The oil caldrons

Translation

Oil caldron: Hell of oil caldrons

Man being lowered into caldron: Helped the strong cheat the poor

Appearance in a Taiwanese visit to hell

For a description of the oil caldrons from a Taiwanese spiritual medium who had engaged in a series of hell tours between 1976 and 1979, see Voyages to hell, Chapter 46. There the visitor Yang Ts'ien describes this torture as follows:

We are at the door of the prison. Sentry guards stand on both sides. The entrances, without exits, have made me think that the terms of imprisonment must be indefinite. The interior of the prison is sparsely and poorly furnished. A gigantic boiler, resembling a big cauldron used in villages for cooking pigs or vegetables, is in the middle of the room. The guards are fueling a brisk fire under the boiler. The oil in it is boiling at a high temperature. It is exactly what people on earth used to say 'Cauldron of Boiling Oil.' The guards are pushing the souls to the cauldron, then they pierce their bodies with a spear before pitching them into the boiling oil. The sinners manage to utter a single scream before they sink to the bottom of the boiler. In a brief time, the sinners' skin and flesh are completely destroyed. Only a white skeleton is seen in the impassible cauldron of boiling oil.

Yet the torture does not end there. Once sifted out, the souls recover their bodily form, only to be thrown into the cauldron again. Yang Ts'ien is even told what it feels like to dissipate in boiling oil, but some descriptions are best left to the imagination.