With the pageant of the Scriptures stopping and focusing on the chariot, the spiritual “charge” is sharply intensifying, as the fuller connection to God is about to erupt.
One of the elders then starts to chant: “Come, spouse, from Lebanon” three times, and all the elders – in a sense the fullness of the older biblical stories – are following the chant. This is the call in the Song of Songs from God to your soul, to rise up from “Lebanon” (as spiritual perfection), and further up into mystical union with Divine Realities.
And this is moment when the channel is fully opening; the elders chant, the soul is aligned with the deeper cosmic and spiritual realities, and then suddenly a hundred angels erupt out of the chariot, in some way meaning God’s energy is directly opening for the soul.
It’s hard to overstate how important this moment is. If this happens to you, you are truly transforming your being and your soul into becoming something very different. This is not only a poetic description or beautiful imagery of higher aspirations of the Heavens, but a categorically different life for you. It connects you with God from deep within. This is what Dante experienced, and this is what he wants to happen for the reader. The whole Comedy leads up to this moment – the healing of the soul and then the ripping away of the veil and for the first time having the capacity to truly participate in God.
So in terms of the Soul’s journey to God as the purpose of the Comedy, this threshold and connection is what the Garden of Eden actually gives to you. First a state of transformed life where the Divine shines through the Earthly and becomes a permanent presence, and then it will quickly move even further. The capacity that is now built, will reveal things for you never seen or experienced before.
Implicitly this also clarifies Eden and Paradiso; The soul discovers itself and fundamental reality in the chariot metaphor in Eden, and then opens the channel. And if that has happened to you, but only then, will the third book show you the journey of the now transformed and “resurrected” soul, further and further up into God, and to the Heavens.