Admission: unclear, but presumably most good people.
Heaven, as conceived of by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones (although only the former pair are listed as writers), is in many ways not particularly heavenly:
It is not wheelchair accessible (the only way there is to climb a stairway)
Its entrance may not be structurally sound (the foundation of the stairway is on a whispering wind)
It does not feature 24 hour shopping (or there’s no way that the stores would all be closed)
It appears to be biased in favour the wealthy (a woman who can afford a stairway to heaven can get what she wants with a simple word, even if the stores all are closed)
Its hedgerows are the site of mysterious (and potentiallly alarming) bustling
It is more suited to passive contemplation (being a rock) than energetic activity (rolling)
It features unclear and confusing signage (which may have two meanings)
In short, it is less a heaven designed by a benevolent omnipotence, and more one imagined after too much dope and Tolkein.
Admission: followers of the deities who live there, or those of lawful alignments.
Imagine a world of perfect harmony. Perfect order. This is Mechanus.
The cosmic ideal of law and order, where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place, and never ever leaves its place. It is not a soul-crushing order, or at least, it does not set out to be. It is however, an order as lacking in mercy as it is in malice.
This is Mechanus, inhabited by a race of beings who are little more than Euclidean solids given life. One would describe it as ruled with an iron fist, only rulership implies decision-making, and all the decisions here were made so long ago no one remembers who made them, nor much cares, so long as the ancient rules and traditions are followed to the letter, without deviation.
Unfortunately, the John Lennon-inspired vision the phrase “Imagine a world of perfect harmony.” calls to mind for most of us is far from the reality of Mechanus. You’re more likely to hear the music of the cogs than the music of the spheres here.
You’d really need to be a serious techhead – and I mean ‘grafting untested technologies to your living flesh’ type techhead – to get much out of this place. And unless your patron deity lives here, you are not welcome in any case – tourist detract from the order of Mechanus, and are politely discouraged. At best.
The Nac Mc Feegle – who are about six inches tall, blue skinned, and profoundly Gaelic – are a hard-drinking, hard-fighting and hard-stealing people. They believe that the Discworld is in fact the afterlife (and are untroubled by the fact that they cannot recall any previous lives). This is because, as far as they can tell, this world is pretty close to being a Valhalla for them – although arguably, that’s more a question of their attitude than anything else.
The Nac Mc Feegle have a complicated theology involving reincarnation in each of the two worlds, which they believe takes place on a more or less endless cycle. They also believe that this (or indeed, just about anything else in the world) is a good reason to have another drink.
There’s some dispute about the New Jerusalem: in Christianity, most often, it’s a spiritual concept, the home of the Saints. In Judaism, on the other hand, it is most often a literal conception, a rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem where it will be perfected, and Solomon’s Temple will be rebuilt. Oddly enough, these conceptions are not mutually exclusive, although there are enough hotheads on both sides to ensure that peaceful coexistence is unlikely. (And that’s before you get into the William Blake-inspired loonies who want to build the New Jerusalem in England. But I digress.)
Be that as it may, it’s only the Christian conception that really qualifies as an afterlife. Realistically, there’s no good reason
The Afterworld, if we are to take the purple one at his word – and who is to say he has not visited this realm in the course of his shamanic journeys? – is a magical place. We know very little about it, other than that it is a place of never ending happiness, and, given that the sun shines day and night, possibly on the inside of a Dyson Sphere.
By implication from the rest of the song, it is reached via an elevator of some description, and modern psychiatry holds no clues as to where this elevator may be found. Also, a purple banana is involved somehow. Possibly this is the ambrosia of the Afterworld.
As afterlives go, you could do worse – the Afterworld is the veritable land of good trips, a psychedelic playground. However, its prophet is a capricious man who seems to be over-compensating for insecurities regarding his height, and this choice as prophet does not speak highly of the judgement of its gods.
Admission: robots with installed belief chips, and other electrical equipment (with the notable exception of photocopiers)
Is Silicon Heaven real? Robots and androids certainly think so, but then, they’re programmed that way. Somehow, I doubt that the humans who programmed them would agree. But you never know, I suppose. Some of them just might.
Silicon Heaven has a dark opposite in Silicon Hell, which is, of course, where photocopiers go to roast in the eternal fires. Probably after getting worked over by those three guys from “Office Space“.
Seeing as you, the reader, are unlikely to be a robot, android or other artificial being, it’s unlikely you’ll go there. But just in case, here it is. One warning: it is full of calculators.
Origin: “Heaven’s in the Back Seat of my Cadillac” from the album Man to Man
Admission: at the discretion and invitation of Errol Brown
It’s unclear exactly what the make and model of Errol Brown’s Cadillac is, but one assumes that it is a large and comfortable vehicle. Certainly, it is well-tuned and fueled, easily capable of reaching the countryside where there are fewer nosy people.
It may be a little cramped by the standards of some Heavens, but Brown seems confident of its promise, and who could doubt a man who addresses you as ‘you sexy thing’?
This is one of those unusual Heavens that can only be visited by the living, not the dead. At least, I’m assuming the dead are not welcome.
Admission: followers of the deities who live there, or those of neutral or chaotic good alignments.
Inhabited by over two dozen assorted deities who share, among other things, a love of nature and something of a restless spirit, this is the place you’ll wind up if you live in a 2nd Edition AD&D world and happen to fit the criteria. Consisting of three layers – one of eternal day, one of eternal night and one of eternal twilight, the Beastlands have virtually no built structures in them. Instead, infinite grasslands, forests, jungles, swamps and mountains stretch out, home to uncountable animals, were-creatures, and humanoids with animal features, such as centaurs.
Despite the dangers of nature red in tooth and claw, the Beastlands – also know as the Happy Hunting Grounds – are predominately beneficient in nature, rewarding good and punishing evil. Most creatures and entities that dwell here simply wish to be left alone.
The souls of humans and other sentient races that come here after death tend to slowly acquire the features of animals, transforming over the decades in celestial ideals of various beasts, usually with their intelligence intact.
Which is to say: this is where all Furries hope to go when they die
Admission: Heroes and mortals favoured by the gods
The Fortunate Isles are located somewhere in the Western Ocean – beyond sunset, as Tennyson would say – and it’s where you go if you were a particularly great hero or otherwise favoured of the gods.
As with most Heavens, they feature boundless varieties of beast and bird. Unlike most Heavens, at least according to Pliny, “are greatly annoyed by the putrefying bodies of monsters, which are constantly thrown up by the sea” – not a common feature, and possibly indicative of some lack of favour on the parts of either Mannanan Mac Lir or Poseidon.
If you can get past the occasional smelly monster corpse – surely no worse than any beached whale – the Fortunate Isles are indeed a fine place to be (or after-be). Plus, they have possibly the most superb sunsets of any known life or afterlife.
Originating in the warlike myths of the Vikings, Valhalla literally translates as “Hall of the Slain.”
Like most afterlives, it places limits on who gets to go to it, in this case that the Slain must have died bravely in battle and then been chosen by the Valkyries – buxom warrior maidens who serve Odin, head of the Norse pantheon. (By implication, the chosen warriors are usually male, but the Vikings did have a strong tradition of women warriors, who were called Shieldmaidens – indeed, the Valkyries are often referred to as ‘the Shieldmaidens of Odin’.) But after the dying bravely part – which tends to be pretty painful – it’s a pretty sweet deal.
Once admitted to Valhalla, the chosen warriors – the Einherjar – can look forward to spending their days in endless live combat with each other, as they practice their battle skills. Each night, they can look forward to having any wounds they have received that day healed (up to and including fatal wounds), followed by long nights of feasting and drinking. A curious omission from all this is wenching – aside from the Valkyries, who also serve at the tables, there seem to be no other women in Valhalla. It’s possible that there are Shieldmaidens in Valhalla, but given that Shieldmaidens were supposed to be virgins, there’s not so much potential for wenching there. And myth is somewhat inconsistent on the subject of just how ‘wenchable’ the Valkyries are.
And so it goes, for ever and ever, until the day when they will called to fight on the side of Odin and the other Norse Gods in Ragnarok, the great battle at the end of time in which they would all inevitably be heroically slain once more, although this time with greater permanency.
In short, it’s basically medieval redneck heaven, where the men are real men, and the women are non-existent. But if your tastes run that way, it’s well worth checking out.
By the way: Valhalla is actually a mistranslation – technically, the name of the place in English should be Val-hall, but it was accidentally pluralized. The mistake has been reiterated here, simply because this is the name by which it is best known. It is also commonly mispronounced – technically, it should be roughly equivalent to Val-hol.
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by Julian Barnes
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