A Hell of A Set Of Names (Hell part 5)

In earlier installments, we've covered that Hell Has Its Laws, https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/hell-has-its-laws-part-1 , Hell Has Its Place https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/hell-has-its-place-hell-pt-2 , that Hell Hath No Fury https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/hell-hath-no-fury-hell-part-3 , and that there are reasons why Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of modern culture think of there as being Nine Hells. https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/how-many-hells-and-why-hell-part-4 .

Today, we'll be diving a bit more into the lore of D&D and Pathfinder to talk about why each layer of Hell in their lore has the name that it does, what those names mean, and why they chose a particular devil to rule each one, from at least a mythological or folkloric perspective.

Let's start at the top, of course, with Avernus. If we were to follow the original inspiration for why there are Nine Hells at all, then Avernus should correspond to the first Circle from Dante's Inferno. But the first Circle of the Inferno is Limbo, where the virtuous pagans and such reside. That is definitively not what we get from Avernus. In D&D lore, Avernus is a blasted plain that has been the site of countless battle across eternity. It holds the gates to the lower levels. It is where much of the Blood War between devils and demons is fought. It has been ruled,as far back as 1st edition AD&D, by Tiamat, then the pit fiend Bel, then they decided that it was ruled by the fallen angel Zariel, usurped by Bel, then retaken by Zariel. Tiamat obviously comes from Mesopotamian myth, as the fundamental source of reality and mother of monsters. Bel is really just another twisting of the name Baal, which just means lord, a pagan god of the Canaanites recast as a devil. (Bael, Belial, Beelzebub are all actually from the same source, but given different identities in later demonology and things like Milton's Paradise lost.) So why did they name the place Avernus? Well, the name means Birdless Lake, and comes into our lexicon because Virgil (author of the Aenid and guide of Dante in Inferno) recorded the actual lake in a volcanic crater named that, near Naples Italy, as a gateway to hell. It later came to mean Hell in general. So Avernus is just . . .Hell, ruled by a Devil. Interestingly, in Pathfinder, it is ruled by a devil named Barbatos (the bearded one, basically) who is not really a devil at all, but some other kind of being.

Next up we have Dis. Again, no relation to the second Circle in Inferno, where it would be the circle of Lust. The name just means the underworld, and was the domain, originally, of the Roman God Dis Pater (father of the underworld), who would be syncretically combined with Pluto (Hades) and Orcus. And it's ruler actually is the archdevil Dispater. So that lines up. But in Dante's Inferno, which gives us Dis as a city in hell , the city is much lower down, past the 5th Circle, and encompasses all the lower Circles within it. Still, this origin and depiction are much easier to track. Dis in D&D is a fortress defending basically all the lower Hells.

Here we are at the 3rd layer. In D&D it's called Minauros, another city in a stinking swamp in a cavern under Dis, ruled by Mammon. In Pathfinder, it's called Erebus. In both, it holds the prisons and treasurie of Hell. Literally a dungeon layer, in the D&D sense. Minauros, as far as I can find, doesn't really have a meaning. The closest thing i can find is that it is Romanian for mean. I suspect they made it up to sound cool. Mammon even changes his name to it at one point in the lore. BUT. Mammon, on the other hand, is literally Greed personified. It comes from the New Testament and the Sermon on the mount, and was personified as a god or demon by medieval writers. Erebus is a primordial deity of darkness and the underworld in Greek myth, both a person and a place. So, just grabbing another religion's non-Hell underworld and making it a part of Hell. Again. Like Avernus and Dis. There's a pattern.

Phlegethos (Phlegethon in Pathfinder) is a stereotypical Hell. Fire, brimstone, the works. Which makes sense, I guess, since its name comes from Greek myth (again) where it is a fiery river in Hades that flows down into Tarterus (the actual prison part of Hades where, mostly, Titans and demigods are trapped). In the Inferno, it became a river of boiling blood full of warmongers and tyrants. In D&D, it is ruled by the father/pair of Belial and Fierna, whose relationship we will not touch on here. Belial might be another reflex of Baal, as above, but it also means worthlessness in Hebrew and was used to refer to worthless people as sons of Belial. He gets personified in later demonology. Fierna seems to be straight up invented by Colin McComb in Dragon Magazinec 223, where he called her Fierana, and she was the sole ruler of Phlegethos. That name means pride in the native language of Madagascar, but I'm pretty certain that's just a happy coincidence. In Pathfinder, it's just Belial, and the place holds the forges of Hell. In D&D, the layer is where the legal system of Hell is centered.

Hell Number 5. Like Mambo Number five, but less pleasant. In D&D and Pathfinder both, it's Stygia, named after the river Styx. Styx means "shuddering" in fear of death, and the river runs between the mortal world and the land of the dead. For some reason, D&D makes Stygia super cold. In Greek myth its just dark and terrifying, and in Inferno it's a swamp, so I am not sure where they got this idea. In D&D, the place is ruled by Levistus, these days. It used to be Geryon, and in Pathfinder it still is...and in Pathfinder, Stygia is a swamp, where apparently Geryon keeps Hell's libraries, which seems odd.. Levistus, as far as I can tell, is entirely invented. Geryon appears in the Inferno as a huge wyvern or manticore-like "Monster of Fraud", but in Greek myth he's just a three headed giant killed by Heracles.

Six is a good number, but a bad hell. Well, they're all bad hells of course. Malebolge, meaning 'evil ditches, is originally the name of the 8th Circle in inferno, where liars are kept, and is literally a series of enormous ditches with different types of liars in each one. In D&D, it is apparently usually all mountains and caves. Ruled by Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus, in D&D, it and the next layer down were both ruled by Baalzebul in 1st edition, though his viceroy here was Moloch. In Pathfinder, Moloch rules it...but it's a forest covered in ash. So, where does Glasya come from? Glasya-Labolas, a demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon, wh has noting in common with Hell's favorite Princess. How about Baalzebul? It was Ba'al Zevul, meaning Lord of the Exalted Dwelling, and was a name of a god of Ekron, a Canaanite city. The Hebrews made fun of hs name, with the term Baalzebub meaning Lord of the Flies, and the term Baalzeboul (very close but not quite the same) meaning Lord of Dung. In the middle ages this got shifted to Beelzebub, and is just another Devil. That leaves Moloch, which could come from 'mlk' in Hebrew, which means to rule, and is reflected in the modern Arabic Malik, or king. It could also be from Punic 'mlk' which means sacrifice. Either way, the biblical references talk about a deity to whom children are sacrificed, and this gets combined with the Greek myth of the minotaur and a Carthaginian bull god to give us modern Moloch.

Next up is Maladomini, straight up Italian like Malabolge. It literally just means domain of evil, or "The Bad Place." Baalzebul, mentioned above, rules here It's basically just a dark polluted place, an urban mire, and the seat of bureaucracy, like an Infernal DMV. In Pathfinder, instead, its the frozen plane of Cocytus, which is named after another river in Hades, the river of Lamentation. Why is it frozen? Well, back to the Inferno, where Dante describes it as a frozen lake at the very bottom of Hell, the actual Ninth Circle, reserved for traitors. The Devil himself is trapped in the center. So that's seven.

8! In D&D, it's called Caina . . . which is named after the biblical Cain, but first appears in Dante's Inferno as one of the 'rounds' or subdivisions of the Ninth Circle. Caina is where traitors against family are sent, thus why its named after Cain. It's cold, and this finally matches something, since its a sub area of Cocytus above, even if it only matches the Inferno. It's ruled by Mephistopheles in both D&D and Pathfinder...but in Pathfinder it's now a prison made of up needlelike spires and hanging cages over a bottomless pit. Mephistopheles has his origins as an agent of the devil in the legend of Faust (thus Faustian bargains) and his name means something like " he who hates the light" in corrupted Greek, although its a German myth.

And finally, Nine. Nessus. Abode and domain of Asmodeus in both Pathfinder and D&D. In D&D, it's like all of the other Hells combined, but also has tons of rifts and a broken landscape with Asmodeus' Citadel rising from it. In Pathfinder it's just the desolate dark plain at the bottom of Caina's pit. So, where does the name Nessus come from? Well, Ed Greenwood seems to have named the place in Dragon magazine #76 as far as I can tell, and he gives it's alternate name as Cocytus, which would align with the Inferno. The only Nessus I can find reference to is the centaur Heracles killed, whose blood was later used to kill Heracles. (According to Ed Greenwood himself, he constructed the name of Nessus from the Greek word ‘neomai’ meaning to return. He was inspired by Roger Zelazny’s work in the book Shadowjack. ) As for Asmodeus, his name goes back to the king of demons mentioned in the story of Solomon, and probably comes from roots meaning Demon of Wrath in old Avestan ( early Persian liturgical language).

A whole lot of what we see as official Nine Hells lore spawns from 3 articles in Dragon Magazine by Ed Greenwood, in issues 75, 76, and 91, and Ed lists his sources there, which I will repeat here for the fun of it.

Dante’s Inferno;

Homer’s Odyssey, book XI;

Virgil’s Aeneid, book VI;

Spenser’s Faerie Queene, book II canto 7;

Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, book XVII;

Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, book IV;

Milton’s Paradise Lost;

Fenelon’s Telemaque, book XVIII; and

William Backford’s fantasy romance Vuthek.

Pretty soon we'll need to start building a new, singular conception of Hell. See you then.