Hel, Queen of the Dead.

 Dear Reader,

The following is my unverified personal gnosis. The previous post regarding demons vs. khear was based upon experience and discussions with others regarding their experiences with demons. This post picks up a thread from the previous post regading the difference between Hel, the Norse Queen of the Dead, and the Dark Queen of Filianism. This is going to be a bit of a weird post for orthodox Heathens and Filiyani. Disregard it if it makes you uneasy, this is based in my experience and your milage may vary.

Hel is the daughter of Loki and Angrboda. She is half alive and half dead. When the Aesir learned of the prophecy of Ragnarok, they took the children of Loki and Angrboda. The wolf-child Fenris was bound. Jorgmundr, the sea-serpent, was cast into the oceans. And Hel was sent down into the realm of Helheim to rule over the dead. There's a lot of complex things about that myth but it is beyond the scope of this post to get into it. (I have an unorthodox position on this myth as well.)

Helheim is an Underworld realm. To get there, one must follow a road that crosses over a river that roars with the noise of battle upon a bridge gaurded by the giantess Modgud. After crossing the bridge, one comes to a walled place where there is a gate and a bloody hound named Garm that guards it. To get to this place, one must travel down and to the North upon the Road to Hel. Helheim is located beneath one of the roots of the World-Tree and is mentioned as being one of the Nine Worlds held by that tree. Some say that Nifhel is before Helheim as others say that Nifhel is below it.

There are many Underworld realms. Each mythos has one and it is generally the abode of at least some of the dead. Now, let me step away from discussing the different places of the Underworld for a moment. The Dark Queen is located at the lowest level of the Filianic Underworld. She is a malevolent being towards the living and seeks to hold all souls hostage from Déa. While some sources paint Hel as such a being, the mythos of Hel shows her as a generous hostess to all who enter her realm. In the story of the death of Baldur, she gives Heimdall a way that Baldur might be resurrected and reclaimed from her hall. The Dark Queen would do no such thing. Given that there are sources that speak of reincarnation within the Norse mythos and in modern Heathenry, it would be reasonable to believe that Hel is not the greedy Queen of Death who refuses to let the souls that come to her leave. 

Hel is, perhaps, more accurately described as a stern ruler of her lands but a welcoming hostess to all souls that come and abide with her until it is time for them to reincarnate. This is the position that I personally hold. Now, this is where things get weird and intersect with Filianism.

When Hel is cast into Helheim, she is trapped for a time in the realm of the Dark Queen. Then Anna makes her voyage into the realm of the Dark Queen. Hel is powerless to help Anna upon her voyage because the Dark Queen holds sway over all the lands of the Underworld. When Marya comes to rescue Anna, Hel is witness to the rescue and resurrection of Anna. Hel is also witness to the flight of the Dark Queen and her court. After Marya returns to the Celestial realm but before Anna returns to the upper world, Anna puts Hel in charge of one of the realms of the dead. Hel has a fence built to keep out the Dark Queen's forces and puts forth a watch-maid and a guardian at the gate to keep an eye out for the Dark Queen's return. 

With Ragnarok / the inbreathing of the all of creation by the Dark Mother, Hel returns to her potential existence state prior to her birth as does all of Déa's children (and their descendants, whom are also her children). Then the cycle begins again. 

Hel is not the Dark Queen or a servant of the Dark Queen. She is but the ruler of one of the Underworld realms of death who guards the dead from the Dark Queen's mischief so that they might reincarnate and eventually leave the cycle of reincarnation and go to Avala. As Hel is tied to a level of manifestation, she will return to the Dark Mother at the end of Ages. Because she is a child of Déa that bears a measure of her divinity within her, she is not subject to mortality in the same fashion as we the living. And for the matter of khear, Helheim is not low enough in the Underworld to be fully consumed by the taint of it. Thus, Helheim is a place of rest for souls between incarnation. Nifhel, on the other hand, would be quite close to the abyss of khear and, as such, is a place of torment and suffering.