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Above and Below complete a single vertical axis in this atlas, and each half is fixed to its own link, Above to Heaven and Below to Duat, together the only two links site-wide connecting the Cosmology and Realms section to Elements and the Natural World. The two destinations share nothing but the geometry that names them: one is Christian, the other Egyptian, and the traditions never met.

A Direction Older Than Either Destination

Above and Below complete the vertical axis alongside the horizontal compass points, one of the six directions recognized in Vedic and Buddhist cosmological schemes, the four cardinal points plus above and below, sometimes with a seventh, centre. Mesoamerican cosmology uses the same vertical pairing on its own terms, celestial layers above the earthly plane and layered underworld layers below it. The direction itself belongs to no single tradition; it is a shared piece of cosmological geometry that different traditions have each filled with their own content.

Filled, in This Atlas, by Two Unrelated Afterlives

In Christian teaching Heaven is the state of everlasting communion with God enjoyed by the redeemed, described through images of a city, a banquet and a restored garden rather than as a mapped place; Catholic and Orthodox theology centres it on the beatific vision, the direct sight of God, while Protestant teaching more often stresses resurrection life in a renewed creation. Duat is the Egyptian underworld through which the sun god journeys each night and the dead must pass to reach the afterlife, a realm of trials, gates and demons culminating in the judgment hall where the heart is weighed against the feather of truth. Nothing connects these two accounts except the up and down that this atlas's own six-direction scheme assigns them, which is exactly why the link is rare: most pairs of sections this far apart in subject connect nowhere at all, and these two connect only through a direction word.

Where To Read More

• AboveOne of only two edges connecting Cosmology and Realms to Elements and the Natural World
• HeavenHeavensWhat Above is fixed to: everlasting communion with God, disputed since as immediate or awaiting resurrection
• BelowThe other half of the same axis, one of only two edges connecting the same two sections
• DuatUnderworldsWhat Below is fixed to: the nightly journey and the weighing of the heart