Dante (1265-1321)

I made it. The date is June 14th, 1983. This is the second lecture in series of lectures by Roger Ware on the mystic century, tonight's lecture is entitled Donte 1265 to 1321. The divine comedy, the architecture of the interior temple
Mysticism has an odd place in our civilization. At the current moment, we seem to be at one of those points of low ebb, the Nadeer, and yet all indications. If the patterns of longterm history are any accurate indication, the 21st century will be one of the great mystical centuries of all time, so that the individuals that we're dealing with now, and for the next 10 sessions will reoccur as fabulous individuals as models of activity as sages to be consulted. So it's a great interest for us. Those of you who have been attending the Thursday night lecture series on the great scientific and cultural revolutions of the 12th century, the 11 hundreds. And for those of you who were here for the previous series on Tuesday night, that took her medic science from Chino through to Isaac Newton. This particular course will have an extra added meaning because it is the link between the fabulous 12th century and they Renaissance in Northern Italy in Latino's time, about 1450.
The last figure that we take in this series is Thomas on campus who lives to be a very old man and lives on until 1471 so that our campus is available as a living individual for those persons like for Chino who began the movement of hermetic science. So in a way, this mystical century has a quality of reverberation, much like mystical form would have. That is to say it's shape of phenomenal existence does not stop just at the presentational form, but it has a further reverberation, like a parent aesthetical vibration echoing the phenomenal reality in a disappearing era, best of transcendental noumenal reality.
The perception of this vibrational echoing in all the individuals in this course led them as practical mystical individuals to consider well their own place in the cosmos in terms of the vibrational, uh, integrities that were set in motion by their own understanding, we saw last time with Rumi, how an architecture of meaning of great proportions was engendered through his experiments with mystical language and how the must Navi in some 1500 1600 pages developed the scope of a mystical Epic Rumi dying, and 1273. Having had contact with the great Sufi Sage, even a Robbie, especially through the step son of Ebony, Ravi from his third wife, seem to bring together this whole notion of language, being capable of floating, an Epic mystical structure introduced into European mentality at the time in the 1270s, the 1280s, the expectation that there was a capacity for a mystical Epic in their own languages, but that the proper preparation for this was the path which Rumi had taken.
And that was to write love poetry. And in fact, and recognizing that the feelings of love raised from the personal level to the religious universal level was not only true of the Persian mystical poets, real me as the great example of that. There were many others, but that it was further true of that last great of antiquity Virgil who's Epic. The Aeneid had given the last great Epic structure to civilization and recovering Virgil's works increasingly in their integrity, making fresh translations from newly recovered manuscripts. They were surprised and pleased and informed to discover that Virgil had cut his teeth literarily on writing, not only love poems, but colleague poems about nature. So that in the first great poetic structures of Virgil did Georgics and the echo logs, we find increasingly Virgil using the natural sight, the natural hearing, the natural tones of love relationality to women to comrades to the world of nature, preparing him increasingly for a vision, which was inclusive of these reverberations on into transcendental noumenal reality.
And in fact, if we can progress beyond the textbook versions of what Virgil presented, if we go into the India, we find there many sections of almost ultimate composite mysticism. And when we become informed of the background and incidentally, I did a lecture on the mysticism of Virgil about two years ago at the PRS, we discover that virtual was one of the great mystical, all called voices of his time. And that in fact, they authority for writing his great Epic came from Augustus. The great Roman emperor Augustus desire to collect in one set of hands, his own, all of the all called powers of the known world so that he could in effect close the doors of the temple of Janice for the first time in about 300 years, the temple of Janice had two sets of doors and it was like a metaphysical threshold of power in the world.
And when the world was at peace, the doors on both sides could be closed so that there was a sense of presence in Rome of a Harmonia of the entire world, Augustus called this the pox Romano. And in addition to closing the doors of the temple of Janice and so insistent was Augustus that three times in two years, he closed the doors and outbreaks what happened somewhere distant in the empire. He would rush legions there and quell the disturbance and restructure the situation, bring in, uh, uh, not only troops, but emigres so that he could go back and close the doors again. And the third time it stuck. And at this time he ordered, built in Rome in the center of the forum, amidst all the sacred buildings, the sacred temple of world vision wherein he caused murals sculptural, murals of the procession of man's mystical attainment to be executed. And of course, these were done exactly at the time when Jesus was alive in Israel, so that they are S uh, him, uh, is a world class temple of man's vision. And in order to send the reverberations of this temple of peace and the closed doors of the temple of Janice out into the world, he personally commissioned the greatest poetic voice of his age, Virgil to write an Epic poem, the need to carry the meaningfulness of his actions out into the entire world.
This great structure had preparatory to its development in Virgil, the concern with love poetry. So that learning the language of love is not the paltry insipid thing that we think today, but is rather the beginnings of the insight into the fulcrum of that most mysterious process, which alone can be the Keystone in the arch of triumph of human understanding, a Keystone, not of some objective thing, but of the capacity to recognize the significance of the entire durational flow, a phenomenal reality, why it occurs in the first place and that the Keystone for this is the recognition that the inner most gathering of powers of ourselves lies and a focus of forces, which is interchangeable with another. And that the occurrence of the beloved of the loved one is conclusive proof is experimental, uh, recognition. And the nth degree of the fact that our inmost self does not belong to us exclusively, but is an ex changeable sense of presence with another, with another human being, with a beloved one.
And that, that being so man recognizes in his aspiration, that that is true between himself and God. And that the highest order of transposition in the universe is that God enters man, and man enters God in one transpositional act of consecration. So that love poetry is the natural beginnings of tutoring. Our sensitivities and tutoring are angles of perception, tutoring, our sense of the tapestry of the all, how the phenomenal realm becomes an arch, a threshold, a portal that kept into place metaphysically mystically, by our sense of transpositional reality, we made them pass through and enter another realm, this consideration, and all of the others that I have mentioned, plus countless ramifications became the rage in Italy in the middle of the 13th century. And it occurred increasingly to the great poetic voices of that time, that in the first meanderings of the troubadours and the first, uh, brave attempts of the lyrical poetry of Petra [inaudible] were actually the fruitful beginnings of a calming triumphal, a celebration in some Epic form of this great movement, which had happened not only with Rumi and the Persian poets, but with Virgil and the Roman poets, so that we have at the time that Dante was born about 1265 in Florence, a population of individuals who were trying to bring out of themselves the manifestation of the time in terms of writing love poetry.
It's interesting to note
That one, okay.
Dante his greatest friends, PIDO Cavalcanti was also one of the great sonnet writers of his day. And in fact, when Dante was growing up and, uh, realizing his companionship with, uh, uh, CNO and Cavalcanti and others like that, he began to recognize that in his life, there had been an instance of transcendental love seated in his own experience, and that if he could only bring this experience to the fore in his consciousness and his discursive quality of, um, recognizing significance in terms of his active intellect, that this potentiality in that seed experience could be nurtured and grown. And it's rather like the notion of a seed being given a chance to be nourished. And out of this seed through patience grows the mighty tree, the mighty Oak, the mighty tree of life, and this mystical template of culturing and nourishing the seed of such an experience and experience of transcendental love to its large, a tree like structure occurred to Dante when he was about 28 years of age.
Now 28 is one of those formative periods in a human life. A couple of years, give or take 28 as a trends positional age, where the powers of integration suddenly rise, almost ask them topically. And one realizes that the images which were so glib when you were 19 or 20, suddenly become devastating in their capacity to reverberate because it is exactly. Then at that time that our mystical capacity becomes real to us in a sense that it begins to bridge from our selves to the world. And if we are unprepared for it, of course, uh, this can be a shattering experience for Dante in order to take stock of himself. At this time, he wrote a book called the new life and it was written in 1294. So he was about 29 when he actually finished it. And in the new life, Dante Rook calls this early experience that in fact it had happened.
He says when he was nearing the end of his ninth year, and the girl that he saw was beginning her ninth year. He was literally walking down the street when his eye caught the form of a girl about his age, but it wasn't just the girl that he saw, but it was a full seed image of the whole illness of his inner self, of his inner soul of that heart space, where in the seed of recognition took root immediately upon sight and began to grow and how it grew was through these reverberations, uh, parentheses of, uh, noumenal occurrence. So that Dante became immediately transfixed by the experience he began to daydream about the girl every day, he began to take long walks to try and, and, and go by her house. He began to dream up little scenarios of meeting her over, at least seeing her, but it was never the practical issue of boy meets girl.
It was a metaphysical maze wandering off the Quester, seeking a center in elaborate so that he never wants to talk to directly this girl whose name was be a treat she Beatrice, or be a treat. She, and it turned out that he did not actually see her directly again until she was 18 years of age. And he was then walking down one of the streets of Florence. And here she came between two older women and she was dressed in white and she looked exactly at him. And this set off the occurrences all over again on an even deeper level from what he had experienced at age nine. And now at age 18, almost 19, Dante began to be possessed again by this anima archetypal experience and all of the occurrences of his life, which had been ordered somewhat in a phenomenal way, were disordered and distorted because they were being polarized and magnetized and reordered in terms of a new mineral landscape, which was transpersonal.
And of course, Dante like any individual without experience without masters in this regard completely disoriented within two years, be a treat. She actually married another man, a very famous, a wealthy man of the Bardy family, Semillon, Dave Bardy and Dante was present at the wedding. And he was so distracted that he caused a scene and many people thought that he was perhaps going crazy. And in order to establish a protectiveness for his metaphysical love for this woman. So as not to Sully by worldly concerns or by the gossip that might come up in terms of worldly issues, he began to make all kinds of overtures to another woman, writing poems, writing sonnets about her. And in this regard, all of this has confessed in the new life, by Dante. In this regard, Dante managed to defend the sacredness of the image of BIA Trichy so that the truth of his love in terms of the image, they, in my goal, uh, of his heart, the sacred image in his heart was protected by its secretness by its mystical sealed integrity.
The father of Beatrice, Shay, a man named focal Poland RA very famous at his time died. Dante wrote a wonderful sonnet to him and in, it seemed to forecast the early death of a treat sheet. And within six months of her father, she also died. So that Dante began to experience in his life a kind of metaphysical anguish that he had some how a personal direct transcendental link to this woman, that the very qualities of the integrity of his soul in terms of a universal manifestation, were tied by a metaphysical umbilical to the conditions of this woman. And of course her death on the surface in a phenomenal way, seemed to indicate to him that he needed to do everything he could to protect the sacredness of that mystical marriage, which he had experienced with her through just the look of the eyes. It's very important to, to recognize and focus on how important the glance is, the glance to establish contact and the direct gaze to create the flow of contact so that all through Dante, whenever you find him rising up to a mystical, powerful language, it has always choreographed by the line of sight so that in Dante landscapes and architectures and cosmic structures are all important in terms of lines of vision.
So that in core, of course, in the ultimate vision of God, they are all brought together and a floral Rosetta, all the celestial flower formed by the wings of the angels, all arranged and increasing spirals around the center so that all the lines of vision are brought together and unified. So that the eyes and the line of vision, the line of sight is both structural for Dante and metaphorical. And the way in which the eye goes is the cue, the leading clue by which to follow Dante through all the convolutions of his meaning. And when we get to, uh, uh, portions of the divine comedy, you'll see, it can get extremely complicated.
Bitch Richie had died at age 24. The prime of her life Dante had then felt that somehow he had to save himself from the increasing destructive polarities that were coming out in him. And so he admits and the new life that he had just set aside his religious visionary capacity in order to save himself, he had to set it aside. And he says, instead of this, I took up philosophy, the love of philosophy, the love of going into the joys of the wisdom of the mind in all of its infinite detail and all of its luxurious elegance in order to save myself so that he went from theology to philosophy. And he records in the pair of DCO that there are in fact to a double, the attitude to man's condition and Realogy that in pointed distinction to the philosophic, theology of st. Thomas Aquinas, who maintained that there was one beatitude Dante specifically says there are two that there is a philosophic wisdom, and there is a theological fate and that these two exist together.
And later on, Dante will try to maintain that the double order of the Franciscans started by st. Francis of Assisi. And the Dominicans started by Saint Dominic brought to great intellectual prominence respectively by the Franciscans, by Robert Groza test day and Roger bacon and the Dominican's by Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas that in fact, these two orders braid themselves in physical reality so that they interchange their core presences and establish a unity by virtue of the doubling of the beatitudes. This is quite distinct from the tome mystic integration in the Summa. Theologica where everything is unified to one in Dante is like the hermetic conduces, where there are two. And because they are able to intertwine and interchange, they create a unity.
In fact, in the pair of DCO and Cantos 11 and 12 is where Dante presents this most arcane understanding of Christian history, where he has, uh, speaking for the Dominicans. They figure of Bonaventure Saint Bonaventure, who was the great Franciscan of his time. Bonaventure wrote a great life of Saint Francis, but in the pear of DCO, Dante has Bonaventure writing in behalf of the Dominicans. And then he has, uh, a great Dominican writing and behalf of the Franciscans Thomas Aquinas. So that Aquinas is presenting the Franciscan view and Bonaventure the Dominican view. And the only way in order to understand that in terms of Dante his position in the pair of GCL is that there has been an X change of inner presences of the two orders thought to be polarities on earth, but seen in Dante's heavenly vision to be exchangeable centers and thus integrated in heaven.
All this is recorded and initiated in the new life, which appeared about 1294. Dante at this time became married. He had two sons and a daughter, one of his sons Jacopo in fact would be the one who would discover the final 13 Cantos of the divine comedy and thus published them and make a completion of his father's work. The daughter was named via treat sheet via treat sheet Patriots, the same as a little girl. And here's a, here's a, a psychic, uh, manifestation to pay attention to very often in terms of a man's phenomenal reality. He will behave to his daughter as he did to his mother, so that in his present generation, he balances somewhat unconsciously, the parental image with the, uh, daughter image so that the mother and the daughter form a vibrational, uh, continuum from his phenomenal cell that very often for a man to understand his fullness as a spiritual being, he has to make his peace with the image of the mother and the image of the daughter. And of course this ancient archetypal ceremonial imagery is presented in all of its clarity by the Greek called [inaudible]. And [inaudible] the mother and the daughter, and the initiate goes in and is initiated at elusive because of the mother and daughter as a tandem, the fruitfulness of the earth and the return of its fruitfulness through the next generation. And of course the contrapositive of this is true of women of the feminine, a phenomenal psyche. It is the father and it is the son.
So Dante, his daughter was named Beatrice B a treat sheet. They visionary girl had died. Dante had become one of the great promising young writers and Florence. His sonnets were increasingly read with great dignity and excellence by the leading poets of the day he was married, he was having children. He became enamored of politics. And of course the Florence of his day was consumed with a passion for politics, the two parties, the twelves, and the gimbal lanes, which had their origins and their names and Germanic family lore, which had come in, uh, through, uh, Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick the second to dominate the Italian political scene, the corrosive innuendos of politics and Florence, according to the great historian of Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli, who, aside from the discourses and the Prince wrote a great history of Florence in which he said that Florence was constantly like a pot of stew boiling over yet, never ever during the Renaissance period had any real stability. There were constantly Wars between different cliques and factions between the rich and the poor between the artisans and the other, uh, bank, uh, guilds, every conceivable type of factions of human behavior was represented in Florence and they all disliked each other. So Dante entered into this most fascinating worldly realm.
He in fact, seemed to enjoy philosophy, to enjoy politics, to enjoy his family life until a great period of disenchantment set in Dante found himself condemned to be burnt at the stake. And along with about a dozen others flood the city of Florence and began to live in other cities in Northern Italy, he went to Padua, Mantua to PISA, and a rumor has it even went to Paris for a while. He eventually settled in Ravenna and it was there that he died in 1321 while he was traveling. The old visionary capacity kept returning to him. And in his maturity, he records at the beginning of the divine comedy and incidentally, it wasn't called divine until the 17th century in his comb Commedia. He records that lost in the great forest of life at the midway point, feeling that he was beyond salvation, he came upon the vision, the guide of the great Syrah of antiquities Virgil and this great guy, this monumental sear of the bridge between this world and the other, the interior transcendental realms began to appear for Dante almost on the heels of the vision of a fierce lion in this forest, which, uh, pounces and roars before Dante, so that this fierce imagery of beast like best Joel challenge followed by that guide appearing the heavenly guide appearing.
He has repeated later on in the last Cantos of the Purgatorio, so that the beginning of the divine comedy, which is a three part structure, the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and then the pair of DCL at the beginning of the Inferno, we have a condition which is repeated at the end of the Purgatorio, so that the phenomenal realms of the underworld and the limbo of the purgatorial are held between two great parents, identical parallel.
Yeah,
Because only by bringing these two realms and this parallelism, this parent theoretical unity into a harmony, into an expiation, a feeling tone of unity that Dani Dante can then proceed on to the heavenly realms. And not only that, but Virgil as a guide can only take him through this Inferno and purgatorial realms. He must have a new guide, another guide, a different sort of guide to enter into paradise. And in fact, the key to the divine comedy are the last five Cantos of the Purgatorio yet. Like the insurer now has 33 Cantos and all of the lines in the divine comedy are divided into a three part rhymes. Tara is a rhema, the three rhymes and every line, so that the image of triads permeates, uh, exquisitely the structural, uh, literary reality of the divine comedy. But the last five Cantos of the purgatorial are the mystical vision of transition and transposition, and which Dante shows his universal genius. And it is there that we need to go for some specifics, it's almost impossible to find any exposition of the divine comedy these days, that, uh, centers in on this. So I give this to you because the more mundane qualities you can find in any guidebook, but this is very difficult to come across.
It begins with Canto 28 of the Purgatorio. And we are again in a dense forest, only. It so happens that instead of being a wild wood in which Dante has lost as a phenomenal person, unbeknownst to him, he has now entered into the archetypal, a fabulous garden of Eden and that the garden of Eden in this case, as a vast primordial forest uninhabited by humankind and in several places, they angelic beings that come to see him note the fact that this grand great forest, which is the natural abode for man has been empty since the fall of Adam. And we are given to understand that the appearance of Virgil and Dante at this juncture of heaven and earth is a summation all of the significance of all times since Adam and that in fact, Dante now represents increasingly on accumulation of historical polarities and metaphysical magnetic lines of significance.
So that through these five Cantos, increasingly the burden of recognition of the value, which he increasingly represents by his achievement and his accomplishment begins to make of him a universal talisman of man's possibility for resurrection into the paradise, not a recognized resurrection through the particular sufferings of the cross. So much as the resurrection of man's capacities to bring back into focus in himself, all of the noumenal reverberations, which had been so spread out throughout the universe throughout history and throughout time that they had lost all connection with the phenomenal appearance of man. And now we're being brought back and accruing. So that Dante becomes in effect a humanistic savior of man by whose pioneering a step and journey. Every man may come through this journey and this portal with him to the paradise, it is almost bordering at the time when he wrote this 1300 on the SAC religious, uh, disposition.
So Dante in order to convey the fact that he, as a man, as a conscious humanistically based intellectual man, has very little control over this transformation. That in fact, the guide all the way for him, Virgil the civilized prototype of the great Epic writing Sage, who makes a civilization and is unable to carry him any further. And Dante as the representative of earth created, man, intellectually created man, literary man, rising up on his greatest aspiration is brought to the point of helpless tears and shameful repentance at his inadequacies. So at the very point at which Dante could have made a SAC religious figure of himself as men, triumphalism a merging by his own step from hell, from confusion, before it on the earth, from the rising up of the great spiraling mound of Purgatorio, he does not step into paradise by his own step, but needs then give over to a new guide.
All of his capacities and the new guide is none other than the woman be a treat. She who just sends from heaven to see whether or not he can give over his sense of presence to herself can enter into this mystical marriage with her, can accept her deepest presence into himself and give over his deepest presence to her, all this accentuated almost to a point of, uh, in gendering, a psychopathic, uh, tremendousness within the character and the mental and physical capacity of Dante. He's brought to the point of Mysterium. Tremendum where he will either shake apart in break, or he will permit the transposition because he has learned to let go. So he has brought increasingly in these five Cantos by Dante with great, wonderful artistry to the psychological point where he will either have to Xchange or he will break. So he begins this last great movement towards the other end of the parentheses, much as he'd be gone at the beginning of the Inferno. And he records here. This is a translation from Charles Singleton at Princeton. I like this translation.
Please turn your cassette now. And we'll commence playing again on the other side, after a brief pause.

END OF SIDE 1

At Princeton, I write a translation weaker. Now I like this, a translation eager now to search within and roundabout, the divine forest green and dance, which tempered the new day to my eyes without waiting longer. I left the bank, taking the level ground very slowly over the soil that everywhere gives forth fragrance. Every word that he steps the very soil, the ground of this Fort for us gives forth a perfuming a fragrance. It is the presence of the Holy spirit that perfumes the air as it were the ether, as it were the quintessence of the elements, as it were, is a sure mystical sign. As we will see of being on the path, this fragrance of the Holy spirit, which seems to perfume and permeate, all phenomenal reality everywhere. He walks a sweet breeze that had no variation in itself was striking on my bra with the forest only of a gentle wind.
It had no movement, no variation in itself so that it is presented as the wind of unity. Not in its phenomenal, violent manifestation as the rule, the Holy divine wind of God, which appears in all a primordial birth religious experiences that of Abraham and that of the Navajos. You always find the Holy wind as a, uh, phenomenal manifestation of God. God's primordial presence. Dante is feeling this, but now he's feeling it in a capacity where it's just a gentle wind on his brow. It is a tapping to open up to this unity, this gentle wind by which the fluttering vows all bent freely toward the quarter where the Holy mountain casts its first shadow. And other words, Dante is arriving at that point where the mountain comes together and we're at shadow cast also comes together. It's like an hourglass between light and dark between thing and shadow.
And this breeze of unity is bowing as in prayer, the vegetation of the garden of Eden towards that focus so that Dante immediately makes this cosmic X in all creation. And they're at the point where the Mount of purgatory touches the first opening of heaven. He has the focal point towards which Dante is now moving, still guided by Virgil. But increasingly Virgil is fading into the background so that he says all these bows bent freely towards the quarter where the Holy mountain cast his first shadow. Yet they were not so deflected from their upright state, that the little birds among the tops cease, practicing all their arts, but they're singing greeted the morning hours with full joy among the leaves, which kept such burden to their rhymes. So the birds are singing. The birds of paradise are still singing. So Dante, uh, going there and then recognizing that as he's moving towards this focal point, that as he is moving, he has moved to a point where he sees a woman not be a treat sheet, but a woman named Matilda who was across the stream.
And she is a gorgeous apparition for him, not so much in physical cosmetic beauty, but with the integrated gentleness, by which she fits in to the place in which Dante finds himself. And he looking at her long practice to seeing this feminine archetypal image of wholeness recognizes that she is singing a song, which is of the nature of the reality of this place. And so he motions to her to come closer and in doing so realizes that there is a little stream that flows through this forest and that she is just on the other side of this dream from himself. And in fact, looking at the stream, he sees himself reflected in that stream, like a mirror, his left side. So that then seeing her, she appears at the top of his image of his left side so that he and his reflection is a bridge between himself as he experiences himself and her, as he sees her.
And they are moving in tandem along this stream together and wherever the stream wines, they wine. And so this parenthetical, uh, shape is set in motion. This movement towards the focus of this axis of all the universe and in this movement, Dante again, and again, uses the imagery of the air. And he says, now that he notices that in fact, this breeze is like the Sirocco, it's like the hot wind coming up and the imagery begins to build. So that one has air, which when it moves, becomes wind moves in such a way that after it moves, it becomes flame that the air moving as wind catches fire and becomes plain. And again, and again, this kind of transpositional imagery haunts these final Cantos. So that everywhere is the quality of presence as in air and then movement within that presence as in wind and then flaming into realization as in fire. And then as the fire flames up, Dante realizes that there is some mystical explosiveness and the recognition of what the flame brings.
And he finds within himself a deep simpatico with that, which the flame brings so that he finally asking if he may hear this song, she says to him, finally, you are newcomers. You are newcomers. You've just gotten here. And perhaps why I am smiling in this place chosen for the nest of the human race. Some doubt, hold you wondering. But there are Psalms that give light that may dispel the cloud from your minds. And Dante realizes now that his mind, his mental capacities are all transparent to her. And in fact, as he looks at her and the Canto, uh, comes along and comes to a close, she says, they who in olden times sang of the age of gold at its happy state, perhaps in Parnassus dreamed of this place here, the root of mankind was innocent. Here is always spring. And every fruit, this is the nectar of which each tells Dante says, I turned them round to my poets and saw that with a smile.
They had heard these last words then to the fair lady, I turned my face and she goes on singing. And as she is singing, he experiences in the sound of her words, which moves like a intelligible wind upon the air, an experience. He says that's very much like lightning only instead of lightning just occurring and then waning it's lightning that increases. And the sense that there is lightning around him, waxing introduces to him. They experience that some tremendous off left of energy has seized the situation. And in this increasing lightning like atmosphere of light perception, he turns to look and he sees coming a vision of an mystical entourage coming through paradise through this deep dense, primal forest. And as it comes, he describes it with a, uh, increasing sense of all. And, uh, for this, because it's very difficult to make sense out of this, uh, part of the translation.
I take us to the HF Kari translation, uh, that at the beginning of Canto, 30 of the Purgatorio, uh, Kerry did this translation early in the 19th century. And, uh, in this particular instance, he's superior to the Singleton. So I'll come to carry, uh, Y here's how Singleton translates it when the wane of the first heaven, which never knew setting or rising or veil of other cloud than of sin, and which they're made each one aware of his duty, even as the lower Wayne guides him, who turns the helm to come into port had stopped still the truthful people who had first come between the Griffin, the net turned to the chariot as to their peace. It's very hard to make sense what he is saying. So I come here to Carrie and what Dante has seen as a chariot with great wheels being pulled by a Griffin and the symbolic Christian, um, figure of a Griffin, which is part Eagle.
And part lion is a of a twofold nature. It's an animal, a Chimera technically, but it has a twofold nature. It has the Eagle, which is the Lord of the air of the wind of saw of that, which would bring the flame and of the lion, who is the King of the earth of the beasts of that, which comes from below. So above and below the Eagle and the lion who individually may also be very fierce, nothing is more fierce in the air above then the Eagle and Saint John was the gospel of the Eagle. And nothing is more ferocious than the lion, the lion of Mark, the gospel of Mark. So that Mark and John really are the protectors of the integrity of the gospel. Mark of course, went from Rome where he was the interpreter of Saint Peter. After Peter was martyred, Mark went to Alexandria because he was the one who could teach the Alexandrians.
He was, he was tough. He has a lion is tough. And John, of course the visionary for the long future, the Mo the millennial ages to come because he was the Eagle. He was able to rise to great Heights of insight. So the Eagle and the lion together formed the Griffin and his, this image, this twofold beast who pulls this fabulous chariot, and the chariot has on one side, one wheel, three maidens who are symbolically arrayed. One of them is red in color, like, um, a burnt Crimson, the other as an Emerald green, just the opposite. And the third is a pure milk, right? So that you have the red, white, and green of these three maidens. And on the other wheel of the chariot, there are four maintenance who are all dressed in a Royal purple and they always move so that they are creating a center between them.
So the four of them always create a centering. And the other three always create a ripple of reverberation between the opposites and the equilibrium, the red and the green and the white, so that in this iridescent entourage and behind their other figures, uh, 24 elders who come to by two. So you have 12 pairs. And along with this chariot being drawn by the Griffins and, uh, guarded paranthetically by the choreographed three maidens and the formations and the entourage behind in the chariot unseen by Dante at first is the most fearsome, highly charged, energized presence. And he doesn't see right away because it was so energized. So highly potently there that he can't record it, that he has feelings, his sensitivity, his mind records a negative space because of so much integration in that figure. And only when he is tuned enough that he begins to be able to see in glances that figure, he realizes that it is via Trichy, but she is colored like an iridescent flame.
She is a flame being, and her eyes are so intuitively powerful that he dare not look at her, that he is just in orienting himself to a glance of her is almost destroyed. He had this tremulous list that comes over him so that he begins to focus himself again, as he did with the other woman, he begins to look down and he's trying to find in the media and ground between him and yet between him and that, between what he is and that other basic ground. And as he's looking down, he notices this dream rippling through the same stream that he saw Matilda. On the other side, only this time, the stream seems to run over the ground over the grasses so that they are all bent and this wave form ripple of some kind of a stream or flow of integrity. And in that stream, in that miraculous water that flows over land and in air, in this phenomenal concurrence of all the elements, he recognizes that he must look up, he must see her, but in order to orient himself, to being able to do this, he has to conceive to himself some kind of an orientation in his experience.
And so he's searching for an orientation. How may I can see this incredible event so that I may participate in it. He has to have a structure. And so Canto 30 begins, and we couldn't make sense out of it with a Singleton translation, but look how Kerry how's this.
He makes a vision in terms of polar light, like the GuideStar Polaris, this polar light. He says soon as that polar light fair ornament of the first heaven, which has never known setting nor rising, nor the shadowy veil of cloud, other than man's sin to duty. There each one could invoicing as that lower does where the steersman guides himself to port by the firmly fixed star forthwith, the saintly tribe, who in the van behind this Griffin and its radiance came, did turn them to the car as to the rest. So that all the figures, he say, all the figures surrounding this car, Dante begins to concentrate on them. And as he does, he notices that they orient themselves geometrically towards the car that the Griffin is pulling. And so with this guide, with this cue, with a structure, Dante can bring himself to bear to recognize that what is happening is that some great primordial, cosmic ordering is happening before his very experience and that he is a part of this experience.
So much a part that he will not exist unless he participates in that experience so that his very existence, his very nature as a viable being at any time in the universe is all dependent upon him participating there. And now in that increasing geometry of meaning shaping and taking place right before his eyes, as he does. So he has cue and his guide is this intellectual structure of the threes and the fours of the seven of the twos of the chariot of the fact of the Griffin and all of this. And finally he is able to look and see, and when he looks up at her, she looking at him, unsmilingly devastates him by a direct glance and Dante for a second, looking away, looking for Virgil, looking for his guide and Virgil is not there. He's gone.
The great Epic sages of antiquity. I've taken him as far as he can go. They've never been where he is. They couldn't go where he is. He's on new ground Terra incognita. And so he realizes that he is left alone, suspended all the qualities of the existential alienation yet Dante in that moment. And he realizes that the only place he could look is back to that center of devastation, back to be a tree chase eyes, and looking back, he looks up to her just as she calls out to him, do not look for your old guy. Virgil is gone and you tremble because you have not yet the unit team within yourself to stand firm and float free and be with me as I am.
And she says, this is impossible for you now, except with my help, I will through this paradoxical condition through this prime Orgill forest, where you were living lost again. But instead of on the beginning level, you were lost at the highest pinnacle of your possible attainment. And only a spirit guide can help you here. And I am that. And yet you cannot look at me. You cannot be here with me as I am. There was a found here from which two rivers flow, the Tigris and Euphrates, or they Lycee the river of gratefulness of past sins. Yes. And the other river, which has always forgotten in our day and age, the, you know, H E U N O E. So there are two rivers. There was one of forgetfulness, but not a forgetfulness of everything. Forgetfulness of the sting of past sin. The other river is a nourishing lick here, Illich, SERE, Ambrosia, which fortifies the good, the Lycee and the, you know, eight together.
And you have to take them in that order. You have to be able to take the Lycee. You have to let go of that sin fall past reverberation, and you have to accept that fortification of the good reverberation only then can you make this transition from the limbo of transcendental purgatory to the lightning manifestation paradise, as it really exists? Yes. In the beyond, uh, beyond from any phenomenal condition you could imagine. And what you have to let go of is all that reverberate [inaudible] baggage, which you have imagined, which will forbid you from going into paradise. And at the same time that you let go of that you have to come full round presence here now, and look your spirit guide in the eye. And it's the one place in the universe. He does not want to look because he does want to look so terribly badly there, that it scares him to death to think that he could, he drinks the Lycee and looks up.
And he realizes that it's totally harmless. That'd be a treat. She is the woman. He loved not just as a woman, but as a spirit, soul companion. And he says to her, how could I have been so foolish as to be fearful? Are you, I'm looking at you? And she turning to rainbow colored flame before his eyes now seen as a beautiful Harmonia says before you had not drunk of lethal, but you are going to have to go back to earth. You're going to have to go back and write to mankind this way of transformation. So I give you a lethal now, temporarily, and now we give you all, you know, a temporarily so that you may come into paradise and you will record. They're not in your mind, but in your transcendent, spiritual being the conditions which you find there. And so at the end of the purgatorial, he records the seven ladies stopped at the edge of a pale shade, such as beneath green leaves and dark bowels.
The mountains cast over their cold streams in front of them. It seems to me, I saw you're afraid to use Tigris issue from one fountain and like friends slowly parked from one another old light, Oh, glory of the human race. What water is this, that pores from here? One source and from itself withdraws itself. It's like the vision of Mount Kyla us in the Himalayans or the way in which the Brahmaputra and the Indus come from the same Lake, Minnesota. Arar the very same kind of an image that Holy Mount of purgatory like Mount Kailas. He has a center from which the streams of life like friends slowly part and come around full to make the condition of man in the phenomenal world and the arms of their parentheses. So that what we think is real is only occurring within the scope of a cosmic wholeness. And throughout this, Dante gives the image of a dance. All these maiden forms are always dancing, and there's a sense of the choreography of the posture of moving freely in the air.
To my question, she replied, he asks, how does it withdraw as itself in itself? Thus to my question, she replied, asked Matilda to tell you, and here are the beautiful lady answered as one free herself from blame this and other things I have told him. And I'm certain that Letha is water, did not hide it from him and be a treat. She then says to Dante, and he can hear her now without trembling, he's ready. He's ready to, to be with her as she is. She says, and perhaps some greater care, which often robs the memory has darkened the eyes of his mind, but see, you know, a that flows forth here. Bring him there too. And as you are, want revive his weakened faculties as a gentle spirit, that makes no excuse, but makes it will of another's will. As soon as that is disclosed by outward sign.
So the feral lady after I was taken by her, moved on and with womanly grace, she says, come. And then he says to us, if reader, I had greater space for writing, I would yet even yet be singing about the sweet drought, the sweet drink, which never would have saved me. But since all the pages ordained for this second Canticle or filled the curb of art, lets me go no further. In other words, the structure is complete. He dare not go further. His imagination cannot go beyond the bounds of the structures of the spirit I came forth. He says from those most Holy waves renovated, even as new trees renewed with new foliage, pure now, ready to rise to the stars. And he has this vision where at this particular point of transcendence, where one may rise up to the paradise, that what he had seen originally as a peculiar group of, he now sees them as almost like seven giant candelabra, which are flame rainbow flame, which he had thought they were trees at first. And that as he looks at them, he sees that they are not just giant flaming candelabra, but that they burn and weather through the phenomenal reality of what flame would be and leave. He says a quality of painted air. And in that painted air, there's a presence, a twinkling, an otherness, which he now has adapted himself. And he can see, and thus to beginning of the para DCO, he immediately transposes himself from one reality to another. And he says the purgatorial ended that way. And the Paradisio begins this way.
The glory of the all mover penetrates through the universe and reclose in one part more and another less. Now I have been in this heaven that most receives of his light and have seen things which, who so descends from up there has neither the knowledge nor the power to relate because as it draws near to its desire, our intellect enters so deep, that memory cannot go back upon the track. Nevertheless, so much of the Holy kingdom as I could treasure up in my mind shall now be the matter of my song so that he's going to give us those reverberations. After the transcendental flames have occurred, those impressions that are left and that will be the divine comedy. And in order to facilitate this Dante, then at this incredible juncture puts in the appeal to the classical Apollo. Interesting. Then now, Oh, good Apollo for this last labor, make me such a vessel of your worth.
As you require for granting your beloved Laurel, thus bar one peak of Parnassus has sufficed me, but now I have need of both. As I enter the arena that remained, he's going to need both beatitudes. Now, no matter how powerfully transcendent was the religious, the theological, he now at this point of injuring paradise, the pair of DCO knows he's going to need the other also of whom Apollo. He is the cue he's going to need Christ. And the polo he's going to need to be a tree cheat and something else in order to sing the song and bring this structure into language. Because if he follows only be a treat, you, there will be nothing phenomenal there to record. It will be a mystical experience of which there is no telling. There is no song. There are no words that could speak of it. So he's going to need the other beatitude in order to make something there for us to follow. So the other be out of tune, the wisdom of philosophy is the only clue that man ever has consciously to get through to paradise. Well, that's all for tonight.

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