A bronze anvil falling from heaven takes nine days and nine nights to reach earth. From earth, it takes nine more to reach Tartarus. That is the distance Hesiod gives in the Theogony (c. 700 BCE) — a measurement that tells you nothing about miles and everything about terror. Tartarus is the deepest region of the Greek cosmos, a primordial abyss that serves both as a prison for the gods’ enemies and as a raw, pre-cosmic force older than Olympus.
Definition: What Tartarus Actually Was
In the Greek worldview, Tartarus is not a synonym for Hades. Hades is the realm of the dead — a shadowy underworld where all mortal souls go, ruled by the god of the same name. Tartarus lies far below Hades, a “yawning chasm” (Hesiod’s chasma) surrounded by a bronze wall and gates of bronze. It is a place of confinement, not a general afterlife. Only the most dangerous enemies of the cosmic order were sent there: the Titans after their war against Zeus, the hundred-handed Hekatoncheires as guards, and later, certain mortal criminals whose offenses were against the gods themselves.
Tartarus is also a god. In the same Theogony, Tartarus is one of the firstborn entities, emerging alongside Gaia (Earth), Eros (Desire), and Erebus (Darkness). He is the personification of the abyss itself — a male figure who, with Gaia, fathers the monster Typhon. So Tartarus is both a place and a power, and the Greeks never fully resolved the tension between the two.
History and Origins: From Hesiod to the Orphics
The earliest surviving description comes from Hesiod, writing around 700 BCE. In the Theogony (lines 720–819), he details the geography of Tartarus: a “great gulf” where the roots of earth and sea end, where the Titans are bound in darkness, and where the house of Night and Day stand on a bronze threshold. Hesiod’s Tartarus is a cosmic dungeon, but it is also a source of the universe, the place where the primordial elements meet.
Homer, writing a generation or two earlier, mentions Tartarus only once. In the Iliad (8.13–16), Zeus threatens to hurl any god who disobeys him “into Tartarus, far, far away, where the deepest gulf is beneath the earth.” For Homer, Tartarus is a threat, not a fully developed location.
By the 5th century BCE, the idea expanded. In Plato’s Gorgias (c. 380 BCE), Tartarus becomes a place of judgment and punishment for the wicked dead, specifically for those whose crimes are incurable. Plato describes it as an underground river system where souls are purified or tormented. This is the first clear link between Tartarus and a moral afterlife, a shift from the earlier cosmic prison.
The Orphic tradition (6th century BCE onward) went further. Orphic hymns treat Tartarus as a primordial principle, sometimes equated with the “egg” from which the universe hatched. In some Orphic fragments, Tartarus is the seat of Phanes, the first-born god of light. This mystical reading influenced later Neoplatonists and, through them, Renaissance occultists.
Symbolism and Meaning: The Abyss as Origin and End
Tartarus represents the absolute bottom, the point beyond which nothing exists. The Greeks used it to think about limits. If the cosmos is a finite sphere, Tartarus is what lies beneath its foundations. It is the “roots” of the world, a phrase Hesiod repeats. That image is concrete: roots hold a tree in place, but they also draw from the dark, formless earth. Tartarus is the dark earth from which the ordered world grows.
In occult and esoteric traditions, Tartarus has been read as the unconscious, the void before creation, or the “abyss” that separates the material world from the divine. The Kabbalistic concept of Da’ath, the hidden sephirah of knowledge that is also an abyss, has been compared to Tartarus by Western esotericists like Eliphas Lévi (19th century). In Thelemic magic, the “Abyss” is a stage of spiritual initiation where the ego dissolves, and some practitioners have drawn on Tartarean imagery for that crossing.
But the Greeks themselves did not use Tartarus for spiritual growth. It was a place of punishment, not purification. The human consequence was fear: the worst thing that could happen to a soul was to be cast into Tartarus, where there was no hope of return. The Titan Prometheus, chained to a rock, was threatened with Tartarus if he refused to reveal his secret. The threat worked because the Greeks understood that Tartarus was not a metaphor.
Practices and Traditions: No Temples, Only Threats
There were no cults of Tartarus in ancient Greece. No altars, no sacrifices, no prayers. You did not ask Tartarus for favors. You invoked him only in curses or oaths, the most binding oaths were sworn “by Zeus, by Gaia, by Helios, and by Tartarus.” To swear by Tartarus was to call on the abyss as a witness, and the implication was that breaking the oath would send you there.
In magical papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt (2nd–4th centuries CE), Tartarus appears in binding spells (katadesmoi). The practitioner commands the spirit or victim to be “cast into Tartarus” or “held in the depths of Tartarus.” These are not prayers; they are threats spoken with the authority of the magician. The name of Tartarus itself was considered powerful, a word that carried the weight of the abyss.
In later Christian literature, the term Tartarus appears in the New Testament (2 Peter 2:4) to describe the place where fallen angels are bound until judgment. The Greek word is tartaroō (“to cast into Tartarus”). This is the only use of the verb in the Bible, and it shows that early Christians borrowed the Greek concept for their own cosmology. But the Christian Tartarus is not the same as the Greek one, it is a temporary holding cell for demons, not a permanent prison for Titans.
Comparisons: Tartarus, Hades, and Erebus
The Greek underworld had layers, and the names are often confused.
- Erebus is the darkness that fills the space between the upper world and Hades. It is a region, not a ruler. Souls pass through Erebus on their way to the judgment place.
- Hades is the realm of the dead proper, a vast, shadowy plain where most souls dwell as shades. It has its own geography: the Asphodel Meadows, the Elysian Fields, and the Fields of Punishment. Hades is also the name of its god.
- Tartarus is below Hades. It is not part of Hades. In Hesiod, it is as far below Hades as earth is below heaven. It is a separate cosmic region.
The distinction matters because the Greeks did not believe that all the dead went to Tartarus. Only the worst offenders, those who committed crimes against the gods (like Tantalus, who served his son as a meal to the gods) or against the natural order (like Sisyphus, who cheated death), were sent there. Most souls simply existed in Hades, neither punished nor rewarded.
In later Neoplatonic thought (e.g., Proclus, 5th century CE), Tartarus becomes the material world itself, the lowest emanation from the One. Matter is a prison, and the soul’s descent into a body is a kind of fall into Tartarus. This allegorical reading influenced Renaissance magic and alchemy, where Tartarus was sometimes used as a symbol for the base matter that must be transformed.
Common Misconceptions
Tartarus is not Hell. The Christian Hell is a place of eternal conscious torment for all unrepentant sinners. The Greek Tartarus was reserved for a specific class of offenders, Titans, giants, and a handful of legendary criminals. Most souls went to Hades, not Tartarus. The idea that all wicked souls go to Tartarus is a later conflation, partly from Plato and partly from Christian apologists.
Tartarus is not ruled by Hades. Hades has no authority over Tartarus. In Hesiod, the Hekatoncheires guard the Titans, and Zeus is the one who decides who goes there. Tartarus is a place of divine punishment, not a subdivision of the underworld kingdom.
Tartarus is not a place of fire. The Greek Tartarus is cold, dark, and damp, a “misty darkness” (Hesiod). The fiery imagery comes from later Christian descriptions of Hell, which borrowed the name but changed the climate.
Tartarus is not the same as the Abyss in Gnosticism. Gnostic texts use the term “abyss” (buthos) to describe the unknowable depth of the divine, not a prison. The similarity is linguistic, not theological.
FAQ
Is Tartarus the same as Hell?
No. Tartarus is a specific prison for cosmic enemies and certain mortal criminals in Greek myth. Hell is a Christian concept of eternal punishment for all sinners. The two share some imagery but are not equivalent.
Who is imprisoned in Tartarus?
The Titans (except those who sided with Zeus), the monster Typhon, and later figures like Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion. In some accounts, the Giants are also bound there.
Can anyone escape Tartarus?
In Greek myth, escape is virtually impossible. The bronze wall and gates, plus the Hekatoncheires as guards, make it inescapable. Only Zeus can release someone, and he rarely does.
Is Tartarus a god or a place?
Both. In Hesiod, Tartarus is a primordial deity who fathers Typhon with Gaia. But the same text describes Tartarus as a location. The Greeks did not see a contradiction, the god and the place were the same entity.
Closing
Tartarus is not a place you visit in myth. It is the boundary of the cosmos, the point where the imagination stops. Understanding it means understanding how the Greeks thought about order, punishment, and the limits of the world. For the occult reader, Tartarus offers a model of the abyss that appears in later traditions, a dark ground that is both origin and end. To explore further, see our guide to the Greek underworld, the glossary of underworld terms, and the mythology hub for related figures like Hades, Persephone, and the Furies.