This prayer was written by me, and is part of a series of prayers to recite when going through rough times. Everyone is going through the ringer right now, given the state of everything, so hopefully this can help you get through some tough things too. Enjoy!

Praise be to great Lord Hades, ruler of the underworld,

The fair judge of souls one meets upon death!

Your words are firm, and yet so gentle,

Like the tender mercy of death to the sickly,

And you provide for all in your kingdom,

Alongside all those who call your name in life.

For you are the great father,

The shepherd of the departed,

A good husband to your queen

And a fair ruler for the deceased within your care;

I pray to you, Lord Hades,

That you may guide me down a better path,

Like how Charon and Hermes guide souls to your realm;

Bestow upon me your wisdom

And share with me your tender blessings

As I cry out to you from this place of anguish. 

You are the ultimate comfort for us mortals,

A promise of life after death,

A sweet relief from the pains of living,

And so I trust you to help me out of this pit,

To take me by the hand and guide me to a better life,

For you, O Hades, are so kind to humanity

And take such good care of us both before and after death,

And for this I shall praise your name until the end of time!

Greek Way of Death by Robert Garland: Chapter 5, 'Life in Hades' covers the some of the topography, as described through literature.

Albinus, Lars. 2000. The House of Hades: Studies in Ancient Greek Eschatology. Aarhus University Press.

Calame, Claude. 2009. "Ritual and Initiatory Itineraries toward the Afterlife: Time, Space, and Pragmatics in the Gold Lamellae." In Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece: Heroic Reference and Ritual Gestures in Time and Space. Center for Hellenic Studies.

Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III. 2015. "Imagining the Afterlife." In The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, edited by Esther Eidinow and Julia Kindt. Oxford University Press.

Burton, Diana. 2016. "Utopian Motifs in Early Greek Concepts of the Afterlife." Antichthon 50:1–16.

Ἅιδης οὐ κακός, ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαῖος.

Hades is not evil, but necessary.

Conquering the Fear of Divine Absence

There will be moments on your path where silence feels heavier than presence. You may pray, meditate, offer, and wait, and still feel nothing. No warmth, no sign, no whisper in the dark. It’s easy to start doubting yourself, to wonder if your deity has turned away, or worse, if they were never there at all.

There are rare moments when I do strongly feel, see, or hear Hades and those moments are sacred beyond words. They remind me that He is indeed real, alive, and near. But they don’t happen every day, and that’s okay. They are not meant to. The connection isn’t built in fireworks; it’s built in quiet, steady devotion.

Daily meditation has helped me more than anything else. Sitting down, breathing, and simply opening a space for Him, without forcing, without expectation, changes everything. The key isn’t to chase an encounter, but to cultivate presence. Even when He feels absent, I keep that space open, and somehow, He fills it in His own way.

I’ll admit, I used to be impatient. I almost forced something to happen desperate to feel Him, desperate to prove the connection was real. When it didn’t happen, I would lose faith and spiral into doubt.

But over time, I realized something deeper was going on. My impatience came from my own abandonment wounds, the fear that if I couldn’t feel Him, He must have left me, too. That realization changed everything. When I stopped projecting that fear onto Him and simply let Him be, my bond with Hades became stronger, gentler, and more authentic than ever.

If you’re in that place of silence, please know this: your deity has not left you. Absence is not rejection. It’s often an invitation, a chance to grow trust, to find the sacred in stillness, to know that faith does not depend on constant proof.

Cherish the rare moments when they do come, but don’t let the quiet break you. The bond is still there, even when unseen. Sometimes the gods speak most loudly through the silence, waiting for us to listen, not with our ears, but with our hearts.

Anubis: God of death, mummification, cemeteries, funerary rites, embalming, protector of graves and tombs, psychopomp, guiding souls to the Underworld (Egyptian)

Hel: Goddess of the underworld and death, ruler of the dead (Norse)

Hades: God of the dead, ghosts, necromancy, funeral rites, king of the Underworld (Greek)

Morana: Goddess of winter, rebirth, death, dreams (Slavic)

Keres: Female spirits (daimones) of violent or cruel death (battle, accident, murder, disease) (Greek)

Yama: God of justice, death, underworld, judgment of souls, afterlife, ghosts (Hindu)

Persephone: Goddess of the underworld, Queen of the dead (Greek)

The Morrígan: Goddess of war, fate, death, destiny, destruction (Celtic)

Hecate/Hekate: Goddess of the underworld, darkness, death, necromancy, ghosts, crossroads, spirits, and magic; guide of souls, intermediary between the living and the dead, holder of the keys to the Underworld (Greek)

Cailleach Bheur: Goddess of winter, storms, death (Celtic)

Thanatos: God and personification of non-violent death, psychopomp guiding souls to the Underworld (Greek)

Izanami: Goddess of death, motherhood, creation (Japanese)

Mors: Goddess and personification of death and darkness (Roman)

Kali: Goddess of death, time, rebirth, destruction, transformation (Hindu)

Ammit: Goddess of the afterlife, death, underworld, execution (Egyptian)

Hermes: Psychopomp god, guiding dead souls safely to the Underworld (Greek)

Osiris: God of the underworld, death, rebirth, resurrection, judge of the dead, afterlife (Egyptian)

Pluto: God of the underworld, wealth, the dead (Roman)

Mictlantecuhtli: God of death and the underworld (Aztec)

Mictecacíhuatl: Goddess of death and the underworld (Aztec)

Dionysus: God of madness, savagery, death and rebirth, transcender of death, associated with reincarnation and the eternal soul, embodiment of the assurance of life after death (Greek)

Melinoe: Goddess of ghosts, restless spirits, the dead, nightmares, funerary rites, fear and madness (Greek)

Odin: God of death, war, wisdom, knowledge, battle (Norse)

Veles: God of the underworld, death, protector of souls, psychopomp, spirit communication (Slavic)

Yanluo Wang: Ruler of Diyu (underworld), God of death (Chinese)

Charon: Psychopomp, ferryman of the underworld, carrier of souls with funeral rites (Greek)

Ereshkigal: Goddess of death, Queen of the underworld (Mesopotamian/Sumerian)

Makaria: Goddess of blessed death, peaceful afterlife (Greek)

Donn: God of the dead, psychopomp guiding souls to the afterlife (Celtic/Irish)

Freyja: Goddess of fertility, death, love, war (Norse)

Namtar: God of disease, fate, death (Mesopotamian)

Nephthys: Goddess of death, mourning, night, magic (Egyptian)

Badb: Goddess of war, death, prophecy (Celtic)

Arianrhod: Goddess of stars, death, moon, reincarnation, psychopomp (Celtic/Welsh)

Nehebkau: Primordial serpent God of the afterlife and funerary rites (Egyptian)

Gefjon: Goddess who oversees those who die as virgins (Norse)

Nergal: God of war, plague, the underworld (Mesopotamian)

Anput: Goddess of funerals and mummification (Egyptian)