Hell, according to many religious beliefs, is an afterlife of suffering where the wicked or unrighteous souls are punished, in most beliefs, by Satan and his many minions.
Hell is almost always depicted as underground. Within Islam and Christianity, hell is traditionally depicted as fiery. Some other traditions, however, portray Hell as cold and gloomy. In Judaism, Hell is portrayed as a state of neutrality and an eternal existence in nothingness.
Some theologies of Hell offer graphic and gruesome detail (for example, Hindu Naraka). Religions with a linear Divine history often depict hell as endless (for example, see Hell in Christian beliefs). Religions with a cyclic history often depict Hell as an intermediary period between incarnations (for example, see Chinese Di Yu). Punishment in Hell typically corresponds to sins committed in life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each wrong committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er or Dante's The divine Comedy), and sometimes they are general, with sinners being relegated to one or more chamber of Hell or level of suffering (for example, Augustine of Hippo asserting that unbaptized infants, whom he believed to be deprived of Heaven, suffer less in Hell than unbaptized adults). In Islam and Christianity, however, faithrepentance play a larger role than actions in determining a soul's afterlife destiny. and
Hell is often portrayed populated with demons, who torment the damned. Many are ruled by a death god, such as Nergal, the Hindu Yama, or the Christian Satan.
In contrast to Hell, other general types of afterlives are abodes of the dead and paradises. Abodes of the dead are neutral places for all the dead (for example, see sheol), rather than prisons of punishment for sinners. A paradise is a happy afterlife for some or all the dead (for example, see Heaven).
Modern understandings of Hell often depict it abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally under the ground.
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