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Since the devil does not do talk very much about himself, men look
for all sorts of references about hell.
Most religions have what is called a "place for punishment"
where the immortal soul goes after committing certain crimes against
society (it all seems to be a matter of society rather than the
individual). Each culture also develops its particular view about
this land of suffering: it can be the other bank of a river, where
a three-headed dog lets no-one leave, or else the foot of a mountain
that smashes souls under its weight.
For the Greek hero Prometheus, who stole the fire of the gods and
gave it to man, hell was remain hanging from a cliff where a bird
came every day to eat his liver. In his play "No Exit,"
Jean-Paul Sartre says that hell is other people. In one of his poems,
Jorge Luis Borges offers a very interesting description of what
awaits us after life: eternal contemplation of a face. For certain
people this would be heaven, for this face would be that of someone
we love, whereas for others it would be hell to have to remain there
always looking at the face of someone they hurt for no reason.
There is an interesting description in an Arab book that says that
the soul, once outside the body, should walk across a bridge as
narrow as a razor's blade, with heaven on the right and on the left
a series of circles that lead to darkness inside the Earth. Before
crossing over the bridge (the book does not explain where it leads
to), each one has to carry their virtues in their right hand and
their sins in their left - the balance will make us fall to the
side determined by the acts we perform on Earth.
Christianity talks of a place where one hears crying and the gnashing
of teeth. Judaism refers to an interior cave with enough room for
a certain number of souls - one day hell will be filled up, and
then the world will come to an end. Islam speaks of the fire where
we shall all burn, "unless God wills the opposite." The
"Dictionary of Religions" says that at the time of Christ
some currents of Judaic thinking held that evil souls would be punished
after death in a place called Geena - a name borrowed from a place
near Jerusalem that used to serve as the rubbish dump for neighbouring
cities. However, in Geena there exists no idea of an eternal punishment,
and the maximum penalty can never be more than 365 days.
For the Hindus, hell is never a place of perpetual torment, since
they believe in reincarnation of the soul after a certain time in
order that sins be redeemed in the same place where they are committed
- this world. Even so, there are only 21 types of places for suffering,
places usually known as "the lower lands."
The Buddhists also distinguish between the various types of punishment
that the soul can face: eight hells of fire and eight completely
frozen, besides a kingdom where the condemned feel neither cold
nor heat, only infinite hunger and thirst.
Nothing, however, compared to the gigantic variety conceived by
the Chinese. Unlike the great majority of cultures that situate
hell inside the Earth - generally because of the analogy between
death, burial and decomposition - for the Chinese the souls of sinners
go to a mountain called the Small Iron Fence, which is surrounded
by another called the Great Fence. In the space between them there
are eight large hells one on top of the other and each one controlling
16 small hells which in turn control ten million hells below them.
The Chinese also consider devils to be souls that have already
fulfilled their punishment, experienced pain, and are now after
vengeance, trying to inflict the newly-arrived with punishments
that grow worse and worse.
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