JAHANNAM Jahannam is the hell of the Islam religion. The name is the Arabic derivative of GEHENNA, an ancient valley in the Middle East once used for human sacrifices. The underworld of Islamic faith is a fiery pit enclosed by seven gates located far below the surface of the earth. Its features are similar to those of the Middle Eastern deserts: dry, hot, and desolate. In Jahannam, burning souls long for water but find no relief and suffer from various tortures inflicted on them by DEMONS. The KORAN (Islam’s holy book) mentions seven regions of Jahannam: Jahannam proper, Latha (flaming inferno), Hutamah (destroying blaze), Sa’hir (blaze), Saqar (scorching fire), Gahim (fierce fire), and Haiyeh (great abyss).
According to Islamic teachings, when a person dies, he or she must face Allah directly. There is no intermediary to help weigh the factors of judgment in determining the soul’s fate. Allah, being merciful and good, wants the soul to enjoy eternal paradise, but he is also just and must therefore hold each spirit accountable for its actions. Thus, all who have defied the will of Allah can blame only themselves for their damnation.
Hell itself is located underneath Al-Sirat, a narrow path that leads to paradise. Every spirit must cross over the bridge, and only the mercy of Allah can guarantee safe passage. Those who are unworthy will tumble into the seven-layered inferno below and suffer eternal damnation in the fiery chasm. According to the Koran, Jahannam is a horrific realm of retribution: “For the wrongdoers will be an everlasting place of final return: Hell! They will burn there … an evil bed to lie on indeed … a bed of fire, whose sheets encompass (the damned). If they should ask for relief, then water like molten copper shall be showered upon them to scald their faces.… They shall be lashed with rods of iron. Whenever, in their anguish, they try to escape from Hell, the angels will bring them back, saying ‘Taste the torment of Hell-fire!’”
As the skin of the damned burns away, Allah regenerates it so sinners can suffer anew. But Allah is also merciful and can redeem souls from this punishment. A passage from the Koran states that the damned in hell “shall dwell there so long as there is a Heaven and an Earth, unless Allah wills it otherwise.”
Muslims also believe in the LAST JUDGMENT (called the Day of Decision), a time at the end of the world when everyone, living and dead, will face final justice. Allah’s faithful servants will be taken to paradise, while infidels shall be banished forever to Jahannam. Islam teaches that all Muslims will be saved on the Day of Decision, and Jahannam will be filled only with the souls of nonbelievers who refused to accept Allah as the one true God.
JAIN HELL Jainism, a 2,500-year-old outgrowth of Buddhism, teaches that the universe is divided into three parts: as a headless body with trunk, waist, and legs. Hell is located in the section corresponding to the right leg. It is a realm of 8.4 million torture chambers where a soul burns off bad KARMA, the spiritual residue of evil acts.
In each section of the underworld, souls are punished and purged of their evil before rejoining the reincarnation cycle. Every chamber has a specific DEMON who specializes in torturing damned spirits according to their particular sins. Torments include being torn apart by sharp hooks, clawed by fiends, and slashed with razor-sharp swords.
Once sufficient suffering has been inflicted, the soul moves on to another existence in the terrestrial world. Some followers believe that irretrievably evil spirits will burn in the lowest pit of the great abyss for all eternity. The rest will reenter the cycle of transmigration (symbolized by the SWASTIKA) and continue the quest for spiritual perfection.
JIGOKU Japanese Buddhist mythology describes Jigoku, a place of the dead located far below the earth. In Jigoku are eight “hot hells” and eight “cold hells” where souls are punished according to their sins. Damnation to Jigoku is not permanent; intercession, sacrifice, and prayers from living friends and relatives can redeem a soul sent to Jigoku, or at least reduce its punishment.
Jigoku is ruled by EMMA-O, a harsh judge of the dead. He is aided in his adjudication by two severed heads, Miru-me and Kagu-hana. Miru-me has the power to see a soul’s most hidden sins, and Kagu-hana can detect even the faintest stench of small offenses. In Jigoku there is also an enchanted mirror that each departed spirit must stand before. Reflected in the mirror are all the sins committed during the soul’s lifetime. After reviewing all this evidence, Emma-O sentences the spirit to the appropriate hell for divine punishment.
JOKES Despite its traditional reputation as a place of unending pain and despair, hell is the setting for hundreds of jokes. Early examples of this comedic interpretation of the underworld date back to around 400 B.C., when Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote THE FROGS, a satire of the infernal afterlife. His drama depicts HADES as a MERRY HELL where a chorus of singing amphibians replaces the dour dirges of traditional CHTHONIC works. The Frogs was denounced by contemporary authorities as “insulting to the gods,” but the play was popular with audiences. Infernal jokes have thrived ever since.
In 1910, some two millennia after The Frogs first hit the stage, a new Off-Broadway theater opened in New York City with a similarly sacrilegious show. The now-defunct Folies-Bergères offered as its first production Hell, a “profane burlesque” hosted by “Mr. and Mrs. DEVIL.” The program featured crude gags about drunks, old maids, sex-crazed sailors, and other damned souls. Like its ancient predecessor The Frogs, Hell was decried by the critics and hailed by the people. Thus underworld humor continues to thrive.
In the electronic age, television regularly brings infernal puns to the masses. The long-running variety show LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN has reaped big laughs over the years with numerous “Top Ten Lists” about the realm of the damned. These have speculated on everything from hell’s headlines (“Ice Water Canceled—Again”) to unpleasant underworld occupations (intestine adjuster). And Letterman frequently chides his viewers with remarks likening the show to the great abyss. On more than one occasion, he has greeted his studio audience with “welcome to hell, ladies and gentlemen.”
Bill Maher’s comedy talk show Politically Incorrect likewise reaches into the abyss for laughs. One episode, taped shortly after the controversial dignitary’s death, posed the question, “Did Nixon go to heaven or hell?” Guest Martin Mull quipped, “I hope he brought his suntan oil,” and noted that the ex-president “would go to whichever is closer to Yorba Linda.” Other commentators were not so kind in guessing what his afterlife fate might be.
Radio, too, has provided a media for devilish humor. The Cutler Comedy Service, an agency specializing in comedic material for the airwaves, recently offered a “Sitcom Hell” sketch in which former Mary Tyler Moore Show characters Lou Grant and Ted Baxter vie for the affections of BEETLEJUICE star Winona Rider. The exercise presents an underworld of bad television reruns, similar to the inferno of the film STAY TUNED.
Even syndicated radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy has probed the depths of hell for a laugh. The witty conservative has frequently remarked that he hopes “God is all-merciful,” since that is his only hope of avoiding damnation after living such a colorful life. He explains that he is most certainly headed for hell if what he learned in parochial school is true. One sympathetic listener responded that at least in the great inferno Liddy will be among friends, whereas he would have “no one to talk to” in heaven.
And in an age where many people profess not to believe in eternal damnation, cocktail party jokes about the underworld remain popular. Among the most common: A man died and was sent to hell. When he arrived, the Devil greeted him and gave him a choice of three rooms in which to spend eternity. In the first, the man saw DEMONS beating the damned with whips and chains. The next was even worse: Here demons cooked and devoured condemned souls at a huge feast. In the third room, the damned sat in a waist-deep pool of human excrement, sipping tea. Repulsive as this was, the man decided it was preferable to the other two options. He joined the tea drinkers in the cesspool. But just as he sat down, a demon walked in and shouted, “Okay, everyone, break’s over! Back on your heads!” The punch line of this joke can be heard in rock star Sting’s 1993 recording “ST. AUGUSTINE in Hell.”
The perennial popularity of jokes regarding the underworld is a testament to our enduring fascination with the land of the damned. Like COMIC BOOKS and ANIMATED CARTOONS about hell, such humorous outlets allow us an opportunity to laugh in the face of the ultimate—and eternal—peril.
JULIEN The 1913 French opera Julien, written by Gustave Charpentier, follows the life of a passionate poet completely devoted to his artistry. He places his work above all else, more important to him even than his beloved Louise. Betraying this dedication is the ultimate sin in Charpentier’s work. And hell in Julien is the bitter punishment for abandoning dreams and forsaking beauty.
The opera opens as Julien visits the Temple of Beauty on the Holy Mount to consecrate himself to his art. He pledges to suffer for it, enduring humiliation, sacrifice, and ridicule to produce great works. His lover, Louise, realizes that she will never be as important to Julien as is his poetry, but she is content knowing that he is happy in his endeavors. But when the temple’s high priest warns Julien that all his efforts will amount to nothing, that in the end his pride will be his undoing, Louise becomes concerned for the artist’s soul.
After leaving the holy place, Julien comes to the Valley of the Accurst, a grim realm for damned poets who have betrayed their artistic vows. In this abyss, the sound of wailing and screaming drowns out all lyric of joy. The inhabitants of the Accurst Valley are forced to spend eternity lamenting their lost dreams and cursing their weak resolve. They call out to Julien, proclaiming that he will one day dwell among them.
Julien ignores this warning and begins pursuing his work, but he soon finds his vow to serve truth and beauty sorely tested. He does not find the inspiration he had hoped for but instead learns that the world is an ugly, cruel place where real beauty is rare. The only source of radiance in his life is Louise, and when she dies he is devastated. Julien decides that there is no appreciation for spiritual joys in a world obsessed with “animal pleasure,” so he, too, will become a beast. Renouncing his vow, Julien willingly becomes one of the “animals” who have bitterly succumbed to despair.
In the closing scene, Julien has degenerated into a drunken vagrant rioting in the streets. He follows a mob into the Theatre of the Ideal, where the proprietor and attendants seem hauntingly familiar. Julien joins the revelers in vandalizing the theater before realizing that he is back at the foot of the Holy Mount. He recognizes the strangers as the maidens and priest of the Temple of Beauty, now mutated into terrible beasts. The horror of this revelation and the memory of his youthful aspirations seize Julien’s soul. In his final moments Julien understands that he has lost everything: his innocence, his beloved Louise, and now his immortal soul. He dies at the feet of the DEMONS, ready to assume his place in the Accurst Valley with the rest of the damned.