The Theravada form of Buddhism practiced in parts of Nepal expresses, like all forms of Buddhism, a belief in reincarnation. However, in this tradition, they believe that several people can be reincarnated as the same person at once, which they use as an explanation for multiple personality disorder. The voices in the head are just other souls wanting a turn at the metaphorical wheel. Furthermore, because they believe there is a constant in the numbers being reincarnated, there are human vessels out there that have no souls at all. This therefore explains the actions of those seemingly with no form of moral compass as there is no eternal spirit within navigating the morality ocean. Theravadan theologians have been feeling particularly smug about this concept since the rise of social media.
The Akuntsu tribe of the Brazilian Amazon believe in a heavenly place called Margate. Their sacred scripture, carved into the bark of mahogany trees describes Margate, Essex in uncannily accurate detail, although they have Boots the chemists four buildings down and neglect to mention Morrisons completely. However, so fearsomely accurate is this portrayal of Margate in their scriptures that the Akuntsu tribe spend the vast majority of their time seeking immortality so they don’t have to go there.
The Peebles family of Walton-on-the-Naze believe that the after-life is heavily based on the coupon system, and as a consequence each member gets buried with a pair of scissors and a suitcase full of coupons when they die. “We see ourselves,“ stated patriarch, Ruben Peebles, “as following in the sandled footsteps of the Pharaohs, but with a much more proletariat outlook. Whereas the Pharaohs had treasures and servants etc. to ensure that they were duly catered for in the next life, we’re looking for twenty per cent off canned goods, and half priced admission to a waterpark.“
There grew up in the 1950s in a remote part of Wisconsin an anglophile community that developed into a cult, worshipping every aspect of English life. None of the members had ever been to England, but simply gleaned their love from representations in movies of the 40s and PG Wodehouse novels. Consequently, their view of an afterlife, granted to those amongst their commune who’d dutifully doffed their caps to their social superiors, always extended their pinkies when drinking tea, and had memorised all the words to ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ and ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, was to experience for eternity those two most English of delights, queuing and complaining non-confrontationally about the lack of queuing etiquette of others. For, as it said in large letters on the outside of their community’s headquarters (before the whole nasty business to do with the fire and the FBI): ‘wherever an Englishman is stood, another Englishman will go and stand behind him’.
Etched on to the side of a temple in the ancient Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, is a series of Maya glyphs, which experts in Mesoamerican culture have interpreted as a Tikal-centric view of the afterlife. According to the glyphs, if you had been a loyal subject to the king, by protecting him from jaguars, not stealing his chocolate, and not kicking up too much of a fuss when it was your turn to be ritually sacrificed, then you were rewarded in the afterlife with a massive quetzal bird and a saddle with which to ride it. If you had been a naughty Mayan, then the glyphs illustrated that you would be smeared in honey and seeds and you’d have a very different relationship with the massive quetzal bird.
Viking conscientious objectors rather than believing in Valhalla and the eternal feasting for those who died gloriously in battle, believed in Bonhalla, where those who had tutted disapprovingly when pillaging is proposed or suggested that perhaps some form of compromise with other nations might be in order, went. In Bonhalla, you’d live out your days eating meatballs and writing pop classics whilst sitting in a hot steam-filled broom cupboard.
There are many tales about Tartarus in Greek mythology and the punishments meted out on those who’d committed appalling sins during their mortal existences. One thinks of Ixion and the big wheel, Tantalus and drowning whilst trying to reach fruit (which is of course how Elvis died), and Sisyphus rolling the big rock up a hill. There were others, of course, Propostenes who had upset the goddess Aphrodite by comparing her thighs to souvlaki, spends his eternity smearing grease on cross-channel swimmers. Episemachus, the King of Sparta, got into trouble for breaking the tradition of good hospitality, xenia, when he placed an insufficiently fancy biscuit on the pillow of his guests who turned out to be Zeus and Hermes. These ancient equivalents of the ‘mystery guest’ wrote terrible reviews on Trip Advisor (or Herodotus as he was then known), and condemned Episemachus to an afterlife of mild IBS and non-quilted toilet paper. Isosceles, the inventor of two things being longer than a third, was condemned to Tartarus for proposing to the goddess Athena that they spatchcock her owl for his mother’s birthday. Whilst down in Tartarus he has to spend every day removing sand from damp socks whilst Hephaestus tattoos ‘I hate triangles’ onto his right buttock.
Despite the film ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’, it has long been the subject of great theological debate about what access the animal kingdom has to the plains of the afterlife. The Whadjuk Noongar people of South Western Australia believe that far from no animals getting into the afterlife, it is only quokkas (a small rodent-like marsupial native to those parts), that do so. As such, the Whadjuk Noongar people spend most of their lives dressed as quokkas to ensure that if they do unexpectedly cark it at any point, they are ready to fool the guardians into allowing them into the spirit plains. Given the heavily furred nature of their costumes, most Whadjuk Noongar people die from sunstroke.
In a survey carried out in the ‘Washington Post’ in August 2024, it was discovered that 17% of Americans believe that Belinda Carlisle was right and that Heaven is a place on Earth. In particular, the majority of that 17% believe that it is somewhere in Idaho and has an impressively wide range of flavoured potato chips. In the same survey, most Americans believe that Heaven is mainly made of clouds, but that you are able to shoot buffalo there even in the off-season. In the same survey, Hell, according to 35% of Americans is being stuck in an elevator with Joan Rivers and a disappointingly inept balloon animal artiste.
World famous psychic, Doris van Drake (or to give her, her stage name ‘Madame Chuchoteur de Cadavre’) admitted in a recent interview that she’d been making up all her conversations from beyond the grave because each time she tried to communicate with the deceased she simply got an engaged tone. “I got through once,“ she told the Fortean Times, “back in 1983, but simply got a man called Martin who wanted to know whether they were doing a second season of ‘Cagney and Lacey’“. “The problem is,“ stated Fontaine Mesmeriso, head of the Psychic and Clairvoyants Union, “that there are too many people trying to commune with the dead. There are only about two dozen native American spirit guides in the beyond, and they are that back-logged with psychic requests that if you’re just being born now, it’s best to put in a call, and by the time you’re connected, you’ll be long-since retired and able to book a double-room with en-suite for when you pass through the invisible veil the following week.“
Author of ‘The Three Musketeers’ and many other novels, Alexandre Dumas, believed that the afterlife was controlled by literary agents. He felt that in order to assuage them in the afterlife, he should put as much work as humanly possible their way during his lifetime. Dumas’ beliefs had their origins in his Haitian roots – an important aspect of Haitian Vodou is Iwa – a form of spirit that intercedes with the deity Bondye on humanity’s behalf. Somewhere between his roots in what is now Haiti, and his teenage years in France, the concept of Iwa got muddled in his understandings and became synonymous with literary agents. Dame Barbara Cartland had the same belief. But her Iwa were all pink and Bondye was a Pekingese.
Philosophers over the years had interesting thoughts to say about the afterlife. Nietzsche proposed the idea of eternal recurrence, that life in its entirety will repeat itself infinitely. An idea he suggested as it would give him the chance to finish redecorating his study which he never got round to the first time around. It was all blues and he felt rather a cold palette, which he feared may have created a pessimistic undertone to his philosophy. Plato believed in the soul’s immortality in a realm of perfection – or where at least you didn’t have to pay 20% extra for table service. Epicurus was having none of it, and insisted on stating that there was no afterlife, which was why he wanted more pie now. Confucius was keen for us not to focus on the afterlife, particularly when you’re operating heavy machinery.
Powell and Pressburger in their seminal 1946 film ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ mooted the idea of personalised escorts to the beyond. Obviously there had been previous ones such as ‘The Grim Reaper’ who dealt with everyone, or the Valkyries who specifically took warriors who died in battle, but Powell and Pressburger firmly believed in individual service having both worked in retail at Harrods during their teenage years (Powell was in comestibles and Pressburger worked gentlemen’s hosiery), and so suggested that every soul is individually shepherded into the ‘Other World’. These soul shepherds were known as ‘Conductors’ and simply given a number. Number 71 is the one shown in the film who gets confused by fog.
Another major theory about the afterlife proposed in the film is that a massive wide escalator carries you up to Heaven. This is not the first mention of vertical transportation methods when it comes to the afterlife. Famously, there is ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ which was predominantly used by angels to get up and down from the mortal to the immortal realm. AC/DC insisted that there was a highway to Hell, but were less clear initially about any form of roadway to Heaven until their B-Side to their 1990 single ‘Thunderstruck’, ‘Poorly tarmacked B-road to Heaven’. Of course, being devoted evangelical Christians, the members of AC/DC often relate lyrics to such Biblical semiotics – here referencing Matthew Chapter 7 verses 13 and 14. In the Kutch District of Gujarat, India, there is a ‘Road to Heaven’ though disappointingly it actually leads to the village of Santalpur and not the Pearly Gates.
The Csángó people of eastern Romania believe in the use of trebuchets to get into the afterlife. For many years the Csángós lined up a series of trebuchets on the western shore of Lake Cernica and fired their recently deceased across its glittering surface until they started getting complaints from the neighbours. No-one wants a semi-decomposed Romanian grandmother landing amongst their geraniums. The local beaver population’s dams look more like charnel houses than the traditional wooden affairs of their western European cousins.
The Uru people of Lake Titicaca live on self-made floating islands woven out of dried totora reeds. They believe that the afterlife exists on the underside of the reed islands – an idea that inspired the Duffer Brothers in their ‘Stranger Things’ show. The Uru people spend each evening on their stomachs shouting about relatives’ medical ailments through the reeds for the benefit and interest of their ancestors on the pretext that that was all they talked about in the last decade of their lives.
Treatises of Gloria 