Why the bugs?

I have a Flickr membership that goes with these blogs. On it, you will find that I've joined a sometimes odd seeming assortment of groups. Some of the groups (like the horror groups) might not seem so surprising for somebody writing a site about Hell, but why the insect groups? The fungi, the moss?

I'm going to be a little mysterious about that because I don't want to give spoilers for stories I'm writing, but let's say that this is going to be a very well fleshed out Hell in these stories. Death in these stories will be a transition to a new life - in this case, not a very good life. The damned departed in my stories aren't going to be disembodied spirits. They're going to inhabit physical bodies and have physical needs, just like in this life. Which they'll have to satisfy in a world designed to make them miserable, and to make their rulers (and tormentors) miserable as well. Bugs will appear in my groups and pictures on Flickr because they will be doing so in my stories.

It will make more sense, later. Be forewarned - I'm not a Christian. The Hell you will be seeing in my stories will not be the Hell of normative Christianity. Some people, on reading them, might tell me that I am a heretic. If so, I'll smile and remind them that as a Jew, I can't be a heretic, because we have no clerical hierarchy and thus, nobody to set any doctrine which I must support and nobody to "ex-communicate" me for my failure to comply with any such demand. I'll then go on to add that they're being very silly, because these stories are just stories, not a statement of my personal beliefs, and because at least one historical Christian heresy is going to get skewered by being written into the plot. Unless I decide to not do that.

I'll be doing some comparative theology, looking at ideas about the afterlife from a number of religions. If that sort of thing bothers you, move along. You've been warned.