We’re now already up at the sixth Terrace on the Mount, and things go very fast after the Dream the second night. The dream where a monster transforms into a Siren, as a framing of the last three terraces after Sloth.
And just like the Pilgrim whose thirst increases with the learning as we ascend, so goes the reading speed itself many times. It’s almost hard to stop.
So now there’s only the seventh Terrace of Lust left, and then the last six chapters of the Heavenly Forest, The Garden of Eden. And we’ve had some major new discoveries about the role of the First Dream – to transcend many things and enter a more deeply spiritual sense of the Purgatory, described by Statius indirectly through the explanation of how there are no weather systems or earthquakes possible after the Gate. It is not an Earthly world in many ways.
The spiritual Ascent to the Empyrean begins in some forms already at the Gate of Purgatory, initiated by the Dream of the Eagle. And then it gradually becomes a deeper and wider spiritual experience, to read as well.
And through this the whole second book could be seen as one continuous transition from the Earthly shores, to the beginning of the Transcendent Divine.