rivers that ran underground; The first of them was the first test that the deceased had to pass, for which it was essential to be accompanied by a guide dog. For this reason, it was common for the deceased to be buried with carcasses of this animal, as well as with numerous amulets that were to help the deceased to overcome all the tests that awaited him, which were not few. It is curious to point out that the rate of the corpse's putrefaction was indicative of the speed with which the soul was passing the tests: the faster the body was consumed, the luckier the deceased was having in the afterlife.

The Aztec underworld is, then, a kind of self-improvement, which culminates with an individual judgment of which the deceased is his own judge, since he must appeal to his conscience. However, ultimately, the geography of Mictlán was more due to the type of death that the person had suffered. Thus, the heroes were destined for the Tonatiuhichan, a place next to the sun to which the women who had died from childbirth, also considered heroines, were also sent. On the other hand, there was one last place: Tlalocan, reserved for those who died from drowning or lightning strikes (because it was the home of the god Tlaloc, lord of the elements).

Buddhism and personal salvation

Throughout this exhibition, the case of Buddhism stands out. Unlike other religions, this Eastern philosophy denies individuality; the soul does not possess its own identity and, in reality, authentic salvation will come from the liberation of the samsara or eternal cycle of reincarnations.

Buddhism considers that death is a mere transition from one existence to another, for whose preparation meditation is essential. Through it, the self dissolves and becomes fully aware of the non-permanence and insubstantiality of all things. The liberation (the famous nirvana) is, therefore, the annulment of existence as such and, therefore, of the self, of individual identity. He nirvana (literally, from Sanskrit "to cool by blowing", that is, to cool the desire) is nothing more than a state of illumination, not a place, unlike other religions.

The fact that Buddhism does not recognize a physical and concrete postmortem place makes sense if we consider that, for this philosophy, the soul is an indefinite element, not a full identity as it is in the case of the Old Egypt. Thus, the endless wheel of samsara is subjected to a cycle of reincarnations, depending on the vital energy that we accumulate, the karma, and its definitive liberation will only be possible when we enter the state of nirvana: the comprehension that, in reality, nothing remains and nothing is.