Hell is Other People (And Bagpipes)

Some of you may recall that the very first post in this blog presented the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.  I now present for your viewing delight (if you are a bit demented) its companion painting, HELL.

You see, after all that nude frolicking about, making out with mermaids and getting high on giant raspberries, the karmic price must be paid.  And unlike the typical modern vision of hell with its boring old fire and brimstone, Bosch had a vision of the punishment realms to rival his view of what fun in the world was like.

We'll start with someone who is not being brutally mutilated.

A nunpig is trying to get intimate with a rather uncomfortable-looking man, while a helmeted creature that appears to be part man, part bird, part frog, and part badger offers him a small pot.  Apparently the Manbirodger went through some difficultly to bring him this pot, as it has been shot in the leg and has a dismembered foot dangling from its helmet.  Maybe it contains a rare aphrodisiac to make the experience with the nunpig more pleasant.

I assume this guy is being punished for gambling--besides the die on the impaled hand, there are other cards and games scattered around.  But what I want to know is....why does the mouse-creature strangling him have a spoon sticking out of its ankle?

Hell's choir evidently ran out of paper, so they started printing music on inmates' naked bottoms.  The music stand is, of course, a giant Lute-Harp of Death that crushes in place the torso accompanying the bottom.  Also apparently in hell, demonic conductors use their massive beaded tongues instead of batons.  I like to think the dude gesturing at the music is trying to point out some kind of error in the notation.

This is a rabbit. With a gun.  Despite the odd angle, it appears the body he is holding upside-down has an exploding stomach.

In hell, ears pierce YOU.

"Doctor...did you mess up the coordinates on the TARDIS again...?"

Hell's Water Sports Club.  I particularly like the Mutant Platypus Ice Skating Archery Division.

Ok.  So.  A giant bird with pots on its head and feet is devouring someone with crows flying out of his anus, while defecating fully grown people it presumably already consumed.  The expelled bodies fall into a pit (already full of bodies) while vomit and coins rain down on them.  I don't know what this is supposed to punish.  Did the eaten man bake four and twenty blackbirds into a pie?

Also there is a green creature with tree-branch legs and a porthole for a bottom, with someone inside watching a naked lady be violated by a man-donkey.

Now for the centerpiece.  The giant hollow man-tree with pink bagpipes on his head.  I guess the bagpipes WOULD be the instrument of choice in hell.  Really the man-tree looks quite placid in the middle of all this.  Maybe this is what the devil is really like, watching people stabbed and devoured and listening to a bad rendition of Scotland the Brave on endless loop, wearing a Mona Lisa smile.

He also has this adorable flag on his back.

Hell: Claimed in the name of the Pink Bagpipe Demon Tribe!