Hell Tour

The gates of Hell

The Hell Tour (地獄巡り, Jigokumeguri^?) refers to a journey through hell, as well as a 'secret technique' that utilizes it, undertaken with the goal of returning a deceased individual to the world of the living.

Principles

This section requires expansion Basic concept (taboos/'landmines'), technique

Various religions and mythologies have concepts of an afterlife and realms of the dead (such as Heaven and Hell in Christianity). Additionally, there are a number of stories in mythology, literature and fiction involving journeys into hell, the underworld or other realms of the dead, including attempts to break out of them and return deceased individuals to the world of the living. Given the nature of this objective, this is often portrayed as an extremely difficult task, with many obstacles and risks that would prevent someone from accomplishing it, and potentially disastrous consequences for those involved should they fail.

The term "Hell Tour" is used to refer to a method of cheating death based on the concept, devised and utilized by magical experts Johann Valentin Andreae and Anna Kingsford. In informing Kamijou Touma, Kingsford described it as a 'secret technique' that one could call a "Hell Tour" (地獄巡り, Jigokumeguri^?), alternatively describing it as a "jailbreak" (脱獄, Datsugoku^?).

False Hell

This section requires expansion Structure, nature (influences (on minds and by minds))

The secret technique known as a Hell Tour does not involve the true Hell, instead occuring in and utilizing a phase that acts as a false hell (偽りの地獄, Niseri no Jigoku^?), created by Johann Valentin Andreae to facilitate a resurrection. As its creator, he has partial but not total control of the false hell.

According to Kingsford, the artificial phase is a temporary space which was created by collecting and combining different images of hell, covering up a supposedly dead soul with a false hell in order to shuffle its destination and forcibly convert its affiliation to a vague near-death state, neither fully alive or fully dead. It exists to fake the qualifications needed to return a deceased soul to the living world, providing a miraculous survival after the fact. However, it is made to only restore a single soul back to life.

Being formed from a collection of different images of hell, influenced by people's mental images, the false hell has an element of vagueness that allows souls within it to influence its landscape with their mental images to a degree, both intentionally and unintentionally. Conversely, hell also exerts an influence on the minds of those within it to remove their regrets and attachments to the living world, instilling a false sense of resignation that would lead them to wander in hell eternally.

Souls brought into this false hell (as opposed to the shady figures that are part of the construction) manifest in the forms they took while alive, with the same capabilities. They feel sensations that they would feel if they were alive, though as they are already dead and the nature of hell is to eternally torment its captives, they likely cannot die as they would have done in the living world, with one noted exception at the very core of hell.

Magic can function in hell, although spells utilizing the heaven-to-earth format of the Sephiroth need to be converted to the earth-to-hell format of the Qliphoth. Certain magic and tools specifically intended to operate in the regular world don't function as intended - in the case of Andreae's miniature model, a card of interconnecting crystal pieces intended to simulate the world, the pieces formed a jumbled V-shape, refusing to fit together and clinking against one another. As the Christian hell is not a world controlled by demons where they gather strength for their rebellion, but part of God's plan as a righteous device created to torment damned sinners, the glory of God can be found even in its depths, and spells invoking such power will still work, as shown when Kingsford crossed herself to drive off one of hell's gatekeepers. Imagine Breaker also functions, not destroying the souls brought to the false hell or the figures and fixtures within it, but negating magic as it usually does.

Structure

This section requires expansion General expansion, exit/staircase

Matching popular conceptions of the Christian hell, this hell is shaped like a giant mortar or inverted pyramid, said to be formed as the earth moved to avoid Lucifer as he fell from heaven. Rather than a lunar crater, it is more like an open-pit mine, with each level like a step, growing narrower further down and converging on a single point at the bottom.

As with the conception of hell that this false hell was modelled on (thought up based on limited depictions in Revelation and other sources), in order to escape from this hell and return to the world of the living, one must climb up from the very bottom. In this idea of hell, the vertical route was only usable by the winged angels in charge of hell as a shortcut. In the false hell, there is a long staircase that can be reached from the bottom which leads back to the living world.

Several rivers flow through this hell, including the Acheron (アケロン川, Akeron-kawa^?), the Styx (ステュクス川, Sutyukusu-kawa^?) and the Phlegethon (プレゲトン川, Puregeton-kawa^?), derived from the rivers said to flow through and around the Greek underworld, with rivers symbolically forming boundaries between life and death.

Gates of Hell

In the case of Kamijou Touma's Hell Tour, arranged and guided by Anna Kingsford, he initially awoke after death in a white void. After taking Kingsford's hand, sensations returned and the void became a dense forest of damp trees and rocks, enveloped in a thick shadow (such that Touma could not tell the color of their surroundings) with only a vague orange light in the distance. Walking through this forest for a while brought them to the gates of hell. Walking outwards rather than heading for the gate does not allow for one to escape from hell, with no stories mentioning that turning back from the gate would bring one back to life. Instead, it would result in one forever wandering the dark forest at the top level of hell.

The gates of hell took the form of a pair of wooden doors within a hemispherical stone arch, with stone steps leading up to it. Although there were not stone walls on either side of the arch, it still gave the sense of a "border" to Touma. The stone arch had various carvings, and a metal plate was fixed at the top of the arch, with an inscription in alphabetical characters but not in English - which Kingsford assumed translated to "abandon all hope, ye who enter here" (我ヲ通り抜ける者は一切ノ希望ヲ捨てろ, Ware wo tōrinukeru mono wa issai no kibō wo sutero^?). Touma and Kingsford encountered Andreae waiting on the steps here.

Upper Levels

In the shallow levels of hell after passing through the gate, there was a wasteland with a great gale blowing across it. The party encountered a minotaur there, which Kingsford noted shouldn't have been on that shallow a level. A little after this, due to mental influences, mountains in the shape of Kingsford's breasts and bottom were manifested, to notable chagrin.

Further down, in a region pouring with rain, there was a muddy bog with shades being tormented by Cerberus. There was a hill present, from which the party could look down into the bog. Nearby was a stone drawbridge, about the size of a broadcast tower and using chains. A stone pillar near to it had a small hole around hip height, where a key would be inserted to operate it. This key was found up in a harpy's nest in a nearby tree, with a trunk resembling a human silhouette, presumably part of the "forest of suicides" (自殺者ノ森, Jisatsu no Mori^?).

Lower Levels

This section requires expansion Fraud

After a few different fire-based hells and a few levels down, there was a "wasteland of scorching sand" (熱砂ノ荒野, Nessa no Kouya^?), with embers pouring down like a blizzard. According to Kingsford, this area of hell, where fiery flakes punish sinners who violate the laws of nature or god's providence, was partway between the medium and spicy levels, and according to Andreae's miniature model was just beyond the midpoint.

Not long after this, the events of Andreae's past and his 'sins' were displayed in recreations of the University of Tübingen, given that the path was tuned to him. During a gap in the recreations, the party encountered Nyx, with Andreae being attacked and rolling down a level.

Closer to the bottom of hell, among facilities designed to punish the more serious sins, there was the region where sinners guilty of simony were punished. The simoniacs were stuck upside down in fields with their legs out of the ground, with fires at the bottom of the pits burning their heads as they were unable to escape.

Shortly afterwards, the party had to cross the river Phlegethon, which was not red and flaming like the original. Kingsford was able to obtain tools nearby to build a raft, given that there were boats and villages in hell, and given the influence of the Greek Tartarus, an area protected by a bronze wall, with tools used to build them lying around. Cerberus attacked the party's raft partway down the river.

Cocytus

This section requires expansion Exit/staircase/climb

The bottom level of hell, known as Cocytus (コキュートス, Kokyūtosu^?), is a cold and dark region of ice. It is divided into four concentric areas, similar to the rings of a tree, and further inwards, the severity of the sin being punished increases, with the most sinful in the central region. From outermost to innermost, these areas are named Caina (カイーナ, Kaīna^?), Antenora (アンテノーラ, Antenōra^?), Ptolomea (トロメーア, Toromēa^?), and Judecca (ジュデッカ, Judekka^?).

The staircase to the living world, as the false hell's bottom falls away.

At the center of Judecca, at the core of hell, the Great Demon King is imprisoned in a frozen lake, shrouded in darkness and gnawing on the three greatest sinners in the world, an eternal punishment until the end of the world.

From the very bottom, one can access the sole escape route from hell, which takes the form of a spiral staircase, seemingly made of thick panes of highly transparent glass, looking like a line of light shining down from heaven. This staircase shines when in use, and will only allow for a single soul to return to the world of the living.

Monsters

This section requires expansion General expansion

• Minotaur
• Cerberus
• Nyx
• The Great Demon King

1/4

There are various monsters (怪物, Kaibutsu^?) within hell, some of which act as gatekeepers (番人, Ban'nin^?). Many of them originate in Greek mythology, which would be an odd thing for a Christian-based hell. Some of them present a purely physical threat, while others pose a threat from merely looking at them. When one of them, a minotaur, was sliced apart, the pieces fell to the ground, turned into thin shadows and then vanished.

Name	Origin	Notes
Minotaur (ミノタウロス, Minotaurosu?)	A bull-headed monster from Greek mythology.	The minotaur is a bipedal, muscular monster with a bull's head, apparently around 3m tall and wielding a huge, heavy axe, rivalling it in size. During Touma's Hell Tour, it was initially encountered on a shallow level, noted as something that should not be by Kingsford. It was easily dispatched by Kingsford and Andreae, sliced diagonally by their right index fingers using magic, converted from the Sephiroth to the Qliphoth. It was encountered again when Andreae shook up the false hell during his final battle with Touma to send the monsters at him, but was easily thrown aside by Kingsford, taking out Cerberus in the process.
Cerberus (ケルベロス, Keruberosu?)	A three-headed dog who guards the Greek underworld.	Cerberus appears as a three-headed demon dog with a serpentine tail, apparently the size of a light car. According to Kingsford while covering Touma's eyes, while it was not enough of a monster to kill a person if they looked at it, looking at Cerberus would apparently have dulled his soul. During Touma's Hell Tour, it was initially encountered pursuing figures in a muddy bog. The party encountered it again as they were attempting to cross the river Phlegethon, with Cerberus doggy-paddling after them. It then appeared when Andreae shook up the false hell during his final battle with Touma to send the monsters at him, but was defeated when Kingsford threw the Minotaur into it.
Harpy (ハーピー, Hāpī?)	A half-bird, half-woman monster from Greek mythology.	The harpy in the false hell was merely described as something above that looked like girl and was cawing. During Touma's Hell Tour, it was encountered in the forest of suicides, where a key needed to operate a drawbridge was in its nest, up in a tree resembling a human silhouette. Kingsford reached up to the key on Touma's shoulders, but was spotted by the harpy and had to fire her magic against it, knocking out Touma in the process, from the grip on his neck by her legs combined with the recoil.
Nyx (ニュクス, Nyukusu?)	The primordial goddess of the night in Greek mythology.	The Nyx in the false hell was a woman colored white tinged with red and with long black hair, wet and filthy - such that it could be mistaken for a wave of pitch-black sludge, making similar noises. According to Kingsford, after identifying her as a primitive concept not characterized as the Malebranche and then a manifestation of Nyx who surrounds Tartarus, she seems to calculate the number of souls wandering in hell and locks onto them. During Touma's Hell Tour, Nyx was encountered after the party had seen a recreation of Andreae's past. While Kingsford held Touma close to keep him safe, Nyx locked onto the lone Andreae and pounced on him, but she left trembling after Touma's rant to Kingsford, leaving Andreae lying on the ground smoking. She later appeared when Andreae shook up the false hell during his final battle with Touma to send the monsters at him and Kingsford, but was repelled by Kingsford crossing herself as Nyx was lunging at her.
The Great Demon King (悪魔大王, Akuma Daiō?)	Referred to by various names and titles, such as the king/lord of demons, the king/lord of hell, Satan, Lucifer and Beelzebub. Imprisoned in ice at the center of hell's bottom level, the demon king has six wings and three faces, gnawing on the three greatest sinners, doing the will of God despite his rebellion. During his fall from heaven, the ground moved to avoid him, producing the crater that would be known as hell.	The manifestation at the core of the false hell apparently had six wings and three faces, but its full form was obscured by shadow. Although not told, Touma instinctively felt that directly seeing it unobscured would shatter his soul. During Touma's Hell Tour, it was encountered at the bottom of the false hell, shrouded in darkness in the frozen lake of Judecca in the center of Cocytus. In the final battle, Andreae attempted to expose Touma to the demon king, first by attempting to merge with it and then by shining his lamp on it, but Kingsford's intervention prevented it.

Background

This section requires expansion Concept in mythology/stories prior to Andreae

Even before the time of Johann Valentin Andreae, there were various stories in mythology and literature involving journeys into hell, the underworld or other realms of the dead, as well as attempts to break out of them. One example from Greek mythology was Orpheus's attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld, which failed due to Orpheus breaking his promise with Hades not to look back before they had exited the underworld.

It is unknown when exactly Andreae constructed the artificial phase which would act as an imitation of hell for the purposes of his resurrection, though it was presumably after he set out to destroy Rosicrucianism, which originated from the prank he had started in 1602, assuming the identity of Christian Rosencreutz to that end but ultimately dying with his goal unfinished in 1654.

Whether the phase had ever actually enabled any resurrections in the interval between his death in 1654 and his resurrection by the Bridge Builders Cabal's ceremony on January 4th of the main story's second year is unknown. It is also unknown when Anna Kingsford learned of it, though she had knowledge of it by the time of January 6th at the very least.

Chronology

Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index

Hell Tour Arc

Main article: Hell Tour Arc

This section requires expansion Mid-journey expansion

Following Kamijou Touma's death at the end of January 6th, Anna Kingsford stopped the machinery reanimating her body and visited him in the world of the dead, offering to help him overturn his fate using the Hell Tour - a course of action that she had determined beforehand as the best way to save him, on learning that his death had inadvertently been pre-determined through a previous interaction with Alice Anotherbible. After Touma accepted her offer, the two shifted from a white void to dark forest, where they walked to the supposed gates of hell, actually an imitation in a phase that had been constructed to act as a false hell for the purposes of resurrection. On the steps leading to the door, they encountered its creator (though Touma was unaware at the time), Johann Valentin Andreae, who had arrived there after his death at Alice's hands at the start of January 6th.

Kingsford, Touma and Andreae journeying through hell.

The trio subsequently passed through the gate and descended through hell, facing numerous hazards and obstacles along the way. Some of these were associated with the images of hell, such as monstrous gatekeepers and dangerous environments, while others were conjured from the images within their minds. During the journey, Andreae's past was revealed to Touma, and he tried to instill doubts about Kingsford's intentions, which were ultimately dispelled.

At the very bottom, the truth about the false hell was revealed, with Andreae fighting Touma over the one 'seat' available for resurrection. Despite exerting considerable influence over the false hell, Touma was able to defeat him thanks to his experience from their previous battle, assistance from Kingsford, and Andreae not being able to afford to play around and act as unpredictably as he had alive as "CRC".

Kingsford and Andreae falling into the true hell.

After defeating Andreae, Touma began to ascend the glass staircase leading back to the world of the living. At the same time, with the sole chance for resurrection having been taken, having sustained damage during the last battle, and possibly as a result of the heretical power that the two experts had employed, the artificial phase started to break from the bottom up, and the maw of the real hell opened to swallow up Andreae and Kingsford.

Trivia

This section requires expansion Katabasis (Orpheus)

• Journeys into the underworld in Greek mythology, of a similar kind to the Hell Tour, are referred to by the term katabasis (meaning 'descent', or literally to 'go down'/'going down', in Ancient Greek), with the return referred to as an anabasis ('going up').
  • One of the most famous examples of a katabasis, and the one specifically referenced during the events of Touma, Kingsford and Andreae's Hell Tour, is when Orpheus attempted to return his deceased wife Eurydice to the world of the living.
• While discussing taboos and 'landmines' that could bind one to hell, consuming the food or drink of the dead was mentioned as one of them. There are a couple of mythological stories that use this idea, which have been directly or indirectly referenced in some form in the Toaru series:
  • In Greek (and Roman) mythology, after being taken to the underworld, Persephone (or Proserpina) was tricked into eating a pomegranate from there, binding her to the underworld and death. This concept was used by Kihara Yuiitsu in a magical attack, as part of a ruse of having access to Magic God Proserpina's power.
  • In Shinto, having burned to death while giving birth to Hi-no-Kagutsuchi, and subsequently eating the food of the dead, Izanami was unable to leave the underworld when her husband Izanagi ventured there in order to retrieve her, further being enraged when her husband broke a promise not to look at her (now-decaying) form, with the Yomotsu-Shikome sent after him.
• Although not specifically referred to during the events concerning the Hell Tour and only indirectly referenced in the Toaru series (with Touma drawing a comparison, feeling as though he were grabbing the spider's thread dangling into hell when climbing out of a large tank during the events on December 7th), a notable tale involving an attempted escape from hell is the 1918 short story The Spider's Thread (蜘蛛の糸, Kumo no Ito^?), in which the Buddha lowered a silvery spider thread into hell for a sinner who had once spared a spider, only for it to break when the climbing sinner shouted to others attempting to climb that it was meant for him alone, condemning himself for only caring for his own salvation.

Inferno and the Divine Comedy

This section requires expansion The Divine Comedy - bronze wall, forest of suicides, wasteland of scorching sand, simoniacs, Dante's Satan

• Although not explicitly mentioned within the story, the false hell created by Andreae, intended as a resurrection device for himself and used for Kingsford's Hell Tour, is heavily influenced by Inferno (地獄, Jigoku^?), the first part of The Divine Comedy (神曲, Shinkyoku^?), a three-part 14th century narrative poem by Italian writer Dante Alighieri (the other two parts being Purgatorio (煉獄, Rengoku^?) and Paradiso (天国, Tengoku^?)), which details a journey through Hell ('Inferno'), Purgatory ('Purgatorio') and Heaven ('Paradiso') by a fictionalized version of the author.
  • On the top of the gate to hell, Touma sees a metal plate with an inscription that he couldn't read, apparently in alphabetical characters and not in English, which Anna Kingsford thinks is "abandon all hope, ye who enter here". This is the most frequent translation of a famous line in Inferno - the inscription on the gate of hell in the story ends with the line, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate".
  • In Inferno, much like the false hell, as shown by Andreae's world model and the description of the Christian hell by the two experts, the shape of hell is similar to a mortar or an open-pit mine, with each level like a step and narrowing further down, converging on a single point at the bottom.
    • In Inferno, there are nine circles of Hell, each housing a certain type of sinner and punishing those sinners, who tried to justify those sins and died unrepentant (with those who repented and prayed for forgiveness before their deaths labouring in Purgatory), in a manner fitting their crime. Descending through the concentric circles, the level of wickness gradually increases, converging on and culminating in the imprisoned Satan at the centre of the earth. In descending order, the nine circles of hell concern the following; Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery.
  • Cerberus, the Minotaur and harpies appear in Inferno, in similar circumstances to their appearances as gatekeepers of the false hell.
    • The minotaur is referred to as infamia di Creti ('infamy of Crete' in Italian), encountered by Dante and Virgil as they are navigating a jumble of rocks on a slope leading to the seventh circle of hell (Violence).
    • Cerberus's initial appearance in a muddy bog is similar to his appearance in Inferno, in the third circle of hell, where the gluttonous wallow in a freezing mire, with the ravenous dog guarding the bog and tormenting the sinners as they howl. Virgil managed to get him and Dante past Cerberus by feeding his three mouths with mud, something that Johann references.
    • A key needed to lower a drawbridge in the false hell is found in a harpy's nest, up in a tree resembling a human silhouette. In Inferno, harpies are found in the second ring of the seventh circle of hell, which punishes violence against oneself. In the 'Wood of the Suicides', the souls of those who attempted to or died through suicide transformed into gnarled trees, only allowed to speak when broken and bleeding, with the harpies feeding upon them.
  • During the party's initial encounter with Nyx, Kingsford noted that she was not characterized as the Malebranche and was a more primitive concept before identifying her. A short while later, after a review of Andreae's past, she noted that hell had a spot to punish liars and frauds near the bottom. In Inferno, fraud is punished in the eighth circle of Hell, Malebolge (meaning 'evil ditches'), which is divided into ten concentric ditches or bolgia. The fifth bolgia is guarded by thirteen demons known as the Malebranche ('Evil Claws').
  • The rivers Acheron, Styx and Phlegethon appear in both the false hell and the hell in Inferno.
    • Just as is mentioned when the true hell emerges, in Inferno, the Acheron flows between the gates of hell and the first circle of hell, with Dante and Virgil having to cross the river to enter hell proper.
    • In Inferno, the Phlegethon flows in the first ring of the seventh circle, with those who committed violence against neighbors (e.g. murderers, war-makers, plunderers, tyrants etc) being submerged in the river of boiling blood and fire. Unlike the Phlegethon in Inferno, the Phlegethon in the false hell is encountered after the forest of suicides and the punishment of simoniacs, and as Kingsford notes, isn't red and flaming like the original.
  • The name, nature and structure of the bottom layer of the false hell matches the ninth circle of hell in Inferno; the frigid Cocytus, divided into four concentric rings - Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca, with sin increasing further in, and the centre of Judecca being where the frozen Satan is imprisoned.
    • Much like the six-winged, three-faced demon king in the false hell, said to gnaw on the three greatest sinners, the Satan in Inferno is described as having three faces with a pair of bat-like wings fixed under each chin. His mouths chew on Judas Iscariot, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.
  • Similar to Inferno, the exit from the false hell is accessed from the very bottom, though the false hell has a staircase leading upward, whereas in Inferno, Dante and Virgil descended through the center of the Earth and 'up' into the other hemisphere, where the displaced rock from Lucifer's fall had risen to form the Mountain of Purgatory.