There is still much confusion, or rather, ignorance about what the underworld is, in general, and in particular, what Hades, the greek underworld is.
Starting from the very concept of the underworld, it suggests an immaterial dimmension located underground where the spirits of the dead go to. But moving beyond this initial contradiction of an 'immaterial realm in a physical location'1, maybe the underworld is not actually 'under the ground', but, like what it also suggests, a place where the dead seem to be hiding from sight. Well, this doesn't require that it should be 'underground', since ghosts are invisible. Perhaps, like what the names of Hades and Hel imply, it's just a state of concealment from from physical perception, as if the dead would be hiding 'under' physical perception itself. If this is true, then the underworld can be de facto 'underground', above the ground, in the air, in space, basically it can be anywhere, just as long we don't perceive it with our physical senses.
But our physical senses are one thing, and our spiritual senses another. And on this distinction, the sages discovered that spirits with heavier, lower vibrations tend to be nearer to the Earth and the material plane, whereas spirits in higher frequencies are further away, just like the stars are far from Earth. Maybe this is how the idea of 'heaven' and 'underworld' originated, that the underworld is not exactly under the earth, but close to it, and hidden from sight like the underground, and that heaven is further away and physically inaccessible, like the stars in the sky, but spiritually accessible to people and souls on the same frequency.
To this attests the accounts of siberian shamans who say that the underworld of King Erlik is just a place of transformation, like a purgatory, or limbo, but not necessarily evil.2 And if it's a place or state of transformation, this seems to imply the universal belief found in shamanism and ancient traditions, that people, when they die, if they don't abandon all material and emotional yearnings and longings related to the physical life, they won't go straight away to a heavenly state - which makes sense since many people, if not all, all they know is the physical life;
- Conventional religions like christianism don't help in that regard due to lack of knowledge of what happens after death;
- atheism and materialism is abundant and prolific, multiplying evermore like a pandemic or mass hypnosis,
and so it wouldn't be surprising if a recently disembodied person would find themselves in a limbo, not being able to move on. And this is a true limbo and a purgatory, and a true burning hot hell of sorts, because such state requires the total abandonment of the material world. The body is gone, now it's left to deal with human preconceptions about what life, and death, should be, passions, possessions, hopes, etc... If there isn't such, then there is most likely suffering, i.e., 'Hell'.
How then, was this hinted in greek religion, philosophy and literature?
For one, the fact that Hades means invisible, and was said to rule the underground, like the underground where dead bodies go to.
Secondly, the underground is made of earth and water, and so are we also physically made of earth and water. So our pneumatic vehicle, or according to yoga, our pranic body which permeates the physical body, is 'under' the earth.3 Yogis also believe that the planet has a pranic body too, which concurs with this example, but that's another subject.
Third, Hades was equated with Dionysus4, who, as Proclus wrote, is the monad of the mundane world, monad meaning summit, therefore meaning the whole planet earth including atmosphere.
Fourth, Pythagoras in his turn taught that the kingdom of Pluto, who is Hades, begins with the inerratic sphere, down to the seven planets and the Earth, meaning, the whole universe, or the material world, is the realm of Pluto, or Hades itself.5
Fifth, Porphyry in his teatrise "On cave of the nymphs" proved how Homer occultly, but efficiently, used the example of a cave to imply and personify the material world on which souls descend to, which agrees with Pythagoras, who, along with this line of thought, also taught that the body is the grave of the soul. If this world is, according to Homer, like a cave, then it is an underworld in itself, and the human body, a micro-underworld, a replica of the higher one. This also implies that the soul is greater in size and in quality than we think:
- In size because a cave is tight, and a body even tighter;
- and in quality because on one hand it possesses the world, like the monad of the world, or like the soul before entering the world/cave, and on the other it becomes one with the world, and is possessed by it (Hades kidnapping Persephone), but it is not the world, it is not material - it is something entirely different.
So in a way, the mundane world comprises the sensible cosmos, from the in erratic sphere down to Earth, but to the neoplatonists, the upper sensible cosmos, i.e., the inerratic sphere plus the seven planets was the astral plane (from greek aster, 'star'), and the plane where souls would go to after death and between incarnations.6
What does that mean, that the soul is confined to the material realm?
Yes and no. It is in the sense of being subject to cycle of reincarnation, of which the material universe is a half, but it also means that, if the material world is a cave (according to Homer, and agreeing with Pythagoras), that the hypercosmic reality is represented in the ceiling of the cave, like in cave paintings, and the stars in the sky correspond to those representations on the cave's ceiling, and that the sky and stars that we see is all part of Homer's cave, and the realm of Pluto according to Pythagoras7, and that the true 'astral' realm to which the souls go after physical death, is beyond the cave of the material world, since the physical sky is merely a representation of the actual 'heaven'. Beyond, not in distance, but in quality, i.e., it's not material.8
- Hypercosmos (psychic gods)
- Cosmos a) - Stars and planets (as the visible bodies of the psychic gods)
- Cosmos b) - Planet Earth
Sixth, Hades, along with Zeus and Poseidon, comprise the paternal triad at the summit of the hypercosmic world, the realm of the psyche, or where the psyche originates, further away from the material world. This means that Hades in this triad represents the demiurgic aspect that inspects, surveys and rules the divisible creation, i.e, the material universe of separate bodies, or put in another way, Zeus (Hades) as the father or power who carries souls (Persephone) to the material world, whereas Hades in the form of Dionysus is the demiurge who becomes the material world.
But returning to Point One:
Porphyry in "On cult images" implies that Pluto is the South Pole of the planet Earth, because it is unseen (aides) to us, and that it also corresponds to the sun going under the Earth at night, much like the Egyptian belief that Ra travels the duat at night in his solar bark and becomes Osiris. But the language of mythology is fluid and poetic, both drawing examples from and comparing the material with the immaterial, but they are all metaphors nonetheless. When the sun is said to travel the underworld at night, unseen to us, and called Pluto, it doesn't mean that Pluto is restricted to our solar system, no. As we know, the sun is used as a metaphor to convey several metaphysical concepts, but in this case, it is the anagogic (uplifting) and seminal power that pushes souls upwards, and Pluto the power that drags souls into the material world, just like the example of the kidnaping of Persephone by Hades. This agrees with the order of the hypercosmic gods,
Demiurgic triad: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades
Vivific triad: Artemis, Persephone, Athena
Anagogic triad: triple Apollon
because one (Hades, or terrestrial Zeus/demiurge) causes souls to descend, and the cosmos to be created, whereas the other (Apollon) causes souls to return to their place.
This imagery is also connected to agriculture, of the sowing, growing and reaping, and that is why Porphyry used those analogies, like the power that causes the maturity of end-summer fruits, which he calls Dionysus. But he immediately says afterwards (in other words) "not the fertile power of the Earth, but of the sun upon the earth and vegetation"9, that is, the effect of the sun on Earth during autumn, after spring and summer. This is comparable to cooking, when we make a stew, first the fire is at minimum to fry the onion and garlic (spring), then we add the water and meat and increase the intensity of the fire (summer), and finally we decrease the fire to the minimum again to finish the stew (autumn).
Notes:
1 - because everything is endowed with vibration and life (even rocks are composed of atoms, which are condensed energy and space), such an existence would pose no obstacle to forms of consciousness in a disembodied fashion, since consciousness, as the yogis teach, is all-pervading. This can be proved by how beings are conscious in this world. Some have little consciousness, some more, some more or less by habit, some more or less by choice, and some more by exercising their intellect, senses and intuition. This proves that to an extent it depends on the physical body, and that on the other hand, it depends on 'mind', 'will power', and training, but that essentially, consciousness is not limited to a particular vehicle, and if it is not, then it can be found anywhere, and go anywhere.
2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REIMdXLpxv4
3 - Or better, under water, since our bodies are made of almost 90% water. But water is also a greek and egyptian metaphor for generation, and generation means both psyche and cosmos, so it doesn't stray too far.
4 - "For if it were not to Dionysus that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysus in whose honor they go mad and rave." Heraclitus, DK B15
"The philosopher Heraclitus, unifying opposites, declared that Hades and Dionysus, the very essence of indestructible life (zoë), are the same god.[80] Among other evidence, Karl Kerényi notes in his book[81] that the Homeric Hymn To Demeter,[82] votive marble images[83] and epithets[84] all link Hades to being Dionysus. He also notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, as she states that it would be against themis for her to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction, because of this association; indicating that Hades may in fact have been a "cover name" for the underworld Dionysus.[85] He suggests that this dual identity may have been familiar to those who came into contact with the Mysteries.[86] Dionysus also shared several epithets with Hades such as Chthonios ("the subterranean"),[87][88] Eubouleus ("Good Counselor"), and Euclius ("glorious" or "renowned")." - (Wikipedia on Hades)
5 - "Now these meadows of Asphodel, form the supreme part of Pluto’s dominions: for, according to Pythagoras, as we are informed by Macrobius, in the preceding note, above, the empire of Pluto commences downwards from the milky way." Notes of Thomas Taylor's translation of Porphyry's "On the cave of the nymphs"
6 - Which is recounted in the Myth of Er, at the closing of Plato's Republic.
7 - Pluto, who is Hades, also known occultly as the terrestrial Zeus or demiurge.
8 - “They assert that there are seven corporeal worlds, one Empyrean and the first; after this, three etherial, and then three material worlds, the last of which is said to be terrestrial, and the hater of life: and this is the sublunary place, containing likewise in itself matter, which they call a profundity.(...) The inerratic circle succeeds the zones, and comprehends the seven spheres in which the stars are placed. According to them, likewise, there are two solar worlds; one, which is subservient to the etherial profundity; the other zonaic, being one of the seven spheres." (Psellus)
9 - Metaphorically, the sun is the fertilizer or cause of fertility, whereas the earth is the fertile or fertility. Two different things. And so a seed is a metaphor for Persephone and Hades together in the underworld, because a seed carries both, both fertility, and the seminal power.
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