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Good morning!
A new sunny day – great coffee ☕️☀️, and likely another walk to a nearby hill today! And we just wrote a brief intro to the levels of dionysius here: Nine Levels of Angels, by Dionysius
Have a great morning!
😀
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Dante Anniversary, 2021!
Next year is the 700th year marking of Dante’s passing away, in Ravenna in 1321, only a few months after he completed the Paradiso and the trilogy of the The Divine Comedy! And the national celebration in Italy will be centered in – yep – Ravenna!
Dante’s Tomb in beautiful Ravenna..
More info is here! http://www.dante2021.it/
Posted in Dante
Tagged 2021, dante, history, italia, italy, literature, ravenna, the comedy
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Dante on Structure as essential element of Thought.
One of the main and interesting discoveries in Dante’s Comedy is how essential the faculty of structure is in his storytelling, cosmology, theology, philosophy and in the nature of thinking in itself. This at times feels very much like an adoption and tribute to the basic approach of Aristotle – that thinking needs to contain several different elements in a well balanced composition adapted to the subject matter one is thinking about. But Dante is inserting structure deliberately at several emotional and close to ecstatic moments in the Comedy as a reminder of the necessity of this – to achieve clear and profound insights.
After reading about 60-70 cantos, this rhythm and pattern becomes well established as a habit and underlines a basic claim: that reason should never be excluded from an overall assessment of a topic, concept, emotion or even spiritual experience. One of his explicit statements on this is in Canto 18 of Purgatory, on the Terrace of the Slothful:
you have the innate faculty of reason,
which should defend the threshold of consent.
As a tool and guiding principle in exploring the intellectual and spiritual realms – this is at times a surprising discovery. But it does unite the whole of experience, in a harmony. It provides a foundation from which to explore the world. And perhaps that partly also laid the groundwork too, for the earliest beginnings – of the new and at the time slowly emerging, Great Florentine Renaissance.
Purgatory & Paradise – a Reading of Dante.
After 16 months of deep studies and podcasting of Dante’s Paradise and Purgatory, it’s hard to remember exactly how several aspects of philosophy and theology used to be experienced by the mind before we started the whole journey. The learning has in itself created a change and expansion that is hard to grasp fully, yet. Maybe it’s even a transformation, in parts.
Once the deeper symbolic reading becomes natural and gradually more automatic, the inner landscape of experience is changed almost permanently it seems. One still retains the original way of reading, but that becomes more like one part of something much bigger, that changes the nature of the original boundaries. The relationship to the story in itself becomes increasingly altered in deep and only partly conscious ways – though some of it is clearly felt without an easy way of articulating exactly how.
Maybe some of what Dante is doing is providing a deeper spiritual nutrition in poetic form, that stimulates and grows part of the unconscious mind through the embedded wisdom and beauty in his poetry. One item after another is examined and elaborated, as we go through the journey. And then afterwards, the world looks and feels different. There is more deep and substance everywhere!
Purgatory 27 – The Purifying Fire, and Crowning Moment!
In canto 27 there are two big moments in Dante’s Journey through Purgatory! The Pilgrim is first walking through the Wall of Fire (meaning the final purification, and the symbolism of death before rebirth), and the chapter ends with the crowning speech from Virgil, where Dante’s faculities of Intellect and Reason have fully been developed, and he is now “The Lord of Yourself”. These are the very last words of Virgil, in the whole work!
The episode will be published tomorrow 29th, at 10am UK time!
http://patreon.com/ancientworld
This also concludes a full year of podcasting every chapter of the Paradise and Purgatory in the Divine Comedy! A deep gratitude to everyone who has been following the series, and hope the learning continues to grow from here!
🏞😇🌿
Thanks for listening,
and enjoy! 😀
Purgatory 25 – Metaphysics of Body and Soul
Today’s episode is about the climbing up to the 7th Terrace where Virgil is handing over Dante’s deep question about the nature of the “shades” to the Poet Statius. This is partly symbolic of how Dante’s question is now moving more into the spiritual and transcendent realms, and Statius becomes a representation of the transition between the rational-intellectual (Virgil) and the theology-spiritual (Beatrice).
The metaphysics of the soul blends the Aristotelian three levels with the Biblical Genesis – from the material creation of the embryo, to the breathing of the spirit and soul into the growing person once it has reached the vegetative soul (plants) and the sensitive soul (feeling and moving, like animals) – and then has the potential for the intellectual soul (only humans).
Dante is finally adding a part about the nature of “shades” and the “aerial bodies” as they appear in the Comedy, and comes back to the theme of how the body is also a “reflection” of the soul as something separate, and how the body “imitates” the life of the soul.
All of which explains why the soul/shades of the Gluttonous are so thin. Their bodies symbolize the lacking spiritual knowledge and nutrition in their Earthly lives.
And then – they enter the 7th Terrace of the Lustful.
Enjoy! 😀
Posted in Purgatory
Tagged 7th terrace, Aristotle, beauty, dante, gluttony, journey, purgatory, scholasticism, soul, statius, virgil
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Dante’s Great Journey through Purgatory!
We’ve now reached the end of the 6th Terrace of the Mount Purgatory, and just one Terrace left (The Lustful) before we enter the Garden of Eden – and the Earthly Paradise! 🏞🌿☀️
At the end of the Terrace of Gluttony – Virgil, Statius and Dante see a mysterious Tree!
The first 9 episodes can be found here: anchor.fm/ancientworldpodcast – starting on March 25th.
For Episode 10-33 (currently making episode 25), look here! patreon.com/ancientworld
Thanks for listening,
and enjoy! 😀
Ancient World Podcast on YouTube!
Here’s a youtube mirror of the latest episodes from the main podcast!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgaN1PtgvIh_c5C08TiJ5oA
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