Guest Post: Trinity Faegan: A Brief – Like Really Brief – History of Hell + Giveaway entry

Today, I’m excited to announce that I have a guest post with the author of The Mephisto Covenant, a book I’m most craving, Trinity Faegan. She is a fellow Texan and I’m delighted with her guest post about the history of hell.

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Since she was a teen, Trinity has been fascinated by the afterlife, probably because she read Paradise Lost while she was on pain meds after getting her wisdom teeth removed. She found an outlet for her curiosity about Hell by researching what other people imagined, then making up her own mythology in THE MEPHISTO COVENANT, a young adult paranormal romance to be released by Egmont USA in Fall, 2011. Trinity lives in the outback of west Texas with her husband and a mean cat.

A Brief – Like Really Brief – History of Hell
Trinity Faegen

Hell as we know it today is more a work-in-progress than a static place or concept, as much a result of the romanticized imaginings of Milton and Dante as the Bible or myth. Since the start, mankind has asked the eternal question: What happens to us after we die? Maybe it’s the ultimate human conceit that we can’t imagine death is truly death – the end of consciousness – which is why every period since ancient times has its version of life after death, some less freaky scary than others.

Four thousand years ago, Mesopotamians produced the first written accounts of the land of the dead, the myth of Queen Inanna, or Ishtar, who ruled Heaven and Earth, and her sister, Allatu, who ruled the dead in the Land of No Return. Inanna paid her sister a visit, and Allatu took her prisoner, only allowing her to leave if she provided a ransom. I’m guessing she was mad she drew dead people duty while her sister frolicked topside. Inanna’s ransom was her consort, who stayed below with Allatu six months, then with Inanna the other six months: A classic dying-vegetation-god myth. Or a sisters-sharing-one-guy-OMG-eew-story.

The Egyptians may have the most colorful ideas about life after death and the underworld. They went on the assumption that we carry on for eternity much as we do while living, with a job, made easier if your family entombed you with a shabti, a slave in the afterlife who’d do the hard work while you enjoyed paradise. Egyptians believed you can take it with you, so showing up for your afterlife without your stuff was bad form. And woe unto a guy without a Book of the Dead. Much like a tourist in New York without a subway map might wind up at Coney Island instead of Columbus Circle, a dead guy in ancient Egypt could be eaten by crocodiles and face other horrors if he didn’t have access to the spells within the book.

After Inanna and her angry sister, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, there was Zoroaster, which sounds like a comic book hero. “Zounds! My evil plot to control the world is foiled by Zoroaster!” Cool name for a prophet who spawned a religion that persisted in the Middle East and into what is now Russia until the prophet Mohammed arrived on the scene. Unlike the early myths that relied on a pantheon of gods, Zoroastrianism was less complicated. The force of Good, the Wise Lord, and his seven Immortal Holy Ones, fought the Lord of Lies that lived in Hell and sent his devils to torture humanity. Upon death, humans were judged by Rashnu, the angel of justice, their fate determined by a ledger of good and bad deeds. If good trumped bad, the dead went to the House of Song; too many checks in the wrong column meant the dead guy was headed for Hell. Sound familiar? But wait! There’s more! Zoroastrians believed there would be a final battle between Good and Evil – with Good winning, of course – and a savior, the child of a pregnant virgin and Zoroaster, would harrow Hell, saving the repentant, whose bodies would be resurrected to reunite with their souls. After the harrowing, Hell would be obliterated.

Then there are the Greeks and Romans, who eschewed the dualistic nature of Zoroastrianism for myths of gods, and no relatable Heaven or Hell as we know it, but simply the underworld, where the dead go to dwell. In Greek myth, there are different levels of Hades, depending on who you were in life.

Fast forward to the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The advent of Christianity, and the Church, brought back the dualistic idea of Heaven and Hell; sinners cast down to the torment of Lucifer, and the good ascending to Heaven. But the finality of it all was problematic, so somewhere around the 1300s, Purgatory was invented. Primarily devised by theologians as an answer to the spread of heresy, Purgatory was a limbo-land of sorts, a temporary punishment, after which the newly cleansed could ascend to Heaven – a second chance, so to speak.

As centuries passed, the notion of Hell, in all its varying incarnations, remained a place of punishment for the wicked, primarily in the Christian faith, and the details were imagined by different writers, most famously, Milton and Dante. Countless other writers have used Hell, Lucifer, and the damnation of mankind as fodder for their fiction, and I’m no exception. I’ve reread Goethe’s Faust over the years, and the wager between God and Mephistopheles over who will win Faust’s soul still fascinates me, as much because it seems the ultimate contest of good versus evil as that the man in the middle has the choice. Ultimately, it’s Faust who decides; a metaphor for humanity’s free will.

September 27th 2011, Egmont USA
400 pages, Hardcover
Young Adult Series


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Sasha is desperate to find out who murdered her father. When getting the answer means pledging her soul to Eryx, she unlocks a secret that puts her in grave danger—Sasha is Anabo, a daughter of Eve, and Eryx’s biggest threat.

A son of Hell, immortal, and bound to Earth forever, Jax looks for redemption in the Mephisto Covenant—God’s promise he will find peace in the love of an Anabo. After a thousand years, he’s finally found the girl he’s been searching for: Sasha.

With the threat of Eryx looming, Jax has to keep Sasha safe and win her over. But can he? Will Sasha love him and give up her mortal life?

Don't forget to comment for a chance to win Mephisto Covenant! Comments will be counted, but please go to the link to enter for the giveaway.

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Categories: Guest Post, Midnight Summer Festival