Way Down, Under Ground, The Dead

Metaphysics of the underworld

Down, down, down you go.

Into the underworld, to the land of the dead.

But perhaps you’re not dead?

No matter! You are mythic! Or at least legendary. Never mind that you are raising more metaphysical issues than the mere existence of the undead.¹ Find that appropriate crack in the earth, and go down. And don’t ask too many questions about how miners aren’t always finding themselves in the netherworld, with all its attendant issues.

Better yet, come back up.

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air - there’s the rub, the task.

― Virgil

But what does it mean, to have this crack, this portal, this gate to the other world? It is so much more than even a standing portal to another world.² Pythagoras, or Orpheus, might descend and return, with all the astonishment that brings. Perhaps with divine wisdom. Or perhaps, as a wag might state, with the wisdom to never do that again until the day of their deaths.

More mundanely (so to speak), Odysseus descended to the very gates and set up a careful rite to summon the ghosts and question them. How difficult it is to reach the gate while mortal would determine how often this is done, but imagine a steampunk world in which the crack that was once found every several generations is a dirigible ride away, so that tourists can gawk and soothsayers can set up shop, and courts of law routinely consult the dead to determine what they meant by their wills.

Or perhaps they can’t be summoned back that way, and the necromancers set up camp to trap as many ghosts as they can. A great temple is built over the cracks to protect as many as can be protected. Paladins escort unseen travelers down to a road, and ghosts are lured to their stronghold to be offered this protection.

Or they --

Hmmm --

In the myths of Persephone, she spends only a third of the year with Hades, and that’s why nothing grows then (probably summer, when Greece gets no rain; farmers farmed in the winter), but whenever a dead soul reached Hades, Persephone was there.³

Perhaps the purpose of funeral rites is to induct the dead soul into the train of Persephone, and spend the rest of the year with her, until finally she descends with all the souls of dead with her. Summer is a dangerous time to die, and the more elaborate rites are to persuade Demeter to take on the soul until her daughter returns.

Ghosts are those who do not get the rites, and do not have Persephone as a guide. Perhaps you can perform the rites for a ghost. Perhaps you can work out a different psychopomp to convey the soul. The original Greek psychopomp was Hermes; it was, in fact, his title, and that is the origin of the term “psychopomp” for “guide to the soul.”

Which is how you can tell that I am altering the myths to my whimsy.

Do it yourself: Alter myths to taste. Follow the European tradition of having Persephone descend in the winter, if you thus choose. Work out how it works if your world has a southern hemisphere. Are the Antipodes the land of the dead? (If that seems strange, Romans often thought Britain was.)

All of which is the consequences of putting the portal to the land of the dead in a physical location accessible to the living. If you don not want that in your story, it is much wiser to elide that. Any psychopomps can guide off the souls by paths that mortal feet can not walk.

Or make it a legend. Far off and inaccessible is good enough.

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