The otherworlds, heavens, underworlds and intermediate places described by the traditions in the Atlas: the Norse nine worlds, the Hindu and Buddhist lokas, the Greek Hades, the Kabbalistic worlds and many more. Each entry records the tradition it belongs to and the kind of realm it is. Cosmologies differ sharply on how many realms there are and how they relate to each other.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 79
- Peoples and Traditions Covered
- Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Norse, Celtic, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Aztec and Maya cosmologies, together with modern Western esoteric, Pagan and Spiritualist belief. These are unrelated traditions with incompatible maps of the cosmos; the heading is comparative and imposes no single scheme on them. 1
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The Otherworlds and Their Inhabitants
A realm, in this category, is one of the otherworlds, heavens, underworlds or intermediate places described by a tradition's cosmology: the Norse nine worlds, the Hindu and Buddhist lokas, the Greek Hades, the Kabbalistic worlds, and many more. Each entry records the tradition the realm belongs to, its place in the wider cosmos, and who is said to dwell there or pass through it.
Realms are the geography of the mythic and metaphysical world, where the gods live, where the dead go, what lies above and below the ordinary world, and how the levels are joined by a world-tree, a mountain, a bridge or a river.
How Cosmologies Differ
Traditions disagree about how many realms there are, how they are arranged, and what determines which a soul reaches. Some picture a simple upper and lower world with the living between; others build elaborate storeys of heavens and hells, or wheels of rebirth through many planes. The entries report each scheme on its own terms.
The realms group by kind (heavens, underworlds, planes and worlds), so a reader can compare, say, the underworlds of many traditions side by side. The largest of these structures connect outward to the section on Cosmology & Realms.
Enter a year to compare these entries as the atlas records them at that moment. Leave it empty for the present. A year before the common era is entered with a minus sign, so 44 BCE is minus 44.