Representations of death and the afterlife. The underworld according to the ideas of the ancient peoples

They say that the other world is near. How do you know about this?

The Lord is close to us. The shirt we wear on the body is further away than the other world and the Lord Himself.

Once I had to drive a Niva car from the village of Palekh to Puchezh. And it was in winter, on the road potholes. Several people were traveling in the car, one mother (a dentist) began to talk about her trip to Palekh:

Father, when I went to Palekh, our bus was like ...

No sooner had she uttered the word "skidded," as our car was thrown to the side of the road, hit right into a tree. Interestingly, she began to speak suddenly. Before that, it was about something completely different.

Once I was talking with the parish priest. He told:

We had a priest in Zharki before me, and one woman came every evening and made scandals for him. When I changed this priest, she stopped scandalous. I decided: "So, the father himself is to blame." And as soon as I thought about it, she came that day and threw me such a scandal! And now every day is scandalous! I should have thanked the Lord for keeping me safe, but I accused the other priest, and thought to myself that I was good.

And another person who was sitting next to us listened to us and said:

And it was interesting for me too. Once I was driving a car and thought: "I have been driving for three years and the wheels have never failed, never let down." I forgot that this was not my merit, but the Lord kept me. I thought so, drove a kilometer, and - again! - the wheel is flat. Replaced it. I drove a little - the second wheel went flat ...

The eyes of the Lord look at us day and night, control all our thoughts, words, deeds. And we must walk before God and try not to allow sinful habits, and if we allow somewhere, to repent and live properly, always remember that the invisible world is here with us.

How do you explain to non-believers that there really is life behind the grave?

We know that in the history of the Church there were many cases when the Lord showed miracles of returning from the afterlife. Everyone knows the resurrection of the gospel four-day Lazarus, and today, among our contemporaries, there are many such cases. Usually people who returned from the other world said that their souls continued to think, feel, experience. They told how the soul entered into communion with angels or demons, saw the abode of Paradise and Hell. The memory of what they saw did not disappear, and when the soul returned back to its body (apparently, the time had not yet come for their final departure), they testified to this.

Such "trips" to the afterlife do not pass in vain for the soul. They help many to reconsider their lives, to improve. People are beginning to think more about salvation, about their soul.

There are many such cases. But ordinary worldly people who live in the bustle, in the difficulties of our time, little believe such stories and say: "Well, we do not know! There is life or not in that world - who knows? Nobody has returned here yet. We, by at least we have not met such people. We have no experience of spiritual communication with those who died and returned. "

I remember such a case. One journalist and I were driving in the car and drove past the cemetery.

This is our future town. We'll all be here, ”I said.

He smiled and replied:

If at least one person returned from the world you are talking about, to the earthly one, then one could talk about it and believe in it. But no one has yet returned from the grave.

I told him:

You and I are talking like two twins who are soon to come out of the womb. One says to the other: "Listen, dear brother. Deadlines are running out. Soon we will go out into the world where our parents live. It is so great!" And the second, atheistically inclined, says: "You know, you are talking about some oddities. What kind of world can there be? What kind of independent life? We are now completely dependent on our mother, we feed on her with oxygen. And if we leave, then our connection with her will be interrupted. and who knows what will happen to us. Maybe we will perish? After all, no one has returned to the womb! "

This is what I told a journalist of little faith. When we lived without faith, were brought up in an atheistic spirit, we reasoned that way. All the forces of the devil were aimed at atrophying the most important organ in man - faith. The man became empty. No misfortunes, troubles, such as the Chernobyl accident, the Spitak earthquake, the Moscow hurricane, floods in Western Ukraine, terrorist acts, can awaken the people sleeping in an atheistic coffin. The Lord constantly makes it known that the end of life is near for everyone, that we all walk and live only by His great mercy. He alone keeps us and waits for us to correct ourselves.

How do non-believers feel? They usually say: "You can believe in what is, what you can touch, see." What kind of faith is this? This knowledge, and even that is biased, inaccurate, incomprehensible. This knowledge is materialistic. And only the Highest Reason, which is the Creator Himself, can know everything about everything.

Unbelievers say: "We, people, are a product of matter. A man died, crumbled to dust in the grave, and there can be no more life." But man is not made up of only flesh. Every person has an immortal soul. It is a purely spiritual substance. Many researchers tried to find it in the body, touch, see, measure, but the result could not be, because they looked at the otherworldly spiritual world with our earthly, material eyes. As soon as the soul leaves the deceased body, it immediately has a vision of the other world. She sees both worlds together: the spiritual world permeates the material, earthly. And the structure of the spiritual world is much more complicated than the visible world.

Recently, a young woman called from Kiev and said:

Father, pray for me: I will have an operation.

Three days later, he reports that the operation went well. When they put her on the operating table, she asked the surgeon:

Can you baptize yourself with your hand? He replied:

Better cross yourself mentally. And he continues:

When I crossed myself mentally, I felt that I was out of my body. I see my body on the operating table. I felt so free, so easy and good that I even forgot about my body. And I saw a tunnel, and at the end of it a bright light. And from there I hear a voice: "Do you believe that the Lord will help you?" They asked me this three times, and I answered three times: "I believe! I believe, Lord!" I woke up - I was already in the ward. And I immediately appreciated earthly life. Everything seemed to me empty, vain. All this is nothing compared to the otherworldly, spiritual world. There is true life, there is true freedom.

Once the priest talked in a maternity hospital with nurses and doctors. He told them about Dr. Moody, who described cases of clinical death in the book "Life After Death". People came back to life and talked about what they saw, being ... dead. All as one said: "Yes, they saw the tunnel, saw the light at the end of it."

Hearing this, one doctor said:

Father, how interesting! You know, when a child is in the womb, he also needs to go through a tunnel to enter our world, into the light. The sun shines here, everything lives here. Probably, a person, in order to go to the other world, must go through a tunnel, and after the tunnel there will be real life in that world.

What do those who have been to the next world tell about hell? What is he?

Television rarely shows something edifying, edifying. But then somehow an interesting program was broadcast on the Muscovy channel. One woman, Valentina Romanova, told how she was in the afterlife. She was an unbeliever, got into a car accident, died and saw her soul separate from her body. In the program, she told in detail what happened to her after her death.

At first, she did not realize that she was dead. She saw everything, heard everything, understood everything and even wanted to tell the doctors that she was alive. Shouted: "I'm alive!" But no one heard her voice. She grabbed the doctors by the hands, but nothing came of it. I saw a piece of paper and a pen on the table, I decided to write a note, but I could not take this pen in my hands.

And at this time she was drawn into a tunnel, a funnel. She exited the tunnel and saw a dark man next to her. At first she was very glad that she was not alone, turned to him and said: - Man, tell me, where am I?

He was tall and stood on the left side of her. When he turned, she looked into his eyes and realized that no good could be expected from this man. Fear seized her and she ran. When she met a luminous youth who protected her from the terrible man, she calmed down.

And then the places that we call hell opened up to her. The cliff is of a terrible height, very deep, and below there are many people - both men and women. They were of different nationalities, different skin colors. An unbearable stench emanated from this pit. And there was a voice to her that said that there are those who committed terrible sins of Sodom during their lifetime, unnatural, prodigal.

Elsewhere she saw a lot of women and thought:

These are infanticides, those who had abortions and did not repent.

Then Valentina realized that she would have to answer for what she had done in her life. Here she first heard the word "vices". I didn't know what that word was before. Only gradually did I understand why the hellish torments are terrible, what is sin, what is vice.

Then I saw a volcanic eruption. A huge fiery river flowed, and human heads swam in it. They plunged into lava, then surfaced. And the same voice explained that in this fiery lava are the souls of psychics, those who were engaged in fortune telling, witchcraft, love spells. Valentina got scared and thought: "What if they leave me here too?" She did not have such a sin, but she understood that in any of these places she could stay forever, since she was an unrepentant sinner.

And then she saw a staircase that led to heaven. Many people climbed this staircase. She began to rise too. A woman walked ahead of her. She was exhausted, began to faint. And Valentina realized that if she did not help her, she would fall down. Apparently, she is a merciful person, she began to help this woman. So they got into a bright space. She could not describe him. She spoke only about the amazing fragrance and joy. When Valentina experienced spiritual joy, she returned to her body. She found herself in a hospital bed, in front of her was the man who knocked her down. His surname is Ivanov. He told her:

Die no more! I will reimburse all the losses on your car (she was very worried because the car was broken), just don't die!

For three and a half hours she was in the afterlife. Medicine calls it clinical death, but it allows a person to be in this state for no more than six minutes. After this period, irreversible changes in the brain and tissues begin. And even if a person is later revived, he turns out to be mentally disabled. The Lord once again showed the miracle of the resurrection of the dead. He brought a person back to life and gave him new knowledge about the spiritual world.

I also knew such a case - with Claudia Ustyuzhanina. It was in the sixties. When I was returning from the army, I stopped in the city of Barnaul. In the temple, a woman approached me. She saw that I was praying and said:

We have a miracle in our city. The woman lay in the morgue for several days and came to life. Would you like to see her?

And I went. I saw a huge house, a high fence, there. They all had such fences. The shutters in the house are closed. We knocked and a woman came out. They said that we came from the church, and she accepted. There was still a boy of about six at home, Andrei, now he is a priest. I don't know if he remembers me, but I remember him well.

I spent the night with them. Claudia showed certificates of her death. She even showed scars on her body. She is known to have had cancer of the fourth degree and died during surgery. She told a lot of interesting things.

And then I entered seminary. He knew that Claudia was in persecution, the newspapers did not leave her alone. Her house was constantly under control: nearby, two or three houses away, there was a two-story police building. I spoke with some of the fathers at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and she was summoned. She sold a house in Barnaul and bought a house in the town of Strunino. The son grew up, now he serves in the city of Alexandrov.

When I was in the Pochaev Lavra, I heard that she had gone to the other world.

Where is hell?

There are two opinions. Saints Basil the Great and Athanasius the Great imagine that hell is inside the earth, because in the Holy Scripture the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel says: "I will bring you down /.../ and I will place you in the underworlds of the earth" (Ezekiel 26, 20). The same opinion is confirmed by the canon of Matins on Great Saturday: "Thou art descended into the lower earth", "Thou art descended into the underworld of the earth."

But other teachers of the Church, for example, St. John Chrysostom, believe that hell is outside the world: "As royal dungeons and mines are far away, so Gehenna will be somewhere outside this universe. But what are you asking, where and in what place will be what is it to you? You need to know that it is, and not where and in what place it is hiding. " And our Christian task is to avoid hell: loving God, our neighbors, humbling and repenting, go to that world.

There are many mysteries on earth. When Archdeacon Stephen was stoned, a temple was erected for him at this place, at the gate to Jerusalem. In our time, archaeologists came there from Belarus and Ukraine, opened the entrance under the temple, which leads under the city, brought in equipment and suddenly saw in huge underground caves black birds, with wings in a span of more than two meters. The birds rushed to the archaeologists, overtook them

such fear that they left the equipment, drove an excavator and filled up the entrance with stones and sand, refusing to further research ...

How many people go to the Kingdom of God, and how many to hell?

One priest was asked this question. He smiled:

You know, dear! When I climb up to ring the bell tower before the Divine Liturgy, I see people coming from nearby villages along the paths to the church. Grandmother with a stick, grandfather mince with granddaughter, young people walk ... By the end of the service, the entire church is filled. This is how people go to the abodes of Paradise - one at a time. And to hell ... Now the service is over. I - again to the bell tower, I see: people all come out of the church gates together. Immediately they cannot pass, but from behind they are still hurrying: "Why are you standing there! Get out quickly!"

Holy Scripture says: "Enter by the narrow gates; because the gates are wide and the path leading to destruction is wide, and many go by them" (Matt. 7:13). It is very difficult for a sinful person to give up his vices and passions, but nothing unclean will enter the Kingdom of God. Only souls purified in repentance enter there.

The Lord gave all the days of our life to prepare for eternity - all of us will have to go there someday. Those who have the opportunity should constantly go to church - both in the morning and in the evening. The end will come, and we will not be ashamed to appear before the heavenly inhabitants, before God. The good deeds of an Orthodox Christian will intercede for him.

Do you think the saved person will be completely happy if he knows that his family and friends have gone to hell?

If a person enters the abode of Paradise, then from the fullness of grace he forgets earthly sufferings, he is not tormented by memories and thoughts of his lost neighbors. The soul of everyone unites with God, and He fills it with great joy. A holy man who has attained the bliss of Paradise prays for those who remain on earth, but for those who have ended up in hell, he can no longer pray. We must pray for them, the living. To save our relatives and friends with alms, prayers and good deeds. And ourselves, while there is still an opportunity, to try to live holy, not to sin, not to oppose God, not to blaspheme Him. After all, if we throw mud in the sun, this mud will fall on our bad head. And God cannot be mocked. We must humble ourselves before Him: "I am weak, I am weak, help me!" We will ask Him, and He will give what we ask. For it is said in the Gospel: "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you" (1 Cor. 11: 9).

Is it possible after the death of a person to find out his afterlife fate? After all, they say: "Death of the sinners of lyuta" (Ps.33). But Orthodox Christians also had many deaths that cannot be called peaceful on the basis of external signs.

Peaceful Christian death is a state of mind when a person feels the presence of God, the protection of the Most Holy Theotokos and entrusts his soul to the Lord. This is a Christian death, even if outwardly it was martyrdom. The "death of fierce sinners" is not only because it is outwardly impious (for example, someone was killed in a drunken brawl), but also because it is sudden. A person does not have time to prepare, to confess, to cleanse himself, to be reconciled with everyone, and most importantly, with the Lord.

How do monks die? Peacefully. In our monastery, a nun fell seriously ill. Mother, who looked after her, says: "Father, you are leaving, what if something happens?" - "Wait". I come in a week. At 3 o'clock in the morning she was given the Holy Communion. I come in the morning and ask: "Will you go to the Kingdom of Heaven?" She barely moves her lips. As the Monk Silouan taught: if the confessor says: "Go, child, into the Kingdom of Heaven and see the Lord," knowing that the child lived worthily, the Lord will receive him into the abode of Paradise.

I baptized her and said: "The Lord is waiting for you. Go to the Kingdom of Heaven." And he went to confession. Mothers read the canon for the exodus of the soul, and after 30 minutes she departed to the Lord.

A person is sick from birth with a severe hereditary illness. All his life he suffers and suffers. What awaits this sufferer in this world and in that?

If he is sick from birth and does not grumble, does not blame anyone for his illness, he thanks God and humbles himself, then he is a sufferer, a martyr before God. If his life ends in suffering from illness, he will receive a martyr's crown in the Kingdom of God.

Many holy people asked that the Lord, even during this life, give them suffering, sickness for their sins, in order to temporarily suffer, torment, and the Lord would forgive their sins for this suffering. And in that world there will be no more suffering.

To suffer bodily is valuable for salvation. If we are sick, then we must be strengthened in spirit in this test.

I remember such a case. In the thirties of the last century, a wealthy landowner lived in Moscow. For fifty years he never slept lying down. Wherever I left the house, I slept sitting everywhere. And at home he slept in an armchair. He didn't even have a bed. And then everything was revealed, why he did this, why he took on such a "feat". It turned out that some gypsy woman predicted that he would die lying in bed. Then, in order not to die, he decided never to go to bed again. I just sat there. And, of course, he died sitting in a chair.

This "feat" of his was based on superstition, pride and did not lead to salvation.

If we suffer for the sake of the Lord, for the sake of our neighbors, endure sickness and do not grumble, only then martyrdom and patience are imputed to us for the feat; if we undertake "martyrdom" by indulging our passions, it will lead us to ruin.

If a person, according to worldly concepts, was quiet, peaceful, calm, did not get irritated, did not swear, and even did not grumble in illness, but at the same time was not churchly, did not repent and did not receive communion, what would be his fate in that world?

It is said that a person's deeds go to that world. The Apostle Paul writes: "He who does not believe has already been condemned, but the believer will be condemned." There are people who would like to be in the Church, but they do not have such an opportunity. But if a person has a church nearby, close by, and he does not recognize the sacraments of the Church, then this will be especially blamed on him.

For seventy years, party agitators have been driving people into their heads that faith is obscurantism, a dark, illiterate Middle Ages. And the generations of people who grew up on this "truth" can be called lost to God. Their souls died before their bodies died. Rarely in someone (only through the prayers of neighbors) has a spark of faith in Christ been preserved.

A person, even a quiet, peaceful person, without God does not have the fullness of spiritual development that he could have while living in God. A person who is not a church, even a quiet person, has an unrepentant soul, darkened by sins. About such "quiet" people the Russian people themselves have put down a saying: "In a still pool, demons are found." That is, a person is afraid to show people his insides and covers it with a beneficent look, but there is still passion inside. Without God and repentance, one cannot get rid of them. We know from the Holy Scriptures that "this very kind (that is, demonic - AA) is expelled only by prayer and fasting" (Matthew 17:20). Therefore, one must live like a Christian, and not just be quiet.

During his lifetime, a person did good deeds and passed into that world. Will these good deeds be for his salvation, if they were done not for the sake of God, but for the sake of his neighbors, for the sake of his good name?

The Holy Scripture says that everything that is done not for Christ's sake is sin.

There are people who still live in a pagan way, do good deeds not to the glory of the name of God. If they do good not for their glory, but for the sake of their neighbor, over time these good deeds will lead them to God, because God is love, God is good.

I know one woman. She lives in Kineshma. Once she helped a church, and after that her dacha burned down. A woman is inexperienced in spiritual matters. Someone take it and tell her: "You see, you did a good deed, and now you are tempted, the dacha is burnt down." This woman answers: "Well, that's it! Now I will not help anyone else, otherwise I will remain a beggar!"

This is how it goes. The man did good and did not understand why. The dacha burned down - it's okay. It is said: "I lost my wealth - I lost nothing, I lost my health - I lost half, I lost God - I lost everything." The Lord will multiply many times what evil spirits have taken from you in revenge for a good deed.

If a person did good deeds out of the kindness of his soul, then this is a direct road to God. And if he did it to glorify his name, then there is no benefit to him in this, he will not receive a reward in that world. What is the reward for the communists? They destroyed temples, monasteries, went against God. It seems that they helped many countries, but the goal was one - to establish their ideology in all countries. Countries passed to another power, their peoples hated the previous government for its godless propaganda, because it brought death to people. And now we are reaping the fruits of atheism, and the fruits are bitter. Even nature cannot bear them: more and more tornadoes, earthquakes, catastrophes.

Our relatives have died, we pray for them, but it is not known where they ended up - in Heaven or in Hell. If they went to hell, I want to know when they will be relieved from our prayers: after the Last Judgment or earlier?

After the Last Judgment by the Lord, everything will be finally determined and prayers for the dead will not be needed. They need them now. After death, the soul that leaves the body appears before the Lord for a private judgment to determine its fate. Through the prayers of the Church, relatives and neighbors who have remained to live, it is possible to change this fate, the Lord sends His angels, and they either transfer the soul to places of lesser torment, or completely remove it from hell.

An angel of the Lord appeared to one person and asked:

Do you want to see human affairs?

Yes, I do.

And the angel led him through underground passages. They walk, they hear groans, screams, screams around. They approach the place where there are huge red-hot ovens, and terrible screams are heard from there. Suddenly, an angel rushed into one of the furnaces and freed a man who was enveloped in fire from head to foot. I touched his body, and all the fumes flew off this man. The liberated angel dressed in white robes, and his face shone with heavenly joy. Then the first angel man asked:

What happened to this soul, why such a change?

The angel replied:

This man, when he lived on earth, went to church very rarely, he only lit candles. Occasionally, once or twice a year, he came to confession, spoke of sins, but not everything, he concealed some. He would approach the Chalice and commune with condemnation. He did not observe fasting well, only the first and last weeks of Great Lent, on Wednesdays and Fridays, he used to indulge himself quickly, saying: "All right, the Lord is merciful, forgive!"

His soul was suddenly separated from his body, no one foresaw his death. Relatives, knowing his negligence, knowing that instead of evening and morning prayers, he often read a short rule of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov, began to pray hard for him, gave them to many monasteries, donated to churches. Forty years passed, and through the prayers of the Church, the Lord set this man free.

Do you know why I showed you these places? Why did you tell about this person? I knew I needed to free him, and I took you here. You, just like this person, lead a careless, sinful life. If you do not want to get here, you must correct yourself, be a real, living Christian.

The man came to himself. He understood that the Lord had deliberately revealed to him the secret of the other world. He radically corrected himself and repented of all sins.

And all shameful sins are consumed with shame. On the day of the Last Judgment, demons will not be able to show the sins confessed by a person - they will be forgiven and erased from demonic charters. And unrepentant sins will be declared before all people, before the saints and angels. If in confession we are afraid of our spiritual father, then what awaits us at the Last Judgment, what a shame and shame! Remember: millions have passed before the confessor, and all with the same sins. You will not surprise him with your sins, and he will not condemn you, but will help you to repent.

What can you say about those who have already left for that world? How can they influence those who remained on earth?

Of course. The sins of the parents weigh on the children, the holy, God-fearing life of the parents teaches children to fear God.

Many people know that all children are as pure as angels. For example, a girl is clean, kind, but suddenly, by the permission of God, an evil spirit enters her and, sometimes, beats and pounds her, tortures her for twenty or thirty years. She is pure, she has few of her sins and all are childish, but for the sins of her ancestors she can bear this punishment. It happens that the ancestors are in hell, and she has to suffer for her family in order to beg their sinful souls.

Possessed people sooner or later come to church, to the priest. Often they are able to understand why this happened to them, and are ready to carry their cross. These people, in whom the Lord allows an evil spirit to dwell, if they do not grumble about their lot in earthly life, after death will be martyrs in the Kingdom of Heaven. And the crowns of martyrdom are the most precious in the eyes of the Lord.

The sins of parents up to the third or fourth generation are reflected in the lives of children. Let's not go far for an example. Those people who, after the revolution, destroyed churches, shot believers (and forty million Orthodox Christians were destroyed), many remained on earth without punishment, but in the future life they will answer for all their crimes and gain eternal hellish torments. And retribution on earth will come through the lives of their children and grandchildren. If children also live without faith in God, their race will end. God won't let it continue.

Those people who live holy, pray, fulfill the holy commandments of the Lord, have joy in procreation. The Lord says to Abraham: "For your pious life, I will multiply your race, like the sand of the sea." And believing Christians will live and be saved in such a pious lineage. They will inherit the heavenly dwellings.

Underworld views

The peculiarities of the syncretic religious system become even more obvious when considering the ideas of the Chinese about the afterlife, the underworld, and hell. The forces of the afterlife did not in any way act as antagonists to the forces of heaven. On the contrary, they constituted an integral part of a common whole, obeyed the supreme jurisdiction of Yuhuan Shandi and did not at all personify evil. In accordance with this, the Chinese hell, all of whose attributes are almost entirely borrowed from the Indo-Buddhist, with all its external resemblance to Christian (especially noticeable when describing sophisticated torments), in fact, was quite different from it: in the Chinese minds, hell was not so much eternal punishment for sins, as much as something like purgatory. Having got to hell and having spent as much time there as he deserved, sooner or later a person left it in order to then be reborn to a new life; in doing so, he could even be in heaven.

The concepts of the afterlife were formed in the syncretic religion of the Chinese mainly on the basis of Buddhist beliefs. This initial layer was later enriched by ancient Chinese and Taoist concepts. The result is a multi-layered and somewhat contradictory picture.

Even in ancient times it was believed, as we know, that every Chinese possessed two souls. The syncretic religion needed a third soul, with which all the transformations associated with hell and rebirth had to take place. After the death of a person, this soul entered the underworld through holes located near Mount Taishan; therefore, the deity of this mountain was revered as the master of the fate of people, regularly collecting all information about them from countless zao-shenei, Cheng Huang and tudi-sheney... Under the ground, the soul fell into the first judicial chamber of hell, where its further fate was decided: depending on merit, sins and other circumstances, it could be sent either directly to the tenth chamber of hell, or to one or even several (or even all) of the rest eight chambers. In each of the chambers, the soul had to experience torment and punishment (the chambers had a certain specialization), but ultimately it still ended up in the tenth chamber, where it was assigned to be reborn. There were six possible rebirths in total. The highest was rebirth in heaven, that is, in essence, getting into heaven, the second - on earth, that is, in the guise of a man, the third - rebirth in the world of underwater demons. These three options were considered desirable - more or less. The other three were undesirable and were seen as punishment for sins in a past life. The fourth was the rebirth in the world of underground demons, servants of hell, the fifth - in the world of demons, "hungry ghosts" who fly around the world restless and bring misfortune to people, and the sixth - in the world of animals, including insects and even plants. It is very important to bear in mind that all these rebirths, except for the first, were not eternal. After a certain period of time, those who were reborn died again, again fell into the first chamber of hell, where everything happened from the beginning.

Each of the ten chambers of hell had its own head, but the most influential among them was the head of the fifth chamber, Yanlovan, a modification of the Buddhist Yama. It was through his department that the souls of people who had various sins passed - from the disrespectful use of inscribed papers to murder or adultery. For each sin there was a corresponding atonement, but an indulgence could be obtained in advance. For this, the eighth day of the first month, on the birthday of Yanlo-wang, followed, swearing to avoid sins. Naturally, this opportunity inspired the Chinese, who had something to repent of. Hence, apparently, the enormous popularity of Yanlo-wan, comparable only to the popularity of the head of the seventh chamber of hell - the deity of Mount Taishan.

There are discrepancies regarding the head of hell as a whole. Sometimes he is considered to be Yuhuang Shandi himself. However, most often the head of the underworld is the bodhisattva Ditsan-wang, who also served as an object of enthusiastic reverence. It was Ditsan-wan, who was sometimes identified with the deity of the Earth, who appeared in the underworld to personally transfer deserving souls to heaven, to Nirvana, to the great Buddha and Amitaba. In order for all this to happen immediately and in the best possible way, immediately after the death of a person, a Buddhist monk writes a stereotypical prayer - examples of which are abundantly given in the work of A. Dore - and asks Dizang-wan to fulfill his duty. Of course, the Chinese ideas about the organization of the afterlife, about the functions and significance of the deities of the underworld have never been uniform and harmonious. But in the basic principles, the concept of the afterlife remained unchanged and was characteristic of the entire country. Everywhere, the dead and their future were carefully cared for, so that all three souls were comfortably arranged where they were supposed to be. The cult of ancestors still dominated the country's religious and cult system, it was he who determined the nature and direction of the most important rituals.