The Violent
Dante and Virgil scramble down an escarpment and enter the
seventh circle of hell. There they are menaced by the Minotaur and once again
Virgil successfully wards off the danger. Further on, they encounter the river
of blood which marks the first sub-circle or round of the 7th circle.
The seventh circle has three rounds or sub-circles which are
for:
1. Those who
were violent towards others.
2. Those who
were violent towards themselves.
3. Those who
were violent towards God.
In this circle Dante encounters many that he knew even his
old tutor Brunetto Latini who was there because of having committed sodomy.
There we find, Master Samael says: writers, many learned men and even doctors.
First Round – Violence Towards Others
In the first region Dante and Virgil encounter those who
were violent against their neighbours, war mongerers, cruel tyrants, assassins,
soldiers etc. all those who shed the blood of their fellowmen and lived off the
blood of their fellowmen. As they wallowed in blood they are immersed in boiling
blood according to the degree of their guilt. Alexander the great is there
immersed in blood upto his eyebrows. Centaurs guard the river and shoot anyone
with arrows who tries to rise up out of the river of blood more than what is
allowed. The arrows symbolize the anger that those souls strengthened in their
psychology.
Virgil manages to win a safe passage over the river of blood
from Chiron the leader of the centaurs. Chiron orders a centaur Nessus to take
them across the river of blood.
Second Round – Violence Toward Oneself
After taking Dante and Virgil across the river of blood
Nessus leaves them at the edge of the wood of the suicides. Here they find
those who committed suicide, those who destroyed their own substance.
The souls who committed suicide are sent by Minos to this
region as a seed that grows into a tree whose leaves are constantly eaten by
harpies (witches with bird bodies). As the harpies eat the leaves of the trees
blood flows from the trees and only when the blood flows can the souls speak.
As they destroyed their bodies they are denied human form and as the maximum
expression of their life was self-destruction they can only speak or express
themselves through their own destruction or wounds (blood and pain). The
Harpies in Greek mythology were those who defiled and destroyed all that they
touched so it is apt that they are the ones who harm those who committed
suicide.
While in the wood of the suicides Dante saw two famous
squanderers and destroyers of goods that are chased by hounds and are overcome
and ripped to pieces, with the hounds carrying off their limbs in their teeth.
This is the punishment for those who commit suicide destroying their own flesh.
Third Round – Violent Towards God
Dante and Virgil find a great plain (desert) of burning sand
upon which descends a continual slow rain of fire. There blasphemers those who
were violent towards God are stretched out on the sand, the sodomites those who
were violent towards nature run in endless circles and the usurers those who
were violent towards art huddle in a group on the sand.
The burning plain with raining fire symbolizes that
blasphemy, sodomy and usury are all unnatural and sterile actions, as sterile
as the desert. The burning of the sand represents the punishment from nature
(below) and the fiery rain represents the punishment from God (above), where
normally rain should be cool and refreshing, it is instead against them as they
were against God.
Summary
Extraordinary, Saturn is the circle of violence, where all
that goes against the correct order of things in relationships is prevalent..
This region is all about cutting, disintegration and breaking down.
There are three basic relationships, they are the one
between us and others, the one with ourselves and the one with God.
Relationships must be cultivated and strengthened using good will and love.
When the opposite of these two qualities are present then we begin to break
down relationships and align ourselves with this circle. Very importantly if we
approach and act with good will and love in all three of these types of
relationships we will travel far from this circle of Saturn and be more e and
more immune to its influence.
End (366).
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