The Bridge Every Soul Must Cross

Zoroastrianism teaches a judgement of each soul at death, staged at the Chinvat Bridge, the Bridge of the Separator. On the fourth day after death the soul arrives there and its life is reckoned up, thought against thought, word against word, deed against deed. What happens next depends on the balance. For the righteous the bridge grows broad and level; the soul is greeted by a radiant young woman who is the embodiment of its own good conscience, the daena, and conducted across to the House of Song, the luminous abode of Ahura Mazda.

For the wicked the same bridge turns thin as a razor's edge, the daena meets them as a hideous hag, and the soul plunges from the bridge into the House of the Lie, a cold and comfortless place. This verdict is real but not final: it holds until the general resurrection and the renewal of all things at frashokereti. The motif of a narrow bridge of testing that the dead must cross recurs in later traditions, a likely inheritance from Zoroastrian eschatology.