Hell is where? Circles of hell and the angels of hell

Yes, burn it in hell! Infernal work. Hell heat. Get it all to hell! The word "hell" has long become common, people, using it, do not even think about the true meaning of the term. Nobody, speaking of the heat of hell, can imagine boilers with boiling sulfur. Infernal work - this is not so much a blurry trait, tired of waving pitchforks. And the real hell is a crush at the rush hour, a scandal on the planerkah and a rowdy quarrel among the neighbors. For most contemporaries, this word is just a figure of speech, a saying that is so familiar that you do not even notice it. From the place of eternal death posthumous hell became a meaningless abstraction, an illustration for a collection of folklore.

Evolution of the concept of retribution

It is difficult to find a person who would consider the existence of classical medieval hell possible. However, there are fewer and fewer supporters of strict canonical Christianity. Many believe in an abstract nameless God - the embodiment of a higher power and higher justice. Those who consider themselves Christians, may well consider the concept of rebirth reasonable, this does not seem a paradox. But the concept of posthumous retribution is still relevant, but now it is less literal.

Now even religious people, speaking of the afterlife punishment for sins, presume still something of an immaterial, spiritual property, and not licking of hot pans. And for atheists and representatives of a number of non-Christian religions, this is generally only a legend. Ada, in their opinion, does not exist. If divine retribution falls upon the heads of sinners, then here on earth - say, in the next life. And yet, not so long ago, not believing in hell was just as strange as now seriously discussing pitch and horned devils.

In this case, the very fact of posthumous retribution is usually not disputed. As Voltaire said, if God does not exist, then he would have to be invented. With the devil and hell - the same story. In life, not so often bad actions entail punishment. Moreover, very often there are energetic and cheerful corrupt officials and healthy, cheerful bribe-takers. And this is not a sign of time. Dishonesty is the simplest way to enrichment, and cruelty and dishonesty are an easy way to get what you want without any moral torment.

Justice of the Ancient World

This moral dilemma has two solutions. Either accept such injustice as an integral part of life, or create an effective deterrent system. That is, the most unscrupulous and aggressive waiting for a direct road to hell.

Paganism followed the first path. Strong - right, he gets the best, strong - a favorite of the gods. And the weak ones are to blame themselves. Survival is more adapted. This was paganism. Behavior was regulated exclusively by law and traditions. That's how you can not do it - but you can. Do not "do not kill", and do not kill the guest, do not kill in the temple, do not kill the bread that broke with you. And in other cases - either "an eye for an eye", or pay a virus.

This is clearly seen not only in the Greek and Egyptian myths. Even in the Old Testament , traces of this ancient cruel world view are visible. Often the behavior of the characters does not conform to the norms of Christian morality. They lie, betray, kill. But at the same time they honor the commandments - innumerable norms and prohibitions regulating behavior and life. They believe in one god and enjoy his undoubted patronage. Why? Because that was the world view of those times. If you are successful - you are pleasing to God, he protects you. If not ... well then. Apparently, you are a sinner. A cruel Darwinian theory justified by religion. In such conditions, hell is an obvious excess. Why should someone punish, if you can just slaughter him with a sword? Retribution here and now, with your own hand, if, of course, you can.

Why is hell necessary?

Later, with the advent of Christianity (and the Old Testament is not Christianity, it's much earlier), the situation has changed. Christ said: "Do not kill, do not steal and love your neighbor." All. That's all the rules. The Christian concept of a man pleasing to God is an example of humanism with a minimum of external attributes. It does not matter if you cook lamb in his mother's milk. It does not matter which hand you bathe after visiting the toilet. The only thing that matters is the soul. The vector has shifted.

During the time of paganism, it was immediately apparent who the gods loved. It is rich - it means, like, it means, it is worthy. They help in business, give good luck. If it is unsuitable, you live poorly and badly. What further retribution can we talk about? But what about Christians? In this, very young then religion, external attribution has been replaced by the inner one. A good man, observing all the commandments, could be poor, and sick, and unhappy. Moreover, for sure, a peasant who does not steal and does not rob, will be poorer than the robber and the owner of the brothel. But how is this possible? Where, then, is justice? This is where the concept of retribution appears. Paradise and hell are those whip and carrot that regulate a person's behavior, in their convictions and moral criteria of the unstable. After all, if someone considers lying and stealing wrong, then in any case he will not do it. But if he hesitates ... This is where the concept of posthumous retribution comes to the rescue. Do the right thing and you will be rewarded. And if you sin ... Hell is eternity, full of pain. Quite a weighty argument in favor of the right choice.

The dogma of purgatory

True, it was the supposed infinity of punishments that aroused criticism. After all, then it turns out that both those who stole the chicken and those who set fire to the shelter receive almost the same punishment. All one way - to hell. Yes, it is likely that the thief in the cauldron will have sulfur on the ankle, and in the arsonist - in the throat. But still, if we look at this situation from the position of eternity ... This is not so true.

Therefore, Catholicism introduced the dogma of purgatory. This is hell, but hell is temporary. The place of repentance for sinners who have not committed unpardonable sins. They serve their sentence there, being purified by suffering, and then, after the expiration of the allotted time, they go to heaven.

This dogma even has confirmation in the Bible, albeit indirectly. After all, the relatives of the deceased are offered to offer redemptive sacrifices and pray for the repose of the soul, which means that it makes sense. But if the punishment is eternal and unchanging, then the entreaties do not change anything, and therefore are useless.

Catholicism is the only branch of Christianity, adhering to the view that sinners fall not only to hell, but also to purgatory. Both Protestants and the Orthodox Church believe that there can be no talk of any temporary redemptive punishment. But really, what then is the meaning in the memorial service? After all, they do not change anything. Particularly interesting is the answer to this question, when such rituals are held on a paid basis and declared by the church to be necessary for the deceased. There is an obvious paradox.

What does hell look like?

What exactly happens in hell is a mystery. The Bible says that this is the place of eternal torment, but what exactly? This question was of interest to many philosophers and theologians. There were many concepts and guesses. In disputes on this subject, the theologians of the Middle Ages have been breaking spears for more than one century. To whom and how does retribution depend on what the hell looks like and what happens there? These questions have always interested people. Sermons dedicated to this topic enjoyed immense popularity among parishioners.

Now many people are sure that circles of hell are really a description taken from religious texts. Quite a logical picture: the division into sectors, for each type of sinners - its own. With deepening, sins are harder, and punishment is ever more severe.

In fact, circles of hell in this form was invented by the Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri. In his "Divine Comedy" he described his own journey through the afterlife: purgatory, paradise and hell. Each of these worlds consisted of sectors. Expression: "In the tenth heaven of happiness" - also from there. In the Divine Comedy, the paradise consisted of ten heavens. And the last, the highest heaven, the Empyrean, was meant for pure, blissful souls.

Dante's Inferno

Hell, described in the poem "Divine Comedy", consisted of nine circles:

• The first round is Limb. There those who did not recognize the Word of God not of their own free will were waiting for the Day of Judgment: unbaptized babies and pagan souls, pure in spirit.
• The second circle is for lusts and libertines. Eternal hurricane, endless rotation and bumps against rocks.
• The third circle is for glutton. They rot under unending rain.
• The fourth circle is for misers and spender. They drag huge stones, constantly entering because of them into quarrels and fights.
• The fifth circle is for the furious and bored. The swamp, in which the angry fights endlessly, trampling the bottom, consisting of the bodies of dull people.
• The sixth circle is for false prophets and heretics. They rest in flaming graves.
• The seventh circle is for rapists. They boil in the blood, suffer in the desert. They are torn by dogs and harpies, they hit arrows, sprinkles a fiery rain.
• The eighth circle is those who betrayed those who trusted them. They are waiting for an infinite variety of punishment. Scourging, fire, bags and tar. For them, hell is devouring snakes and turning into snakes, endless diseases and suffering.
• The ninth circle is traitors. Their punishment is ice. They froze in his neck.

Geography of hell

But all the nightmarish descriptions are really hell, invented by a poet and writer. Of course, he was deeply religious, but "Divine Comedy" is not an apocrypha. And not even a theological treatise. It's just a poem. And all that is described in it - this is only the fetus of the author's imagination. Of course, Dante was a genius, so the poem gained worldwide fame. The idea of a hell divided into circles and the heavens above one another has become so familiar that people already do not know who was its author.

The question of where hell is located and how it actually looks, was asked not only by Dante. There were many versions. Most of the theologians put hell under the earth, some believed that the vents of volcanoes - this is the path to the underworld. The argument supporting this theory was the fact that as the depths deepened, the temperature increased. Any miner could confirm this. Of course, the reason for this was the hot infernal boilers. The deeper the mine - the closer to the underworld.

After the scientists were able to accurately answer the question of what is happening in the sky and on earth, the concept had to be reviewed. Now the theologians tend to think that hell and heaven, if they exist literally, it is certainly not in our world. Although, most likely, these categories are still spiritual. For the torment does not need boiling cauldrons, and for enjoyment - paradise booths. Spiritual torment and joy are no less perceptible than bodily sensations.

But so far, one can find notes in which it is reported that the geologists have become too enthusiastic about drilling, and now a well is leading into the underworld. In hell, according to journalists, you can travel and on a spaceship - after all, the sun perfectly fits the definition. Great and hot - there will be a place for all sinners.

Hell and Hades

However, the fact that hell is the place of eternal torment, the theory is relatively new. After all, during the time of paganism, there was also the afterlife. In ancient Greece, people believed that after the death of the souls of people cross the river of oblivion, falling into the realm of the dead - Hades. There they wander forever, unconscious and unaware of themselves. And kings, and beggars, and great warriors - are all equal before the face of death. Whoever a person is in life, everything that remains of him, is a shadow for which there is neither past nor future. The rules of Hades are the god of the afterlife, also Hades. He was not evil, nor was he the god of death. Separated the soul from the body Thanatos, and escorted her to the next world Hermes. Hades governed the kingdom of the dead, no cruelties or crimes committed. Compared with the other gods of the Greek pantheon, he was very good-natured and unblushy. Therefore, when Aida's films are portrayed as resembling a demon, it is very far from the truth. The underworld is not the realm of evil and pain. Hades is the place of eternal rest and oblivion. Later, the same idea of the afterlife was adopted by the Romans.

Such a world does not at all resemble a habitual concept of hell. The origin of this name, however, scientists doubt. Hell is Ancient Greek Hades, just one letter "lost."

Gods and demons

Christians borrowed from the Greeks not only the name of the earthly world. Angels of hell, that is, demons, goat-legged and horned - it's practically the twins of satyrs and fauns. These lower deities have traditionally served as a model of male power and tirelessness - and hence fertility.

In the ancient world, a high libido, the ability to fertilize, was unequivocally regarded as a manifestation of vitality. Consequently, they were directly connected with abundant shoots, with crops, with a litter of cattle. The traditional embodiment of vitality, vitality, fertility is a goat. He borrowed hooves and horns of the faun, and he is one of the incarnations of Satan.

Hades was also traditionally considered a god of fertility and wealth. The underworld is a world of silver, gold and precious stones. The seed is buried in the ground, so that in the spring it will grow up.

The monstrous, disgusting feces of hell, contrary to human nature, is just an ancient god of fertility that has lost its greatness. It's hard to say why this happened. On the one hand, the new religion often borrows the elements of the predecessor, while creatively reprocessing them. On the other hand, Christianity - ascetic religion, lust and fornication condemning. From this point of view, the fertility god really looks like the embodiment of sin.

Infernal personalities

If the lower demonic hierarchy, devoid of individual traits, comes from the pagan gods, then here are the highest echelons of the diabolical power - commodity piece, author's. Same, however, like the saints. The Bible says only about one god - and about one devil. There are angels and there are fallen angels. All. The rest is the reflections of theologians and scholars who are brought into religion, who talk about what is heaven and hell. These are artificial generations. That is why new Christian movements, for example Protestantism, deny the existence of holy and personalized demons.

Angels of hell, the highest demonic hierarchy, are first mentioned in the Middle Ages. They are written about by specialists-theologians and demonologists, inquisitors, investigating the affairs of witches and heretics. And often their opinions about the specialization of this or that demon diverge. For example, Binsfeld wrote in 1589 that every demon is the embodiment of one of the vices. Pride - Lucifer, lust - Asmodeus, greed - Mamon, gluttony - Beelzebub, anger - Satan, laziness - Belfegor, envy - Leviathan. But Barrett after two hundred years claimed that the demon lies - Satan, temptation and seduction - Mamon, revenge - Asmodeus, and false gods - Beelzebub. And these are opinions of only two specialists. In fact, there is much more confusion.

Either hell is a place where employees need to regularly take courses to upgrade their skills and master related fields of knowledge, or demonology is not entirely sincere.

Curious fact. All the famous characters of the novel "Master and Margarita", Behemoth and Azazello, were not invented by the writer, but were borrowed from the literature on demonology. Hippopotamus is a demon that is mentioned in the book of Enoch. In addition, in the 17th century, the famous rite of exorcism took place. Demons were expelled from the abbess of the monastery, and this process was carefully recorded. The hippopotamus was the fifth demon to abandon the unhappy woman. His head was elephant, and his hind legs were hippopotamus.

Azazello is Azazel, the demon is not Christian, but Jewish. Bulgakov wrote the truth. It really is a demon of a drought and a desert. Jews who wander through arid territories, as no one knew, how hot and dry can be. So it was quite logical to make him a demon-killer.