Hell

This article is about the theological or philosophical afterlife. For other uses, see Hell (disambiguation).

In many religious traditions, Hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict Hell as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict Hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Typically these traditions located Hell under the Earth's external surface and often included entrances to Hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations included Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, Naraka, and Limbo.

Other traditions, which did not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward, merely described it as an abode of the dead—a neutral place located under the surface of Earth (for example, see sheol and Hades).

Modern understandings of Hell often depict it abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally underground, but this view of hell can, in fact, be traced back into the ancient and medieval periods as well.^{[citation needed]}

Hell is often portrayed as populated with demons, who torment the damned. Many are ruled by a death god, such as Nergal, Hades, Yama or the Christian/Islamic Devil, called Satan or Lucifer. In Islam however, the Devil does not actually reside in Hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell