Annihilation In Other Religions

[Vomit Comet]

I guess hell, soul death, eternal damnation or whatever... is kind of an annihilation where it's eternal and you're totally fucked and that's that.

 

Do other religions have an equivalent? Or is there no parallel?

[Dhampir]

Islam has a version of hell which, from what I've been told, is worse than the christian hell. I believe Hindu, and certain forms of Buddhism have hells (plural, as in more than one in each religion), though I'm not sure either are permanent.

[Thurisaz]

Do other religions have an equivalent? Or is there no parallel?

 

Well in the most commonly (as far as I know) accepted view of modern Asatruar, nothing is eternal. Literally nothing. Not even this universe. So much for any possibility of eternal (whatever)...

 

...and as for places of punishment, generally the Asatru view features a "default destination" realm of the dead called Hel and ruled by the Goddess of the same name (and you wondered where the morontheists got their term "hell" from ), a place often described as unpleasant... but it's not a place of torture. The fearless warriors who died on the battlefield, of course, will be divided between Odin and Freya who will have them brought to their respective halls of Valhalla and Folkwang.

 

And there is one stanza in the sagas that hints at something similar to the morontheist hell:

 

38. A hall I saw, | far from the sun,

On Nastrond it stands, | and the doors face north,

Venom drops | through the smoke-vent down,

For around the walls | do serpents wind.

 

39. I saw there wading | through rivers wild

Treacherous men | and murderers too,

And workers of ill | with the wives of men;

There Nithhogg sucked | the blood of the slain,

And the wolf tore men; | would you know yet more?

 

(The Poetic Edda, H. A. Bellows-translation, Voluspo poem - see http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe03.htm)

 

In case you are wondering, "Nithhogg" is a mythical dragon that will play a role in the Asatru End Times™ also known as "Ragnarok"...

 

However, the Edda was not written down until long after the morontheist conquest, and by a morontheist monk... so it is definitely possible that this idea was not original to ancient Asatru, but either a morontheist fabrication or something that sneaked into the original sagas after the initial (peaceful) contacts between Asatruar and morontheists. In other words, all we can do today is guess

[BlueGiant]

I would also look at Greek and Roman versions of the underworld. There were some very creative punishments down there.

[Guest SmAshley]

I think it is Buddhism that you are reincarnated until you are a "perfect" person and then you go on into Nirvana which is their equivalent to the christian Heaven. If that is so technically hell is here on earth when you keep getting reincarnated because you do "bad" things.

[Skankboy]

Sanskrit nirvāṇam, a blowing out, extinction, nirvana : nis-, nir-, out, away + vāti, it blows; see wē- in Indo-European roots.]

 

Technically, Nirvana isn't "heaven" in the christian sense. Tied to belief in reincarnation, nirvana means you no longer exist, at all. "Snuffed out like a candle"

[Guest SmAshley]

Sanskrit nirvāṇam, a blowing out, extinction, nirvana : nis-, nir-, out, away + vāti, it blows; see wē- in Indo-European roots.]

 

Technically, Nirvana isn't "heaven" in the christian sense. Tied to belief in reincarnation, nirvana means you no longer exist, at all. "Snuffed out like a candle"

 

 

oh ok well that works too lol. Thanks for the correction.

[Vomit Comet]

Sanskrit nirvāṇam, a blowing out, extinction, nirvana : nis-, nir-, out, away + vāti, it blows; see wē- in Indo-European roots.]

 

Technically, Nirvana isn't "heaven" in the christian sense. Tied to belief in reincarnation, nirvana means you no longer exist, at all. "Snuffed out like a candle"

 

Where's the fun in that? I'd rather go to Freya's house and get all the I can handle.

[Comanche]

Saved this from somewhere a while ago because it was interesting.

 

Christianity. Bible, Revelation 21.8

 

As for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolators, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.

 

Islam. Qur'an 78.21-30

 

Hell will lurk in ambush

to receive home the arrogant,

who will linger there for ages.

They will taste nothing cool in it nor any drink

except hot bathwater and slops,

a fitting compensation

since they have never expected any reckoning

and have wittingly rejected Our signs.

Everything We have calculated in writing.

"So taste! Yet We shall only increase torment for you!"

 

 

Buddhism. Lotus Sutra 3

 

After their lifetime's end

They will enter the Avici hell,

For a complete kalpa;

Reborn at each kalpa's end,

They thus go on revolving

Unto innumerable kalpas;

When they come out of hell,

They will degrade into animals,

Such as dogs or jackals,

With lean-cheeked forms,

Blue-black with scabs and sores,

The sport of men;

Moreover by men

Hated and scorned,

Ever suffering hunger and thirst,

Bones and flesh withered up.

Alive, beaten with thorns,

Dead, with shards and stones;

By cutting themselves off from the Buddha seed,

They receive such recompense.

 

And another description of Buddhist Hell

 

Buddhism. Sutta Nipata 672-76

 

Then the man of unwholesome deeds boils in water infested with worms. He cannot stay still--the boiling pots, round and smooth like bowls, have no surfaces which he can get hold of. Then he is in the jungle of sword blades, limbs mangled and hacked, the tongue hauled by hooks, the body beaten and slashed. Then he is in Vetarani, a watery state difficult to get through, with its two streams that cut like razors. The poor beings fall into it, living out their unwholesome deeds of the past. Gnawed by hungry jackals, ravens and black dogs, and speckled vultures and crows, the sufferers groan. Such a state is experienced by the man of unwholesome deeds. It is a state of absolute suffering. So a sensible person in this world is as energetic and mindful as he can be.

 

 

Hinduism. Garuda Purana 3.49-71

Some of the sinful are cut with saws, like firewood, and others, thrown flat on the ground, are chopped into pieces with axes. Some, their bodies half buried in a pit, are pierced in the head with arrows. Others, fixed in the middle of a press, are squeezed like sugarcane. Some are surrounded close with blazing charcoal, enwrapped with torches, and smelted like a lump of ore. Some are plunged into heated butter, and others into heated oil, and like a cake thrown into the frying pan they are turned about. Some are thrown in the path of huge maddened elephants, and some with hands and feet bound are placed head downwards. Some are thrown into wells; some are hurled from heights; others, plunged into pits full of worms, are eaten away by them....

[Crazycatlady]

Buddhist and Hindu hells (and heavens) are temporary places/states of being until reincarnation on earth again.

[The Sage Nabooru]

Judaism is a tough cookie to figure out, due to the different opinions within its own ranks, but I don't think whatever hell it may have is permanent, either. I think it's just referred to as "purgatory".

 

Islam is a lot more specific about what goes on in its hell, but I don't think it's neccessarily "worse". I mean, what's worse than hell? Hell is hell. It's supposed, in both religions, to be the very very worstest thing ever. Islam just goes into detail about the sufferings (eating fruit that, when going down, feels like drinking boiling water, etc.) whereas the Bible just speaks vaguely of fire, mostly.

 

Religions with reincarnation generally assert that hell is temporary, including the Dharmic religions of India.