Valhalla, Hades, Heaven and Hell

TEN MAPS · ONE FIELD GUIDE

Every culture on Earth drew a map of the territory past death — where you go, who decides, and what it's like when you get there.

This is a field guide to those maps: each one described the way its own believers describe it. No verdicts. No debunking. No preaching. Just the maps, then the numbers — how many people follow each tradition today, and how long each has held influence.

Tap any tradition below. Tap the [n] markers anywhere for the source.

1. The maps

2. The stats

How many people stand on each map today — Pew Research Center's 2020 estimates, from the June 2025 report "How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020," covering 201 countries and more than 2,700 censuses and surveys [1].

"Years of influence" is approximate — scholars differ on origins, and origins are marked where the tradition itself traces them. Ranges are honest, not exact. The timeline below shows them all.

Pew's 2015 projections looked ahead: Muslims at 2.8 billion and Christians at 2.9 billion by 2050 — nearly even, with Muslims projected to pass Christians around 2070 if trends hold [2]. One surprise from the 2020 data: Buddhists were the only major group to shrink in absolute numbers, falling to 324 million.

3. The timeline

How long each map has been in force. The oldest traditions dwarf the youngest — tap any bar.

Bars marked faded ended as living religions — their maps survive in texts, art, and the traditions that borrowed from them. "Norse" here means the Viking-era form; Germanic roots run older, sources thinner.

4. My take

Here's what gets me. Nobody told every culture to draw this map. Egyptians, Aztecs, Norsemen, monks in Tibet, grandmothers burning incense in Guangzhou — all of them, independently, refused to believe love ends at the grave.

The maps disagree on everything — the address, the gate, the stay. They agree on exactly one thing: that there is something to map at all.

I'm not going to tell you which map is right. That's not my road to drive. But whatever you believe, I'd sit with this: the most stubborn fact in human history might be the one every tradition shares — that the people who love us don't feel gone to us. Ten maps. One refusal.

This post describes what traditions teach, as they teach it. It argues nothing.

Sources

Doctrine summaries rest on standard references and primary texts; population figures on Pew Research Center. Tap any [n] above to see the matching source here.

• [1] Pew Research Center, "How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020" (June 9, 2025). Estimates for 2020 across 201 countries, from 2,700+ censuses and surveys. The study's seven categories: Christians, Muslims, religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, other religions.
• [2] Pew Research Center, "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050" (April 2, 2015). 2050 projections: 2.8 billion Muslims, 2.9 billion Christians.
• [3] Norse: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Valhalla"; the Prose Edda, Gylfaginning (Snorri Sturluson, c. 1220); Grímnismál (Poetic Edda) for Freyja's Fólkvangr — "half the slain" chosen by each.
• [4] Greek: Homer, Odyssey, Book 11 (the underworld journey); Plato, Phaedo and Gorgias (judgment and the divisions of the dead); Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Hades."
• [5] Christianity: Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1023–1050 (heaven, hell, purgatory); New Testament passages on resurrection and judgment as cited in standard theology references.
• [6] Islam: Qur'an 23:100 (the Barzakh); Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Jannah" and "Jahannam."
• [7] Judaism: the Hebrew Bible (Sheol); Mishnah Sanhedrin 10 and rabbinic tradition (Gehinnom, Olam Ha-Ba); diversity of contemporary views per standard Jewish educational references.
• [8] Hinduism: the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita (samsara, karma, moksha); Encyclopaedia Britannica, "reincarnation," "moksha."
• [9] Buddhism: the Pāli Canon (the six realms of rebirth); Encyclopaedia Britannica, "six realms of existence," "nirvana."
• [10] Chinese folk religion: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Diyu," "Yama." Syncretic practice varies widely by region — described here in broad, standard strokes.
• [11] Egypt: The Book of the Dead, Spell 125 (the weighing of the heart); Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Duat."
• [12] Aztec: the Florentine Codex (Bernardino de Sahagún, 16th century); Codex Vaticanus A (the nine-level list — scholars note the tidy scheme comes mainly from this one colonial manuscript and may partly reflect European cosmology).