In Norse belief most people go to hell. This is the literal source of the word and it was governed by the Vnir goddess Hela. To the Norse, hell was just a place of dreary boredom. Hell wasn’t for the evil. It was just the underworld instead of the sky.
Helios is Greek for sun, which would be heaven? Yes, but death rites in every culture are more about life than death. So hell was like being snowed in at one of their villages. Cold, hungry and unable to go anywhere.
The idea of an afterlife reward or punishment arose only in the cultures with aspirations of empire. Before that there was merely life and death, and possibly life again. But to allow a nation to be united, death must continue to be acknowledged as the great equalizer. So in our case kept simple.
To understand death we need to understand our gravity on the universe that surrounds us? I agree and our ancestors did. We have mostly given that question up in modern thinking.
I don’t know if they did fathom infinity? Oh they didn’t and neither do we. But they did have theories; stories of an abyss, of the whole universe arising from an ocean. They had an intuitive knowledge of the universe. In fact, creation myth has a great deal to do with death rites. It was believed that when you departed you were taken about a solar boat in Egyptian belief, and made a journey across the regions of the afterlife to the court of judgment.
Wasn’t it Babylon where they said to turn all language? All understood all? Indeed, it was believed that in the Babylonian empire there was that universal communication. It may have arisen from a certain quality of scholarship maintained by the Babylonian priest kings. Which as their culture decayed can have been lost. They tend to kill scholars when they want to maintain tyranny, and also erased them from funerary rites so that they would not be remembered.
Aren’t humans awesome? They are their own heaven and their own hell.
It is our cause to never understand death it seems, what makes us continue? I’m not sure I agree with that. More research is being done and parapsychology is gaining more respect in the scientific community.
We’re a cosmic joke I think. Well even jokes have a rhyme and reason. Most of the trickster spirits are connected with death rites also. So maybe death is when you get it, and some people get it early because of a near death experience or something.
Stars? Stars actually are also connected to death rites. In Taoist belief they were spiritual trails that lead to the realms of the immortals.
That’s why we can’t all get along or agree maybe, we are made of different stars genetically? That could be argued, similar in adaption but different in essence?
What is our goal today in the beginning of the 21st century? To resolve old beliefs and understand that again.
What are your beliefs? As far as my own beliefs, I have a lot of stories and experiences I could share, but to use an example: The idea that life and the soul continues I believe, and that your efforts here don’t end but are understood differently.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~