Afterpants: Afterlives (Heaven)

Ok. So we've talked about all sorts of places where the afterlife might/might not be.

Starting with #1 in the :Nether Regions series, I talked about all the afterlife places listed therein. So, at tvtropes (I read as "story tropes") they have several listings under the category "heaven" and I will do a run through here. However, please note that this trope is based primarily in a western idea of the afterlife and should therefore be regarded with a grain of salt.

Heaven then, is normally regarded as "in the sky" (which I personally feel is rubbish).

A place of reward, filled with fluffy clouds. and angels .

An alternative idea here is that for some reason, heaven is terrible for a certain individual.

This can be for many reasons. Perhaps heaven doesn't allow pets, or a person with a vastly different ideology from the other residents ends up there etc...

There is also the idea that heaven can be a physical place...like you can drive there as long as you know where it is.

Here too, a storytelling idea exists that "if heaven is in the sky, then there must be a way to get there" Hence the "stairway to heaven" trope.

Further, there is the idea that the beings in heaven are detached from the living world and don't care about human feelings. This is best demonstrated by the Hindu ideal of "the god realm" wherein persons reincarnated as gods are normally too absorbed in the divine pleasure realm to care what happens to humans. The god realm is another example of "heaven is a physical place" In this case the gods are said to live on Mt. Meru.

The last entry is "warrior heaven" Exemplified by the Norse tales of Valhalla. Personally, I believe this one should have been dis-included but anyway...this is the idea that if you are a brave warrior you can go to a heaven where you can drink and fight and sing for all eternity. Sounds more fun than fluffy clouds, eh?

I'll make several notes here:

At Afterpants, we dont endorse any ideas of heaven. There is an afterlife...it is an underworld...quite simply...the stairs go down!

While I do endorse cultural variations, I believe they're all in the underworld.

Lastly please refer to the post did on the Egyptian afterlife.