Zoroastrian Afterlife
The Fate of the Soul
The Zoroastrian afterlife begins with a three-day period after death when the soul sits at the head of its body praying for its future. Next the souls must cross a river that grows more difficult as their weeping relatives swell it with too many tears. The ordeal or judgment at the Chinvat Bridge follows, where the soul often meets the three angels of judgment: Mithra, Srosh, and Rashnu. The bridge stretches from Alborz Peak (Hara-Berezaiti, probably the mountain known today as Mount Damavand) to heaven or Daitih Peak, near the river of the same name. Although this has been identified as the Aras River, parts of this geography are mythological and so not easily identified with actual places.
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Some texts speak of the individual judgment as a balancing of good thoughts, words and deeds against their opposites, but the judgment also can play itself out in the physical manifestation of the bridge as either a wide walkway for the good, which allows them to reach the peak, or a sharp and narrow razor-edge for the wicked who fall into hell. After death, the soul also meets a young maiden who is the reflection of its own thoughts, words and deeds — in some texts this encounter occurs before, and in others after, the crossing of the Chinvat Bridge.
Few texts describe Zoroastrian hell — a gloomy and fiery place full of stench. Only one, The Book of Arda Viraf, describes it in detail, and it is difficult to determine Arda Viraf’s perspective, whether he is looking down on, or passing though, the scenes he describes. This makes it difficult to get a sense of the geography of the place. However, in addition to the river and bridge, it mentions hills and four particular places by name: Dush-humat, the place of evil thoughts; Dush-hukht, the place of evil words; Dush-huvarsht, the place of evil deeds; and Chakat-i-Daitih, a desert below the Chinvat Bridge. In addition it describes the unnamed deepest region, the pit, of hell, which Manuschihr in Religious Judgments (Dadestan-i Denig) calls Drugaskan, a place so dark that all who are sent there are as if blind.
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