What is your hell like?

Convictions, morals, other societies and religions.
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Nefastos
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What is your hell like?

Post by Nefastos »

I deliberately put this topic here and not in Symbolism, since I'd like to talk about psychological & magical states more than symbolistic representations. Of course those necessarily overlap somewhat.

Many religions, including post-Dantean Christianity, talk about different kinds of hells. How do you envision hell, or what kind(s) of hell if most meaningful for you? Do you regard those hell-worlds as real, & if so, where or how are they located?

Two short anecdotes for the beginning...

Yesterday we were talking about the Tree of Death with brother Fomalhaut. He asked my opinion, & I said that personally I think that the Tree of Death (which is the ten groups of demons/qliphoth) is this, our threefold world. We are living in a fragmented, schizophrenic world that yields constant suffering, & whether we as humankind know it or not, "our Earth is the only hell" (as Blavatsky said). Of course, in this threefold world hell is presented in dis-carnate dimensions too, but they all are facets or perceptions of this very same suffering. Hell in never distant or away, for it is a state of mind. Even an adept can, when there's a need, to focus one's attention into that state of being.

The night before the last I dreamt of hell. That hell was total blackness in the deep depths of Earth, & there was nothing but completely empty stone halls under the immense pressure of the earth above. It wasn't the worst hell I have experienced - not by far -, but the feeling was terrible in its psychological suffocation, so to speak.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Benemal
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Benemal »

I have seen so many dark dreams, that I can now often enjoy them, because I've become so desensitized. You can get used to things, that seemed horrific at first. Dark tunnels are very familiar and they feel more like an astral videogame, than hell. There's been some interesting boss fights.

However, dreams of hell are still there, or here. Things happen, that shouldn't be. Not possible to explain in words. An ultimate ordered chaos. There's random forms and colors, that eat me. A trip to some mysterious place, often turns into a struggle and then I wake up tired, because it's been so straining to get black things of me. They hold on tight. The first dream I can remember, from when I was six, was my mum falling into a volcano, because I wasn't strong enough to pull her up. That's a hell of a kind, watching someone else falling in. The real hell is falling yourself and nobody sees it. Then a fake you, takes your place and smiles. Smiles at dead faces.
In dreams, scary and painful experiences can take truly wonderful forms and this makes it easier. Especially if you're used to it anyway, you can have fun in monsterland.

Being awake and aware, that something is happening to you, is a thousand times scarier. Looking at small piece of matter and falling into the emptiness inside. Or worse, the emptiness inside something, that I thought was alive. Suddenly I'm alone in the world, because I have discovered everything dead and empty. Like a thin shell of matter around a shadow. A bubble, that can't be, but is. This whole thing.
obnoxion
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by obnoxion »

I, too, will take up something I dreamt about. I've had my share of hellish nightmares like everybody else. But about a month ago I saw a truly horrific one. I had murdered someone. I had been too nervous to confess it yet, but I knew it would come out. I was thinking about the immense consequences of murdering a human being. And I couldn't stop thinking that "I'm a murderer". It was the last thing in the world I wanted to be. I thought I would rather be killed a thousand times than be a murderer. It felt like the lowest thing a person could be. So I think that one of the worst kinds of hells would be to live with the knowledge that you're a killer, a rapist or a torturer. That kind of hell must be one of the worst there is.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Insanus
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Insanus »

Those moments you know there's something that must be done or something that's wrong but you don't know what it is. A murderer can live on a sad and ashamed life and perhaps still do some valuable things, but if he doesn't wholly understand he has killed, if it stays in his subconscious mind as a ghost, as a "something" that tortures him without him knowing why and scaring him away from his reality again and again to an illusion that's okay, but he just knows it's not real, not his life he is living.
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obnoxion
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by obnoxion »

On the less subjective side, I do find the Buddhist descriptions of afterlife states to be most precise. The Eight Cold Narakas and The Eight Hot Narakas, all which are, like Johannes said, connected to this our world (Jambudvipa). These are extremeley horrible states of being, but none of them is everlasting, though Avitchi is told to be 3.39738624 x ten quintillion years long. And though I've understood that these kinds of exact lengths in Oriental religions are more instructive to how these states relate to each other, that is an awful long time. It also sounds more terrible than the eternal Hell of the Monotheisms, because to be part of a truly neverending state of being is so far beyond any human concept, that it is impossible to relate to. On the other hand, the infernal visions of Dante seem quite merciful when compared to Buddhist temporary hells.

One vision of Hell - which is very naivistic, and most likely that is why it is so appealing - that is veryy close to the immdeiate idea of a hellish situation would be the The Wang Saen Suk Monastery Garden (or "The Hell Garden) in Thailand. There are plenty of photos of it to be found from the internet.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Cancer
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Cancer »

My nightmares are almost never really terrifying. Nearly all of them are about plain & simple violence, and it's always me who is doing the shooting, beating or whatever. What annoys me the most when I'm dreaming tends to be that I never get to actually kill anyone, because I wake up before I have the chance. Aterwards I feel just nausea, like after watching a really bad action movie. Talk about banality.

Recently I've had much more hellish experiences while awake. One of the worst has been a feeling of being just a piece of rotting flesh, an agonizing recognition of my body's mortality and fragility, that has loomed in my thoughts during the last few months, at times surfacing intensely. The feeling hasn't given rise to fear for my own sake, at least not primarily, but rather to a heavy, black sadness about 'all this', about the material world and the passing of time. Like everyone I care about had really already become corpses, because they are going to.

I have to highlight that this hasn't been an intellectual thing at all; I haven't drawn any 'Nihilist conclusions' from life's finitude, and I don't think that there's any reason to do so. Neither have I felt any hate or bitterness in connection to this feeling, which I think is because it is related to a feminine archetype. For me, there's always also love in the "Kiss of our Dark Mother" (as a Black Metal-band put it), no matter how horrible a form it takes. It is bearable because it is living, rooted in this world. Hell-states that have more to do with the intelligence than with the physical/emotional side are worse because they're colder, less human. That's probably why the lowest levels of Dante's hell are frozen.
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Jiva
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Jiva »

Well, I think I’ll borrow from Zamyatin again and state that my personal definition of Hell is something like the Heaven proposed by God, namely a state where entropy has prevailed and everything is stagnant in its monotonous nature. In other words: boredom. This was the origin of much of the depression I suffered during my teen years although a large amount of this suffering was due to me not seeing the value in the various situations that caused it. Nietzsche also talked about boredom in a similar way, although in my teen years I misunderstood much of his philosophy and thus became arrogant in my depression.

As a kind of counterpoint to this, when I was a child I had a few constantly recurring dreams that emphasised chaos and my inability to comprehend or order it. The first involved a seemingly infinite number of constantly changing outlines of shapes that had to be aligned, which I naturally had no chance of succeeding at. The second was similar in that the perspective and dimension of ordinary object constantly changed. This recurring dream often had aspects of hypnopompia as they continued after I had awoken and sometimes caused a terrifying sort of vertigo and motion sickness.

My interpretation is that I consider these to represent the stereotypical developmental stages the generic human passes through with both being simultaneously necessary: an initial RHP ordering of knowledge and attempted mastery of their own personal world, followed by a LHP dissatisfaction with these limitations and ensuing attempts to resolve this. Or perhaps I’m being overly pretentious and megalomaniacal.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Nefastos
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Nefastos »

It's very interesting that many of us mentioned dreams & nightmares when talking about hell. It might be a very important part of the subject.

Hells seem to be made up, i.e. get their energy from, our dreams gone wrong: maybe we know we should have something, & we see only lack of it; or, we know we shouldn't have something, but it's there no matter what. Like brother Obnoxion said, murder is something that can be seen as absolutely wrong, but yet we know that murder is a real existent thing. These kinds of abominations are the things our mind either blocks out (which is the profane way) or tries to understand with its best ability, which necessarily brings suffering. Hell is mental suffering, there's no way around that. Of course one may embrace the suffering & thus overcome it with intuitive love. Which I think is usually no easier than it sounds...

As a liminal state, something under the threshold of normal understanding, it's Inferno, the underworld. Only for someone afraid of his or her superconscious Ego (the possibility of divinities or universal meanings) it would be located above us - like in Lovecraft's case. Understanding the latter hells might help us understand our own hells, too. Namely, to see that in their core there's something really beautiful & meaningful.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
Kenaz
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Kenaz »

Like everyone else here has alluded to, it's difficult for to try and pick one particular setting or experience to describe what Hell is like, as it is more so a state of mind. I think Hell for me is a state where emotions and experiences involving fear and guilt and failure are brought to the forefront, with all the archetypal symbolism and personal traumas acting as agents to invoke as intense experience as they can.


Dreams are where they hit me the hardest as well. I think dreams are such a potent place for these things to occur because your psyche is in a much more vulnerable state than when you're awake, and it gives your ego a chance to throw all the dark parts of your subconsciousness against you in an effort to maintain its control. I guess it could be said then that Hell is the festering ground for the ego's attempt at self preservation.


Something that has been on my mind lately is that it seems sometimes that the further I progress along my own path that the more intense my Hell can become when it manifests. I've come to look at this as that the process of transcendence requires letting go, and in the process of chipping away at the smaller parts of you're ego you're eventually lead you to the center of the darkest and most resistant parts of your nature (like your own Dantean Devil that's frozen you in place now that I think about it :lol: ). Has anyone else experienced similar things? What have/did you take away from it?
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Cancer
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Re: What is your hell like?

Post by Cancer »

Kenaz wrote:Something that has been on my mind lately is that it seems sometimes that the further I progress along my own path that the more intense my Hell can become when it manifests. I've come to look at this as that the process of transcendence requires letting go, and in the process of chipping away at the smaller parts of you're ego you're eventually lead you to the center of the darkest and most resistant parts of your nature (like your own Dantean Devil that's frozen you in place now that I think about it :lol: ). Has anyone else experienced similar things? What have/did you take away from it?
At some points the process of transcendence requires letting go, at others the opposite: holding on to what is important, not giving in to the world. Chipping away 'smaller parts of the ego' is actually chipping away that in you which is not-you, that which distracts you from whatever you truly want. Living in Hell can be very liberating in this respect: when everything is totally fucked up, there is no energy left for worrying about trivial matters; one has, on a certain scale, reached the centre of the earth, where one meets the Devil. My point is that the dark, heavy energy thus obtained can be used for good purposes; that one needs not just get rid of it. Hell enables one to be egoistic in a healthy way.

Your post made me think of this because much of the pain and frustration I experience is about stuff being in a stagnant state. Limbus - endless meaningless waiting - can be worse than Hell, and hellfire can be used to get things up and running again.
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