Beautifully clear opening..
On the top of the stairs, the first stage completed.
Then seeing how this is a smaller round, and then starting to “see” the first elements: the path and the bank, in dark blue-black stone.
And the first terrace gently sinks into the background.
After the deeper dive into twelve examples of the dynamics of distortions, the pilgrim reaches a point of a new and somewhat repaired outlook and deeper cosmology. The examples give experience and are also structured into three parts – a setting up internally of base distortion (Will over Reality, internal models over fullness of Reality), then the resulting churning inside (seizing authority, replacing authority, spinning a web of distortions), and then gradually how this externalizes for a person (practical choices, material priorities, seeking dominance in the material domain). In short: setting up, churning, externalize.
These twelve images also culminates in the interior destruction of “Troy”, leaving it in emptied caves and caverns.
The passage also shows an important dynamic: reason starting to work on the experience and supporting, enriching, making a useful model and tool, to understand these dynamics more precisely and to predict and repair more quickly in many cases. A meta-level is to show how this relationship should work, direct revelation vs. experience, and supporting help from reason to analyze and structure.
Which then brings us to verse 85, where Reason has completed its task for now, and points towards the next: an Angel preparing for their arrival.
So this is the moment that starts the final and overall part of Terrace one, and also, the foundational passage of any complete repair internally of the soul and overall cosmology. The foundational ideas of one self, fullness of Reality, and the relationship between the two.
It’s hard to “sum up” the whole terrace because close to every single tercet is itself a summary of an insight, a change, a process comment, support from Dante, rational approaches, the dynamics and combinations of all of these aspects.
But in some ways the overall motion is the following: to open up the spiritual life, pondering the dynamic and combination of the spiritual vs. material-secular life, three examples of lives that were partially dominated by deeper distortions (from family name, artistic gifts, or drive for dominance), and the foundational churning over exactly how the distortions are seeded and proliferates throughout oneself and the entire world as one engages with it.
So in short: open the spiritual, make this a part of one’s life, understand the earlier disease. Or simply: Receiving the Divine Light, and Healing internally.
Again, the nature of the sacred poem is such that the journey has to be undertaken by oneself, and it cannot be summarized in a meaningful way without the experiences. And the overall claim is significant; this is the starting point and first step of any case subject, individual or at larger scales (culture/society). Open up for the Divine Light, start healing and receiving. And now we also have a more precise understanding and also a toolkit for these processes.
And with that, we enter the final part of Canto 12 and Terrace One, the fuller encounter with the Angel, the Grace, the bigger picture infinitely embedding the whole passage that the Pilgrim (and the open Readers) might just have been through.
This terrace requires deeps studies, ample time, but then – the foundational work is finished. As Virgil states: this day will never dawn again. The light is now flooding into the spiritual, and also onto reason itself. And from there, the journey continues through more repair, rebirth and ascent – into the Heavens.
In the verse lines 52-57, Dante changes the focus somewhat from overall to more into the specifics of healing and transforming Superbia.
Virgil, as reason, has already asked about how to quicken and ease the process, and the response that is unfolding is first to simply stay with the process and help “cleaning” the distortions, and then now engaging more directly in likely the most common versions of them.
So in a pedagogical sense, we have moved from the spiritual life, to superbia as the first big obstacle, and now diving into the specifics to make the healing go faster.
This might not be necessary for everyone; at times simply praying and right aim will in itself make the process happen, but if the intellect wants to, one can discern deeper.
Thus the practical instruction book continues in these tercets, with how to restore the natural bigger picture of Reality, and learning as much as possible in the process.
After Reason wondered about how to find the fastest and easiest way through the healing and repair of superbia, the beginning of the answer comes from an unclear place:
ma fu detto: «A man destra per la riva
con noi venite, e troverete il passo
possibile a salir persona viva.
Roughly: “But it was said: ‘On the right hand along the bank, come with us, and you will find the step where it is possible for a living person to ascend'”.
In many ways a calming and stabilizing response: do not try to rush this process, nor forget it completely. Stay with it, support it, “clean the distortions” away through reflection and contemplation, and you will reach the end of it. The fullness of the repair and transformation will come eventually. But it takes time.”
And Dante comes back to this idea several times in the Comedy. The spiritual path is a journey that unfolds in its own pace often. Once entered, do not rush it. Do the daily bread, and enjoy the journey and growth, in peace and in beauty. And then, the ascent will come.
After looking at the distortions and their process (as being crushed/transformed under the big boulders), Virgil’s starts speaking with a question about how one might quicken or ease the whole process to reach beyond it.
The passage is:
«Deh, se giustizia e pietà vi disgrievi
tosto, sì che possiate muover l’ala,
che secondo il disio vostro vi lievi,
mostrate da qual mano inver’ la scala
si va più corto; e se c’è più d’un varco,
quel ne ‘nsegnate che men erto cala;
ché questi che vien meco, per lo ‘ncarco
de la carne d’Adamo onde si veste,
al montar sù, contra sua voglia, è parco».
So reason starts with recognizing the angelic potential, as in wings, that exists in the deeper faculties/elements/”points” in oneself, that might have become distorted. And then he respectfully asks for teachings, on how to find the fastest or easiest way.
This shift is in many ways extraordinary. Reason is already learning to be humble and open, and also to appreciate the spiritual wisdom and aspect/dimension of reality itself. This is rapidly becoming a very different and healthy rationality, vs. one that is self-contained, closed, and trapped inside its own web of constructs and models about the world.
And Virgil ends with this (roughly): “as the one who is with me here is clothed in the flesh of Adam, that slows him down in the ascent, counter to his own wishes and aim.” This might in many ways also resonate with the Reader too, and likely Dante the Writer: even when the spiritual part is found and started, and to some extent understood, there is still a slowness to the process that could be frustrating. And it is partly because of this, that Reason here wants to know from the healing and transforming distortions: how do we get this done as fast as possible, and move on?
So reason “clicks” back into its efficiency and analytical mode here, but still, it is much more open and matured, and realizes the value and necessity of learning from the process that is in many ways reshaping the foundations from which reason is often operating. And yet still, first of all: how to get through this faster?
After the opening prayer of Canto XI Dante briefly describes the overall process of purgation as similar to how one sometimes dreams of the boulders – likely referring to the sense of old distortions disappearing and healing in a sort of dreamlike state.
Così a sé e noi buona ramogna
quell’ombre orando, andavan sotto ‘l pondo,
simile a quel che tal volta si sogna,
Roughly: “Like this to themselves and to us, these shades were singing good prayers, walking under the boulder, similar to that which one sometimes dreams of.”
The “pondo” as stone/boulder thus becomes a symbol of the whole terrace, and the whole central transition in a life as well – removing the distortions, healing, and opening up to fuller reality and a categorically different experience and participation in Being.
The elements within oneself, slowly being crushed, the faculties gradually rebuilding healthy and aligned assumptions and elements of a new cosmology.
This process itself is really something of a miracle.
After the circulation of the Divine and Creation, and the right ordering of receiving and engaging, Dante moves on to the idea of alignment of the Will, in gratitude.
Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi
fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna,
così facciano li uomini de’ suoi.
Meaning roughly: “Like how the Angels are sacrificing their Wills to You, whilst singing Hosannah, so do the humans with their own Wills.”
Simply pointing to how reconnecting to the bigger picture and aligning one’s cosmology with these bigger and deeper Truths, is in a way to “sacrifice” the Will to choose any cosmology one would like, but at the same time: once understood there is no greater joy or gift than to find one’s place in the bigger and fuller living Reality, in gratitude and in richness.
Choosing the richest, eternally beautiful and generative abundant relationship to reality is indeed to forego the “choice” of other outlooks – but what better sacrifice can one possibly make. Even more: the sacrifice is the choice of something much bigger and better, once fully apprehended and experienced.
Then, comes a more practical aspect from Dante:
Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna,
sanza la qual per questo aspro diserto
a retro va chi più di gir s’affanna.
Meaning: “Give us today the daily manna, without which in this dry desert, those who struggle more to turn themselves will go backwards again.”
So there is a double effect in this tercet: both the confession that this is a difficult or strenuous change to undertake within oneself, and also that one needs support and nutrition every day on this journey. It is not sufficient to merely “understand”, and having a Gabriel moment internally, one has to keep working for a long time, and one also needs the spiritual nutrition, “bread”, manna – from the Heavens.
In a way, this could also come in the form of Dante’s Divine Comedy in periods. Reading a couple of tercets every morning and contemplate, dwell, enrich oneself in the meaning and wisdom and experience, is in itself a form of spiritual daily practice. Which also changes you, and will gradually open Scripture as well, which in some sense is harder to apprehend for a closed or blocked secular mind. Dante’s Comedy reaches people in this condition too, through beauty, poetry, as literature, more secular philosophy at times, and rationality itself as guide for 2/3rds of the whole Journey. This is in some ways a key pedagogical aspect of the work – start with the rational to reach out to the disconnected secular minds, and gradually build out a bigger cosmology of both the spiritual and rational, and also see how rationality itself leads to this balance and combination over time.
So a simple advice and companionship from Dante here; once the spiritual path is found and started, remember the little daily inputs and devoted time/experience in the spiritual. It will grow slowly. And using the Comedy itself is excellent nutrition and even channeled manna from the Heavens in many places.
Which is in large part why, the poem still reads like and performs miracles right here in the real (and bigger) world.
After the lifting of sights up to the Heavens, and to the Love that overflows for the first effects (souls and angels), the second tercet returns this outpouring of love, with a praising up from the whole of creation:
laudato sia ‘l tuo nome e ‘l tuo valore
da ogni creatura, com’è degno
di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore.
as in “every creature rendering gratitude for the sweet breath/spirit of the Divine.”
And Dante then continues the third tercet with a newfound humility from the distortions, now in a way being remade into something different: the faculties of apprehension and overall world views – having found the right ordering of Being itself:
Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno,
ché noi ad essa non potem da noi,
s’ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno.
Meaning: “Come towards us the peace of your Kingdom, as we to it cannot by ourselves, if it does not come, with all our ingenuity.”
Or in more flowing language: “May come towards us the peace of your Kingdom, as we cannot arrive there by ourselves, even with all our intellect and ingenuity, if it does not come to us first.”
So a significant point here is the acknowledgement, and perhaps a new understanding, of the correct ordering of things. The light and peace of the spiritual Kingdom must arrive to us, so we can reach it, and we cannot reach it alone by force or determination. This touches on the deepest dynamic throughout the rest of the Comedy: we must Receive, and then engage with that which we receive, and this sequence is essential.
And in many ways one might hear Dante’s own voice in this – his own hard learned lessons, that by one’s own devices and no transcendent connection and receiving, one will only reach so far.
A tercet of gratitude, wisdom, practical instruction, and beauty. We ascend through receiving, not through grasping higher. And this will eventually become a daily and persistent reminder; open, receive, gratitude, engagement. Infinite enrichment and eternal circulation of grace, joy, and the light of the Heavens.
These are the fruits of healing Superbia.
Here is the full analysis with the method. Note especially the Result section at the end:
“This tercet is the pivot from the foundational architecture of the spiritual life (Purgatorio X) to the spiritual life itself as lived relationship with God. It breaks the circumscribed, spatial, sovereign God of superbia and replaces it with the relational God who dwells through generative, overflowing love for the souls and angels he created.” Continue reading
After the discernment and reflection on Purgatory X, one might wonder: what comes naturally next after this? After the full outline of the spiritual life and removal of Superbia?
And the first tercet of Purgatory XI shows us.
«O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai,
non circunscritto, ma per più amore
ch’ai primi effetti di là sù tu hai,
Meaning: “Oh Our Father, who dwells in the Heavens, not circumscribed by it, but because of more love that you have for the first effects up there.”
And what else could come after the monumental Purgatory X, than lifting the sights to the biggest picture, to the Being and to the Divine. We have just been through a deep dive into the nature and beginning of the spiritual path, and inner purgation, and then – it zooms out into the overall picture, the Heavens, and a Divinity that dwells there from an overflowing and abundant love for the souls and the angels (first effects), and beyond any boundaries or circumscriptions. The wording here is another seed for the whole of Paradiso, and what will eventually become the unfolding image of Reality itself in its Divine nature.
But as a first journey and pilgrimage, this meaning is largely or fully hidden. For now, it is a reminder and a redirection of focus to something higher and bigger. Out of the self-focus of purgation and repair, and up towards the widest sense of Being there is, and to the Love from Being towards the Souls. An overflowing Love from the Heavens, for the living spirits, and from that from which we once originated.
