After Dante has established the chariot as a deep metaphor for both your soul and ultimate reality, he opens up the next canto by lifting the sights into the night sky, and recognizes the chariot (carro) once again.
The poem becomes almost impossibly multilayered and recursive at this point, but an overall intention is to show how this foundational principle runs through the entirety of the creation as the source and basic pattern (or “fractal”) of existence itself. And he starts with one of the most central metaphors of the whole comedy, the “Big Dipper” as a constellation showing this chariot in the skies, slowly rotating around and pointing to the North Star, the center and source of all existence and a general metaphor for God. That around which everything revolves – als0 physically.
The carro also alludes back to the seven candlesticks and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that comes from the “first Heaven” or the Empyrean, the Mind of God and the realm of pure Divine Light and Love.
The imagery is infused with beauty, and suggestive: the carro (as constellation, ultimate reality, the deep of your soul, gifts of the Holy Spirit, a churning unity of two wheels/asymmetrical dimensions) – the carro “never rises nor sets” as Dante writes, apart from the fog that we ourselves might veil it with – through vice and sins. Meaning; this deeper truth and reality is always there, and it is up to us to clarify our vision and remove the sins, to be able to perceive this reality clearly.
It also touches on the idea of “Our heart is restless until it rests in thee”. Dante writes that the truthful people (la gente verace) turn themselves to this carro, as “to their peace” (come a sua pace).
This has a very practical aspect: IF this suggestion from Dante about reality is correct, there is once again a cascading effect of pieces falling into their place. If this is reality, then it has to be reflected in the soul as well, and the soul will not find peace until it correctly discovers and aligns itself, with this dynamic and nature. It is only when the soul “clicks” with this dual perception and alignment with its deeper nature, that it falls to peace and can see the world correctly. Almost in a technical sense; there will be unrest and a lacking fullness and peace, as long as the “apparatus” is not aligned with itself, and “tuned” with its own nature. But when it does, an infinite wealth and generation starts occurring – in a sense; The Kingdom of God will start unfolding in its infinite abundance.
So this is one of the key moments of the Comedy and the unveiling in the Garden of Eden: the nature of reality and your soul – and how you can align with this reality through the spiritual life, the Scriptures, and through Christ as an aligning force and the “pulling griffin”.
Trying to reach the “carro recognition” internally through a single-mode thinking is simply impossible, as it becomes a rigid model of “same natured” elements. It is primarily through uniting spirit and matter, and the dynamic between the two, that we can reach this insight and experience.
And, once this stage has been reached, one might see implied in these verses, there is also “no way back” to unseeing it. In part because you will have new insights that the “old way” of thinking and experiencing simply cannot explain or account for. So once this is established and used for a while, it becomes a self-sustaining mode of being and participation in reality. In a sense, the “carro” becomes a living reality for your soul, and that which opens up not only more insights, but the path and what changes into the instrument itself, for the ascent up into the highest Heavens.
And the reminder is now there on clear nights in your daily life, if you just look up, to the starry night skies.