[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Do you hear people saying "dammit to the seven hells" or something along those lines? I overheard some tourists on the train today and I wonder what religion that came from o_0

Hmmm, Dante painted nine levels of hell.... oh, there's a game called Devil may Cry that invokes a "seven hells" (one for each of the Christian Seven Deadly Sins). Some googling doesn't provide any direct literary references but its used a lot in metal rock and such...

edit: ah here we go - ancient Mesopotamian mythology (very very pre-christian, interesting):

In a cycle of Sumerian and Akkadian poems, the god-king Gilgamesh, despairing over the death of his companion Enkidu, travels to the world’s end, crosses the ocean of death, and endures great trials only to learn that mortality is an incurable condition. Hell, according to the Gilgamesh epic, is a house of darkness where the dead “drink dirt and eat stone.” More details of this grim realm emerge in the poems about the Sumerian shepherd and fertility god Tammuz (Akkadian: Dumuzi) and his consort Inanna (Akkadian: Ishtar), who in her various aspects is the mistress of date clusters and granaries, the patroness of prostitutes and alehouses, a goddess associated with the planet Venus and spring thunderstorms, and a deity of fertility, sexual love, and war. Inanna is also the sister of Ereshkigal, queen of the dead. An impulsive goddess, Inanna, according to some versions of the myth, is said to have threatened, in a fit of pique, to crush the gates of hell and let the dead overrun the earth. In the poem Descent of Inanna, she sets forth to visit Ereshkigal’s kingdom in splendid dress, only to be compelled, at each of the seven gates, to shed a piece of her regalia. Finally, Inanna falls naked and powerless before Ereshkigal, who hangs her up like so much meat upon a drying hook. Drought descends upon the earth as a result, but the gods help revive Inanna, who escapes by offering her husband as a replacement. This ransom secures the fecundity of the earth and the integrity of the grain stores by reinforcing the boundary between hell and earth. It is the better part of wisdom, the tradition suggests, for mortals to make the most of earthly life before they are carried off into death’s long exile.

I had a short period of trying to use Norse curses and oaths in my early twenties... but it always just sounded awkward. Wishing Cthulhu and his brethren, the Old Ones, or the Elder Gods on people at least sounds a little bizarre.