Places

Did you ever wonder if Heaven and Hell really exist? They do – and there are LOTS of them. Every vision anyone has had of Paradise or the Pit has a dedicated Afterworld in which that concept becomes reality. The really popular ones, like Dante’s Inferno or the Pearly Gates, are vast, perhaps even infinite, fueled by their place in the popular imagination. Others, like the proverbial personal hell or little slice of heaven, are just big enough for the one or two people who originally envisioned them.

Do souls go to such places for eternity? That depends, I guess, on them.

The Afterworlds remain one of the great mysteries of the universe. Do they exist because we create them, or were they there before we conceived of them? Did godlike beings shape

these realms for human souls? Or is it like Alan Moore once said, that “these halls were carved by men while they yet breathed”? No one has the right answer to those questions. The nature of subjective reality means that even the most dispassionate authority on the subject sees what he expects to see.

Here’s my theory: people who expect to go to Heaven or Hell go to the heaven or hell they expect to go to. A human consciousness, upon death, projects itself to wherever that consciousness deeply believes it deserves to go. Some consciousnesses remain stuck in the Shadowlands as ghosts, others disappear into instant reincarnation, and the majority of them head off to the Afterworld they expect to enter after death.

“Expect” is a tricky word. I assume that a lot of people who consider themselves pious yet deeply fear Hell (the same people who secretly believe they deserve to go there) wind up in the Hell they fear, not the Heaven they crave. How long do they stay? Who knows? Maybe as long as they expect to stay… which could be a very long time. Are they sent there by God/ Goddess/ the Gods/ Whatever, or do they send themselves there? Folks have disputed that for centuries, if not millennia. One thing, though, is beyond dispute: these places exist, and people can go there.

Sometimes even before they die. Mages who are brave, desperate, devout, or crazy enough to try to visit the Afterworlds can do so. The passage is difficult, frustrating, and often deadly, but as myths and stories suggest,

it can be done. We’re not going to go there right now, but the potential to do so exists if you’re willing to sacrifice everything you think you know about yourself and your world. There are reasons that people call such searches “underworld journeys” and “dark nights of the soul.” It’s a perilous trip no matter where you’re bound… and again, you often find what you expected, on some level, to find there all along.

Do gods and angels and demons exist? They do, if only because we believe they do. That’s another chicken-and-egg dilemma, where the chickens – that is, us – have the idea of “egg” pretty firmly in our heads. For now, just remember this: if you would search for Heaven or Hell, recall that gods and angels and demons have long traditions of kicking mortal ass… and the prouder the mortal, the worse the punishment.