If you travel the world and are passionate about visiting ancient monuments , you will have come across multiple tombs, cemeteries, temples and representations of death and the afterlife. But do you know its meaning? Today we invite you to take a tour of the different underworlds in each culture and the meaning that this had for the peoples.
Get to know the different underworlds in each culture
Death is something that has always worried man. In the ancient cultures of humanity , countless rituals were established to help the soul of the deceased to fully realize what they called Beyond. Witnesses of these beliefs, rites, customs and traditions are, for example, the pyramids of Egypt or the megalithic constructions. But why were these places erected?
These constructions served as a cemetery, but they were not limited to housing the corpses of the deceased, but as a place to honor or remember them, according to the tradition of each town. But, let’s review the different underworlds in each culture, which is the place where souls are believed to go. The underworld, as a place where the souls of the dead go, is merely mythological and does not have a specific location, nor does it have a scientific meaning, nor is there any evidence of its existence. In addition, as we already anticipated, each culture had its own conception of the underworld.
The Duat of the Egyptians
Without a doubt, one of the peoples with the greatest funerary tradition is the Egyptians. Proof of this are the pyramids, temples and funerary enclosures that the Egyptians built. For them, there was a life after death. The place where souls went, according to Egyptian culture, was the Duat, also called Amenti or Necher-Jertet. This sort of underworld was the place where the judgment of Osiris took place, according to the Book of the Dead.
In the Duat, the spirit of the dead wandered and dodged various dangers and trials, but it also had to pass through multiple doors to fulfill the different stages of its journey. At first, the Duat was called Dat and it was on Earth, however, during the New Kingdom, beliefs changed. Then the Duat was had as an underworld under the Earth and ruled by the god Osiris. Thanks to these beliefs, the Egyptians began to divide the days into twenty-four hours: twelve of which were sunny and another twelve, dark. The division arose because the Egyptians believed that the god Ra soared through the sky during the day, but, at night, he traveled towards the Duat.
Tartarus: an underworld shared by Greeks and Romans
The Greeks and Romans have many similarities, religiously speaking. The term underworld is believed to have been coined by the Greeks, since the first reference we find about a place to which the soul of the dead traveled is found in the texts of the poet Homer: The Iliad and The Odyssey . Although, the word, as such, has Latin etymology: inframundus or world below.
For the Greeks, the Hereafter was divided into three parts. For the heroes, the Champs-Élysées; for the damned Tartarus and for other spirits, the kingdom of Hades. According to Greek literature, the underworld was a place that was located at the ends of the Earth: at the end of the world. In Greek culture, the soul of the deceased had to cross the River Acheron, aboard a raft led by the ferryman Charon, who was given a coin to be able to cross to the other side. Hence the custom of placing a coin on the body of the deceased.
Different underworlds in each culture: Nordic Valhalla
If there is an underworld that we have heard a lot about, it is Valhalla. Thanks to popular culture and multiple series, movies, songs and operas, we know that Valhalla exists or that the Nordics believed. Valhalla means “hall of the fallen” and it was a huge room, in Asgard, ruled by the god Odin. According to Norse mythology, it was the Valkyries who chose the dead in combat and took them riding to Valhalla. There, their war wounds were healed and they had to wait together with Odin to fight in Ragnarök, the battle at the end of the world.
Detailed descriptions of the Vallhalla are found in the Poetic Edda, a series of poems compiled in the 13th century.
The Celtic Otherworld
For the Celts, the underworld was called Orbis Alia or Other World and referred to a world that coexisted with that of humans. In some myths, the Otherworld is beyond the Western Sea, but in others, under the great megalithic monuments and dolmens. The Celtic Otherworld was divided into three:
- The Sídhe, refuge of the fairies (descendants of the Tuatha Dé Danann, expelled by the Gaels from Spain) composed of fountains, ruins, mounds or lakes. Traditions of the Sídhe can be appreciated today in Asturias. Here it is believed that the entrance to this kingdom is in the Castro of Altamira.
- The Islands of Paradise, beyond the ocean and separated from the earthly plane by the ninth wave. The tradition of the ninth wave is practiced on the beach of La Lanzada, in Galicia.
- The Annwn or Welsh underworld, belonging to the Arthurian myth.
Mictlán and Xibalbá for Mexicans
Far from Egypt, Greece and Rome, the ancient Mexica or Aztecs and the Mayans established their own rites and customs. Within the different underworlds in each culture we find the Mictlán of the Mexica and the Xibalbá of the Mayans. The first divided the universe into parcels or regions created by the gods Xipetótec, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcóatl and Huitzilopochtli. These gods had also created two universes: one horizontal and the other vertical; to the latter belonged the overworld, the world and the underworld, forming a kind of cube and delimited by four huge trees.
The underworld, called Mictlán, was divided into nine regions or hells, to which only those who died a natural death went. In this underworld, souls had to face a series of torment-filled trials and obstacles in order to free their soul.
We have news of the Xibalbá of the Mayans thanks to the Popol Vuh, a book discovered during the conquest of Mexico. The Xibalbá was ruled by disease and death and it was believed that its entry was in Guatemala. To get to Xibalbá, you would have to descend some very steep stairs that lead to a river that runs through multiple thorny ravines until it meets four paths: red, white, yellow and black. The black road is the one that would lead to Xibalbá. Of course, to get to Xibalbá you had to go through six houses or doors full of horrors.
Summerland, the modern pagan underworld
Have you ever wondered what the pagans believe? There is an underworld for them, the Summerland. This is a conceptualization of an afterlife, of an afterlife used by certain pagan cultures such as the Wicca and Theosophists. The term was coined by the American writer Andrew Jackson in the book The Great Harmony , inspired in turn by a Christian mystic.
Summerland is a more spiritual than earthly place, as it would be a spiritual achievement, the highest level to which we can aspire to enter, after death. Summerland is described as a place full of peace and beauty (quite the opposite of the different underworlds in each culture that we have described above where everything is destruction).
Summerland has the characteristic that all souls go here, regardless of whether they have been good or bad, it is a version of the utopian (and literary) Shangri-La. In Summerland souls can reunite with their loved ones and also look at those they left behind on Earth.
