Damnation

Last Judgement (detail)

Damnation (from Latin damnatio) is the concept of divine punishment and torment in an afterlife for sins that were committed, or in some cases, good actions not done on Earth.

In Ancient Egyptian religious tradition, it was believed that citizens would recite the 42 negative confessions of Maat as their heart was weighed against the feather of truth. If the citizen's heart was heavier than the feather, it was said that it would be devoured by Ammit.

Zoroastrianism developed an eschatological concept of a Last Judgment called Frashokereti where the dead will be raised and the righteous wade through a river of milk while the wicked will be burned in a river of molten metal.

Abrahamic religions such as Christianity have similar concepts of humans facing judgement after death to determine if they will spend eternity in Gehenna for their sin or eternity in Heaven. A damned human "in damnation" is said to be either in Hell, or living in a state wherein they are divorced from Heaven and/or in a state of disgrace from God's favor.

Following the religious meaning, the words damn and goddamn are a common form of religious profanity, in modern times often semantically weakened to the status of interjections.


© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search