I haven't written in a while. Sorry, to all you non-existant persons not reading this. Lately, I've become to think my world is hell. For various reasons which I won't go into . Nevertheless, I think my personal microcosmic hell can be related to the more macrocosmic vision of Earth as Hell. Now that may sound like a misnomer, but right now my glass is half-empty, and that's the way I see it.

Why would earth be Hell? Oh, I don't know, I could think of plenty of reasons, can't you? Yes, I know, there are some paradaisical apects of earth that are beautiful and highly commendable - rainforests and breathtaking mountains and canyons and marvelous and unusual lifeforms. Who says Hell couldn't have these as well? It doesn't have to resemble Dante's "Inferno", now does it?

But within those marvelous ecosystems is a largely unseen nasty battle of the eaters and the eaten. There's a lot of death going on under that beautiful, calm facade. Same thing goes for the human sphere - untold misery, death, deception and evil underlying the noble aspect of humanity. Sometimes it seems as if there is no need for a medieval version of a burning Hell with demons with pitchforks tossing us into the searing fiery pits. We seem to be demonic enough ourselves to pitchfork the bodies into mass graves or funeral pyres.

So few aspirations become attainable in this sphere. This seems to be world of failure and regret. Only an incredibly tiny minority ever really "make it", in terms of what society deems making it. Many aspire, write wondrous novels, make stupendous paintings and films, etc., which are never seen and never are sold. There is a type of clique, where membership seems almost to be hereditary, and if you're not part of the clique - welcome to Hell.

What if we existed somewhere else before this existence here? What if we are reincarnations of our former selves? Or, as in the Mormon view, we lived in a pre-existence before now, in the presence of God? If it is the latter, this world would surely be a severe come-down. In comparison to the glories of Heaven, it would appear hellish. If we reincarnated from a higher sphere, due to, I guess, our bad karma, it would also appear hellish, if you remembered your previous life. And even if neither of the previous two caveats are true, billions here live an existence ekeing out a threadbare life, while the haughty Paris Hiltons of the world flash their unimaginable wealth before us in the most ostentatious manner, teasing the rest of us with a vision of what could be, but never will for the overwhelming majority of the masses. This is a type of hell, no?

And to top it off, according to the scriptures, the Devil himself and his legions of demons live here invisibly on this earth, too, cast out from heaven in a vast cosmic war long ago, cast down to here. Doesn't the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, whatever you wish to call him, live in Hell? So are we not inhabitants of this same Hell? If so, we at least seem to have an escape clause - death - which does not exist for the more traditional depictions of Hell, where the inhabitants burn forever.

So there was a cosmic war between two different factions of beings, one lead by Michael the archangel in behalf of God, the Heavenly Father, and one lead by Lucifer, a proud and beautiful angel. Lucifer lost, became Satan and was cast down to here. What if this story isn't a myth? What if there was an actual war, with actual, powerful weapons, waged thousands, if not millions of years ago? What if this story partially conceals actual events witnessed by the trembling primitive inhabitants of Earth long ago?

Would there be any traces of this war? Any physical evidence? Perhaps accounts of it from ancient traditions other than our own (Western)? Traces that are almost impossible to rationalize away by scientific or atheistic skepticism? There are. Stay tuned.