Ulysses and Europa represent the two main pitfalls.
After a first direct experience of God, the Pilgrim sees the Earthly mistakes with new clarity: Self or False Gods, over true Reality.
At the end of Sphere 8 – the Fixed Stars – Dante has a second look back on the Earth, and sees his past life once again with new eyes. This comes after he has experienced a Touch of God in his own Awareness, and discerned this as Solidifying the Experience (as in the St. Peter’s confirmation of Christ), and understanding Hope as both the forward drive towards knowing God, and after a direct experience, the drive towards the Glory and Fruits of a life with God.
The third step is with St. John, understanding Love and Motion as something that cannot be “grasped” conceptually at all – thus his passing inability to “see”, and the “eclipse” before the light of St. John. The block is inside his own mind, with the apprehension faculty of concept, structure, analysis, category – getting in “the way” of apprehending directly and naturally.
And when these three discernments are thoroughly examined, the Pilgrim suddenly reaches down to his own “inner Adam”, the origins of his own soul.
He learns about the nature and shifting experiences of Theosis, and how it will often be brief but recurring, like the sun passing through the Zenith inside, with warmth and illumination.
So after these massive changes in the Pilgrim (in large part as consciousness growing and catching up with pure experience and what the soul/Beatrice has shown), there is one last look down at the earthly, and at what Dante now calls “the First Life”, “il primo clima“.
It could be helpful to pause here at what Dante seems to be saying. The Sphere of the Fixed Stars gave him the first direct experience of God, and with the three theological virtues, he gained “access” to the deepest roots of his own soul, that was born in communion with God.
If correct, this is Dante simply declaring his shift from a first life as secular and disconnected from God, as in the opening Dark Forest, and now being connected again. The fulfillment of refinding the way is completed in these very verses, not at the last page of Paradiso, but at the end of Sphere 8 with the Fixed Stars, in Canto XXVII, verses 76-81.
His soul then tells him: “Lower your face, and see how you have turned” (vòlto).
And what he sees, is the Mediterranean Sea, and the folly of Ulysses on the one side (from Inferno 26), and that which made princess Europa the “sweet charge/cargo” on the other side.
Meaning: What Dante realizes is the two main roots of his disconnected life, or in general, God’s perspective on how people go wrong. Either choosing the Self (Ulysses) or False Gods (as Europa does, founding a civilization from falling for the deception of Zeus).
Dante realizes his “first life” in the Earthly, his “first season”, was blocked and distracted by exactly these two forces internally: False Gods or the Self as the pinnacle of Reality.
There are still more to be learned and experienced for the Pilgrim before the end of the poem, but the main mission and turn is already completed. He has refound the way, and he is once again reconnected and living in participation and communion, with the Heavens.
The identification of Ulysses and Europa as representing self-idolatry and false worship resonates deeply with the Augustinian framework that undergirds much of Dante’s moral architecture—the distinction between using and enjoying, between *uti* and *frui*. I find particularly compelling your reading of Canto XXVII as marking the completion of the pilgrim’s essential conversion rather than reserving this for the Empyrean; this aligns with the tradition in Bernard of Clairvaux where the touch of divine presence, however brief, fundamentally reorients the soul’s loves. The notion of *theosis* as recurring rather than static also reflects the medieval understanding, particularly in the Victorines, that contemplation in this life must always be a rhythm of ascent and return to the active life below.
What a profound moment of transformation – I love how Dante positions this reconnection not at the poem’s end but right here in Sphere 8! The way you’ve mapped out those three discernments with the saints, especially that striking insight about conceptual thinking getting in the way of direct experience with St. John, really illuminates the journey from disconnection to participation. And those two pitfalls of Self and False Gods feel so universal and relevant – it’s remarkable how Dante can look back at his “first life” with such clarity once he’s touched that divine awareness.
The architectural elegance here is striking – three diagnostic tests (Peter, John, James) functioning like a triple authentication system before granting access to the soul’s deepest layer. What interests me is how Dante positions the completion point at Sphere 8 rather than the finale, suggesting the poem’s remaining structure serves a different function than the primary transformation arc. The binary classification of spiritual failure modes (Self vs False Gods, Ulysses vs Europa) feels almost like identifying two fundamental design flaws that corrupt the entire system’s operation.
Yes, but they are both contingent on Free Will. This is the imperative of their existence. A part of the design, without which Theosis as a voluntary relationship with Love could not exist.
What strikes me most profoundly here is this notion of *il primo clima* – that our entire existence before genuine encounter with the divine is merely a “first life,” a preliminary season. The dual pitfalls of Self and False Gods… are they not two faces of the same coin? When we worship anything less than ultimate Reality, whether our own ego or constructed idols, we remain trapped in that dark forest where conceptual grasping itself becomes the obstacle to direct seeing.
True. A difference might partly be in self-perception. It is always a fundamental choice of Self vs. God (the Two Trees in many ways), but for many the false frameworks might not *feel* like the Self. They might assume that they follow higher “good” values.