Nice article! Inspirational material with Halloween coming up at the end of the month. I noticed a few important "hot spots" missing from the list though...
1. Boca do Inferno (English: "Mouth of Hell"). Quoting from another page on
atlasobscura.com it is
On yet another
atlasobscura.com, there's the story about how Alesiter Crowley supposedly went there to commit suicide, after a fight with his mistress. It was just a publicity stunt. He published the following suicide note (in Portuguese) in the newpaper. It is written to his mistress:
2. Cleveland, OH. In the Buffyverse, there's a Hellmouth in Sunnydale, CA, and another one in Cleveland, Ohio.
3. Under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem In
Dante's Inferno, the author finds the gate to Hell in a cave outside a dark wood. Geographically, this gate is underneath where the altar of burnt offerings stood in the Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. Dante and his peers believed this location was the center of the world. The gate of Hell has a stone with the following famous inscription on it. I'm using John Ciardi's translation, since he sticks with the original
terza rima rhyme scheme:
Hell is described as a vast pit in the shape of a funnel (or inverted cone) having nine ledges (concentric "circles") where sinners get tortured forever. The apex is at the centre of the earth. There, at the center of the earth, Satan is frozen in ice.
Beneath Satan is a tunnel, leading to the Mountain of Purgatory, on the opposite side of the earth. The Mountain of Purgatory is like a giant pyramid with nine ledges. At the apex was the Garden of Eden. Above that are the nine heavens of Paradise. You could use the
Antipodes Map to find the exact point on the surface of the earth opposite to Jerusalem. You find that point (-31°46'S, 144°47'W) right smack in the middle of the south Pacific, roughly east of Brisbane Australia and west of La Serena Chile... If there is a Mountain of Purgatory there, it is probably an underwater volcano.
4. Monster mouths. In Old English prose and poetry, a "Hellmouth" was quite literally the mouth of some giant monster that would swallow you, and you'd go to Hell. Some examples:
Note that these creatures don't "bite" sinners -- they swallow them whole. Hell is in the
bowels of these creatures. No wonder it smells like sulfur.
5. The Gates of Hell in Milton.
Book Two of Milton's Paradise Lost describes the gates of Hell. His descriptions are adapted from Virgil's descriptions of the gates of Tartarus. There are "three thrice-fold" gates: The inner is brass, the middle gate is iron, and the outermost stone. After Satan's daughter, Sin, throws open these gates for him, Satan flies out of Hell into Chaos, a gap between the creative power that makes Hell a place of punishment and Heaven a place of bliss. Chaos is totally absent of divine Law and order. It is "governed" by three beings: Chaos, Chance and Night. As such, Chaos (the place, not the person) is filled with confusion, uncertainty and darkness. These three beings are personified, and they have a throne in the middle of Chaos (the place). At the end of Chaos (the place) is the "Pavillion of Chaos," equated with Pluto. This in turn leads to Limbo and the World.
Dante and Milton have quite different
maps of Hell. If you Google, you can find lots of images depicting these conceptions.
The number
three is very important to the
architecture of both conceptions---
In Dante: Three main locations (Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise), each with nine (= 3 * 3) circles.
Terzi rima (three-line stanzas). Satan has 3 faces, devouring a different arch-sinner in each of his three mouths.
In Milton: Three unearthly locations (Hell, Chaos, Heaven). There are three thrice-fold gates of Hell. An infernal Trinity: Satan, Sin (his daughter), and Death (his grandson). And a chaotic Trinity: Chaos - Chance - Night. Milton's Satan has 12 (=4*3) disciples (like Jesus's 12 disciples), who are drawn from 3 ancient religious pantheons: Greek - Egyptian - Semitic. And so on... Three
s all over.
