Tag Archives: Hel

As is evident from this blog’s title, hell within Buddhism is pluralized as opposed to its singular Christian counterpart, for there are many hells—in some texts, vast panoramic cities of them. The English word hell is derived from a Northern European Goddess named Hel, meaning the one who “covers things up.” In point of fact, it was not until Milton’s majestic poem, Paradise Lost, which depicts Satan (Myself Am Hell) and hell’s “vast pandemonium”, along with Dante’s poem Inferno (from the larger Divine Comedy), that notions of hells fiery sulfuric-nature became imprinted within the Western psyche. Buddhist notions of hell antecede its Western equivalent: read more