Descent Into the Underworld

Descent into the Underworld

DESCENT INTO THE UNDERWORLD

DESCENT INTO THE UNDERWORLD . Narratives the world over tell of descents into the underworld. Many traditions include myths connected with journeys to the "otherworld" undertaken by both human and suprahuman beings. Experiences of such journeys are especially common in the shamanistic traditions, but they are also found in association with various ecstatic religious phenomena and various heroic and visionary contexts within a great number of cultures.
An important differentiation can be made between the descent with no return (accomplishing the due of human mortality) and the descent with return made by heroes, shamans, and other extraordinary humans. The imaginary experiences with return could fulfill different objectives: to explain the cosmic subterranean topography, to rescue someone from the realm of the dead, and to expose the punishments and sufferings in the otherworld with a moral purpose. The descent into the underworld, particularly to the kingdom of the dead, is one of the central themes in myths explaining the cosmic order, the limits and possibilities of the human being, the relationships between gods, and human relationships with god or the gods.
But the descent into the underworld is also a powerful imaginal and, on occasion, stereotyped literary motif. In the European traditions, due to the influence of the Homeric Nekyia (ninth book of the Odyssey ), the descent (Greek, katabasis ), an imaginary motif is present in major literary and artistic works despite the cultural, chronological, and religious differences between contexts and authors (between, for instance, Vergil 's sixth book of the Aeneid and the Inferno in Dante 's Commedia ). Such a literary motif is also found in the Middle Eastern traditions from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Book of Enoch or the isra of Muḥammad. There are cross-relationships among all of these literary traditions. Christ 's descent into hell and medieval

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