Hades, Hel, & Beyond: A Traveler’s Guide to the Underworlds of Mythology

From the moment humanity first gazed at the stars and contemplated its own mortality, the question of what lies beyond the veil of death has been a source of endless fascination, fear, and creativity. Nearly every culture across the globe has woven intricate tapestries of myth to map this unknown territory, creating realms as complex and varied as the mortal world itself. This guide is your passport to these final destinations. We will journey into the shadowed kingdoms of the ancient world, exploring the underworlds of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian lore. Prepare to meet their stern rulers, navigate their treacherous landscapes, and discover the fates that awaited the souls who made the ultimate journey from life into death.

The shadowed realm of Hades

Often misunderstood as a place of pure evil, the Greek underworld was more of a vast, neutral, and meticulously organized kingdom. Its ruler, Hades, was not a devil but a grim and powerful king, tasked with governing the spirits of the dead and ensuring they never returned to the land of the living. He ruled alongside his queen, the reluctant but formidable Persephone.

A soul’s journey here began at its borders, defined by five great rivers. The most famous was the Styx, across which the ghostly ferryman Charon would transport souls, but only if they had an obol, a coin placed in their mouth upon burial, to pay the fare. The other rivers shaped the landscape of the afterlife: Acheron (the river of pain), Cocytus (lamentation), Phlegethon (fire), and Lethe (forgetfulness), whose waters would wipe the memory of a soul’s past life.

Once across, souls faced the monstrous three-headed hound, Cerberus, who guarded the gates. Beyond him, the dead were judged and sent to one of three final resting places:

• The Fields of Asphodel: A vast, grey, and shadowy plain for the majority of souls—those who were neither exceptionally good nor evil. Here, they wandered as listless phantoms, devoid of purpose or memory.

– Tartarus: A deep, lightless abyss far below the rest of the underworld. This was the prison for the truly wicked and the enemies of the gods, like Sisyphus and Tantalus, who were subjected to eternal and inventive punishments.

– The Elysian Fields (Elysium): A paradise of sunlight and eternal spring reserved for heroes, the righteous, and those favored by the gods. It was a place of peace, music, and blissful existence.

The icy halls of Helheim

In stark contrast to the structured bureaucracy of Hades, the Norse underworld was a place of chilling gloom. Known as Helheim, or simply Hel, this realm was not primarily for the wicked but for the vast majority who did not die a glorious death in battle. If you died of old age, sickness, or accident—a “straw death”—your spirit descended to this cold, dark kingdom.

Its ruler was Hel, the daughter of the trickster god Loki. Her appearance reflected her domain: one half of her body was that of a beautiful woman, while the other was a rotting corpse. She was a somber and implacable overseer of the dead. The journey to her realm was long and arduous, leading north and down a path that took nine nights to travel. Souls had to cross the roaring river Gjöll over a bridge paved with glittering gold, guarded by the giantess Móðguðr. The entrance to Helheim itself was a gate called Helgrind, watched over by the fearsome hound Garmr.

Unlike Tartarus, Helheim was not a place of active punishment. It was a joyless continuation of existence, a shadowy and cold reality where the dead lived in halls shrouded in mist. This afterlife stood in direct opposition to Valhalla, the majestic hall in Asgard where Odin feasted with the souls of warriors slain in combat. The Norse worldview placed immense value on a heroic death, making Helheim the undesirable but common fate, a reflection of a life that ended without glory.

The trials of the Egyptian Duat

For the ancient Egyptians, the underworld, known as the Duat, was not a static destination but a perilous, transformative journey. It was a complex, multi-layered realm of gods, demons, and trials that the soul of the deceased had to navigate to reach a blessed afterlife. Their essential roadmap for this odyssey was the Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and incantations to overcome the Duat’s many dangers.

The journey mirrored the nightly voyage of the sun god Ra, who traveled through the Duat in his solar barque to be reborn at dawn. The deceased soul hoped to join him. Guided by the jackal-headed god Anubis, the soul had to pass through a series of gates, each guarded by a fearsome entity that had to be pacified with specific spells. The greatest threat was the serpent demon Apep, the embodiment of chaos, who constantly tried to swallow Ra’s barque and plunge the cosmos into eternal darkness.

The climax of this journey was the final judgment in the Hall of Two Truths, presided over by Osiris, the resurrected king of the underworld. Here, the deceased’s heart was weighed on a great scale against the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of truth and justice. The ibis-headed god Thoth recorded the verdict.

• If the heart was lighter than the feather, it proved the soul was pure and free from sin. The soul was declared “true of voice” and granted entry into Aaru, the Field of Reeds—a blissful paradise that was an idealized version of Egypt.

– If the heart was heavier than the feather, it was devoured by the monstrous goddess Ammit, a hybrid of crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus. This was the ultimate terror for an Egyptian: not damnation, but total annihilation, the end of one’s existence.

Common threads in the land of the dead

While the landscapes and fates of these underworlds differ, they are woven together by several common threads that reveal shared human anxieties about death. Each realm has a formidable guardian at its entrance, a figure ensuring the boundary between life and death remains absolute. Hades has Cerberus, Helheim has Garmr, and the Duat has a host of gatekeepers. Similarly, a body of water often serves as a transitional barrier, like the River Styx in Greece or the River Gjöll in Norse myth, symbolizing the definitive crossing from one state of being to another.

The concept of a final accounting is also prevalent, though its criteria vary. The Greeks and Egyptians implemented a moral judgment based on one’s deeds and purity, while the Norse focused on the manner of one’s death. This reflects the core values of each society: justice for the Greeks, order (Ma’at) for the Egyptians, and heroism for the Norse. The table below highlights these key distinctions and parallels.

Our tour of mythology’s most famous underworlds reveals a profound human need to impose order on the chaos of death. We have journeyed through the highly structured realm of Hades with its distinct fates for the good, the bad, and the ordinary. We felt the bone-chilling gloom of Helheim, a stark reminder of the Norse obsession with a glorious end. Finally, we navigated the treacherous trials of the Egyptian Duat, where a soul’s very existence hinged on a pure heart. Though separated by geography and culture, these myths share a common architecture: guardians, transitional rivers, and a final sorting of souls. They are more than just stories; they are windows into the values of a civilization, proving that our quest to understand our final journey is a timeless and universal part of the human story.

Image by: Trevor Lawrence
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