In the Vampire Diaries universe the Other Side played a very significant role. It was a parallel dimension, a limbo where souls of dead supernatural beings reside in. There were few other parallel dimensions in The Vampire Diaries and The Originals series apart from the Other Side.
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The Hell
Arcadius “Cade” was the oldest known supernatural being in the Vampire Diaries universe. He was a psychic who was living in ancient times. His people got scared of his powers, so they burned him at the stake. Heartbroken Arcadius sent out a powerful psychic blast on his dying breath. That psychic blast created an entire world to contain his soul.
What do we know about this place? This new dimension was a parallel world to the living world. Arcadius was the ruler of this dimension. It was fiery in nature; either it was filled with fire or the residing souls were burning on fire. Arcadius lost all hope for humanity, and he was determined to punish wicked souls, so he sought out sinful people and claimed their souls in order to drag them into his dimension. We can imagine the fate of poor souls in the Hell, because he showed Damon’s awaiting fate where Damon would have been burning and screaming helplessly. The Hell was a suitable name for this dimension. As the ruler of this place, Arcadius aka Cade became the Devil in TVD universe.
The Devil had the ability to grant immortality for mortal beings. He granted immortality and eternal youth for the Sirens by making them the first known pair of immortals in the Vampire Diaries universe. Whether this immortality was bound to the Devil or to the Hell is not known. But the Hell was not bound to the Devil himself.
Even though the Devil got killed by Stefan, the Hell did not got destroyed with him. It persisted after Arcadius’s death and later Katharine seized the chance to become the Queen of the Hell. Later Bonnie destroyed the Hell by redirecting Hellfire into the Hell itself. So Arcadius’s Hell no longer exists in the Vampire Diaries universe.
The Other Side
The Other Side was a limbo or a purgatory for the souls of dead supernatural beings. By default, Supernatural beings such as vampires, werewolves, witches and psychics went into the Other Side after their death. Doppelgangers are also supernatural in nature, however whether they go into the Other Side or to the Peace was not clear.
Even though the Other Side was the default afterlife for supernatural creatures, it was not a naturally created place. Qetsiyah created it to punish Silas. She wanted to prevent Silas from passing onto the Peace and wanted to force him to stay trapped inside the Other Side with her for forever.
After the creation of the Other Side almost all supernatural beings ended up in there after their deaths. Early in the Vampire Diaries series Klaus killed Elena’s aunt during the ritual to break free from the Sun and Moon Curse. Aunt Jenna died as a vampire. But later Esther Mikaelson told to Elena that Aunt Jenna was not in the Other Side, so she must have found the peace.
As the Devil in the Vampire Diaries universe, Cade had been dragging down wicked souls into the Hell. Since almost all supernatural beings are not good people, the Other Side must have cost him a good amount of souls. However it seems like he had the ability to get supernatural souls if he wanted to. Cade showed to Stefan that he wanted Stefan’s soul since he saw the Monterey Christmas day ripper incident in 1917. However Cade’s servant, Seline decided to modify Stefan’s memory and let him go.
Katherine Pierce was unable to pass through the Anchor, Bonnie to the Other Side. She got sucked into the Hell.
When the Other Side started to crumble, some souls in there got sucked into the hell too.
Prison Worlds
As the name suggests, Prison Worlds are created to imprison some powerful enemies of the Gemini Witch Coven. Inner workings of a prison world is bit confusing. A prison world is a snapshot of the real world. They are stuck in a time loop where they repeat the same day which they were created. And the prisoners in a Prison World cannot die, thus making them virtually immortal.
Each Prison World requires a magical key in order to create the prison dimension and access it. These keys are called Ascendants. Even though they look similar, each one is unique to their specific Prison World. Ascendants need drop of Bennett blood to activate them. Bonnie found spells related to Prison Worlds in her grandmother, Sheila Bennett’s grimoire. So Bennet witches were involved in creating Prison World spells. Since they were descended from Qetsiyah’s bloodline, may be Bennett witches have the knowledge about Qetsiyah’s Other Side creating spells. Activated Ascendant needs the power from a celestial event to work. Also 1903 and 1994 Prison Worlds were connected to the leader of the Gemini Witch Coven. So both of them got destroyed with Kai Parker’s death.
Even though the original Prison Worlds were destroyed by Kai Parkers death, there are new Prison Worlds which were created after the decimation of the Gemini Coven. Bonnie guided Alaric’s daughters to create a new Prison World in order to imprison Kai who managed to escape the Hell. And I think there are few other Prison Worlds in Legacies series too.
Phoenix Stone
Phoenix Stone is the big red stone in the hilt of the Huntress’s sword. When Huntress kills a vampire with her sword, the victim’s soul get trapped inside the Phoenix Stone. Each soul inside the Phoenix Stone experiences their own personal hell. When Julian stabbed Damon with the Huntress’s sword, Damon’s trapped spirit experienced a torturous memory loop inside the Phoenix Stone.
By using spells, a trapped soul could be extracted and put in a dead body. But the body has to be compatible to host a vampire soul. As an example a human body will start to reject the vampire soul. Vampire blood cannot heal or turn such human body plus vampire soul combo. In order to resurrect a specific dead vampire, the spell casting witch has to search for the correct spirit within the Phoenix Stone. Otherwise some random spirit from many Rayna Cruz’s victims would occupy the body.
Two Heretics, Nora and Mary Louise used their combined power to destroy the Phoenix Stone. Without the stone, its hellish dimension got destroyed. Many vampire souls which were imprisoned in the stone broke free and occupied the nearest corpses to them. It actually created a mess. Stefan who was trapped inside the stone did not get into his own body, instead he ended up in a human body and nearly died again due to body incompatibility. His body got possessed by a serial killing vampire who started to wreak havoc. Newly resurrected vampires who mysteriously were able to find dead vampires with daylight rings to possess, started to run loose in broad daylight. And Rayna Cruz started to lose her mind because her victims got free and her magical nature compelled her to hunt them all, all over again.
Origin of the Phoenix Stone is unknown. We only know that Rayna Cruz got it from the Shamans and in legends it was considered as a stone with a magical ability to reanimate corpses.
Bonnie’s Dimension
Bonnie Bennett is a unique character in the Vampire Diaries series. She thought she had psychic abilities when she was young and even talked about it with her friends. But no one took her seriously. Later, when it reveals that she was actually a witch from a very powerful bloodline, everyone including Bonnie herself forgot about her claims to be a psychic. With minimal guidance she taught herself to become an extremely powerful witch. Near end of the series it was revealed that Bonnie had dormant psychic powers all along. That made she is one of the five known psychics in the TVD series. Others are Arcadius, Sirens: Sibyl and Seline, Silas. Bonnie is similar to Silas; both Silas and Bonnie are witches who developed psychic powers later on their lives.
Bonnies psychic ability was awaken by a great trauma. She witnessed her lover, Enzo getting killed by her friend, Stefan Salvatore. While holding Enzo’s body she let out a scream filled with great grief, simultaneously she let out a powerful psychic blast. Her psychic blast created a separate dimension to contain Enzo’s spirit.
I thought Bonnie had created a small pocket dimension only to contain Enzo’s soul. But later in the series Arcadius met Bonnie and explained to her that she had created an entire parallel world with her psychic blast like Arcadius did 5000 years ago, and no one else has achieved such a feat except them, also this new world is even hidden from the Devil himself and he does not have power over it. That’s not all, Bonnie fought for Damon’s soul against Arcadius and was able to hold on to it until Stefan killed the Devil.
So Bonnie made an entire parallel world and capable of holding souls. Does that mean she could become someone like Arcadius in the future?
Mind Palaces (Chambre de Chasse)
Witches use spells to create living spaces for minds, and use representational magic to draw minds of intended people.
We first saw such a place when Finn Mikaelson created a virtual cabin to bring in minds of his brothers: Klaus, Elijah and Kol.
Mikaelsons trapped the Strix leader Tristan de Martel inside a container using a dark object called Serratura and dropped him in the sea to be perpetually drown. Next Strix leader, Aya employed Strix Witches to create a mind palace, so that Tristan’s mind could relax in a huge astral chamber without feeling the pain of continuous drowning.
In The Originals a seer witch prophesied that Mikaelson family will be perished by a friend, a family and a foe. Mikaelsons tried very hard to avoid the prophecy. But at the end Freya got poisoned, Rebekah got cursed, Elijah and Kol got bitten by the Beast Marcel and Klaus got stabbed with the Papa Tunde Blade. Freya did not have time to cure them all. She gave instructions to Hayley to find required ingredients for remedies and put themselves on suspended animation until Hayley could gather everything they needed. Freya used her aunt Dahlia’s sleeping spell and channeled Klaus to power it and put herself and Rebekah, Elijah and Kol into a magical coma. She created an astral plane where their minds could relax. She created an entire garden and a big house to reside in until awaken by Hayley.
Arcadius also had the ability to create rooms, places and sceneries and even recreate memories where he could talk with souls. He created a room, Monterey orchard and Stefan’s first day at Mystic Falls School during his negotiations with Stefan.
Freya’s Necklace Crystal
Freya Mikaelson has a magical necklace with a blue crystal pendant. That crystal has the ability to contain souls. She used it to extract Finn Mikaelson’s spirit from Vincent Griffith’s body, and imprisoned it inside the crystal.
Freya used it again to save Elijah Mikaelson’s soul after he got killed by Hollow. However at that time crystal got shattered, and it caused Elijah’s spirit to split into many pieces. Freya, Hayley and Hope sent their minds into the crystal in order to piece together Elijah’s mind. What they saw was not an entire world like the Other Side or a Prison World. They saw a hallway with many doors. Each door leads into a key memory of Elijah. Hayley had to search through Elijah’s memories to find his prominent memory in order to reach his consciousness.
We saw only a shattered dimension, so how does intact crystal dimension looks like is unknown.
The Peace
The Peace is the default afterlife of the Vampire Diaries Universe. It is an entire parallel world similar to the living world. People and places look similar to the regular world. At the end of the TVD Elena and Damon died as humans and went to the Peace. They turned up in Mystic Falls. Elena went to her old house and reunited with her dead parents, Aunt Jenna and John. Damon went to Salvatore house and reunited with his brother, Stefan.
In the Originals series Esther Mikaelson and her sister Dahlia also found the Peace after their death. They appeared on a beautiful meadow as their younger selves.
Is the Peace equivalent to the traditional heaven? I don’t think so. Damon, Stefan, Esther and Dahlia had done many horrible things. Especially Damon and Dahlia never even regretted about their evil behaviors. So if any evil person can get into the Peace without redemption, then it can’t be a traditional heaven.
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