That of all the various nations of antiquity, there never was one which believed in a personal devil more than liberal Christians in the nineteenth century, seems hardly credible, and yet such is the sorrowful fact. Neither the Egyptians, whom Porphyry terms “the most learned nation in the world,” nor Greece, its faithful copyist, were ever guilty of such a crowning absurdity. We may add at once that none of them, not even the ancient Jews, believed in hell or an eternal damnation any more than in the Devil, although our Christian churches are so liberal in dealing it out to the heathen. Wherever the word “hell” occurs in the translations of the Hebrew sacred texts, it is unfortunate. The Hebrews were ignorant of such an idea; but yet the gospels contain frequent examples of the same misunderstanding. So, when Jesus is made to say (Matthew xvi. 18) “. . . and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it,” in the original text it stands “the gates of death.” Never is the word “hell” – as applied to the state of damnation, either temporary or eternal – used in any passage of the Old Testament, all hellists to the contrary, notwithstanding. “Tophet,” or “the Valley of Hinnom” (Isaiah lxvi. 24) bears no such interpretation. The Greek term “Gehenna” has also quite a different meaning, as it has been proved conclusively by more than one competent writer, that “Gehenna” is identical with the Homeric Tartarus.

In fact we have Peter himself as authority for it. In his second Epistle (ii. 2) the Apostle, in the original text, is made to say of the sinning angels that God “cast them down into Tartarus.” This expression too inconveniently recalling the war of Jupiter and the Titans, was altered, and now it reads, in King James’s version: “cast them down to hell.”

In the Old Testament the expressions “gates of death,” and the “chambers of death,” simply allude to the “gates of the grave,” which are specifically mentioned in the Psalms and Proverbs. Hell and its sovereign [i.e. the devil] are both inventions of Christianity, coeval with its accession to power and resort to tyranny.

– Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2, p. 506-507

Much in the above quote, from H. P. Blavatsky’s first book, is actually inaccurate and is contradicted by her elsewhere. It is not true at all that either Hell or Devil were introduced by Christianity. Buddhism, for example, has not just one but many Hells and its scriptures go into grotesque detail about the torments and tortures of those who are reborn there in accordance with their bad karma. It is thus far more Hell-obsessed than Christianity. Westerners are often surprised to learn this, since we are usually fed a highly sanitised, diluted, non-religious form of Buddhism, which has little in common with Buddhism as believed and practised in Buddhist countries. The following passage, from the last book HPB was working on before she died, is much more reliable. We include the former quote here only to demonstrate that inaccuracy and bias does indeed sometimes crop up in HPB’s writings and that one should thus not necessarily take everything at face value. This should not alarm or disturb us, provided we have not made her into an infallible idol, something that she expressly insisted she was not.

Hell. A term with the Anglo-Saxons, evidently derived from the name of the goddess Hela (q.v.), and by the Sclavonians from the Greek Hades: hell being in Russian and other Sclavonian tongues — âd, the only difference between the Scandinavian cold hell and the hot hell of the Christians, being found in their respective temperatures. But even the idea of those overheated regions is not original with the Europeans, many peoples having entertained the conception of an underworld climate; as well may we if we localise our Hell in the centre of the earth. All exoteric religions — the creeds of the Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mahommedans, Jews, and the rest, make their hells hot and dark, though many are more attractive than frightful. The idea of a hot hell is an afterthought, the distortion of an astronomical allegory. With the Egyptians, Hell became a place of punishment by fire not earlier than the seventeenth or eighteenth dynasty, when Typhon was transformed from a god into a devil. But at whatever time this dread superstition was implanted in the minds of the poor ignorant masses, the scheme of a burning hell and souls tormented therein is purely Egyptian. Ra (the Sun) became the Lord of the Furnace in Karr, the hell of the Pharaohs, and the sinner was threatened with misery “in the heat of infernal fires”. “A lion was there” says Dr. Birch “and was called the roaring monster”. Another describes the place as “the bottomless pit and lake of fire, into which the victims are thrown” (compare Revelation). The Hebrew word gaї-hinnom (Gehenna) never really had the significance given to it in Christian orthodoxy.

– The Theosophical Glossary, p. 506-507

Hades was quite a different place from our region of eternal damnation, and might be termed rather an intermediate state of purification. Neither does the Scandinavian Hel or Hela, imply either a state or a place of punishment; for when Frigga, the grief-stricken mother of Bal-dur, the white god, who died and found himself in the dark abodes of the shadows (Hades) sent Hermod, a son of Thor, in quest of her beloved child, the messenger found him in the inexorable region – alas! but still comfortably seated on a rock, and reading a book. The Norse kingdom of the dead is moreover situated in the higher latitudes of the Polar regions; it is a cold and cheerless abode, and neither the gelid halls of Hela, nor the occupation of Baldur present the least similitude to the blazing hell of eternal fire and the miserable “damned” sinners with which the Church so generously peoples it. No more is it the Egyptian Amenthes, the region of judgment and purification; nor the Onderah – the abyss of darkness of the Hindus; for even the fallen angels hurled into it by Shiva, are allowed by Parabrahma to consider it as an intermediate state, in which an opportunity is afforded them to prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their wretched condition. The Gehenna of the New Testament was a locality outside the walls of Jerusalem; and in mentioning it, Jesus used but an ordinary metaphor. Whence then came the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Christian theology, with which they have succeeded to hold in subjection the numberless millions of Christians for nineteen centuries? Assuredly not from the Jewish Scriptures, and we appeal for corroboration to any well-informed Hebrew scholar.

The only designation of something approaching hell in the Bible is Gehenna or Hinnom, a valley near Jerusalem, where was situated Tophet, a place where a fire was perpetually kept for sanitary purposes. The prophet Jeremiah informs us that the Israelites used to sacrifice their children to Moloch-Hercules on that spot; and later we find Christians quietly replacing this divinity by their god of mercy, whose wrath will not be appeased, unless the Church sacrifices to him her unbaptized children and sinning sons on the altar of “eternal damnation”!

– Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2, p. 11

John gives to his Word [i.e. the “Word” or “Logos” referred to in the opening verses of John’s Gospel] a purely kabalistic significance, which no “Fathers,” except those who had belonged to the Neo-platonic school, were able to comprehend. Origen understood it well, having been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas; therefore we see him bravely denying the perpetuity of hell-torments. He maintains that not only men, but even devils (by which term he meant disembodied human sinners), after a certain duration of punishment shall be pardoned and finally restored to heaven. In consequence of this and other such heresies Origen was, as a matter of course, exiled.

– Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2, p. 13 

If we do not admit of any punishment outside of this earth, it is because the only state the Spiritual Self knows of, hereafter, is that of unalloyed bliss. . . . crimes and sins committed on a plane of objectivity and in a world of matter, cannot receive punishment in a world of pure subjectivity. We believe in no hell or paradise as localities; in no objective hell-fires and worms that never die, nor in any Jerusalem with streets paved with sapphires and diamonds. What we believe in is a post-mortem state or mental condition, such as we are in during a vivid dream. We believe in an immutable law of absolute Love, Justice, and Mercy.

– The Key to Theosophy, p. 138

. . . the fallacy of the christians – who would burn immaterial souls in a material physical hell . . .

– Master K.H., The Mahatma Letters, p. 45

The occultists say the hell means simply the human body, and there is no other hell than earth. The fact that Christ and so many other solar gods – Hercules, etc. – descended into hell is an allegory pointing to just such imprisonment in the physical body. . . . St. John’s Revelation is not a Christian work, but is simply the Christianized form of prophecy, which is universal – and I can assure you it is one of the most occult things for anyone who understands it. . . .The “Dragon” symbolized the sons of wisdom incarnating in humanity, and thus hurled into the Hell of matter, which is our bodies, because there is no Hell outside of our own dear persons here. It is humanity, and on this earth, that is Hell, and nowhere else.

– The Secret Doctrine Dialogues, p. 483, 491

The metaphorical FALL, and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they led it to believe in the dogma of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all good, whereas the former lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man. Finally it created the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man’s own appearance on this, and probably on other earths. Henceforth the people were led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world’s sorrows, the thought of original sin.

– The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p. 484

Myalba (Tib.). In the Esoteric philosophy of Northern Buddhism, the name of our Earth, called Hell for those who reincarnate in it for punishment. Exoterically, Myalba is translated a Hell.

– The Theosophical Glossary, p. 219

Avîtchi (Sk.). A state: not necessarily after death only or between two births, for it can take place on earth as well. Lit., “uninterrupted hell”. The last of the eight hells, we are told, “where the culprits die and are reborn without interruption — yet not without hope of final redemption. This is because Avitchi is another name for Myalba (our earth) and also a state to which some soulless men are condemned on this physical plane.

– The Theosophical Glossary, p. 45

Myalba is our earth — pertinently called “Hell,” and the greatest of all Hells, by the esoteric school. The esoteric doctrine knows of no hell or place of punishment other than on a man-bearing planet or earth. Avitchi is a state and not a locality.

– The Voice of The Silence, endnote, p. 97, 1889 edition

Theosophy, on the contrary, teaches that perfect, absolute justice reigns in nature, though short-sighted man fails to see it in its details on the material and even psychic plane, and that every man determines his own future. The true Hell is life on Earth, as an effect of Karmic punishment following the preceding life during which the evil causes were produced. The Theosophist fears no hell but confidently expects rest and bliss during the interim between two incarnations, as a reward for all the unmerited suffering he has endured in an existence into which he was ushered by Karma, and during which he is, in most cases, as helpless as a torn-off leaf whirled about by the conflicting winds of social and private life. Enough has been given out at various times regarding the conditions of post-mortem existence, to furnish a solid block of information on this point. Christian theology has nothing to say on this burning question, except where it veils its ignorance by mystery and dogma; but Occultism, unveiling the symbology of the Bible, explains it thoroughly.

– Answers to Queries (article)

~ * ~

I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of the afterlife to spell. And by and by, my soul returned to me and said: “I, myself, am heaven and hell.”
(from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)

We recommend reading Loss of The Soul and Annihilation next, for it follows on most naturally from this one. You may also like Death and The Afterlife and When We Die. For the complete list of over 400 articles, please see the Articles page.

~ BlavatskyTheosophy.com ~