Additional traditions and cosmologies affirming invisible realms that interpenetrate or generate the visible world:

• Amazonian Shipibo-Conibo and other Ayahuasca traditions – Forest and river overlaid with visionary plant-spirit geographies.

• Ancient Egyptian religion – Duat, an unseen underworld and soul-realm beneath ordinary life.

• Ancient Greek mystery religions – Hades and Olympian realms, entered more fully through initiation.

• Andean Indigenous cosmologies (Quechua, Aymara) – Apus and huacas, mountain and place spirits shaping events.

• Australian Aboriginal Dreaming – Ancestor realms continuously singing the world into visible form.

• Bon religion of Tibet – Interlaced worlds of gods, spirits, and humans in a layered cosmos.

• Candomblé – Terreiros as crossroads where human and orixá spirit domains interpenetrate.

• Chinese folk religion – Heaven, Earth, and underworld populated by gods, ancestors, and ghosts.

• Christian angelology and demonology – Invisible angelic and demonic hierarchies active behind history.

• Christian mystics’ “spiritual senses” – Inner senses by which the soul perceives divine and angelic realms.

• Classical Chinese Daoism – Subtle qi-realms and immortal territories accessed by inner alchemy and spirit travel.

• Classical Hindu Tantra – Subtle lokas and tattvas where deities and energies precipitate into matter.

• Diné / Navajo spirituality – Holy People in unseen dimensions sustaining or disturbing hózhó (harmony).

• Gnosticism – Pleroma of higher aeons beyond the flawed material cosmos.

• Haitian Vodou – Lwa inhabiting parallel spirit-worlds, temporarily “mounting” human devotees.

• Indian Vedic religion – Heavenly worlds of devas influencing ritual, ethics, and earthly life.



• Inuit and Yupik worldviews – Souls and helping spirits inhabiting layered, invisible worlds around humans.

• Islamic Sufism – Malakut and jabarut, unseen kingdoms interpenetrating the sensible world.

• Jain cosmology – Vast vertical universe with multiple heavens, hells, and rebirth realms.

• Japanese Shintō – Kami, unseen presences inhabiting places, forces, landscapes, and beings.

• Kabbalistic Judaism – Four worlds from Atzilut to Assiyah cascading from subtle to gross.

• Kashmiri Shaivism and nondual Tantra – Thirty-six tattvas from pure consciousness down to dense matter.

• Korean Muism – Gods and ancestors in invisible realms contacted by mudang shamans.

• Manichaeism – Dual invisible realms of Light and Darkness structuring visible history.

• Mongolian and Central Asian Tengrism – Sky, earth, and underworld spirits interacting with human communities.

• Navajo (Diné) spirituality – Holy People in invisible dimensions shaping balance, health, and land.

• Orphic and Pythagorean traditions – Immortal soul cycling through unseen worlds and bodily incarnations.

• Polynesian and Micronesian Indigenous religions – Ancestors and land/sea spirits dwelling in invisible oceanic realms.

• Puranic Hindu bhakti traditions – Many lokas, god-worlds, and hells interwoven with earthly existence.

• Siberian and Tungusic shamanism – Upper, middle, and lower worlds traversed by the shaman’s soul flights.

• Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism – Multiple invisible realms of rebirth causally linked to present karma.

• Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana – Bardos, pure lands, and visionary deity realms shaping experience.

• West African Yorùbá Ifá cosmology – Òrun, the spirit-world of deities and ancestors co-creating visible ayé.

• Yakut (Sakha) shamanism – Tripartite cosmos linked by a world tree and spirit journeys.

• Yoruba-based Umbanda – Spirit guides and entities working from unseen planes through mediums.





All art by Mark Dell'isola