Editing Supernatural (section)

=== Underworld ===
{{main|Underworld}}
The ''underworld'' is the supernatural world of the dead in various [[religious]] traditions, located below the world of the living.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/underworld |title=Underworld |work=The free dictionary |access-date=1 July 2010 |archive-date=6 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106064933/http://www.thefreedictionary.com/underworld |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Chthonic]] is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.

The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself".<ref>Isabelle Loring Wallace, Jennie Hirsh, ''Contemporary Art and Classical Myth'' (2011), p. 295.</ref> Common features of underworld [[myth]]s are accounts of [[Descent to the underworld|living people making journeys to the underworld]], often for some [[hero]]ic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the recently dead [[Patroclus]] haunting [[Achilles]] until his body could be properly buried for this purpose.<ref>Radcliffe G. Edmonds, III, ''Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets'' (2004), p. 9.</ref> Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld.<ref>Jon Mills, ''Underworlds: Philosophies of the Unconscious from Psychoanalysis to Metaphysics'' (2014), p. 1.</ref>

A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination.<ref>Evans Lansing Smith, ''The Descent to the Underworld in Literature, Painting, and Film, 1895–1950'' (2001), p. 257.</ref> Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art. The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors".<ref>Evans Lansing Smith, ''The Descent to the Underworld in Literature, Painting, and Film, 1895–1950'' (2001), p. 7.</ref>