Hel

Norse Queen of the Underworld, whose name became the English "hell." Dead heroes who went to the hose of Hel were known as helleder, "Hel's men." Sometimes they were ancestral ghosts known as Hella cunni, "kinsmen of Hel," corrupted in the medieval mystery play to Harlequin, lover of Columbine the Dove-maiden, who was another version of the Goddess. The Celtic Lord of death, wearer of the apex or pointed tiara of divinity, bore the title of Helman.

The early "hell" seems to have been a uterine shrine or sacred cave of rebirth, denoted by the Norse hellir. The notion of Hel as a cauldron-womb filled with purgative fire may have been related to the idea of the volcanic Mother-mountain (Latin caldera.) 

The Infernus of classical paganism contributed to the Christian amalgam of images of Hel's land Infernus meant an oven in the earth; an old Roman proverb said "the oven is the mother."

Medieval legends spoke of Hel as Brunnhilde, "Burning Hel,"also the name of a leader of the Valkyries, otherwise known as Hild the Avenger. Some myths suggest that Hel was originally envisioned as not fiery but dark: a Crone-goddess like Black Kali, eater of the dead. her ancient altars were found in Holland at the mouth of the Rhine. Hel's underworld was reached by crossing a river, like the Greek Styx; the river was Gjoell, "Wailing." 

Persephone

"Destroyer," the Crone form of the Triple Goddess Demeter, whose other aspects were Kore the Virgin and Demeter-Pluto the Mother or Preserver. The three deities succeeded each other cyclically like the three points of a turning triangle-Demeter's symbol delta-so that Kore and Persephone were often confused and came to be considered the same Goddess. The fable about Kore-Persephone's abduction by Pluto was a later invention. She was Queen of the Underworld long before there was a masculinized Pluto. Orphic mystics worshipped her as Goddess of the blessed dead, to whom they addressed formula prayers: "And now I come suppliant to the Holy Persephone, that of her grace she receive me to the seats of the Hallowed" Persephone answered, "Happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal." She held the keys to heaven and hell (Elysium and Tartarus,) thus anticipating the Mithraic pater patrum and his Christian counterpart Peter.

Persephone is considerably older than the Eleusinian myth of classical writings, which told of her descent into the underworld and her annual return to the earth each spring. She is really another name for Hecate or Hel, and had ruled the underworld as destroying Mother Kali ruled it under the name of Prisni, which may have been the origin of Persephone's Etruscan name, Persipnei. Romans called her Proserpine. It was under this name that she passed into Christian tradition as a Queen of She-Demons. Like Kali the Destroyer, she was the basic Death-goddess from the beginning.