John Milton, Paradise Lost
Pandemonium
The capital and council hall where the fallen host converts defeat into policy.
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Cosmologies describe the order of a world and the places within it. Here, accounts of creation and the afterlife sit alongside named realms in particular texts. Read each world through the source that gives it form.
109 entries · A–Z
John Milton, Paradise Lost
The capital and council hall where the fallen host converts defeat into policy.
Dante, Inferno
The frozen round where Alberigo claims a soul can arrive before its body dies.
Final purification in Catholic teaching and Christian debate
Understand Purgatory as Catholic final purification, its relationship with prayer for the dead, Reformation disagreement and Dante’s literary mountain.
Japanese Buddhist tradition
The shadowy river-bed where children build stone towers and seek Jizo's protection in Davis's account of the afterlife.
The dead and their dwelling in the Hebrew Bible
Understand Sheol in the Hebrew Bible, its images of darkness and descent, and why translations such as grave or Hell can obscure its meaning.
Amitabha’s Pure Land and the aspiration to awakening
Explore Sukhavati, Amitabha’s Western Pure Land, through Buddhist sutras, Japanese traditions, devotional practice and historical art.
Theosophical astral cosmology
A constructed afterlife environment identified with higher astral subdivisions.
Buddhist traditions, Nivedita and Coomaraswamy
The divine realm where Buddha teaches before returning by heavenly ladders.
Dante, Inferno
An opaque pool that conceals the inhabitants accused of corrupt public dealing.
Dante, Inferno
Opposing companies collide with heavy burdens in the fourth circle.
Dante, Inferno
The open, heated tombs encountered inside Dis.
Norwegian fairy tales: Old Tales from the North
The remote castle reached with the North Wind’s help, where the girl must recover the enchanted prince.
Dante, Inferno
The fortified entrance to the deeper infernal regions, initially closed against the travellers.
L. Newton Hayes, The Chinese Dragon
Carved dragons coil around the marble columns of the Confucian temple photographed by Hayes.
Dante, Inferno
Separate fires conceal the inhabitants of the eighth ditch, including a divided flame.
Dante, Inferno
The inscribed entrance that declares the purpose and permanence of the infernal realm.
Dante, Purgatory and Paradise
The guarded threshold opened by two different keys.
Dante, Inferno
The apparent towers resolve into immense bodies around the pit leading to the frozen circle.
Dante, Purgatory and Paradise
The immense assembly of the blessed arranged as a living flower.
Dante, Inferno
Headfirst openings in the third ditch, with burning feet and successive occupants.
Jean de Bosschère, The City Curious, retold in English by F. Tennyson Jesse; New York and London, 1920 title page
An edible country whose inviting materials and unsettling threshold transform Smaly and Redy’s search in Bosschère’s illustrated fantasy.
William Blake’s illuminated poetry
The sorrowful realm of graves that Thel briefly enters through the eternal gates.
Dante, Purgatory and Paradise
The first luminous appearance that prepares Dante to see the heavenly courts.
Dante, Inferno
The bright enclosure where Dante encounters the honoured figures of antiquity.