Test number two is a bit more daunting and involves going face-to-face with Yama - more precisely known as the King of Hell - at Ghost Torturing Pass, where he takes stock of the merits of your soul.
The third and final test takes place at Tianzi Palace, where a large stone rests at the front of the gate: if you can stand on the stone on one foot for three minutes, your soul is good enough to avoid hell, and if not Described famously by Virgil in The Aenid as the home of the Sybil - the guide of the underworld - the cave was said to lead directly to the River Styx, the main passage to Hades.
Explored extensively by British archeologists in the s, The Cave of the Sibyl in reality is an inhospitably hot labyrinth of passages clouded with noxious sulfur fumes. That environment, buried beneath a volcanic wasteland, seems a perfectly suitable road to hell. New Orleans is America's cultural epicenter for the Voodoo religion, and a city with unique ties to the afterlife. Practitioners of Voodoo describe an underworld known as Guinee, through which all souls must pass en route to their final destination.
Guinee is billed as a more murky plane of purgatory than the traditional fire and brimstone of hell, bit it's an accessible underworld, nonetheless. The Big Easy is home to not just one physical gateway to Guinee, but seven , scattered among various cemeteries and portions of the French Quarter.
If you're planning your itinerary, the first gate is said to be at the famous tomb of Marie Laveau and is most active on holidays such as New Year's and Mardi Gras.
Just don't travel light, as each gate has a guardian that must be appeased with ritual offerings, and they're said to be prone to anger. That's understandable; guarding the land of the living from the souls of the dead is likely no easy task.
Mount Osore. Patrick's Purgatory. Pluto's Gate. Houska Castle. Fengdu Ghost City. Cave of the Sibyl. Did any of these make it to your list? Please let me know in the comments below! View All. Fengdu Ghost City , China A collection of monasteries, temples, and shrines dating back to 2, years, this ghost city is located on the Ming Mountain.
Lifestyle Desi Girl Traveler. You might also like. Lifestyle Health Fitness gt-app gtc-fitness-junkies weight loss. According to Livy's account, the chasm appeared in the middle of Rome, and nothing could fill it. An oracle prophesied that the chasm would not close and the Roman Republic would be destroyed unless the city sacrificed that which had made it strong.
Marcus Curtius realized that Rome's strength lied in the weapons and bravery of its citizens and so, fully armed and armored, he rode his horse into the chasm and straight into the underworld. The chasm closed and the city was saved. It may well be this legend that classed Lacus Curtius as a mundus, a place where one could easily commune with the underworld.
It was also a conduit for buying off the gods of death; during the reign of Augustus, Roman citizens would toss coins into the lacus to pray for the Emperor's safety.
According to the legend, after Patrick had become frustrated with his doubting followers, the Christ appeared to him and guided him to a cave on Station Island. Inside the cave was a pit, which was the gateway to Purgatory, where the souls of the dead must endure punishments for their sins before entering Heaven. While there, Patrick also received visions of the torments of Hell. From the 12th century on, Station Island has attracted Catholic pilgrims looking to sit close to Purgatory.
In , the lords justices of Ireland ordered the cave closed and most of the records of pilgrimages prior to that year were destroyed, but we do know that the pilgrims would fast and pray for days before spending a full day shut inside the cave. Despite the cave being shut, the pilgrimages continued unbroken; modern pilgrims can still visit Station Island for three-day pilgrimages, during which they must keep a hour vigil while fasting on the island.
Mount Hekla: Iceland's particularly active volcano developed a reputation as a gateway to Hell in the 12th century, after its eruption. Benedeit's Anglo-Norman poem Voyage of St. Brendan mentions the volcano as the prison of Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus.
That reputation continued with further eruptions; after the eruption, there was a report that people saw birds flying amidst the fire—birds, some thought, that must really be swarming souls. Even in more recent times, Hekla has maintained its diabolic status, as some superstitious folk have claimed that it's a spot where witches meet with the devil.
Photo of the Acheron by ale3andro. Acheron: The Acheron is a real river that flows through northwest Greece, but it also figures prominently in classical mythology. In Homer's Odyssey , Circe directs Odysseus to the underworld, telling him that he must find the point where the Acheron meets the Pyriphlegethon and of a branch of Styx.
The poet Vergil mentions also Acheron in the Aeneid , identifying it as the river from which the Styx and Cocytus rivers flow. The ferryman Charon was supposed to transport newly dead souls across the river into the afterlife, something he even does in the pages of Dante's Inferno.
In Dante's poem, the souls of the Uncommitted, who chose neither good nor evil, find their eternal home on the banks of the Acheron, not condemned in Hell, but still forever punished for their indecision. Entrance to the cave of the Sibyl at Cumae by Carole Raddato. The crater lake was sacred to the Cumaean Sibyl, and according to myth, she could lead a living traveler into the underworld. It name offers some hints as to why it might have been deemed such a deadly portal.
It's unclear how much truth there is to this belief; in modern times, birds are quite happy to fly about the lake. Cape Matapan: If you don't want to deal with Charon the ferryman, you could enter the classical underworld of Tartarus through the back door. The Mayan Cenotes: The Maya certainly had some of the most picturesque entrances to the underworld.
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