World, Overworld, Underworld, Dreamworld (The God Series Book 13) by Mike Hockney

Author:Mike Hockney [Hockney, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Hyperreality Books
Published: 2013-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

Ghost Stories

Catholics once believed that Purgatory was located in an isolated mountain island in the southern hemisphere. This was where the dead went who were neither evil enough for hell nor good enough for heaven. It was a penal colony where sinners were punished until they were purified and ready for admission to heaven.

By some accounts, the summit of the island’s table mountain was the original Garden of Eden: Earthly Paradise. Those who graduated from Purgatory were briefly allowed to enjoy Eden before ascending to heaven.

Given that the souls of the dead were present on the surface of Earth and that the barriers between life and death were often permeable, it was no surprise to ordinary people that they should sometimes encounter ghosts, or that hauntings should occur.

Ghosts – from Hades, Sheol, the Underworld, Purgatory (according to taste and culture) – were part and parcel of the human experience. Mexicans still celebrate this ancient culture with their Day of the Dead rituals.

When Protestants abolished Purgatory and conceived of heaven and hell as completely extra-terrestrial, it was no longer possible to account for ghosts of the dead being present in our world. So, “ghosts” became demons and devils masquerading as dead loved ones. It’s forbidden for Protestants to believe in non-demonic ghosts.

The Gods

The ancient pagans had a radically different relationship with their gods than Abrahamists do with their God.

For the Greeks, paradise (Elysium) was a place on Earth. It was a tranquil place free of toil, war, fear, disease, ageing, cares and anxieties. However, it definitely wasn’t where the gods lived. They were on Olympus and mortals simply did not go there.

As for the Underworld, King Hades lived there but he had almost no interaction with most of the souls that came to his realm. His three Judges met the new arrivals and judged and sentenced them. Hades took no part. He certainly wasn’t any kind of psychopathic torturer Devil as envisaged by the Christians. The Underworld wasn’t full of devils and demons. Rather, it had a guard dog (Cerberus), impassable rivers (except with the help of Charon the Ferryman), the Judges and the avenging Furies, and that was about it. There was none of the Abrahamic hysteria, horror and terror. Hades wasn’t a cosmic Torture Chamber. It was mostly a sad, grey, indifferent place, full of mediocrities – much like the world in fact!

The Abrahamists massively upped the ante by claiming that ordinary humans could mix with God himself in paradise (an idea unthinkable to the pagans). Thus Abrahamism was all about pandering to human narcissism and egotism. In the ancient world, the masses were regarded as a vulgar, base mob and the notion that any god would ever want to mix with them was unimaginable. The gods desired to mix with the heroes and the exceptional, not with the mediocre herd. Well, with whom would you choose to mix if you could choose anyone?

Abrahamism succeeded because it changed the pagan concept of good or bad (extraordinary versus ordinary) to good or evil (virtuous versus sinners).

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