Hades-Tartarus-Styx-Charon

This Hades-Tartarus-Styx-Charon page and the entire website are excerpted from You and the Universe, a handmade, individualized fine art book on astrology, mythology and astronomy through which the recipient's complete astrological reading is woven.

According to Greek mythology, when someone died, they were judged by Zeus' three sons (Rhadamanthus and Minos by Europa, and Aeacus by Aegina) as to where they would go. (All three had been kings on Earth, and had been so renowned for their justice and wisdom that, when they died, Pluto/Hades made them judges of the dead.) Evil doers went to Tartarus below Hades; heroes went to the Elysian Fields; and the remaining saints and sinners went to Hades.

The land of the dead is separated from that of the living by five rivers: Styx, the river of hate; Acheron, the river of woe; Cocytus, the river of lamentation; Phlegethon, the river of fire; and Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. The dead were ferried into Hades by the old boatman, Charon, not across the river Styx as is commonly believed, but rather across the river Acheron. There the three-headed, dragon-tailed dog Cerberus (see picture, top of page) stood watch, allowing all souls to enter but none to leave. Charon only took across those who had been properly buried with a coin (an “obol”) placed in their mouths upon burial. It was said that if a god cemented an oath by swearing upon the river Styx, and the god then broke that oath, Zeus would force the god to drink from the Styx. The river was reputed to be so foul that the god would lose his or her voice for nine years upon doing so. Some say that Thetis dipped her son Achilles into the Styx to make his body impregnable to all weapons; but she didn't realize that the water couldn't touch his skin on his left heel where she held him; and it was there he was vulnerable and later killed by Paris in the Trojan War.

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