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QuantumBranching β Underworlds: the Notening
#fantasy #map #underworld
Published: 2018-03-01 04:17:11 +0000 UTC; Views: 11152; Favourites: 115; Downloads: 96
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A commission for 3892. Thought I'd just make a new post of it rather than edit the former post. (For one thing, people don't seem to notice when I do that.
)With thanks to Borges, from which I stole the fish and bull story.Β
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Comments: 25
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This is genuinely beautiful dude and the amount of depth you're able to convey through the medium of pixel based digital art--and with such deftness--is a testament to the boundless ingenuity of man. I've literally been lookin at your maps for 3 years and you never cease to amaze me.
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I do not like these mythological mishmashes, like take ten or how many mythologies from various times and continents and put them next to each other (usually, they are too incompatible or on the contrary too close -yeah, I am lookin on all these indoeuropean lightning deities! and what you want to do with dozen of sun gods and godesses, heh?-) but THIS is great! I totally love it!
(some plans more or less related to this?)
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I always wondered why in Judaism they have different sections or different "hells". I always used to think that it was the same like in Christianity.Β
I will say I think out of the worse underworlds in any religion and mythology is obviously Mictlan, I mean imagine having to go through a fucking 4 or 3 year long journey full of many deadly obstacles just to simply reach the "afterlife". The Aztecs and their mythology is in my opinion the most funniest (funny in a dark way) and interesting mythologies out of any other in the world in my opinion.Β
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So which of the following pantheons does this underworld chart cover? (Keep in mind that this list is based on an old idea I had for a council of pantheons (even though Marvel along with many other writers has done that before) that has every single polytheistic religion represented. At least the most noteworthy or mainstream of the bunch. It's based on a bunch of sources (in the loosest way possible for a hobbyist) like Wikipedia, Powerlisting and the MOBA game Smite. Feel free to tell me whether you agree or disagree with my placement of sub-pantheons on this list and whether I should add or subtract to those categories on said list right here.)
01. Australian Aboriginal Myth
02. Pre-Islamic Arabian Myth
03. Armenian Myth
04. Aztec Myth
05. Canaanite Myth (Semitic)
06. Celtic Myth (Brythonic (Breton, Cornish and Welsh) and Goidellic/Gaelic (Irish, Manx and Scottish).)
07. Chinese Myth
08. Egyptian Myth
09. Finnish Myth (Estonian, Finnic and Sami.)
10. Greek Myth
11. Guarani Myth
12. Hindu/Indian Myth (Ayyavazhi, Indian Epic Poetry, Tamil and Vedic.)
13. Inca Myth
14. Inuit Myth
15. Shinto/Japanese Myth (Ainu and Ryukuan.) (I know that these two religions are different from Shintoism, but lets be honest, both groups have been heavily assimilated by the Japanese population at this point. So that's kinda why I lumped them in with Japanese mythology in the first place.)
16. Mayan Myth
17. Mesopotamian Myth (Babylonian and Sumerian.)
18. Norse Myth (Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Alpine and Frankish.) (From what I can tell, there isn't much difference between the Norse gods and their Anglo-Saxon/Continental Germanic counterparts other than spelling differences like Odin vs Woden.)Β
19. Philippine Myth
20. Roman Myth (Italian, Maltese and French.)
21. Slavic Myth (Polish)
22. Tengrist/Turco-Mongol Myth
23. Voodoo Myth (Abakua, Candomble, Cuban Vodu, Dominican Vudu, Espiritismo, Haitian, Haitian Vodou, Hoodoo, Kumina, Louisiana Voodoo, Obeah, Palo, Quimbanda, Santeria, Santo Daime, Spiritual Baptist, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda and Winti.)
24. Yoruba Myth
25. Zoroastrian/Persian Myth (Iranian and Persian.)
Myths I'm not to sure about giving their own section:
26. Hawaiian (This is definitely one of the top two pantheons I want in the main category. But I'm not sure if the devs of Smite would make a Hawaiian pantheon or a pan-Polynesian pantheon as a faction in their game.)Β
27. Maori (Same as the Hawaiian pantheon in that it's in the top two I wanna see in the main category, but am not sure if a Maori pantheon would be it's own separate thing in Smite or if it, Hawaiian and other Oceanic pantheons would be lumped in together as a Polynesian pantheon.)
28. Paleo-Balkan (Romanian and Albanian)? (There's modern Zalmoxianism for a neo-pagan movement.)
29. Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian and Prussian)? (There's also Dievturiba, Druwi and Romuva for a neo-pagan religion.)
30. Lusitanian (Catalan and Spanish)? (Is there even a neopagan movement for Lusitanian mythology? Or is there not enough data to fully reconstruct it as a religion?)
Miscellaneous Myths:Β
Β
1. African Myths: (Baluba, Bantu, Bushongo, Lugbara, Mbuti, Akamba, Dinka, Kallenjin, Lotuko, Maasai, Somali, Waaq, Berber, Lozi, Malagasy, San, Tumbuka, Zulu, Akan, Dahomean, Edo, Efik, Hausa, Isoko, Odinani and Serer.)
2. North and South American Myths: (Olmec, Abenaki, Anishinaabe, Blackfoot, Cherokee, Choctaw, Cree, Creek, Crow, Dine Bahane, Haida, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Iroquois, Kwakwaka'wakw, Lakota, Leni Lenape, Lummi, Miwok, Nuu-chah-nulth, Ohlone, Pawnee, Pomo, Salish, Seneca, Tsimshian, Ute, Wyandot, Zuni, Chilota, Mapuche and Muisca.)
3. Asian Myths: (Scythian, Korean, Tibetan, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Balochi, Elamite, Hittite, Hurrian, Kassite, Kurdish and Lydian.)
4. European Myths: (Adyghe Habze, Georgian, Nart Saga, Ossetian, Vainakh, Etruscan, Hungarian and Romani.)
5. Oceanic Myths: (Kaluli Creation Myth, Mangarevan, Melanesian, Micronesian, Papuan, Polynesian, Rapa Nui, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan and Tuvaluan.)
tl;dr So basically my question is this. Does this underworld chart contain references to every possible polytheistic religion known to man?
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I fricking love this map.
I'm a bit confused as to where are Purgatory and Heaven at though I might just be blind.
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Up. These are underworlds, not heavens.
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Ah. I was a bit confused because places like the Elysian Fields and Vallhalla were there too.
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Makes me wonder what Heaven...or Heavens...looks like.
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Not sure if I can believe that the Outer Darkness is the Nega-Utah.
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I will admit to being a bit tired and silly when I added that.Β
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Not that it's bad thing, I just find it funny.
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I for one think the idea is golden.
In any case, wonder what the reactions of the still-living monotheists would be to learning about these - it would kinda prove a whole bunch of their core tenets wrong (while also proving others right, ironically).
Also, since they all have their own afterlives/hells, which virtuous pagans would end up in Limbo? Maybe refugees from the less pleasant afterlives even if you were nice (probably not that many, as IIRC Limbo constantly reminds you that you're not in God's presence because you didn't make the "right" choice, which must get depressing after a few centuries, plus that whole "huge burning-hot wall" thing going on)?
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Nice work as always!
Also, the idea of Australia in its entirety being an afterlife realm is extra hilarious.
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The thing is that Aboriginal legend and Dreamtime beliefs are so closely connected to the actual landscape of Australia, it just made sense to me that the Dreamtime realm would _look_ like the actual Australia.
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I guess even in death, there's no escape from Drop Bears...only now with floating Opera Houses.
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Goodness gracious me, this is amazing!
I love the touch of the half-abandoned but still there afterlives of the earliest, nearly forgotten people and cultures.
And of course, all the ways out of the underworld are at the very bottom, as per the mythologies. Not a pleasant choice that the dead must face -- if you're sent to the first or even second layer of the underlands, you can certainly stay there, but once you're in you're in, and the only way to reach the good afterlives or go back to the world of the living is to descend into and pass through the very worst parts of the lower realms.
(On that note, I was a bit surprised not to see a green arrow at the bottom of Hell -- mostly, that was the route Dante took to exit the Pit, and you seemed to base it a lot off of his Inferno otherwise.
I can't help but wonder where the lands in the intermediate zones are. If you reached the edge of Nagaloka, for instance, what would you see?
Also, I meant to ask -- what myth does the Great Waterfall come from?
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Thanks!
Dante could leave hell because he was touring with a spirit guide. I don't think the normal inhabitants can get out that way. Similarly, it's assumed Gods and some types of demons can leave whatever level they're on: the exits referred to are for the normal human dead.
Nor am I including places where one might get out through bribery or magic or other unorthodox means (say, by turning into a snake - see, the Kalevala). The exits are ones which are _meant_ to be there.
The waterfall? Just sort of Rule of Cool: a most definitive End of the World. It shows in fantasy fiction about flat worlds, such as the Diskworld Series: after all, aren't the Backwards Sailors always worrying about sailing off the edge of the world?Β
Re intermediary zones, needed _somewhere_ to stick all those levels without creating an entire map for each level. Β 
"For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky."
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