Introduction:

The afterlife is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or

their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body.
According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives
on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit of an individual, which
carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary nirvana. Belief in an
afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.
In some views, this continued existence takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular
views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely
with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and
deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a
spiritual realm . Major views on the afterlife derive
from religion, esotericism and metaphysics. Some belief systems, hold that the dead go to a
specific place after death, as determined by God, or other divine judgment, based on
their actions or beliefs during life.

In the past decade, there's new scientific evidence that's emerged pointing at the genuine
possibility of life continuing after death. As medical science advances, new approaches to the
study of life after death emerge. Specifically, measuring the body's physical reactions and
processes that occur once clinical death has been established. In recent years, scientists have
discovered new ways of registering what happens to the physical body and the cell function
during the precise time of death and in the minutes that follow. These findings contradict
much of what we've known about the body's natural death process at the cellular level. 

Back in 1907, a man named Dr. Duncan Macdougall experimented with several of his dying
patients in an attempt to weigh their souls leaving their bodies. He did so by calibrating the
weight on their clinical beds to precisely measure body weight variances before death and
immediately after death. His findings were recorded and indexed in the medical journal called
American Medicine.

After measuring the weights of six individual patients who died, Dr. Macdougall
hypothesized that each of the patients lost a soul weight of 21 grams each. There was a movie
filmed with the title 21 grams, and this is where modern American pop culture latches onto
the idea of the soul having a precise weight.

The secular world seems to always be at odds with the spiritual. When it comes to the
existence of life after death, there's no exception. Scientists want you to trust in what they
believe the evolutionary process of how the universe came to be. They base their findings on
research, mathematical computations, and experimentation.

On the other hand, theologians place their complete trust and faith in the written word of
whatever religious background they choose. These two competing schools of thought are at

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odds with one another, and they're constantly competing for followers in the life after death
arena.

Afterlife is defined different in every mythology. Some of them are classified as follows

Afterlife in Greek Mythology:

In Greek Mythology, Hades is the Lord of the Dead who rules over the Underworld. The
Underworld is a complex place, not unlike interpretation of both Heaven and Hell, or the
"second death." Within the Underworld, there are several planes of existence for the dead to
rest for eternity. Dante’s inferno grapples with similar planes of existing in his interpretation
of Hell and Purgatory.

Hades God Of Death & King Of The Underworld

Much of what we know about the Greek Underworld comes from the writing of Plato, one of
the most celebrated Ancient Greek philosophers.

In his writings, Plato explains how the Underworld is divided depending on how individuals
act during their lives. For those who devote their lives to goodness, they’re rewarded with a
pleasant afterlife experience. Like Heaven, life is even better after death for those who lived a
moral life. 

On the other hand, those who indulge in baser pleasures don’t have the same luxury to look
forward to after death. For the vast majority of souls in the Underworld, a bleak existence
waits after death.

The worst souls face a fate worse than death. It’s like living the same nightmare on repeat.
The Underworld was a place of shadows, darkness, and hopelessness for all but a select few.
Only the most exceptional mortals are blessed with eternal happiness in the Greek afterlife.

There are different divisions of the Ancient Greek Underworld. Each soul goes to a specific
geographic area depending on the life they led. The three levels are as follows:

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  Tartarus: This region is easily associated with Christianity’s Hell. This is where
people were imprisoned and doomed to suffer the worst punishments for all of
eternity. It takes souls nine days to reach the depths of Tartarus.

 Asphodel Meadows: This is where the vast majority of deceased souls reside. This is
an in-between place for souls who lived a mild life. They weren’t overly bad, nor
were they overly good. Those in the Asphodel Meadows drink from the River Lethe,
meaning they forget their previous lives and live in eternal mindlessness.

 Elysium: Finally, this is the region of the Underworld where all mortals aspire to
reside. Elysium is for the most heroic of mankind, and this is close to Heaven. The
souls in Elysium spend eternity enjoying the greatest pleasures.

Path To Underworld:

Once deceased, souls take a journey to their final resting place in the underworld. First, souls
cross a mythological river into the Underworld. They’re ferried by Charon, the infamous
boatman tasked with taking souls to the underworld.

According to legend, Ancient Greeks placed coins in deceased loved one’s eyes as a way to
offer payment to Charon. This became known as Charon’s obol.

Charon’s Obol

After arriving from the ferry to the Underworld, souls enter through the gates. The gates keep
people in but don’t allow human souls to exit. Finally, deceased souls meet a panel of judges
who pass sentences based on the mortal’s lives.

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As mentioned before, most end up in the neutral Asphodel Meadows. Some receive a special
sentence to the other destinations.  

For those cursed to Tartarus, the time is spent in a cycle of pain and suffering. Like Hell, this
is a never ending nightmare. There is no way out of Tartarus in Greek mythology.

For those who are lucky enough to go to Elysium, they’re greeted with an eternity of rewards
and pleasure. Time is spent leisurely as one wishes. 

The majority of human souls don’t do much in the Underworld. They face a bleak, grey
existence of nothingness. While this might sound harsh, it’s a reasonable alternative to eternal
punishment. The hope of reaching Elysium drove many Ancient Greeks to lead moral,
fulfilling lives.

Afterlife In Norse Mythology:

The best-known vision of the Norse afterlife is that of Valhalla the hall of the heroes where
warriors chosen by the Valkyries feast with the god Odin, tell stories from their lives, and
fight each other in preparation for the final battle of Ragnarök, the end of the world
and death of the gods. This image is as deeply associated with Norse beliefs from around
the Viking age (c. 790-1100 CE) as that of the Viking funeral in which a boat is decked out as
a pyre with the corpse surrounded by treasures, and either buried or set on fire.

These descriptions come from works preserving Norse mythology and other types
of literature (as well as physical evidence) which show that burying boats and ships as biers,
or setting them on fire as pyres, did happen and such images have been popularized in media.
There were, however, a number of possible destinations for Scandinavian souls in the
afterlife and boats, because they were so costly, seem to have been rarely buried or burned. A
Viking – or any Scandinavian warrior – may have expected to wake up in Valhalla after death
but the farmer or weaver who had never picked up a sword or axe would not. Even so, what
precisely they would have expected is unclear.

Norse religion was fully integrated into the lives of the people and there was no one set of
dogmatic beliefs on how the gods operated, how they were to be worshiped, or where the soul
went to after death. Religious rituals were practiced privately in homes or at outdoor festivals
and the Norse had no written scripture. It is difficult, therefore, to reconstruct Norse beliefs in
the present day as they would have been enacted before and during the Viking Age.

Further, the Norse concept of the 'soul' was quite different from how it is understood in the
present day or how it was by Christians in the 8th-12th centuries CE. The soul had four
components and one's destination in the afterlife could range between continued existence in
one's grave, haunting one's former home, one of the realms of the deities, or other
possibilities.

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Parts of the Soul

The Norse conception of the soul included four aspects which made up a whole person:

 Hamr – one's physical appearance which, however, would and could change.
The hamr could be manipulated for shape-shifting, for example, or could change color
after death.
 Hugr – one's personality or character which continued on after death.
 Fylgja – one's totem or familiar spirit which was unique to an individual and mirrored
their hugr; a shy person might have a deer as their fylgja while a warrior would have a
wolf.
 Hamingja – one's inherent success in life, seen as a quality (or protective spirit)
which was both caused by a person's hugr and formed it; one's hamingja would be
passed down through a family, for good or ill.

These parts of the soul may or may not have all gone to a single destination after death. There
is evidence that the Norse believed in reincarnation where one's hugr would pass into the
body of a newborn relative while one's hamingja continued on in the family at large and one's
fylgja seems to have just ceased to exist at the person's death. There was no judgment by the
gods involved in a soul's final destination; for the most part, it seems, a soul went wherever it
went. The great hero-god Balder goes to the grey land of Hel beneath the earth, not to
Valhalla, and even the gods cannot bring him back. The Norse sagas themselves often
contradict each other in presenting their view of the afterlife and the power of the gods.

Realms of the Afterlife

This pattern holds in descriptions of the realms of the afterlife which were preserved by these
scribes. It is probable that the dynamic, living religion of the Norse presented a more
complete view but one can no longer tell because of the Christian lens through which most
Norse beliefs were transmitted. Briefly, there were five possible destinations for a Norse soul
after death:

 Valhalla
 Folkvangr
 Hel
 The Realm of Rán
 The Burial Mound

 Valhalla – the hall of the heroes. When a Viking warrior died, the soul was
believed to go to Odin's hall where he – or she – would meet old friends, talk
and drink, and fight in preparation for the final battle of the gods at Ragnarok.

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Viking Warriors In Valhalla Preparing For the Final Battle Of Raganrok With There
Ruler The Great God Odin Son.

 Hel – A grey land under the earth in the fog-world of Niflheim ruled by the
goddess Hel and where the majority of souls would go. The realm of Hel has
no correlation to the conception of hell, but the goddess with the same name
who personifies this realm is probably a addition as for pre-religious times
belief in her is not attested.

 The Realm of Rán – Sometimes alluded to as the Coral Caves of Rán. Rán
was a giantess, married to Aegir the giant and Lord of the Sea, who lived at
the bottom of the ocean. Rán's realm was illuminated by the massive treasure
she had taken from sailors she had caught in her net and drowned and the
souls of these sailors remained with her.

 The Burial Mound – The soul of the deceased could also remain where the
corpse was buried and was then known as a haugbui ('howe', a burial mound),
a 'mound-dweller', who would not leave the grave. The soul could also remain
in the area after death but left the mound to cause problems for the living. This
entity was known as the draugr or as the aptrgangr (meaning 'after-goer' or
'again-goer'); i.e. 'one who walks after death'.

The popular image of the Viking warrior who scorns death, confident of a place at the tables
of Valhalla, is contrasted by the view of death held by most Scandinavians in pre-religious
times who saw it as a tragedy. Death was the loss of all one had ever known and, if there even
was such a thing as an afterlife, it was the dismal grey realm of Hel with its high walls and
thick gates. 

 Scholar Kirsten Wolf notes:

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The eddic poem Havamal  (Sayings of the High One), which is considered to express the
sentiments of certainly a number of the common people in Norway and Iceland in the late
Viking Age, scorns mystical beliefs, such as those in a future life. According to this poem,
death is the greatest calamity that can befall a man; ill health and injury are better. Even a
lame man can ride a horse, a handless man can drive herds, and a deaf man join in battle; it is
better to be blind than burned on the funeral pyre.

Afterlife According To