Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Old Norse

This page groups realms by the language their descriptive name comes from. Wikipedia notes that "chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld," a term rooted in Greek. Browsing by language lets a visitor find every realm whose descriptive name traces to the same tongue.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Realms below or beyond the living world to which the dead are said to go. The traditions gathered here disagree about whether such a place is a punishment, a shadowy continuation or a stage on the way somewhere else, and the entries keep those answers apart. 2
Peoples and Traditions Covered
Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Jewish, Norse, Islamic, Hindu, Aztec and Maya cosmologies. These are unrelated traditions; Sheol, Hades, Naraka and Jahannam are not four names for one place. 2
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard comparative category in the study of religion 2
Directory
Category
Realms 1
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The underworlds

This group holds the underworlds, the lower and subterranean realms of the world's cosmologies, the abodes of the dead and, in many traditions, of chthonic powers. The underworld ranges from a neutral land of shades to a place of judgement and torment, depending on the tradition.

The browser will find the underworld realms the atlas gathers. The entries describe each realm's inhabitants, rulers and character, reporting each tradition's own map of the world below.

Old Norse
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Descent into the UnderworldView the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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