Infero:
Reading Dante’s Inferno as an Initiated Text
To the modern literary mind, Dante’s Inferno is to Hell what Milton’s Paradise Lost is to the Fall: a poetic masterpiece that has defined, even replaced, the imagery of its biblical antecedent. It is fitting and expected, then, for critics such as Dr. Luisa Vergani to claim that “Dante’s theological ideas were strictly orthodox, that is, those of medieval Catholicism, [accepting] church dogma without reservation.”[1] However unsurprising, this conclusion is far from inescapable; in fact, a close reading of Inferno demonstrates a greater correspondence to a mystery play than to a morality play, to a shamanic journey than to a journey through Catholic doctrine.
In order to entertain this new premise, it is necessary to, if not completely dispel, at least cast doubt on the validity of Dr. Vergani’s school of thought. For this, there is no need to look further than Dante’s own words. He tells the reader in the beginning, “It is another path that you must take…if you would leave this savage wilderness.”[2] With this, Dante prepares the reader to expect something other than the obvious. He implores “those possessed of sturdy intellects [to] observe the teaching that is hidden here beneath the veil of verses so obscure,” to be drawn “in among the hidden things” where his wise master, who understands his “covert speech,” makes “a sign that [says] he [wants] to speak secretly.”[3] Further, Dante may have inserted a bit of comedy in his title choice. Infero is “a learned borrowing from Latin meaning `below,’ `lying beneath’”[4]: perhaps inferno was Dante’s idea of a good Latin pun. Regardless, Dante’s language choices throughout the poem make plain to the attentive that there is more to this text than a literal recounting of a hellish journey or even, on a slightly more sophisticated level, a castigating warning to the wicked.
Now looking for Dante’s covert meaning, then, one’s attention is drawn to the action of the poem as a whole: a man is in the throes of a “dark night of the soul,” which Dante beautifully describes as a shadowed and savage forest whose mere memory recalls the accompanying feelings of fear and despondency.[5] As part of his “salvation,” he is led by spirits into the underworld, signifying his symbolic death. During the course of this journey, the man cavorts with spirits, receiving information from the spirit realm that he brings back with him into his return to life. This story is a classic shamanic initiation that rejuvenates the spirit and imparts secret knowledge through a symbolic death. [6] Even more pointedly, a mystic’s initiation is highly characterized, like Dante’s journey, by his “passage [being] interrupted by incidents, rather like pilgrimages,” where his guide encourages “him to recognize each of the figures which pass, like shadows, before him,” most reasonably in an effort to have the initiate identify aspects of himself and the symbolic meaning within the pageant of contacts.[7]
Although the shamanic journey is a universal theme, it seems foreign to Dante’s historical context; however, medieval Europe did have a contemporary counterpart in alchemy. The mystery school of alchemy used chemistry as a metaphor for the process of spiritual evolution, and this metaphor loosely corresponds to Inferno: just as the metals with which alchemists work are drawn from underground, so Dante goes underground to unearth his “metal”; just as alchemists subject base metals to the tortures of fire, chemical reactions and brute manipulation in order to purify them, so the spiritually base impulses of man, such as lust, are subjected to the various purifying tortures of Hell.
Continuing to look at the poem in its entirety for additional “esoteric patterns,” there are at least two elements of Dante’s Hell which cannot escape notice due to their pervasive recurrence. First, Dante’s Hell is hardly the all-consuming fire that students of infernal history may expect; on the contrary, Dante’s Hell is quite wet. Various waterways, swamps, ponds, rain, mist, fog, ice and the like are present in nearly every canto. Surely, such an ubiquitous detail must be symbolically significant in a text which has demonstrated layered meaning everywhere. Investigation does not thwart this inference: Barbara Walker writes that the esoteric significance of water is the birth of spirit, the formless void of creation and undifferentiated oneness, alternately the watery womb of chaos and the seminal fluid of creation.[8] Once again, Dante has provided clues as to the text’s true aim and meaning, imbuing the whole of his journey with the mystical “flow.”
The second recurrence is the number three (3) and its multiples, from prophesies of three suns to Lucifer’s three-faced, six-eyed, three-chinned countenance, which brought pain to three sinners at a time.[9] Casting about for the potential initiated significance of the number 3, one is richly rewarded with consistent meanings from disparate sources. In Kabbalism, the third sefirot, or manifestation of the divine, is binah, or understanding,[10] a meaning which corresponds neatly with the intention of an initiation journey. It is beyond the scope of this paper to persuade readers that Dante may have had knowledge of esoteric Jewish tradition;[11] suffice it to say that either Dante had access to Kabbalistic knowledge or that esoteric symbolism overlaps across a wide range of traditions. Ted Andrews’ exploration of the “occult Christ,” for example, interprets the initiated meaning of the number 3 as a manifestation of the creative will or birth of spiritual knowledge and power. More specifically, Andrews calls the number 3 the signifier of “the teaching of the alchemical process.”[12] This correspondence could not be more a more precise affirmation of Inferno as an initiated text, containing intentional, underlying meaning for a select group of readers. If one needs further evidence, consider the Tarot. The Tarot is touted by most scholars as a thinly veiled tool for teaching esoteric knowledge, perhaps originated by the Knights Templar, with whom Dante certainly had some link.[13] The major arcana of the Tarot, when read together, tell a story about an initiate’s journey. The following narrative of the first three cards is remarkably similar to the first three cantos of Dante’s Inferno:
[In the first card,] a young man leaves his home town and begins a long journey, carrying his life possessions on a stout rod. He travels aimlessly across the countryside in search of spiritual truth. He stops at the small village of Rota where he is taunted and called the Fool by the children and old men alike. They say his is a naive young man with an overly imaginative mind who speaks of unimportant things and unrealistic ideals. The boy realizes his vulnerability and need for caution. He knows a decision must be made. He searches within himself for inner guidance and chooses to leave Rota, traveling northward toward the forbidden mountains.
[In the second card,] he travels onward, he misses the warm fires at home and is weary from the many months on the road, but he presses on determined to translate his ideas into actions and direct his own life. Upon seeing a small school of the occult set alone in the foothills, he takes the initiative and seeks admission. He becomes an apprentice. After many years of diligent studies, he acquires the skill and confidence to develop his psychic abilities and displays the wise and honorable use of them, thus earning the title of the Magician. As he prepares to leave the school, he knows he is about to begin a new and successful cycle in his life.
Before leaving, however, he seeks out the understanding and loving High Priestess [in the third card]. Through her intuitive guidance and spiritual inspiration, he gains knowledge and wisdom. She shares with him the esoteric teachings that are contained in the secret scrolls she protects.[14]
Clearly, the correlation between Inferno’s beginning cantos and the Tarot story is suggestive. This correspondence further explains the heretofore mystifying inclusion and directive of the three heavenly ladies, Beatrice, Lucia and Rachel: from the perspective of the Tarot, these women represent the goddess trinity, or the feminine mysteries, personified by the third card’s High Priestess.[15] Again, Dante takes care to hide his text from none but the most obtuse. Sadly, Vergani’s observations struggle against the obtuse, but do not quite win. Vergani rightly notes that “Dante lived in a world that believed in mystical correspondences, in which numbers … had a mystical significance,” using the ubiquitous number 3 as her own primary example; however, rather than exploring a range of possible implications in Dante’s meaning, Vergani relegates all “mystical correspondences” to the comfortable framework of Christianity.[16]
Vergani has, in fact, more than one such semi-insightful comment. In her analysis, she brings it to the reader’s attention that Virgil was also known as the “white magician” and not merely a “guide and master.”[17] Though Vergani has already warned that Dante “did not mean, nor intend his readers to infer, that it [Inferno] was a literal story of a trip through Hell,” she then proceeds to explain that Virgil is regarded as a white magician because “he uses formal incantations to command the spirits and demons of Hell.”[18] However, as has already been established above, “magician” is the honorary title given to those initiated in the wisdom and proficient in the skills of the occult—thus, the more plausible meaning that Dante intended his readers to infer.
Similarly, Vergani states that with “a typically Dantean touch,” Virgil is cast with a hoarse voice. This hoarseness, she interprets, signifies one, or all, of the following: “Virgil was not much read in Dante’s time; that he has not spoken to a mortal since he was first conjured [by Erichtho]…or, what is most likely, that, as the voice of the empire, he has not been heard or heeded for a very long time.”[19] It is not quite clear from which lines in Canto I Vergani infers Virgil’s hoarseness, but assuming that her observation is accurate, it is an excellent, if blundering, contribution to the many clues of the text’s esoteric nature. Again Dante may be demonstrating his fine use of pun, using Virgil’s “lost voice” as a literal and symbolic reference to the occult’s “lost speech,” as “the aim of all initiation ceremonies is to put the mystic once again in contact with a ‘lost speech’, from which the world is now cut-off.”[20] In some mystery schools, the “lost speech may even have been a form of telepathy,”[21] an idea which would certainly correspond well to Dante’s observation that Virgil “seemed faint because of the long silence.”[22]
A more extreme example of Vergani’s inability to recognize the profound significance of dramatic clues and esoteric symbols can be found in Canto XVII. In this canto, Dante describes in elaborate detail purses that are characterized by a color and animal.[23] Given that this rich description is contextually jarring, without explanation and pointed, it stands out as either tremendously significant or a peculiar breach in the poem’s narrative style. Whether any significance is political or esoteric, or both, it is difficult to conclude. The combination of colors and animals on clothing usually conjures images of family heralds; however, Barbara Walker finds all of the familiars mentioned—the lion, goose and sow—to be, not surprisingly, manifestations of the goddess. [24] Walker’s interpretation does not seem to fit these specific verses, but then again, Dante’s extended use of mythical and real animal totems throughout the poem cautions the reader against jumping to simplistic conclusions. In this same passage, there is a potentially stronger esoteric correspondence with Dante’s use of color, as he describes one purse as blood red with the emblem of an extremely white goose.[25] Here Walker is of some assistance, citing an alchemy tradition of the Siren of Philosophers, whose breasts pour out milk and blood. More explicitly, there is an Italian manuscript which “shows two bearded sages avidly sucking [the Siren’s] breasts, to absorb the secrets symbolized by her colors, milk white and blood red.”[26] While the meaning of these verses may remain hidden for now, they are, nevertheless, notably worthy of thought and discussion, but a discussion missed entirely by Vergani.
Vergani’s superficial analysis does not ultimately mean, however, that Inferno could not also contain traditional morality play devices and messages, providing pointed examples of wickedness, as she has suggested. Somewhat ironically, it is Vergani who reminds the reader of C.S. Lewis’ words on allegory: “`It is an error to suppose that in an allegory the author is ‘really’ talking about the thing that it symbolizes; the very essence of art is to talk about both.’”[27] However, there is a variance in Dante’s vision that seems to suggest the usual moral castigation on any level was not what Dante had in mind; unlike the violently inflicted punishments of Tundale and St. Peter’s Hell, the torments of Dante’s Hell lead him to ask, “Who has amassed as many strange tortures and travails as I have seen? Why do we let our guilt consume us so?”[28] This question moves the message away from a fear-based, eternal hammering from a capricious and exacting God toward the idea that an internal Hell of suffering is created when one chooses the baser expressions of the soul—reveling in lust instead of dwelling in love, for example—thus, according to the esoteric worldview, thwarting the soul’s natural inclination toward God and godliness. In the end, as Dante writes of other estimable fellows, Vergani did not sin; her contribution has merits. If that was not enough, it is only because she lacked the baptism, the portal of faith that Dante embraced.[29]
Notes
[1] Luisa Vergani, Cliffs Notes on the Divine Comedy: the Inferno (Lincoln, NE: Cliffs Notes, 1992) 10.
[2] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam, 1981) II: 91-3.
[3] Alighieri IX: 61-3, III: 21, IV: 51, VIII: 86-7.
[4] Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (New York: Portland House, 1989).
[5] Alighieri I: 2-21.
[6] Richley Crapo, Cultural Anthropology: Understanding Ourselves and Others, 3rd ed. (Guilford, CT: Dushkin, 1993) 260-1.
[7] André Nataf et al, The Wordsworth Dictionary of the Occult, trans. John Davidson (Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth, 1994) 44-5.
[8] Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper, 1983) 1066.
[9] Alighieri VI: 67, XXXIV: 39-57. This image is also curiously reminiscent of Baphomet, the three headed or faced demon supposedly worshipped by the Templars. Whether or not this correspondence further links Dante to Templar knowledge, or whether both images merely echo more ancient expressions of the trinity (eg, Vishnu) passed down through various esoteric traditions, is an area for speculation.
[10] David Ariel, The Mystic Quest: an Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1988) 73.
[11] Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas present a fairly rigorous discussion on the link between Dante, the Knights Templar and esoteric Jewish tradition in The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2000).
[12] Ted Andrews, The Occult Christ: Angelic Mysteries and the Divine Feminine (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1995) 76-7.
[13] See Note 12.
[14] Origin uncertain, possibly from Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deck, first printed in 1969, most recently printed and distributed by US Games Systems, Inc. As an interesting aside, I noticed the phonetic correlation between the Tarot’s “Rota” and Hermas’ “Rhoda,” leading me to question whether they were both, in fact, a reference to an esoteric concept rather than a town and telepathically maligned mistress, respectively. Unfortunately, the clue was too small for me to unravel further.
[15] Walker 94,554, 671, 983-4,1018.
[16] Vergani 11-12.
[17] Vergani 19.
[18] Vergani 14, 19.
[19] Vergani 20.
[20] Nataf 16.
[21] Nataf 49.
[22] Alighieri I:63.
[23] Alighieri XVII: 55-65.
[24] Walker 349, 544, 956.
[25] Alighieri XVII: 62-3.
[26] Walker 19.
[27] Vergani 14.
[28] Alighieri VII: 19-21.
[29] Alighieri IV: 34-6.