Worldliness
Midway through his life (35 years old) Dante woke up to find
himself alone in a dark forest. This forest symbolizes worldliness with all its
passions and vices. Dante recounts that he being “so drugged and loose” with sleep entered that forest after
deviating from the ‘true way’ - the path.
Leopard, Lion and She-Wolf
Dante searching for light, saw at the end of the dark forest
a little hill glowing with light. As he began to climb the hill he was
confronted by three savage animals: a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf, who
symbolizing human weakness blocked his way and prevented him from climbing
further.
She-Wolf
The she-wolf was the animal that drove him to despair the
most, she was also the one that he could not surpass. To his aid came Virgil
who offered to show him the way back to the light, which is the long, narrow
and straight way of the Christ.
Leopard and Lion
Note, the three animals are symbolic, the leopard symbolizes
malice and fraud, the lion violence and ambition and the she-wolf incontinence
(lust, fornication, gluttony etc.). These three animals represent the broad
structure of the infernal worlds.
Virgil tells Dante that he will lead him through the abyss
where he will later ascend to the heavenly light. There is no remedy other than
descending into the 9 regions of hell (the abyss) in order to ascend.
Conclusion
Dante at this point has not yet started his Epic journey
through the inferno of the Earth and then to the Earth’s Heaven. This part of his
book “The Inferno” is to inform us of how one deviated from the path and the
obstacles that one finds. This was a stage at the very beginning of his path,
perhaps before he began his initiations.
We say this based on what Master Samael says about Dante, in
that he was an initiate and his trilogy the is really an initiatic text or map
of the initiatic path left behind for the benefit of humanity or those amongst
humanity that can understand it.
End (356).
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