Ever wonder why we’re so obsessed with what happens when the lights go out? It's kind of a universal human glitch. We can't stand the idea of an ending without a sequel. So, we build these massive, terrifying, or sometimes weirdly bureaucratic places in our minds. If you’re asking how many underworlds are there, the answer isn't a single number you can just plug into a calculator. It’s a messy, sprawling collection of maps drawn by different cultures over thousands of years.
Some people think it's just Heaven and Hell. Simple. Binary. But that’s a pretty recent—and honestly, kind of narrow—view of things. Historically, the "underworld" wasn't always a place of punishment. Sometimes it was just a giant waiting room. Other times, it was a literal mirror of our world, just darker and with more paperwork. From the icy mists of Helheim to the sunny fields of Aaru, the count of underworlds depends entirely on whose mythology you’re looking at.
The Big Names: Greek, Norse, and Egyptian Realms
Let’s start with the Greeks because they basically wrote the blueprint for Western ideas of the afterlife. You’ve got Hades. People often call the god and the place by the same name, which is a bit confusing. But within Hades, how many layers are we talking? Usually, it's divided into three main zones. You have the Asphodel Meadows for the average Joes, Tartarus for the truly awful people, and Elysium for the heroes. It’s like a tiered subscription service for your soul.
Then you have the Norse. They didn't just have one "down there." They had Hel, ruled by a goddess also named Hel (notice a pattern?). But they also had Valhalla for those who died in battle, and Fólkvangr, which was Freyja’s field. So, if you were a Viking, your destination depended less on your "sins" and more on how exactly you checked out.
Egyptian mythology gets even more granular. They believed in the Duat. It wasn't just a pit; it was a landscape filled with lakes of fire, magical gates, and monsters. To get through it, you needed a guidebook—literally, the Book of the Dead. If you didn't have the right spells, you were basically toast. The goal was to reach Aaru, the Field of Reeds, which looked exactly like Egypt but without the taxes or the dying.
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The Count: How Many Underworlds Are There Across Cultures?
If we try to tally them up globally, the number gets huge. You’re looking at dozens of distinct mythological systems.
- Maya Mythology: They had Xibalba, the "Place of Fear." It had nine levels and was ruled by the Lords of Death who loved tricking people with impossible tests, like staying in a room full of jaguars without getting eaten.
- Aztec Mythology: Mictlān was their version. It had nine distinct levels too, and it took a soul four years of traveling through deserts and mountains of obsidian to finally reach the end.
- Buddhist and Hindu Cosmologies: This is where the numbers explode. In some Buddhist traditions, there are 18 "Greater Hells" and hundreds of smaller ones. They aren't permanent, though. You stay there until your bad karma burns off, then you recycle back into the world.
- Chinese Folklore: Diyu is the term here. It's often described as a "Hell Bank" or a massive bureaucracy. Depending on the version, there are 10 or 18 levels, each dedicated to a specific type of social or moral crime.
So, if you’re counting "major" mythological underworlds, you’re looking at about 12 to 15 primary systems. But if you count the individual levels or subdivisions within those systems, the number is easily in the hundreds. It's a lot of real estate for the deceased.
Why the Numbers Keep Changing
Why can't we just get a straight answer? Because humans are constantly iterating on these stories. Take Dante Alighieri. He wrote the Inferno in the 14th century and basically redesigned the Christian afterlife for everyone. He gave us nine circles. Before him, the "underworld" in Christian thought was a bit more vague, often just referred to as Sheol or Hades in earlier texts. Dante’s fan fiction was so good that people started treating it like geography.
Archaeologists and historians like Dr. Irving Finkel or the late Joseph Campbell have pointed out that these numbers—usually 3, 7, 9, or 12—aren't random. They’re "sacred numbers." They represent completeness or a journey. When a culture says there are nine levels of Xibalba, they’re saying the journey is long and hard. It’s symbolic as much as it is literal.
Also, consider the "New World" versus the "Old World." In many Indigenous cultures across the Americas, the underworld wasn't a place of fire. It was often a place of water or earth. The Inuit spoke of Adlivun, a place beneath the sea where the goddess Sedna kept watch. It’s a totally different vibe from the Mediterranean heat of Hades.
The Modern Underworld: Pop Culture and Reimagining
Lately, we’ve added even more to the list. Gaming and movies have created their own "underworlds" that people now recognize as clearly as the ancient ones. Think of "The Upside Down" from Stranger Things or the various "Planes of Oblivion" in The Elder Scrolls. These are modern mythologies. They follow the same rules: they are "other" places, usually dark, where the normal laws of physics don't apply.
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Does that count when we ask how many underworlds are there? Maybe not in a theological sense, but in terms of human consciousness, absolutely. We are still building these places. We still need a place to put our shadows.
The Reality Check
Look, at the end of the day, nobody has a GPS coordinate for these spots. They are cultural constructs. But they tell us everything about the people who made them. A culture that fears the cold will have a frozen hell (like the Norse or some versions of the Buddhist hells). A culture that values law and order will have a bureaucratic underworld with judges and records (like the Egyptians or the Chinese).
The "count" is infinite because imagination is infinite. We keep adding rooms to the basement of the universe.
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Mapping Your Own Research
If you’re trying to dig deeper into this, don't just look for a list of names. Look at the structure. You'll notice that almost every underworld shares three things: a gatekeeper, a river or barrier to cross, and a judgment.
- Read the primary sources. Skip the "Top 10 Spooky Places" blogs. Go to the Epic of Gilgamesh for the Mesopotamian Irkalla. Read the Popol Vuh for Xibalba.
- Compare the geography. Notice how mountain cultures have underworlds in caves, while island cultures often put their afterlives across the ocean or under the waves.
- Look for the "harrowing" stories. Every culture has a story of a living person who went down there and came back (like Orpheus or Izanagi). These stories usually give the most detailed "maps" of the terrain.
Knowing the sheer variety of these realms makes the world feel a lot bigger. It’s not just about "up or down." It’s about a global tapestry of stories that try to make sense of the one thing we’re all afraid of: the dark. By naming it and mapping it, we make it a little less scary. Or at least, we give ourselves a better idea of what spells to bring along for the ride.