YAMA Yama is god of death and punisher of evil found in many Asian religions, including versions of Hinduism and Buddhism. He is a green DEMON, often shown dressed in red robes and armed with a noose and a mace. Yama has red eyes and sharp fangs and is sometimes portrayed covered with open sores. Two hideous deformed dogs guard his palace in the depths of the underworld. Souls of the dead must cross the river Vaitarani and face Yama for judgment. Yama could send the spirit to a place of “21 hells” or back to the world for rebirth.
In hell, the damned face gruesome penalties that correspond to their earthly offenses. Blasphemers have their tongues ripped out, murders are drowned in blood, the frivolous are tormented with piercing knives. Yama has also been incorporated into Hindu religion, where he temporarily detains souls who must purge themselves of evil before being reincarnated.
The BARDO THODOL (Tibetan Book of the Dead) describes Yama as a fierce ruler robed in human skin and wearing a necklace of severed heads and a crown of skulls. In one hand he holds a sword ready to punish sinners. In the other he carries a mirror that reflects the actions of everyone. Departed souls must look into the mirror and face their evil, which is believed to be the worst torment of the afterlife. According to the text, “No terrible god pushes you” into hell; every wicked soul damns itself. The Bardo Thodol describes the DEMONS of “Yama, Lord of Death” who arise when a vile departed spirit finally recognizes its own ugliness: “… their fang-like teeth protruding over their lips, their eyes like glass … they carry punishment boards and shout ‘Beat him!’ and ‘Kill him!’ They lick up your brains, they sever your head from your body, and they extract your heart and vital organs.”
Chinese belief teaches that there are many hells, each with its own Yama, or king. An ancient mural shows an underworld court where frightened souls awaiting judgment offer food and riches to the lord in hopes of winning his favor. Yama’s court is a confused mass of bloodied bodies being chased and tortured by an assortment of green and red demons. Other spirits are being forced into pools infested with toothy serpents.
Yama is often associated with EMMA-O, another Asian deity of death and the underworld.
YAMBE–AKKA Yambe-akka (Jameakka, Jabmeanimo) is the goddess of death and the underworld of the Lapps of Scandinavia. She is a hideous hag whose name means “old woman of the dead.” Yambe-akka guards departed souls in an endless pit of suffering and sadness, where she dwells in the shadows.
YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was fascinated by the occult, mysticism, and metaphysics and dedicated much of his career to interpreting supernatural concepts through his poetry. Yeats came from a Catholic family but also grew up hearing ancient Celtic legends about FAIRIELAND and Druid rituals. As an adult, Yeats blended political dissent, Irish history, pagan IMAGERY, and religious themes into modern masterpieces.
One example, A Vision, contains an entire book dedicated to “The Soul in Judgment.” It was originally written in 1925; however, Yeats amended the work in 1937 after witnessing great personal tragedy and civil unrest. Another poem, “The Wanderings of Oisin,” features heroes of Irish myth discussing philosophy with such Christian icons as St. Patrick in a mystic forum of information exchange.
In his FAIRIE Tales of Ireland, Yeats describes the fallen angels and their bleak underworld: “Some of the angels who were turned out of Heaven … landed on their feet in this world, while the rest of their companions, who had more sin to sink them, went down farther to a worse place.”
Yeats also incorporates into his theories of mysticism the ideas of philosopher EMANUEL SWEDENBORG, who taught that heaven and hell are merely a matter of perspective. The poet likewise echoes ideas from WILLIAM BLAKE, an eclectic artist and visionary. Like Swedenborg, Yeats believed that souls are neither inherently good nor evil but exist temporarily in good and evil states. Thus each person defines his or her own salvation or damnation. This shifting definition of heaven and hell is evident in Wanderings, which describes a place of eternal youth and beauty called the “Island of Dancing.” At first, Yeats’s hero is enchanted with this paradise. However, the realm quickly becomes intolerably boring to adventurers seeking challenge. What seemed a place of ultimate joy has been revealed as a monotonous prison.
Yeats also believed that damnation was not a punishment for immorality but retribution for men who refused to live up to their artistic potential. In The Hour Glass, Yeats describes a dark abyss littered with the desolate spirits bemoaning their wasted lives:
Hell is the place of those who have denied;
They find there what they planted
and what dug
A lake of spaces, a wood of nothing,
And wander there and drift, and never cease
wailing for substance.
The torment of these souls is realizing that they will never be truly fulfilled.
Yeats’s work also includes an allegory about damnation entitled “The Stolen Child.” This cautionary tale follows an unhappy child (representing humankind) as he abandons earth (mortality) for the promise of a better world made by cunning fairies (demons). Too late, the child discovers that he has given up his humanity—and all its joys as well as sorrows—for existence in hell. He describes this Fairieland as a bleak realm of “unquiet dreams” and lost souls. The fairies mock their prisoner, reminding him of the earthly beauty he has forsaken. Yeats revisits this theme in “Valley of the Black Pig,” which examines the last judgment, calling the devil the “Master of the Flaming Door.”
As he grew older, Yeats became less interested in the supernatural and the afterlife, and his work centered more on real people, most notably deceased friends. His poetry also took on political battles and contemporary problems. In “To a SHADE” (deceased spirit), Yeats likens the Irish populist hero Charles Stewart Parnell to the suave DON JUAN. For such speculative works of poetry, Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and is credited with leading the Irish literary renaissance.
YELLOW SPRINGS Yellow Springs is the underworld of ancient Chinese myth. It is ruled by Yangwang, a mythical deity similar to YAMA, the god of dead. He punishes doomed souls in an indigenous hell that is very similar to earth geologically, located under the earth’s surface. Yangwang’s task is to enforce justice after death in Yellow Springs. He is a just overlord who administers pain in direct proportion to a person’s immorality.
Relief from a Chinese Taoist temple shows souls being tormented in the underworld. ART TODAY
YOMOTSU–KUNI Yomotsu-kuni is the Shinto equivalent of hell. The name means “land of gloom.” It is a place of thick darkness populated by hags, thunder gods, and DEMONS. The ancient legend of IZANAMI, the first man, recounts how the father of the human race travels to Yomotsu-kuni in order to retrieve his dead bride, Izanagi, after she dies in childbirth. But the man discovers that she has begun to decay and he refuses to take her back with him. Izanagi sends a legion of demons after her husband, but he is able to elude them. When he returns to the surface of the earth, Izanami seals off the entrance to Yomotsu-kuni from the land of the living. After this, only the dead can enter Yomotsu-kuni, and neither deceased spirit nor demon can return to earth.