The pre-death person's soul is extracted by the archangel Michael (through the mouth) by the order of Christ, while the guardian angel remains honorifically beside the deceased’s body until it is buried. It is a supreme honor for us Orthodox that Christ has appointed the Head of the Angels, the Archangel Michael, to take our souls – something that applies only to the Orthodox!

The archangel Michael delivers the soul into the hands of other angels, who take it and depart to where the soul of the deceased is to be passed through a “Customs Clearance”.  For three days the soul is taken through various “toll-posts”. Not all deceased people are cleared through these “posts”; those who have confessed before departing from this life will pass through Customs checks swiftly, unhindered!  Those who are held back at the toll-posts are the ones where the soul's unconfessed sins are uncovered.  If there is any unconfessed sin that is lesser than a mortal sin, the soul is then “weighed” according to its good works; the person’s good works will weigh in their favour, allowing their soul to proceed to the next toll-posts, until it finally presents itself before our Lord Jesus Christ.  

However, if any soul is discovered at a toll-post to have an unconfessed, mortal sin, it is immediately rejected and destined for eternal punishment...

People receive punishment mainly after the toll-posts that check the soul for:                    a) witchcraft - Satanism and b) for carnal immorality (fornication).

When the three days have passed and the soul has been cleared through all the toll-posts, it is led by the angel to the human aspect of Christ (because His Divinity is not visible) and the soul there is able to see Christ, with the form that we recognize in our holy icons. Christ has no other form.

As is well known, on the third day after death, the Church, as a loving Mother, blesses the “third-day kolyva” (traditional boiled wheat offering). This third-day kolyva offering is present before the Lord, when the soul has arrived before Him to worship Him.  Every single grain of the boiled wheat of the kolyva offering represents the prayers of those who pray for their deceased one's soul, by name!

After worshipping Christ, the soul receives His blessing, without Him saying anything more. God does not declare anything yet; however the soul intuitively knows that - because it was cleared through all the toll-posts - it has been saved, and is now only waiting for the validation of its salvation!

The guardian angel then takes the soul and in no time takes it back to earth - back to the places where the person was born and had grown up - on a tour that displays that person's entire life. The soul will remember details that it had completely forgotten; both its good and its bad deeds, and all the sins it had committed (confessed or not). This is the stage when the soul will empirically realize that Christ is truly Omnipresent and Omniscient!

This journey of the soul's temporary visit to earth lasts from the third day to the ninth day after the person’s physical death.

On the ninth day, the angel takes the soul and presents it again to Christ to worship Him, so we now prepare the ninth-day kolyva, with which the Church and the faithful pray for the Lord’s mercy on that soul. Christ blesses the soul, but again does not declare anything. It is from the ninth day onwards that the serious part of the surprises begins...

The guardian angel takes the soul and leads it to get a view of Paradise. The soul will be seeing Paradise between the ninth and the twentyfourth day. But the soul will not be able to converse with anyone, as it will be like seeing the faces that have been separated from us, by an impenetrable, transparent "glass". The soul can see, but will not be able to communicate or hear what happens in Paradise.

On the twentyfifth day, the angel takes the soul and leads it to get a view of Hades, and the same thing happens there. In other words, there is an impenetrable transparent "glass" there also, and the soul can see, without being able to communicate. However, the sad thing now will be if the soul sees any of its loved ones in there... There in Hades, only the dark (the rock bottom of Hell) will not be visible...

Then on the fortieth day (we begin to count the day of the person’s repose as the first day of the forty), the soul again prostrates itself before Christ, and Christ then decides where the soul will be sent - for all eternity.

This is the reason the Church also ritually blesses the fortieth–day kolyva, as it is the most important and decisive one for the souls of the departed.

This itinerary gives the soul a full experience of the other, intelligible world, which will convince it that all the things that it saw do in fact exist, and that they are not some imagined fairy tale that circulated during their previous mortal state....