And just begin to feel the heat.—Amasa Alden.

We are in Hell now. Rabbi Eleasher says that “the demons who were cast out of Heaven and the descendants of the witless progeny of matter and spirit became in the course of time the men of our planet, after having passed through every form of every one of the elements.”

Where did the Church dig up Hell? The Scandinavian Hell is not a place of punishment, but simply the abode of the dead. The dictionary says that Hades, the Hell of the Bible, is the abode of all the departed, the unseen spirit world. The Shoel of the Hebrews is the place of departed spirits, not a region of torment. The Underworld or Amenti, of the Egyptians, is a region of judgment and purification. The Onderah, the abyss of darkness of the Hindus, is an intermediate state or purgatory. Whence then came the dogma of Hell, that Archimedean lever of Christian theology, with which they have succeeded in holding in subjection the numberless millions of Christians for nineteen centuries.—Isis Unveiled.

Here is where Eusebius and the other Biblical writers got Hell. According to Mahabad, the christ and Adam of the Parsees, who wrote all the laws of God, Hell is peopled with ants, serpents and scorpions, ignorant, sick and indigent men and irreligious philosophers, and on account of the detestable qualities of the later, the ants, serpents and scorpions pounce upon and torture them. This is the Hell of Hells.—Dabistan, 81.

In the chart of the cosmogony of the Kabalists, representing their idea of the creation of the universe, the last and most insignificant creation is the earth, which they have labeled Hell, the abode of the Devil, the Kingdom of the Great Serpent according to the Buddhists.

In the religious Mysteries, if the soul has attained the final knowledge of the heavenly and infernal mysteries, the gnosis, complete reunion with the spirit, and knows the Word, at the death of the body, it becomes a god, or is absorbed into the soul of the world, the astral light, and becomes one of the creative deities or Elohim. If not, it has its part in the lake of fire and brimstone (the elements), the second death. This death is the gradual dissolution of the astral body into its primal elements and the banishment of the human spirit or electron into chaos.

Elephas Levi and many of the wise ones have said that the astral light is the Great Serpent or Devil, so we will go to the Devil anyway, no matter which path we pursue. What difference does it make whether we are united to the astral light or the material ether? All the atoms of all the elements have individual souls.

Krishna, the Hindu christ, Horus, the Egyptian christ, the Scandinavian Thor, the Greek Apollo and St. Patrick, the Irish christ, are all represented as killing the Great Serpent, the Devil. All of the christs, including Buddha, Bacchus, Hercules, Orpheus and Askelapius, as well as Jesus, descended into Hell and ascended again the third day. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, Christ found Adam, Moses, David, Isaiah and all the other saints there, and as they had been burning in Hell several thousand years, their wings were pretty well singed and they were badly mussed up, but Christ took them by the hands and led them up to the Hebrew heaven, where the three balls are worshipped, together with the ass-headed god. The Devil had no one left to rule over except the depraved, uncircumcised gentiles and the elemental demons. The Gentiles cannot get past the gates of Tophet, but must linger for a time, and half a time, and ten thousand times while they do battle with the phantoms of Hell and wrestle with the Serpent of the Great Abyss.

“The Presbyterian clergy of Scotland delighted in telling their hearers that they would be roasted in great fires and hung up on hooks by their tongues. They were to be lashed with scorpions and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of fire and brimstone broader than the earth was prepared for them, their bones, their lungs and their liver were to boil but never be consumed, and while worms were gnawing at their bodies, they were to be surrounded by devils mocking and making pastime of their pains, the torment to be varied in its character as well as eternal in its duration. Hell was created before man came into the world, the Almighty having spent his previous leisure in preparing this place of torment, so that when the human race appeared, it might be ready for their reception.”—Buckle’s Hist. Civ. 2-293.

Hell is the lowest of the astral planes, in the immediate atmosphere of the earth, where the most of us go. Heaven is the highest of the spiritual planes, where God lives, but as nobody to speak of ever goes there, no one on the astral ever saw God or can make affidavit that he exists, and any spirit that claims that he has seen God is either deceiving us or is himself mistaken. He may have seen some astral idol, formed from the astral substance by the imagination and worshipped by the religion-besotted spirits. “The aura of the spirits in the lowest astral plane is the same as that of wicked human beings, a dark, cloudy or smoky emanation, streaked with the red flames of anger and passion. Deep shades of color whirl and swirl in the depths, lightning-like flashes shoot forth, and great bodies of lurid, smoky, clouds fly on the surface, having all the appearance of an inferno, and the region itself has the same aura, derived from the combined auras of its inhabitants. It is not surprising that the witches and wizards of the Bible, who could see by clairvoyant vision, described it as a Hell of fire and brimstone.”—Human Aura, 45.

According to the religion of Zoroaster, “Hell is the House of Destruction. It is the abode chiefly of the priests of bad religions,” that is, all religions except the Persian, but this is not to be taken seriously, as every religion is a joke. Here we have the original doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which our Christian ministers have had the consummate nerve to preach even here in this age of the world.

Mark Twain says in “The Mysterious Stranger”: “A God who mouths justice and mercy and invented Hell, mouths golden rules and forgiveness and invented Hell, who mouths morals to other people and has none himself, who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all, who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of placing it where it belongs upon himself.” The trouble with Mark was that he accepted as true all that silly superstition, all those puerile fairy tales, all those black lies from the Pit of Hell written and taught by the old priests and prophets. God never created the human race, he never made Hell. This cruel remark of Mark is libelous, almost bordering on blasphemy.

Read what the insane Church Fathers said: “There in Hell the intelligent fire burns the limbs and restores them, feeds on them and nourishes them.”—Felix.

The proud monarchs and magistrates (and everybody but the Christians) shall liquefy in the fierce flames of Hell.—Tertullian.

We shall be compensated by a perpetual spectacle of our persecutors in an ever-burning Gehenna being devoured by living flames.—Cyprian.

Ling or the Word is the Commander-in-chief of the universe.—Clement.

Every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into some fire kindled by another.—Origen.

The wicked will be provided not with the old earthly body, but with an indestructible body capable of holding out forever against everlasting fire.—Lactantius.

The whole mass of the human race is condemned. If we can pray the wicked out of Hell, we can pray the devils out.—Augustine.

Everybody, infants included, go to Hell, unless they are baptized.—Ambrose.

There shall be eternal torments for all devils and skeptics.—Jerome.

Votive offerings by the living will reduce the torments of the dead. The blessed shall rejoice over the punishment of the damned.—Aquinas.