Heaven and Hell -- fly up, dig down

[Bullgrit]

First: When and where did the concept that Heaven is up and Hell is down come from?

Has anyone used this concept in D&D? Has there been a dungeon that was so deep that it had levels literally in Hell? Has anyone flown so high that they literally entered Heaven?

How about any other plane? Are there ways of entering other planes via movement on the Material Plane? Like go deep in the ocean to cross over into the Elemental Plane of Water? I'm not talking about a portal to pass through.

Bullgrit

 

[Nymrohd]

Well in my homebrew (retrofitted for some 4E concepts), you can actually dig deep enough that you fall off the world and down into the elemental chaos. Essentially there are no other infinities, everything exists in one universe.

 

[steeldragons]

I'm not entirely sure about where the imagery of "up/down" originated. I'm going to guess that it has something to do with ancient belief in "the Underworld"...the dead went to the Underworld, I'm thinking specifically Hades, which was not a very shiny happy place. But other "Realms of the Dead" were almost commonly thought to be underground.

If "Hell" was associated with going "down" to the underworld it makes sense that the opposite of Hell would be the opposite direction.

Similarly, most every religion of ancient civilizations of the known world, "fathers" or "kings" of gods were almost universally sky deities: Odin, Zeus/Jupiter, Ra. Hence, the Father, the Light, the "Good guys" were "up."

As to whether I've ever run a dungeon with levels that actually reached the Abyssal or Infernal planes...I have not run them, but they do exist.

Specifically, I have a region in my world (Thole "the Broken Lands") that is is entirely consumed in evil. It is rumored there are (and there actually are) "[super]naturally occurring" stable portals to various planes of the nether regions, the abyss, the elemental planes of Fire or Smoke, the "Grey Lands"/River of the Dead (where souls of the dead of Orea must travel before being judged by the goddess of Death at the fork in the river to go down one branch to the Higher Planes or the other to the Lower), the plane of Shadow and possibly other sinister/not so nice places.

Though I haven't detailed these sorts of portals existing in other places in the world, there is no reason there might not be...i.e. Travel far enough beneath the seas, you might find yourself inadvertently passing into the elemental plane of water. On a windy crag at the highest point of some mountain you might pass through a cloud bank to find yourselves in the elemental plane of air...

I like to keep as many possibilities open as...well, possible.

So planar travel without plane-traveling magic is definitely an option...though few are foolish enough to attempt it, particularly traveling into Thole (which only the very evil or very mad would dare to do).

--SD

 

[Stormonu]

yes, I've actually used this for my homebrew, and it actually came up, via a place known as Hell's Gate, a "backdoor" rumored to lead to a treasure vault within Hell itself.

According to lore for my campaign, you can literally fly up to the heavens, or cross the seas "up" to heaven (my campaign world sits inside the sphere of the owrld, instead of being on the outside). There's also a great maelstrom/waterspout combo in the sea that will take you to the elemental plane of water ("the source of all water").

You can also follow the underdark deep enough to reach the howling caves of Pandemonium, and if you can navigate the maze of insanity-inducing cverns, eventually step into Hades/Purgatory, and then through the doors of Damnation into Hell. While you might describe some of these as portals, they are static locations and no different from opening a door in the middle of the woods to enter a woodsman's cottage.

As for the source of up/down for heaven and hell, My hunch is it goes back at least to Greek views of the realms of the gods - Olympus high upon a mountain of its namesake, and Hades accessible from a volcano in the greek realms, whose name I can't remember right now (remember Orpheus's descent into the "underworld"?

I'm sure Dantes comedies have also had a strong influence, though thr question would be was he influenced by others? And I'd expect that yes, he was influenced by greek writings he'd read.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Has there been a dungeon that was so deep that it had levels literally in Hell?

Rappan Athuk does, I believe. And the original Tristram Abbey dungeon in Diablo I.

 

[amerigoV]

Not an adventure, but from an early Conan story where he is locked in a dungeon, Conan does come across a flower whose roots extend into Hell. Very interesting concept and imagery.

 

[Corathon]

First: When and where did the concept that Heaven is up and Hell is down come from?

Well, "heaven" is a word that originally meant (and can still mean) "sky". As steeldragons pointed out, benevolent (more or less) gods lived in the sky. or on mountaintops, death gods (and the souls of the dead) lived in the underworld, conceived by (e.g. the Greeks) as being literally underground.

Has anyone used this concept in D&D? Has there been a dungeon that was so deep that it had levels literally in Hell? Has anyone flown so high that they literally entered Heaven?

I once played in a dungeon in which, if your PC perished, he found himself in Hell (Another set of dungeon levels) and had to fight his way out to live again. I don't think that's quite what you're after, though.

How about any other plane? Are there ways of entering other planes via movement on the Material Plane? Like go deep in the ocean to cross over into the Elemental Plane of Water? I'm not talking about a portal to pass through.
Bullgrit

IMC, you can't dig deep enough to get to Hell (you'd find the Underdark, then the mantle, core etc) or fly high enough to get to Heaven (you'd find outer space). OTOH, a gate to the Lower Planes is likely to be underground, a gate to to the Upper Planes is likely to be on a mountaintop, and a natural vortex to Elemental Water might be found in an ocean trench. So the idea that Heaven is up and Hell is down is probably common among the simple.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Anytime you want to convey an abstract concept of worth, it is natural for humans to gravitate towards physical imagery. Not the only way to do it, but a natural enough choice that it will often happen. We'd have things that were "high" or "low" even if we didn't have any metaphysical concepts to discuss.

Not infrequently, attempts to avoid such imagery--usually on the grounds that it will be taken too literally--involves a lot of jumping around the problem. See all the things described as "beyond" this or that.

Now as far as up being good and down being bad--any number of reasons for that. Somewhere has too be good when you draw a physical map of goodness and badness. But I suppose north/south, east/west have also been used (though perhaps more in fantasy literature trying to avoid up/down than early myth).

The "seven directions" attributed to some Native American mythology are also interesting in this context, where the cardinal compass points and up/down are all "outside" and the seventh direction is thus "inside".

 

[Umbran]

I'm not entirely sure about where the imagery of "up/down" originated. I'm going to guess that it has something to do with ancient belief in "the Underworld"...the dead went to the Underworld, I'm thinking specifically Hades, which was not a very shiny happy place. But other "Realms of the Dead" were almost commonly thought to be underground.

That there's a dark "underworld" is a common idea through many ancient religions: Egyptian, Greek, Norse (though the "geography" there is vague, at best), Zoroastrian. That there's something "under" and "over" you is pretty common.

And that kind of makes sense. If you are a primitive dude you live on the surface of the world. You can clearly see there's stuff above you, but you cannot access it. It isn't a big leap to there being stuff under you as well, especially when you find the occasional cave.

Add in the fact that the sky looks pretty nice (stars, puffy clouds, and all), and some basic ideas of duality, and it kind of falls into place without a whole lot of work. So, the idea is probably about as old as dirt.

 

[Kzach]

Geocentric model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Catholic church also had a model of the universe that had layers of Heaven and Hell based on the Geocentric model. There is also an ancient Hebrew version of the universe that has the earth as flat and the heavens above and a version of hell below which is where the phrase, "Pillars of Heaven" comes from because it was believed that the tallest mountains held heaven up, above the firmament.

Essentially it's this massively confused amalgamation of philosophies, theories, pagan religions, 'science' and the imagination of stoned, drunk old men who would, if combined in today's society, form an ancient sort of Hollywood.