to descend into Hades

The Greeks believed that beneath the living world lay Hades, the kingdom of the dead — a grey country ruled by a grim god of the same name, walled off from the sunlit earth by rivers of shadow. It was a place the living did not go, for the way down was easy and the way back was all but impossible.

Yet a rare few heroes dared the journey. Orpheus went down into that darkness to beg for his dead wife. Heracles went down to drag out the three-headed hound that guarded the gate. Odysseus sailed to its edge to speak with the ghosts of the dead. Each of them crossed from the world of light into the world of shades knowing they might never climb back.

The descent was always a trial. The air grew cold and the light failed; the shades of the dead thronged thin and whispering; and always there was the fear that Hades would simply close his gates and keep another soul forever. To go down was to face the worst the imagination could hold.

And those who returned came back changed — marked by what they had seen, carrying the memory of that grey country in their eyes. The journey down and back became the ancient measure of the hardest, darkest ordeal a person could undertake.

So to descend into Hades is to go, willingly or not, into some dark and dreadful place or trial — to walk down into the very thing you fear most, hoping you will find the way back up.